Baby Blood

'Baby Blood' is a superb overlooked French horror movie that deserves a much wider audience. The beautiful and voluptuous Emmanuelle Escourrou stars as a circus performer who is impregnated by some kind of mutant monster. On the run, her unborn "child" begins to speak to her and demands blood - lots of it. Reluctantly she complies by murdering men she encounters. Eventually she develops a strange love/hate relationship with the monster within her.

This is a brilliantly entertaining variation on the killer baby theme (see 'The Unborn' and 'It's Alive'), with plenty of gore and nudity from the stunning Escourrou. I say steer clear of the American dubbed version as it is cut. 'Baby Blood' is one of the most underrated horror movies of the last twenty years. I thought it was a classic piece of exploitation and I can't recommend it highly enough!

A chatty entity that has existed since the dawn of creation lives on into the 20th century. It ends up inside a cheetah that gets acquired by a circus. After making a messy exit from inside the big cat, it slithers inside Yanka, a circus performer (super sexy French starlet Emmanuelle Escourrou), and starts incessantly nagging at her. "Feed me", it says to her, much like Audrey II from "The Little Shop of Horrors". It turns out that the monstrous fetus needs blood for sustenance, and Yanka is obliged to go out and nastily slaughter a great many male victims during the duration of her pregnancy.

It's true enough that horror stories about monster babies were not exactly original by this point, but director Alain Robak gives the scenario a fresh coat of blood-red paint with his themes of maternal instinct and feminism gone berserk. (One can hardly fail to notice that most of the men in this story are incorrigible rotters or even worse.) The cast gives the visceral, sadistic material a great, straight-faced go, and Robak gives it great pace as well as dark humour. And, of course, horror fans who rate their movies based on the amount of bloodshed should be more than satisfied. There is also no shortage of nudity.

Overall, this is an engrossing exploitation-horror film that gets a lot of mileage out of the developing relationship between the reluctant mother and the monster within her.

Look for a cameo from the canine star of the French cult hit "Baxter"; director Robak supplies the voice of the monster in the original French version, and none other than Gary Oldman does the voice for the English-language version.

Seven out of 10.

Baby Blood is filled to the brim with gore and haunting imagery, but it does leave a funky taste in one's mouth when all is said and done. The plot doesn't quite gel together as well as it should and it can be a frustrating, fragmented, and episodic viewing experience as the lead character goes from person to person on a mad killing spree, trying to satiate her unborn baby's appetite for human blood.

French cinema isn't exactly known for its many horror masterpieces (the exceptions that prove this rule are "Les Yeux Sans Visage" and the more recent "Haute Tension") but, as much as in every other country, there are always some gore-loving genre fanatics that sooner or later direct their own independent cult gem. Alain Robak clearly is such an enthusiast filmmaker and his "Baby Blood" is a hugely entertaining and cheerful splatterfest, despite the poor and inept screenplay. The relatively unknown but impressively voluptuous Emmanuelle Escourrou (what's in a name) stars as the unhappy fiancée of a circus artist who gets impregnated by a parasite that burst out a newly imported cheetah. The fetus growing inside Yanka is pure evil and demands her to kill men so that it can feed on their blood. This results in some of the most over-the-top bloody and sadistic massacres ever shot on film, with cut off heads, slit throats and many outrageous knife-attacks. Of course, this exaggerated amount of bloodshed makes it all blackly comical and "Baby Blood" therefore shouldn't be taken too seriously. This isn't the fist horror film handling about ferocious fetuses/infants (there's also "It's Alive", "I don't want to be Born" and even the premise of "Rosemary's Baby" is remotely similar) but "Baby Blood" is much more creative and tongue-in-cheek than anything you've ever seen before. The camera-work is quite nifty and there are several cameos of eminent Frenchmen, like Jacques Audiard (director of "Read My Lips") and Alain Chabat (who played Caesar in "Asterix"). The script is very man-unfriendly, which is quite a new approach for exploitation! Nearly every male is presented as a weak and imbecile creature whereas Yanka gets stronger with every murder she commits. "Baby Blood" is ingenious, somewhat bizarre horror fun.

Well, The Evil Within (Baby Blood) is definitely a different sort of movie. It isn't just the loads of blood that make this movie a fun choice, it has good atmosphere and a great horror storyline that keep things interesting throughout.

The story circles around a young woman named Yonka. Yonka is a very unfortunate woman as she is impregnated by an alien being. Not from outer space, I might add. Anyway, poor Yonka, the baby inside of her can communicate with her telepathically and forces her to kill people and suck there blood to feed the creature inside. The whole story takes place over nine months and has one misadventure after the next, until the very bloody end.

I first saw this movie under the title of The Evil Within many years ago. It is better now then I remember it being when I first viewed it. The movie is incredibly bloody. Not so much during the first hour of the movie, but the last thirty minutes is something else. Of course, I have seen far more bloody, but, if you are not used to this type of thing, it can be quite disturbing.

The storyline in itself is quite original and simple at the same time. What makes it so cool to watch is the relationship Yonka is forced to have with this evil being inside of her. It can be quite horrific and humorous all at the same time.

If you like horror I don't see how you couldn't like this film. If you like Frank Henenlotter's work, movies like Brain Damage or Basket Case, I think this is right up your alley. 9/10