Baby Blood (Robak, 1990): Nickel Cinema, 7pm
A cruel circus owner beats and abuses his pregnant wife. One day the circus receives a leopard newly captured in Africa, but the animal soon dies. However, an evil creature that was inside the leopard bursts out of the animal’s body, burrows into the wife’s body and takes over her fetus. It soon starts demanding blood, and the woman goes searching for victims for her new “baby.
Screen Slate review (full text here via this link):
Revisiting a film like Alain Robak’s Baby Blood (1990) is a
strange experience in this current moment when its specifically
splattery strain of body horror, once largely relegated to
nth-generation bootleg tapes of movies like Guinea Pig 5: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988) and the pages of Gorezone magazine, has fully ascended to the mainstream with a film like The Substance (2024).
In a way, it makes sense. With horror movies suddenly needing to “Mean
Something” or “Explore Trauma” in increasingly boneheaded ways so that
traditionally lowbrow genre fare is more palatable to discerning
highbrow audiences and, more importantly, awards voters, the horrors of
having a body (and there are many) easily lend themselves to a wide
range of allegories, from transness to AIDS to the myriad pressures that
society places on women. From Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to It’s Alive (1974) and Alien (1979)—and
all of their respective rip-offs, spin-offs, sequels, and
prequels—fears surrounding pregnancy have been especially (I’m sorry)
fertile ground for body horror over the years, but few are as
visceral—or twistedly empowering—as Baby Blood.
Elizabeth Purchell
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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