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"Baby Blood" DVD
Anchor Bay hauls up another
old wreck from the deep--but is this one worth salvaging?
So what we have here
plotwise is--get this--a ravenous, quasi-sentient parasite crawls
into a French circus performer for the express purpose of being
born of a human being. But in order for it to get big and strong
and born, it needs a whoooooole lot of blood. Thus, new French circus
mommy has to go out and slaughter up a whole bunch of people to
feed the "baby".
There are days, folks,
when I type up a quick plot synopsis and even I wonder what I was
on when I wrote that. Clearly, this is not your normal average everyday
horror flick.
I do approve of how the
cage handling scene, done within the first ten minutes, is almost
a mirror for the cage handling scenes from "Dead Alive".
"Dead Alive" also shot its cage handling scenes from an
inside the cage perspective, so "Baby Blood" either took
its cues well or started a legend on its way.
Despite the almost alarming
amount of fake blood being splashed, dashed, and otherwise thrown
around the sets, it's not what you would call gratuitous, gore-for-gore's
sake filmmaking. I'm amazed to say it, but all the splatter is actually
necessary to the plot.
Just as a bit of the
aside, check out the prices at the gas station around half an hour
in. Man, I got the cold chills just looking at them and I'm not
even French. Possibly the scariest moment of "Baby Blood"
was looking at a gas station sign that read "5.65".
Yeah, I know...I'm scared
too.
Not to mention a bit
of wishful thinking--there's a poster for "Baby Blood 2"
in here, with "coming soon" over the top of it. Nice try,
fellas.
Perhaps my one real problem
with "Baby Blood" was the subtitles. Having them is great,
sure...but they could've meshed with the dialogue a bit better.
It wasn't to the point of sheer incomprehensibility--they at least
got the gist of every point--but they really could've made the two
match up better.
The ending is really
rather unsettling, not only for what you actually see, but for the
implications of it all. When you see it yourself, you'll understand
more what that means. And when you think about it, man...creepy.
The special features
include English subtitles and trailers for "Baby Blood",
"Superstition", "Warning Sign", "Cemetery
Man" ("Dellamorte Dellamore" for those of you who
follow the original titles), and "The Evil Dead".
All in all, it's another
salvaged hit for Anchor Bay with "Baby Blood". Maybe not
the best one they've had, granted...but it's not as though this
is any kind of bad. Some genuine shocks combine with an overall
pervasive creepiness to yield a movie that's quite solidly put together.
Baby
Blood
***
DVD
Directed by Alain Robak
Written by Alain Robak, Serge Cukier
Starring Emmanuelle Escourrou, Jean Francois Gallotte, Christian
Sinniger, Francois Frappier
Produced by Ariel Zeitoun, Joelle Malberg, Irene Sohm
NR
84 mins
1989 / 2006
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