The Demon's Baby

Director: Kant Leung Wang-fat
Year: 1998
Rating: 7.0

What a very odd film Wong Jing has produced this time out. It’s sort of Raise the Red Lantern meets Red to Kill as the first fifty minutes is a period piece detailing the lives of a General, his wives and their servants and then the remainder of the film turns into an orgy of hungry sharp toothed fetuses, mangled dogs, blood strewn corpses and crawling torsos. For good measure a few hopping vampires are thrown into the brew. I thought it all added up to a lot of fun – almost too gruesomely hokey to be taken seriously – but at the same time enough character development to care about the outcome.

What the film does well is marry these two disparate themes and makes both of them intriguing. I actually got caught up a bit in the rivalries between the wives, the poor treatment of the staff and the love story of two of the servants. There is also some nice period detail in the film that makes it a pleasure to watch. Of course the ambient music, the peculiar lighting, the shaking urns lets you know it is only a matter of time before this little world will come crumbling down in tatters.


Back in the days of the Ching Dynasty five demons were placed into separate urns, buried deep into the ground and a Golden Buddha is placed within to keep them from running amuck. If ever they were to get loose they could terrorize the world. Their method of re-entering the world is by attaching themselves to a fetus and feeding on blood and brains. One day Tsui Kam-Kong unearths the urns and brings them back to his home along with the Golden Buddha. As long as the Buddha is in place there is no danger, but one day it is stolen and the demons are unshackled.
 

One evening Tsui feels particularly randy and has the lanterns for all four of his wives lit outside and he rushes like a mad man from one to the other in order to have them all. A short time later it is announced that all four wives are pregnant. At the same time the cook, Emotional Cheung, has fallen in love with a maid, Annie Wu, and asked her to marry him. She consents and they make love.
 

Then in a night of bloody carnage the little nippers get very hungry and the stomachs of the wives split open to reveal some very nasty looking creatures within – all slimy and bloody and with tentacles and teeth only a mother could love. These babies are very hungry – first a dog is sucked in, then Tsui in panic feeds them all the livestock – but this is only the appetizers! Soon nearly everyone is being made into baby food and Tsui and Emotional are fighting for their lives. Along comes Anthony Wong a Taoist priest to try and put an end to the madness – but there are only four demons here – where is the fifth?