The Demon's Baby
What a very odd film Wong Jing has produced this
time out. Its 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?
My rating for this film: 7.0
DVD Information:
Distributor - Universe
The transfer is excellent - good color, good
detail.
Letterbox
Trailer for this film
Previews: Haunted Mansion, Temogotchi, F'''/Off,
Tricky King
8 Chapters
Subs - English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified
Chinese
Easy to read subs
Star files on Anthony Wong, Emotional Cheung,
Annie Wu, Tsui Kam-Kong