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?
