Skip to content

Plot: abused woman is impregnated by alien and becomes its murderous host.

France was absolutely the last place you’d expect to find a genuine horror gem at the dawn of the decade that all but killed the genre. A simple concept can go a very long way when executed properly. Baby Blood might very well be the French horror classic from the 1990s that revived the genre domestically. As unbelievable (and unlikely) as it may sound Baby Blood does, and did, just that. It might not look like much but once Baby Blood gets down to business it packs a mean little punch. Armed with an enchanting lead actress and a trio of hungry special effects craftsmen about to go places Baby Blood is a triumph of creativity and ingenuity over more practical restrictions in time and budget. Plastered with gratuitous wall-to-wall nudity and enough gore to satiate the inhuman cravings of any gorehound Baby Blood is nothing if not an unsung classic. Alain Robak directed (and co-wrote) what just may be the best David Cronenberg body horror that David Cronenberg never made. It well deservedly won the jury price at the 1990 Festival international du film fantastique d'Avoriaz (Avoriaz International Fantastic Film Festival), or the precursor to the current (and still running) Festival international du film fantastique de Gérardmer (Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival) in Gérardmer in the Vosges, France.

If nothing else Baby Blood looks and feels like a composite of some of the best body horror and slashers from the two decades preceding it. It merges the central premises of Rabid (1977) and Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage (1988) and has a snake-like alien creature enter its host the same way it did Barbara Steele in Shivers (1975). Said serpentine creature has similar motivations as the alien in Ciro Ippolito's Alien 2: On Earth (1980) and filters that through a sobering, clutter-free character study on the model of William Lustig’s Maniac (1980). Baby Blood is visually informed by Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) and Bad Taste (1987) and alternates that with a detached, almost documentary-style of filming reminiscent of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) and a distinct feminist undertone not unlike Abel Ferrara’s evergreen Ms .45 (1981). Like Alien 2: On Earth (1980) before it Baby Blood is custodian to some of the most outrageous, over-the-top splatter effects of the decade being surpassed only by Peter Jackson’s laugh-a-minute gorefest Brain Dead (1992) some two years later. On an interesting side-note both Gary Oldman and Jennifer Lien lend their voice talent to the international English cut. Oldman was but two years away from the Francis Ford Coppola big budget gothic horror throwback Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and Luc Besson's Léon (1994) two years after that. Lien would become a staple in US television.

Yanka (Emmanuelle Escourrou, voiced by Jennifer Lien in the international version) is a 23-year-old performer for Le Cirque Lohman currently touring all across Northern France. Hers is a life of disenfranchisement, lack of opportunity and social mobility in a male-dominated field rife with every imaginable sort of discrimination. Her current lot as the reluctant mistress of Lohman (Christian Sinniger), the circus manager/ringmaster, affords her some stability but at the price of her well-being. She’s preyed upon not only by Lohman but by seemingly every man. She’s conscious about her weight and neurotically documents her findings each and every day. On top of her body image issues Yanka desperately looks for any and all opportunities to escape her present situation. Lohman is a loathsome, bovine weakling of a man prone to sudden fits of physical - and verbal violence. One morning while Yanka is coming out of the shower a delivery truck arrives custodian of the latest addition to the circus bestiary, a leopard from Equatorial Africa. While the deliveryman (François Frappier) tries to get an eyeful of her form the tamer (Thierry Le Portier) notices how restless the creature is. That night the leopard is reduced to minced bloody chunks and immediately Lohman organizes a canvas of the perimeter to apprehend the culprit. While the men conduct the search a snake-like parasite crawls into Yanka’s uterus. Not feeling her usual self she hops onto the scale and it dawns upon her that she might be pregnant.

Coming to grips with the realization that a carnivorous parasite has taken up residence in her uterus Yanka has no choice but to relent to its demands for the duration of her pregnancy. The creature (voiced by Alain Robak and Gary Oldman in the international version) communicates with her telepathically and keeps her subservient by triggering severe cramps whenever she does not comply. As the unwilling host (and reluctant incubator) to the alien creature Yanka’s subordinate to the will of the malevolent parasite and forced to relate to her fellow human beings only as predator to prey. Her first (and obvious) victim is one of convenience, the contemptible waste of flesh Lohman. In the nine months that follow Yanka adopts the nomadic lifestyle of a vagrant drifting from town to town, job to job, living where she can while seducing and exsanguinating hapless marginalized men to satisfy her uterine passenger’s hunger. The parasite informs Yanka that in five million years it will replace man as the dominant species on the planet and that once carried to term it must be released in the ocean. The parasite allows Yanka to carve a better path in life for herself by literally carving her way through all abusive men she encounters. As Yanka completes her journey of self-actualization and self-realization she exerts her newfound independence by expelling the hostile creature from its corporeal confines.

In place of casting an established name Robak instead decided upon an unknown, more or less. What other way describe Italian-Greek Emmanuelle Escourrou other than that she was all milk and cookies? Another would be to calll the impossibly proportioned 21-year-old the French answer to Debora Caprioglio or Serena Grandi. Is Emmanuelle related to Pierre-Marie Escourrou from Eurociné debacle Zombie Lake (1980)? Who knows, it’s entirely within the realm of plausibility. According to Escourrou’s official biography she accepted the role on merit of Baby Blood being the first French gore film, which isn’t entirely true, and it posing a challenge. Even as a female-centric splatter film it was preceded by Night Of Death! (1980) a decade earlier and the grand père of the entire subgenre is probably Jean Rollin and his The Grapes Of Death (1978). None of which dilutes from Emmanuelle rising so wonderfully to the occasion, wide-eyed and dripping with vigor, in a demanding role that required very physical acting as well as extensive partial and full frontal nudity, a challenge she readily accepted and even moreso desired.

To say that Emmanuelle literally lets it all hang out would be putting it mildly. Comme disent les Français, “Elle a de gros lolos.” Her derrière is worth a mention too. A lot of retrospective reviews over the years and decades since apparently make a big deal about the fact that Escourrou has a gap-tooth but they conveniently forget that this is something very French. Aren’t (and weren’t) Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin, Muriel Catalá, the Isabelles, Adjani and Huppert; Béatrice Dalle, Vanessa Paradis, Emmanuelle Béart, and Audrey Tatou beloved for exactly that reason? Nobody ever seemed to raise a complaint about them over such a triviality. For her performance she won the second ever Michel-Simon award, given to her by British director Terry Gilliam, at the Parisian Festival Acteurs à l'Écran (Screen Actors Festival) in Saint-Denis. Had things gone any differently (or had Brass cared to look outside of his native Italy) Escourrou could have been in Paprika (1991). Possessing both genuine acting talent and the body of a goddess it’s no wonder that Escourrou almost immediately legitimized herself in the mainstream and became a monument of French cinema in her own right.

To understand the historical significance of Baby Blood one should look at the beginnings of the French Extreme some ten years earlier. Night Of Death! (1980) laid the groundwork and set the standard for the French Extreme. The growing movement was bolstered by equally infamous no-budget splatter epics as Ogroff (1983), Devil Story (1986) and The Return of the Living Dead Girls (1987). Baby Blood begins where Night Of Death! (1980) ends or only dared hint at. It may not be the originator of the form or even the first of its kind, but time hasn’t dulled any of its inherent shock value. Also not unimportant is to remember that it was released in 1990, at the dawn of a decade characterized by horror collapsing into either slapstick comedy or slightly darker thrillers. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) was most directly responsible for the change but in hindsight it was Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) that was eerily prescient for the decade and for the direction of horror at large. With no other direction to go the genre instead resorted to poking fun at itself, futilely at that. In other words, the 90s was the decade of irony and marked by a dearth of any significant real horror.

Baby Blood, consciously or otherwise, is a different beast entirely. In truth Baby Blood reinvigorated a cycle that had commenced a decade earlier and set a historic precedent and established the pattern that has more or less been followed since then. The French Extreme seems to renew itself (and pushing itself to new extremes every time the cycle repeats) about every decade as Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s Fuck Me (2000) ushered in what would later be dubbed the New French Extreme. Other historical entries into the New French Extreme include Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible (2002), High Tension (2003) from Alexandre Aja, Inside (2007) and Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs (2008). No doubt the Francophone (but not geographically/culturally French) Calvaire (2004) from Belgian filmmaker Fabrice du Welz deserves to be recognized as part of the same movement. Not bad for unassuming little splatter epic shot over five weeks in Paris and Nanterre for next to nothing. If Emmanuelle Escourrou isn’t able to sell Baby Blood to you with her divine figure and acting, the special effects from Benoît Lestang, Guy Monbillard, and Jean-Marc Toussaint in all likelihood will.

Does Baby Blood says something about social security and the treatment of immigrants, the working poor and the systematically disenfranchised in France and the larger Parisian metropolitan area? Does it comment on male entitlement, machismo/sexism and toxic masculinity in a decade when such words didn’t have the traction they have now? Can Baby Blood be considered a feminist manifesto and enpowerment wish fulfillment fantasy? Mais oui, it probably has a thing or two it begs to share on all three and whether that’s a good or bad thing is entirely within the eye of the beholder. If you are here to see Emmanuelle Escourrou bare her gros tetons and twirl around in the nude, Baby Blood has you covered (and her too a good portion of the time). If you’re here for outrageous splatter effects, there’s that. For everyone else this is just some great body horror in tradition of early David Cronenberg with that uniquely French opaque dream-like atmosphere and quality. The spirits of Jean Rollin or Michel Lemoine might not dwell here but that doesn’t make Baby Blood any less fantastique or fantastic. Whichever way you want to slice it, Baby Blood is quintessential French horror and every bit the classic it’s made out to be. Not even the very belated sequel (it only took 18 years!) Lady Blood (2008) (with a returning Escourrou) can diminish from what Alain Robak accomplished here.

Plot: scholar falls in love with a beautiful girl who might, or might not, be human.

The Extreme Fox (非狐外传) is about the last thing you’d expect from actor-producer-director Wellson Chin Sing-Wai. Chin started out as an assistant director under famed action choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping and actor-producer-director Sammo Hung Kam Bo, and is a specialist in action and comedy, or some combination thereof. Wellson Chin is mostly known around these parts for helming the enduring action comedy franchise The Inspector Wears Skirts (1988-1992) or the Police Academy (1984-1994) from Hong Kong as well as the delightfully insane Girls with Guns actioner Super Lady Cop (1992) with Cynthia Khan. In recognition of his human interest features The Third Full Moon (1994), Once In A Life-Time (1995) and The Day That Doesn't Exist (1995) Chin has received multiple Film of Merit awards (in 1994 and twice in 1995) from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society. While primarily active in the environs of Hong Kong Chin occassionally branches out into Mainland China and The Extreme Fox is a good example of a director doing a genre he isn’t typically associated with.

As far as we can tell The Extreme Fox is a loose adaptation of the short story The Painted Skin from Liaozhai Zhiyi, or Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, from Qing Dynasty writer Pu Songling. Songling’s writing has been the basis for a variety of adaptations including, among others, The Enchanting Shadow (1960), and its famous Tsui Hark reimagining A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), Green Snake (1993), Painted Skin (2008), Mural (2011), and Ghost Story: Bride with Painted Skin (2016), and is considered a timeless monument of Classical Chinese literature. The beauty of many of Songling’s stories is that they can be interpreted as either tragic romances or horror stories, depending on how you choose to read them. The Extreme Fox chooses the romantic aspect with only the bare minimum of horror scenes required to tell the story. While Ghost Story: Bride with Painted Skin (2016) was the more faithful adaptation it never quite reaches the heights of The Extreme Fox, which as far as perfectly serviceable period-costume romances is concerned, is on the smoother end of unremarkable and utilitarian. It never exhibits the creativity of A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) neither does it possess the thick fairytale quality of Green Snake (1993). In those times before the hypnotically beautiful The Enchanting Phantom (倩女幽魂:人间情) (2020) this was a fairly faithful adaptation. Filmed in Hong Kong and aimed at the Mainland China market The Extreme Fox is extremely well-produced and beautiful to look at for what, for all intents and purposes, is a cheap webmovie.

Over the years we’ve taken quite a shine to Chrissie Chau Sau-Na (周秀娜). Chau rose to fame as a lang mo model with her 2009 and 2010 photobooks. Even though sweet Chrissie debuted in 2006 it wouldn’t be until Womb Ghosts (2010) four years later until it became apparent that she wasn’t just another model that stumbled into acting. Chau - famous for her 32D figure and the once-and-future queen of cleavage - was a spokesmodel for luxury lingerie brand Lamiu and in 2012 released her own lucrative bra line. In 2013 Chrissie appeared in 11 (!!) movies, among them Cold Pupil (2013), Lift to Hell (2013), and Kick Ass Girls (2013). In a career now spanning over a decade and sixty-plus productions Chrissie has worked everywhere from Hong Kong, and China, to Taiwan and Malaysia. Chau has played everything from the imperiled love interest, the enchanting spectral maiden, and the tough as nails action girl to more stereotypical romantic - and comedic roles. To our knowledge she never played a mermaid when that was something of a minor thing in Chinese webcinema a few years ago. Hampered by the same problem as Betty Sun Li (孙俪) and many far less than prominent (or talented, for that matter) Mainland China actresses Chrissie’s only fluent in her native Mandarin and Cantonese and she seems content to remain in regional and cultural borders. It’s unclear whether Chrissie speaks English (her Western social media at least suggest some basic knowledge and mastery of English, but her usage of it is inconsistent) and, if so, if she would be able to break into the Anglo-Saxon world in the same capacity as Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Q, Fan Bingbing, Yu Nan, and Ni Ni have.

In ancient Beijing narcoleptic Confucian scholar Wang Sheng (Alex Fong Lik-Sun) remains steadfast in his ambition to become a public servant in the bureaucracy of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Unfazed by the fact that he has failed the Imperial Examination three times in a row already, he travels to a small, sleepy farming hamlet in the village of Liuxian in the province of Wuxia. Liuxian has apparently been haunted for some time by a Kitsune or a fox spirit (why refer to it by its Japanese name if this is supposed to be ancient China?) if the Mayor (Lam Suet) is to be believed. Unable to afford bed and board Wang attracts the attention of gambling con artist Xiao Cui (or Glitter of Dawn) (Renata Tan Li-Na) and a very superstitious local girl (Cai Zi-Fen) before tavern hostess Li (He Mei-Tian) throws him out into the streets. He travels to the Miduo temple and is stunned to meet the beautiful Xianer (or Rosy Clouds Inside) (Chrissie Chau Sau-Na). What Sheng doesn’t realize is that Xianer is actually Princess Xianxia (Noble Summer or Noble Glow of Sunrise) who has spurned her lover General Wu Zhen (Huang Jun-Qi) and now exists as a húli jīng or nine-tailed fox. As Wang Sheng and Xianer face dangers, both ethereal and terrestrial, together a deep romance blossoms between the embattled fox spirit and her virtuous mortal suitor.

That The Extreme Fox is heavily redolent of A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) goes almost without saying. Chrissie gets to wear a few beautiful dresses, there’s plenty of shots with Chrissie in a mist-shrouded forest, a condensed variation on the bathtub scene, but there’s no instances of Chau playing a guqin or singing. Neither are there any instances of martial arts, swordsplay, or characters breaking into impromptu song-and-dance numbers. Understandable as this was shot on the budget of the average television movie. The Extreme Fox is, fortunately, vastly superior in every respect than the ghost horror Ghost Story: Bride with Painted Skin (2016) while never reaching the epic scope of Painted Skin (2008), and Painted Skin: The Resurrection (2012) either. The Extreme Fox sits comfortably in between and truly makes the best of what it could accomplish on a limited budget. To its everlasting credit it’s far more faithful to its source material than Wilson Yip Wai-Shun’s A Chinese Ghost Story (2011) with Liu Yi-Fei (劉亦菲) from two years before. The production value is surprisingly decent for a webmovie for the Mainland China market. Had this been produced in Hong Kong it probably would feature a lot more action, but The Extreme Fox works the best as a supernatural love story. The two female name-stars apparently ended up on opposite ends of the cinematic spectrum. Renata Tan Li-Na would end up in the well-intended Girls With Guns action feature Angel Warriors (2013) and hasn’t acted since 2016, whereas Chrissie Chau Sau-Na has become a respected and respectable A-lister.

If your only exposure to Wellson Chin Sing-Wai was the The Inspector Wears Skirts (1988-1992) franchise and the loopy Cynthia Khan HK actioner Super Lady Cop (1992) you’d never expect him to be able to conjure up something as delightfully old-fashioned as this. It never quite reaches the lofty heights of Tsui Hark’s A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) but that doesn’t stop it from at least trying to channel its essence. The Extreme Fox is closer in spirit to A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) than the ill-fated 2011 remake was. Joey Wong’s performance as the condemned ghost maiden is legendary for a reason, and Chrissie Chau Sau-Na does a close approximation of it here. On average (and given its slightly higher budget) Chau does a better nine-tailed fox than Shin Min-a (신민아) in the South Korean television series My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho (내 여자친구는 구미호) (2010). We would have preferred a prosthetic mask for the partial transformation scenes but digital is the way of today, so there’s that. Alex Fong Lik-Sun is tolerable enough as the clumsy and kind-hearted scholar but he’s no match for the late Leslie Cheung in one of his most memorable roles. Perhaps it’s the nature of the beast with this being a Pu Songling adaptation, but at key points The Extreme Fox re-enacts scenes from A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) sometimes almost verbatim. The most notable among these are the opening kill of an intrepid male wanderer, the truncated bathtub scene (albeit without the drifting rose petals, Chrissie Chau losing various articles of clothing, or any of the situational humour), and the scholar warding off various unholy forces of evil with a merry band of different allies. For reasons largely unexplained the nine-tailed fox (狐狸精) is referred to here by its Japanese name. Even the Korean gumiho (구미호) is more recognizable on average.

As it stands The Extreme Fox not only is one of the better Pu Songling adaptations, but also a Chrissie Chau Sau-Na feature that can be actively recommended for the casual viewer. It never becomes an epic or grand adventure on the scope of Mural (2011) but it compensates its lack of impressive setpieces with an abundance of dream-like atmosphere and a screenplay that understands the strengths of the story it’s adapting. It might not possess the oneiric, fairytale quality of Green Snake (1993), and in fact etches closer towards the stageplay quality of the Shaw Brothers classic The Enchanting Shadow (1960) from some five decades earlier. Mainland China has an abundance of fantasy wuxia on the small – and big screen, and the quality tends to be wildly divergent depending on any number of variables. The Extreme Fox comes to us by way of the Film Bureau which is usually never an indication of quality. Thankfully the opposite is true, and The Extreme Fox is a fantasy wuxia for a general audience. It might not be a match for Tsui Hark’s most celebrated works but it admirably rises to the occassion of transcending any number of limitations imposed upon it. That should count for something, and there’s Chrissie Chau Sau-Na too. Let’s not forget her….