Baby Blood - Kino Cult 4K UHD

I’m tempted to give five stars to Baby Blood for its title alone, but this arbitrary code of honor I have in the fairness of reviewing titles prevents me from doing so. Instead, I will give it four stars. The surprising thing, though, is that this should be a four-star picture at all. More surprising yet is how fun it is for a movie called Baby Blood.

Baby Blood (also known as The Evil Within) tells the story of Yanka (Emmanuelle Escourrou) a circus performer who is impregnated by a slithering snake-like creature. Before long, the “baby” starts to get hungry and the only thing that will do is human blood. The alien fetus inside of Yanka begins to talk to her. It tells her that it needs human blood to be born and to grow strong, and that if it doesn’t get what it wants, it can destroy her from the inside. An unlikely friendship between the two begins to form. She kills for it and it, in turn, promises to be birthed normally and healthily, where it will crawl off into the ocean, never to be seen again. She will have her life back just as soon as its life can truly begin.

In between bouts of gore and spurting blood, there are quieter moments where Yanka and the “baby” talk about this so-called human condition. Neither Yanka nor the baby are particularly happy. She’s killing people to feed an alien snake living inside of her and it’s trapped inside of an incubator that can sometimes be stubborn or unwilling to do what it demands. And it has to admonish her when she tries to sneak in a cigarette here and there. “But isn’t that what makes humans smart?” they both wonder to each other. To have the self-awareness to realize they’re unhappy? No other species can do that.

Baby Blood has plenty of these quieter moments, and it’s not that they hint at a better, deeper film, it’s that the movie somehow manages to have its cake and eat it, too. Is it a gory comedy-horror movie with severed heads flying through the air and flesh being chomped on? Or is it a serious rumination on humanity and what makes us tick? The answer is that it is both of those things. It’s a sly, intelligent little movie that has something to say about this world we live in, but also delights in some casual carnage.

Baby Blood belongs to a very specific kind of sub-genre of horror that, I feel, explores the horrors of being a woman. Movies like Silence of the Lambs, Teeth or Takashi Miike’s episode of Masters of Horror “Imprint.” We view the world through Yanka’s eyes and everywhere she goes, as a pregnant woman alone, she must be on high-alert and cognizant of her surroundings. Repeatedly, throughout the story, she’s subjected to physical violence and attempted sexual assault. And then there’s the horror of pregnancy itself, in which a hilarious monologue from a well-meaning woman describes it as a sideshow geekfest of terror that ends with a bloody, screaming creature torn from her. Baby Blood takes the everyday, real horror of womanhood and cranks it to 11 in a bloody and frequently brilliant satire as a means of holding a mirror to our society.

While the high level of gore may be off-putting to some viewers, those with a strong stomach will find a lot to admire in Baby Blood, a movie that juggles a number of tones with aplomb. It’s at once a sensitive character study, an outrageous and offensive comedy and an icky body horror movie that uses its gore to explore common fears we all have about ourselves that this fragile vessel we live inside of.

Vital Disc Stats: The Ultra HD Blu-ray
Kino Lorber (through Kino Cult) delivers Baby Blood on a 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo, with both discs housed in a standard case with a slipcover. Both the slipcover and the case contain the same artwork. The audio commentary track can be found on both discs, but only the Blu-ray has additional trailers.

Baby Blood has been mastered in 4K from a scan of the original 34mm camera negative in SDR. For the purpose of this review, I played both discs simultaneously on two separate TVs and since there in no HDR grading on the 4K disc, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of difference. The 4K disc is clearly sharper, but color realization, black levels, etc. are going to be remarkably similar between the two. Would an HDR grading have been nice? Sure. I’m not sure it was wholly necessary given the film’s rougher-around-the-edges aesthetic appeal. And when I say “rougher around the edges” I’m mostly talking about some basic so-called “imperfections” like some noisy shadows because of lowlight film stock that was used for darker nighttime scenes. Mostly, Baby Blood looks great. The colors are rich and textured. Film grain is apparent throughout. And aside from a few noisy shadows, black levels look wonderful. This is an early 90s horror movie, after all, and I should expect nothing less. Those nighttime scenes look exquisite.

Viewers have their choice between a 2.0 DTS-HD MA stereo mix in French and 2.0 DTS-HD MA stereo mix in English. I’m generally sensitive to dubbing, so I watched the film in French with subtitles, but I did rewatch some key scenes in English to note any differences in the mix, and there were a few! I feel that the English dub is a bit muffled in musical score and sound effects. I think the original French audio is a bit sharper in clarity and design. The French mix was handled well. Music, sound effects, ambient noise, etc. are allowed to wander the two-channel front soundstage, but dialogue always takes priority. For a stereo mix, it felt full and wide. Both IMDB and Wikipedia say that on the English dub Gary Oldman voices the unborn alien fetus living inside of Yanka. The source on that info seems pretty dubious and it sounds nothing like Gary Oldman (whose voice is so unique and instantly recognizable), so I’m going to express some doubt on that particular trivia tidbit.

Sadly, there are not a lot of features here. Considering how heavily censored the film was for so many years before finally being released, uncut, in the United States, it would have been nice to have a retrospective documentary or interviews with the filmmakers. Even still, there is an audio commentary with the late great Lee Gamin and film critic Jarret Gahan which is a very informative worthwhile listen. There is also a trailer for Baby Blood plus some other trailers for movies issued by Kino.

• Audio Commentary by Film Historian Lee Gambin and Film Critic Jarret Gahan
• Trailers

Baby Blood, Alain Robak’s very French, very bloody and iconoclastic horror film pulls of a delicate balancing act should be enjoyable to gorehounds and art film enthusiasts alike. Kino Cult and StudioCanal have given the film a great restoration from its OCN in SDR with a lossless DTS-HD MA stereo sound mix. While there aren’t many supplemental features to be found, this release ought to pacify fans and curious viewers alike. This release comes Highly Recommended.