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The Demon’s Baby (1998)

Dir: Kant Leung

Legend has it that there was once a ‘Five Ghost Tao’ sect who worshipped five un-dying evil spirits.
These spirits latched onto pregnant women and could make the women and her unborn babies into Demons. Demons who feed on blood and brains!

It is believed that if all five spirits get reborn as babies they would be invincible and cause disaster around the world.
The sect was destroyed though and the five spirits sealed into five separate vases and buried with a guardian gold Buddha statue.
But it is said that the spirits still seek release and sure enough one day the military expedition of one General Hsu (Elvis Tsui, “Chinese Torture Chamber Story”) unearths the chamber, steals the Buddha and removes the seemingly innocent vases.

The arrogant Hsu lives in a grand house with all his wives (he has just added a forth wife to his collection) and servants, including his cook Day-Six (Emotion Cheung) and the maid he loves Little-Fish (Annie Wu).

Day-Six meets a stranger called Chin Hai (the prolific Anthony Wong, “The Untold Story”), who sleeps in a coffin and fights supernatural beasties, and whom saves Day-Six from a ghost. They strike up a friendship.

One of the General’s Wives though is a crafty schemer and asks her lover , the nasty Mr Lee, to steal some of the General’s wealth, and soon Day-Six and Chin Hai will have to work together to combat the five evil spirits when Mr Lee steals the gold guardian Buddha and allows them to escape and take over the General Hsu.
The possessed General then proceeds to make his four Wives pregnant, but that leaves the spirits one woman short….

 

Produced by the hit and miss Director/Producer Wong Jing (“God of Gamblers”, “The Last Blood”) this supernatural opus contains many nods from prime era (late 80’s-early 90’s) Hong Kong Nu-Wave ghosts ‘n’ ghouls films like “Mr Vampire”, but coming so late it sadly has that deflated, tired feel that damaged so much Hong Kong product during this time.

The costumes and sets are nice and colourful (and as always in HK movies, wonderfully detailed) and we have some, always welcome, stalwart ingredients of HK supernatural movies though, like a hopping ghosts, a wacky Taoist priest, paper spells, a mysterious evil fighting swordsman and general weird and wonderful ways to combat spirits (bean curd to fight demons? You got it!) and lots of fun Chinese superstitions. But they are stuck in a basic set-up and plot that fails to fully embrace (and more importantly enjoy) them.

Chin Hai’s rescuing of the crazily named Day-Six from the hopping ghost/zombie is brief but it’s the only thing remotely of interest for the first 40 minutes of the film until the promised five spirits actually do something. Even then, once they have escaped, we have another long period of yet more dull internal household arguments and petty intrigues (mostly the romance between Six and Little Fish and the bitchy Wives) before any supernatural shenanigans start up again.

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The gooey Demon FX are fun but astonishingly unrealistic and hokey looking (the Demon-foetus’s bring back memories of cheesy, 80‘s, creature FX seen in the likes of “Ghoulies“) , as are the splitting stomach FX on the pregnant women, but a bad taste gore gag involving a fluffy little dog is fun!
The splitting stomachs (to reveal the fang laden baby Demon within) do make for a bizarre sight though and also provide some enjoyable deaths as tentacles (ala John Carpenter’s “The Thing”) shoot out and pull people head first into the waiting belly maw!
The ‘munching’ aftermath of skinless/skull corpses lying around is also a suitably macabre idea, but again the effects are extremely bad.

CAT III favourite Elvis Tsui is okay but his role is not as flamboyant and memorable as it should be to get the most from him, Emotion Cheung and Annie Wu are rather bland as the oft used HK idea of the ‘struggling lovers’ and are a pale shadow of say Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong in the classic “A Chinese Ghost story”.
Anthony Wong is underused as the Wu Ma, (“A Chinese Ghost Story”), Lam Ching-Ying (“Mr Vampire”) type saviour and all knowing comrade in arms against the supernatural beasties, but he’s the is the most interesting character to watch (and has a wonderfully arrogant air as he faces down the Demons) and Wong is obviously having fun in the role.

But Wong and his character are sadly not enough to rescue the film from being anything but a cheap looking, mostly dull exercise, that gets sidetracked too often from it’s main plot, leaving only a few bizarre ideas, cheesy FX and weird and wonderful Chinese mysticism to keep the interest.
The bleak outlook the film carries with it and the rather silly final shot at the end of the final battle also mean even the simple feeling of being entertained is fatally lacking.