"If Frank Henenlotter and Peter Jackson had a French Baby"
Studio Canal are releasing Alain Robak's funny, gory French horror picture in an impressive, crystal clear 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative on UHD and Blu-ray.
A leopard is transported from Africa to a French zoo where it explodes. The creature that was living inside it makes its way to the caravan of Yanka (Emmanuelle Escourrou), where it burrows into her womb and communicates with her telepathically, ordering her to drink human blood to feed it.
Yanka leaves the circus (understandably) and ends up in Paris where she starts killing men as her pregnancy continues to develop. Once she reaches term it's time for even more gory horrors, posing the question: who will survive and what will be left of Yanka?
A gory, funny, over the top piece of French horror that doesn't just channel Frank Henenlotter or early Peter Jackson but also features a sequence that wouldn't be out of place in a Ray Cooney bedroom farce, BABY BLOOD also offers a number of in-jokes for those more familiar with French cinema of the period. French writer and director Jacques Audiard (EMILIA PEREZ) appears in it as a jogger who ends up as one of Yanka's victims, and there's a cameo from BAXTER the bull terrier from Jerome Boivin's 1989 the film of the same name, played by the same dog actor (Chimbot).
Studio Canal's disc comes with plentiful extras. Kim Newman provides a new 20 minute piece where he talks about the film, its influence, and very helpfully points out even more of the French cinema in-jokes that many likely miss. There are two commentary tracks, the first with director Robak and star Escourrou which is a jolly chat, while the second with Lee Gambin and Jarret Gahan is more laid back but also more academic. A batch of interviews filmed in 2019 include Robak (18 minutes), Escourrou (20 minutes), DP Bernard Dechet (12 minutes), and actors Jean-Francois Gallotte (8 minutes) and Christian Sinniger (6 minutes). The set also comes with four art cards.
Alain Robak's BABY BLOOD is out from Studio Canal on 4K UHD and Blu-ray on Monday 6th October 2025
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