**SPOILERS**
An opening crawl informs us that,
on April 1, 1973 (y’know, April Fool’s Day), a bunch of prostitutes and other
sundry folks were killed at a rundown brothel/abortion clinic. The lone survivor, an unidentified woman (in both
the film and its credits, though she’s played by Lisa Petruno, and for the purposes of this review I’ll refer to her
as The Mother), is kept at an asylum, where two doctors somnambulistically discuss
her case. Flashback to: the fateful day,
where an abortion goes very, VERY wrong.
Francis Teri’s The Suckling
(aka Sewage Baby) is a simultaneously tasteless and fascinating film. Obviously, any movie using abortion as a
springboard for gore effects is going to be tacky to some degree or another,
yet there are things going on under the surface here that intrigue as well as
exploit. So, let’s look at the more
serious side here to start. Roe v. Wade
was passed in January of 1973, making abortion legal under the Constitution of
the United States of America. Since the
film takes place in April of that same year, it follows that Phil (the father) and
The Mother didn’t have to go to a back alley abortion clinic from a legal
standpoint (she states that “this place is illegal”; it wasn’t by this point,
but for the sake of argument let’s agree that maybe she didn’t know about the
Supreme Court’s decision). Nonetheless,
the very idea of abortion still had a stigma to it (and still does to a certain
extent even today), as did pregnancies outside of wedlock (damned if you do,
damned if you don’t). The Mother doesn’t
want the abortion. She wants to put the
baby up for adoption as soon as it’s born.
Phil, surely thinking only of his reputation, insists that she go just
to talk it over with Big Mama (Janet
Sovey), the madam and abortionist at the whorehouse. The Mother is drugged, and the fetus is
forcibly aborted, an encroachment of The Mother’s rights and an assault on her
body that is, frankly, heinous. By
violating The Mother so personally, the characters in the brothel (and anyone
associated with them) damn themselves.
Because she didn’t want the abortion in the first place, The Mother and
the Suckling still share a symbiotic connection, symbolized by the deadly
umbilicus that the fetus grows (helped greatly by some convenient toxic waste
that drips down onto it) after being flushed down the toilet and landing in one
of the smokiest sewers ever put to film.
The Mother is devastated by the loss of her baby against her will, and
the Suckling responds to this.
This bond between The Mother and
the Suckling manifests itself in the brothel.
After beginning its assault, the Suckling envelops the house in a placenta
that the characters cannot break through, and even if they did, it would
dissolve them. First, this traps the
characters in one location for easy pickings.
Second, it re-encases the Suckling in the womb from which both it and
its mom didn’t want it to be removed.
The Suckling reacts, I tend to believe, to The Mother’s conscious and
unconscious desires and protects her while also taking revenge against the
people who hurt her. The longing to
return to the womb exhibits itself later on when the Suckling literally shrinks
to its birth size and reinserts itself into The Mother. She is already on the edge by this point in
the film, and it really makes you wonder whether this wish fulfillment pushed her
over the precipice, because something monstrous happened to her when the fetus
was removed from her (with a wire hanger on which Big Mama hangs her coat, by
the by) and something monstrous happened to her again when this malevolent
creature thrust itself back inside her (which is also a bit Oedipal in my
opinion, especially considering what happens to Phil). In a way, The Mother’s body ownership is
taken away from her completely by both the abortionists and by her own child,
and in the end, she has shut down, a piece of meat that can no longer choose
for herself what to do with her body.
The Suckling protects her from harm while it also possesses her body for
itself, the symbiosis between mother and child turned toxic and permanent.
The Suckling is also unafraid to go extremely broad in its humor, a
decision I’m unsure about to the extent of whether it helps or harms the film
(though I do tend to lean towards the latter, because it’s frankly not clever or
subtle enough to be successful as black comedy, and in the context of this
film, I think that’s key). For example,
a nerdy guy in a loud plaid suit and bowtie and a kid with the word “fuck”
written on his tee shirt gawp as a man liquefies in front of them (a blunt,
one-note “joke,” to be sure). The
clearest exemplar, however, is the rich john who visits the brothel while the
abortion is taking place. He enjoys getting
pegged with a large dildo while wearing a propeller-topped beanie. Said propeller, naturally, responds to what
happens to this guy’s body, spinning and even popping off at one point (to the
accompaniment of goofy sound effects).
The prostitute he’s with rolls her eyes and leaves in the middle of
their session. Later, he’ll be made to
bark like a dog in a different context.
But he’s wealthy and entitled, and for as much as he sees himself as above
the prostitutes in the brothel, his bizarre proclivities, his dirty little
secrets, make him lower than them. The
prostitutes work for their money, and this is just a job for them, an act they
put on in private. The john, by
contrast, puts his act on in public. In
private, his true self comes out, and it’s the hypocrisy of respectability that
is lampooned (successfully or not) in the scenes with him.
The Suckling itself is a decent
monster makeup, even for how odd it is.
It has spikes everywhere on its body and hook hands (and I have never completely
understood beasts with hooks for hands like Gigan, the Hook Horror from Dungeons & Dragons, et cetera;
they’re totally impractical outside of the one obvious function, but whatever),
and its teeth are about the length of a man’s forearm and protrude from its maw,
resembling a pink, slimy Venus flytrap (or the monster from The Terror Within on crack, and The Suckling bears some resemblance to
that film in the monster child department, as well; coincidence?). As a concept, it makes no sense, but as
something cool for makeup effects lovers, it works well enough in its
uniqueness.
And yet, the film itself is
lifeless outside of the gore/effects scenes.
The acting is wooden across the board.
The characters are either irritating or distasteful or both. There is zero sympathy built up for any of
them, including and especially The Mother, who spends the entire movie as a
passive, crying lump. The cinematography
is flat and static with the brief exception of the few scenes shot in the sewer
which actually looked visually interesting.
There is no plot once the killings start, no tension either between the
characters (despite the attempt to do so with the shitheaded thug/contagonist
character Axel [Frank Rivera]) or as
anticipation for where and when the Suckling will strike next. So, the best advice I can give to anyone
interested enough in watching this movie is to be sure you keep your finger
floating over the fast forward button.
MVT: The effects are about
the only thing that worked for me in this.
Maybe that was the point/intent, so credit where it’s due.
Make or Break: The Break for
me was the “funny” scene between the rich john and the hooker. Humor that low grade takes a certain talent
to pull off, and sadly, that talent is lacking here.
Score: 5/10