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Sewage Baby

1990
Dir. Francis Teri

AKA The Suckling

If trashy, splashy, very un-PC horror is your thing, then Sewage Baby will no doubt have you convulsing with shameful delight. A monstrously mutated foetus goes on a vengeful killing spree in a brothel. 

A college student discovers she is pregnant. Before she even has time to fully process this or make any decisions, her boyfriend takes her to a brothel insisting she has an abortion. She is reluctant, saying she needs more time to think. She is soon drugged by the domineering Madam of the brothel, Big Momma, who makes it her business to make the decision for the young woman.

After Big Momma performs the abortion, she disposes of the fetal remains in a most undignified manner. What she didn’t count on however, was that on encountering some convenient toxic waste in the sewers, the aborted hell-bent-on-revenge foetus would soon mutate into a gigantic and slobbering creature, complete with claws, fangs and the ability to spin webs of placentic ick (!). Before long the staff and patrons of the brothel realise they are trapped and are soon picked off, one by one, by the grisly mutant-critter who has a tendency to pop up out of sinks, toilets and anything else connected to the plumbing system. You see, they can’t simply open a door or window and leave the house because the wayward mutant bairn has covered the building in a giant placenta (!). 


Performances, script and direction are, well, likely what you might expect. An actor in a rubber monster suit (played by Michael Gingold, the editor of Fangoria Magazine) jostles the other actors until they fall down in a squelch of red stuff. The only characterisation afforded the characters comes courtesy of a couple of scenes revealing what kind of kinky sex they are into. There's also a scene featuring a guy wearing a hat with a propeller on top being menaced by a dildo-wielding dominatrix. There’s only so many times we can watch a character ‘lose it’, fling themselves onto the nearest couch and exclaim in an over-exasperated and melodramatic manner that they just can't take it anymore before it becomes tedious. ‘Big Momma! What are we gonna do? We've gotta get outta here!’ Director Francis Terri's penchant for weird angles and quirky cuts is interesting, but fails to generate any tension.


Sewage Baby is exploitative, trashy fun that could be offensive if it wasn’t so bloody awful. It could arguably be read as a highly grotesque pro-life propaganda film, if such a film were to be made by right-wing fundamentalists. It could also be read as a pro-choice tale of why it's important to safeguard the right to safe and legal abortion services. Regardless of the reading, the filmmakers just go for broke to deliver the most outrageous celluloid trash-fest they can. And they certainly succeed. Take away the central subject matter and what you’re left with is a goofy, old fashioned, Troma-esque monster on the rampage movie, entertaining in a 'this is so bad' kind of way. It belongs to that bizarro horror sub-genre of 'killer kids' movies, which includes titles such as It's Alive, Children of the Corn, Village of the Damned and The Brood.

You have been warned…
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