The Demon's Baby (1998)

In the late Ching Dynasty, five demon babies are sealed up in urns and hidden under the care of a golden statue. Should they get out together, all hell should supposedly break loose. Many years later, their resting place is dug up and they are taken to the home of General Hsu (Tsui Kam Kong). But the statue gets pawned and the babies are unleashed, possessing Hsu to impregnate his concubines. The gestation is quick and the ladies' swollen bellies are soon split open to reveal gnashing teeth and oozing babies. As the ladies set about killing, using their tummies as blenders, chef Day-six (Cheung Kam-Ching) and his assistant seek the help of a coffin-dwelling sifu...

The plot sounds good and there are a few nice lines thrown in ("Are you ready to give birth to the evil baby?" asks the sifu). But it's 50 minutes before anything remotely gruesome or exciting happens. An ongoing affair between Day-six and a maid (Annie Wu) gets lost somewhere along the way, and is worsened by some atrocious dubbing. It's not all bad though. Anthony Wong makes a good Lam Ching Ying-styled Taoist perhaps modelled on the Mr Vampire series. And there is a vampire and a hopping ghost too. But that's not really enough to sustain a movie for me.

Credits:

Directed by Kant Leung
Produced by Wong Jing
Starring Anthony Wong, Annie Wu, Emotion Cheung Kam-ching and Tsui Kam-kong