Still, we want to believe that every fetus is free from wickedness. After all, they haven't had a chance to experience the worst that life has to offer yet, so what could possible make them so jaded and jaundiced? Well, unless you believe in absolutes, you have to give the old 'Bad Seed' syndrome equal time as well. If kids can come crowning out uncorrupted, why can't they equally dilate on the dark side? And since they seem to spend the majority of their new world waking time in a constant state of hunger, hurting and digestion, they're tendency toward the tainted seems fairly obvious. The Suckling understands this all too well. In a brazen bit of B-Movie lunacy, we have one of the few films ready to out the toddler as the titan of vice it is. That it does so while simultaneously racking up the horror movie brownie points is a substantiation pudding that everyone should be able to digest.

The DVD:
Typical teens: thinking that unprotected sex would lead to intimacy and closeness. Instead, our proto prom queen is bloated up with baby, and her jock rocking dream date has the perfect solution to this issue of fertility. He drives his honey to a rundown brothel in a part of town that makes skid row look like the Gold Coast, and seeks the surgical advice on one Big Mamma. Seems she's known to be a dependable and discreet wire hanger wielder. Well, our prissy Miss looses her second trimester tot, and before you can say "flushed down the sewer system and covered with toxic waste", our fetus starts freaking out. The unborn baby slowly mutates under the chemical cocktail its soaking in, and before long its a rabid monster brat with horrible dental problems and a taste for hooker meat.

After enveloping the entire cathouse in a strange amniotic sac, our angry mutant infant does what misshapen, unwanted human tissue does best – it goes on a killing spree. It gets a little help along the way. Seems that the residents of the sleazy sex parlor all hate each other, and can't wait to punch, kick and shoot themselves in the STDs. As the bodies start piling up like chord wood and the leftover customers begin craving their antibiotics, our fudged up fetus keeps growing, and garroting. Eventually, the parents have to step in and try to save the day. After all, who cares if your newborn child is a 7 foot tall inside out flesh rendering beastie with oversized incisors and a penchant for people mauling - he's still your responsibility, aborted or not.

You've got to give The Suckling credit. It has a hilarious, exploitation perfect premise just ripe for the reaping of the repulsive. It makes no bones about showing back alley abortions and the icky after effects, including casual fetus flushing. It has a nice, old school 'physical effects' feel to its monster magic. And it traps all this tasty tripe in the best of all possible settings – the skankiest house of whores this side of South Beach, a den of iniquity filled with some of the most miserable, reprobate ever to sell their sex for cash.

And yet, the acknowledgement we have to give the film is not for how unabashedly shameless it is, or how gruesomely gratuitous it can occasionally be. No, we have to commend filmmaker Francis Teri for doing everything in his power to screw himself out of one of the potentially classic creature features of all time. Indeed, by the time its over, we're not overwhelmed by The Suckling like we were with similar freakshow films (Street Trash and Basket Case come to mind). No, this potential pile of prenatal pleasure more or less becomes a miscarried opportunity.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the filmmaking is the decision to dimensionalize the characters. Teri fails his first year fright flick exams by trying to make memorable what should merely be meat bags. Individuals like the sassy hooker, the insane handyman, the noble black bodyguard and the spoiled southern belle madam are all achingly artificial archetypes. But instead of inflating their clichés into shameless slaughter fodder, Teri just lets them yak on and on. There are endless conversations in The Suckling, non plot important discussions that lead nowhere and distract from the disemboweling. When a bottle blond bimbo is better at undermining the cast than the title terror, we've got some major moviemaking issues on hand.

And of course, the actors don't help matters much. Most are from the basic line reading school of recital, offering nothing in the way of nuance or shading in their performance. Some are so over the top – like the Andrew Robinson look-alike handyman – that you honestly think they'll eventually burst through the ceiling. Most of the thespianism is just rote however, basic dull reactions to highly unusual events.

While the monster effects are first rate (our irritated mutant infant kind of looks like the Alien, Pumpkinhead and Kuato from Total Recall all rolled into a sinister jellyroll of hate), the crowd-pleasing claret is barely visible. Many of the deaths occur off screen, and consist of occasional sprays rather than balls out splatter. Turning up the gore would have made The Suckling that much more succulent, ripe for the kind of rabid fandom the scatological storyline deserves. Had a really nasty death occurred every few minutes, instead of all the infighting, bickering, and gunplay (non-serial killer psychos with weapons are NEVER welcome in a fiend film), we'd be able to tolerate many of this film's faults. But without claret to get us through the non-sticky bits, we end up noticing how nonsensical much of this narrative really is. And the last thing you want for your scary movie is to have it become just some manner of eerie emperor's new clothes.

Indeed, it would be easy to say that Teri wastes a terrific setup and some decidedly demented ideas merely to end up going through the monster motions. But if taken for what it is, and when it was made, The Suckling makes a lot of sense. Toward the end of the 80s, when VHS still dominated the home entertainment medium, filmmakers were eager to fill the direct-to-video void, producing all manner of macabre to generate weekend rentals. When viewed alongside such films as Monster in the Closet, Troll and The Video Dead, The Suckling succeeds. It offers just enough boo basics to satisfy your mindless diversion jones and can occasionally be downright disquieting.

Now, if you apply the amateurish elements employed to today's post-modern CGI fests, well, oddly enough, The Suckling still holds up. Current creature features can't get enough of those perplexing computerized opticals. By relying on what looks and feels semi-real, our killer kid doesn't really read 100% authentic, but neither is he a hyper-sophisticated amalgamation of bit rates and shading. There is something tactile and definitive about watching an actor work with latex and make-up – and besides, Bill Gates isn't making money off it, so it's virtually win-win.

So as a throwback to a time when horror didn't demand apocalyptic zombie hordes, demonic minions by the boatload and complicated bio-chemical excuses for the evil, The Suckling avoids the easy critical tag of its title. It's by no means a masterpiece, but it also doesn't dry up and blow away like so many modern independent homemade horror films. Instead, what writer/director Francis Teri wants to do is take an incredibly sick and tasteless idea, drape it in even more squalor and seediness, and then pull out all the stops for some traditional terror fun. Well, as a certain Mr. Loaf would say, two out of three ain't bad.

But the missing facet – the full bore sinew and sluice spook showboating – may be the reason why many will simply dismiss this film as a failure. But beyond all the boredom, aside from the misspent moments and lack of gallons of gore, what we have here is one fudged up fetus. And if life has taught us anything, it's that angry toddlers with psychotropic separation anxiety can be a pain in the pabulum – terrible twos or not. And in The Suckling, they can become downright deadly.

The Video:
Made on a shoestring and apparently shot on a similar substandard format, the 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation of The Suckling is fairly decent. If you want a reference book example of intense grain, intermittent lighting and non-stop pigmentation issues, this DVD will do just fine. Frequently too dark, relying on film stock that seems imported from a different dimension, let alone time, and looking like it was edited with some safety scissors, you will be instantly reminded of those glory days of the Mom and Pop video store after sampling this staggeringly average transfer.

The Audio:
When it was filmed, The Suckling obviously blew its entire budget on monster effects and ho-quality pancake makeup. The audio elements here are about as thin and reedy as you can get without being a clarinet, and are layered with the echo and the reverb of the poorly insulated sets. When characters speak, it's almost as if we're listening to the negative aspects of the spoken sound waves. We can make out dialogue and certain words, but there is very little immediacy in the mix. The music is all faux-electronic noodling and the foley is occasionally flawed, or mis-framed. Still, the bargain basic aural aspects tend to match up problematic point by point with the visuals, making the VHS variants of this digital release that much more certain.

The Extras:
The only bonus here is a trailer, one that makes the movie look a lot more professional, and terrifying that it actually is. Otherwise, we get no other contextual indication about the film, no idea of the who, what, when, where, why, and how of this production or its makers.

Final Thoughts:
There is something to be said about a film that employs illegal elective surgery, overgrown mutant infants and a wisecracking crumpet with a knack for tactlessness, as essential horror film factors. Toss in the customer who likes his Hershey highway repaved, the wounded, whiny lead actress who's about a generation away from the age she's playing, and the heroin shooting gallery set design motif and you've got a film that should easily announce its place in the pantheon of the cheesy movie macabre. But The Suckling can't quite make it all the way to the hallowed halls of horror fromage. Instead, it stumbles around, breaks weak wind, spreads its minor scat, and then settles over in a corner, waiting until it catches its breath before it starts up all over again. While the movie is still recommended, only individuals with a taste for the earliest forms of Troma or Full Moon style amusement will relish the revisit. Others will simply chalk up its ineffectiveness as another case of fright film foolishness. But if given half a chance, The Suckling can give you the wayback willies. But about 50% effectiveness is all it can really muster.

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