The Suckling (1990)
aka Sewage Baby
Dir. Francis Teri
The Suckling (1990) is what happens when community theater skill and Troma-esque gonzo shock sensibility meet to deliver what appears to be heavy handed Catholic propaganda packaged in a scuzzy D-Grade creature feature. It’s like the husk of an after school special lying in the gutter after a meth bender. The story begins with a Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) style title crawl claiming the film is based on true events (wink, wink). Then there’s a dream within a dream, and then finally a frame story about two very small doctors discussing the sole survivor of a bloodbath weeks earlier. Finally in the story proper, we see a dude who looks like Archie Andrews leading his girlfriend, our main character, to a decrepit house that houses a brothel/abortion clinic. There’s some cringey nudity during a scene showing one of the prostitutes with a john. It’s purpose in the film seems to be to garner a few laughs via slapstick. Mostly it’s just kind of goofy in an awkward way, like the rest of the movie.
From here we’re introduced to our cast of degenerates who will serve as canon fodder for the monster, our heroine’s aborted fetus that grows to gargantuan size after being flushed down the toilet and coming into contact with toxic waste. It’s not a bad looking monster. While it’s growing it looks kinda like a slimy, rubbery Starvin’ Marvin from South Park. Equal parts silly and disquieting. Fully grown it resembles kind of a cross between a rat, an insect, and the big Phyllis Diller monster from The Boneyard (1991). It traps everyone in the house by covering the doors and windows in a weird gooey, fleshy membrane creating an almost Night of the Living Dead-type claustrophobia where the characters become as much of a threat to one another as the monster itself. Other than that it’s pretty standard fare with everyone getting picked off one-by-one until we wrap back around to the frame story.
While there is some decent gore, and the monster suit is well put together, the thing that sinks The Suckling is the characters. All coming from stock, we’ve got the no-nonsense headstrong mistress of the house, the cynical and sarcastic aging prostitute, short-tempered young hot-shot tough guy, calm and collected older tough guy, uptight elitist white business guy, and a few other nondescript young prostitutes. Now stock characters aren’t necessarily a bad thing if there’s story, gore, and/or atmosphere to compensate, but everyone is written and acted so over the top that it all just becomes an irritating cartoon. Every time one of these character’s opens their mouth, I just wanna slam my head against the wall. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. No one acts like anything even remotely resembling an actual human being. In some films, this would add to the entertainment value, but here it’s just too much, with nothing of merit or interest to really anchor it down. Another issue is the prolonged prologue. This sort of gutter fare doesn’t benefit from so much preamble. Even at 90 minutes this movie feels a little bloated. Get in, get your gore on, and get out. While I don’t think the director was trying to convey an anti-abortion message, there is still some lame attempts at social commentary, like when a black character forces the white business man to try to chisel through a door, but the white business man argues that he shouldn’t have to cause he’s a business man. Society, amirite?
The Suckling isn’t bizarre enough to be interesting, and it never quite reaches the depths of so-bad-it’s-good that you can just watch it straight and enjoy. It’s a movie that’s gonna make you feel dirty and dumb in equal measure. If you’re going to watch it, my advice is to do it with a large crowd of non discerning pals and make sure you’re at least 2 or 3 beers beers deep before you hit ‘play'.
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