Retro-Shock Theater: The Unborn (1991)

Horror tales are often thought of as being concerned solely with the end of life, preying on our universal fears of death and decay, but the act of bringing new life into the world has provided almost equal inspiration for terror with pregnancy, birth, and the rearing of children continually exploited for all their panicked possibilities.

With the very likely to be heinous romantic comedy What To Expect When You’re Expecting currently in theaters, I couldn’t help but think of the many attention worthy counter-programming options to be found in the horror genre.

While several horror classics involving pregnancy and its potentially awful aftermath instantly come to mind, like Rosemary’s Baby or It’s Alive, I’m going with a largely forgotten item from the back catalog – 1991’s bloody baby bonanza The Unborn.

Written by the duo of John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris under the shared pseudonym of Henry Dominic (the duo’s more recent efforts have been much more high profile, such as the last two Terminator films) and directed by Roman Flender (who later went on to helm 1999’s minor cult fave Idle Hands), The Unborn stars Brooke Adams (The Dead Zone) as Virginia Marshall, an author of children’s books who has struggled for years to have a child of her own.

After several miscarriages, Virginia and her husband Brad (Jeff Hayenga) visit the offices of Dr. Richard Meyerling (James Karen, of Return of the Living Dead), a fertility specialist who might have the answer to their prayers (watch for a pre-Friends Lisa Kudrow in a brief appearance as Meyerling’s receptionist). Virginia is deemed fit to participate in Meyerling’s experimental in-vitro fertilization program and before long, Virginia and Brad are expecting their first child.

Of course, what the joyful couple is too late to find out is that Meyerling is something of mad scientist and the genetically pimped out baby currently growing in Virginia’s belly is not going to bring the couple much in the way of happiness. Brancato and Ferris could’ve constructed The Unborn as a paranoid thriller, making the viewer question whether Virginia is only imagining the worst about Dr. Meyerling and her baby or whether her suspicions are real but while we’re told that Virginia has a history of mental problems and as events spiral out of control she has to wonder whether she’s cracking up, we know from the jump that something diabolical is at the heart of Meyerling’s miraculous practices because it’s not just Virginia who’s having issues.

The film begins with a pregnant woman under Meyerling’s care undergoing violent contractions at home only to have her stomach burst open as her frantic husband is on the phone calling for an ambulance. It’s an attention grabbing opening and it serves notice that this is not going to shy away from being an exploitation film. Clocking in at a brisk 85 minutes (an ideal running time for a B-movie), The Unborn doesn’t waste a minute in getting down to the nitty gritty of fetal fury.

While we do understandably have to wait until the final act to see what kind of kid Virginia is going to deliver, Flender isn’t in slow burn mode here. The Unborn isn’t just about waiting for Virginia’s baby to arrive. Instead, we see several vicious vignettes unfold along the way as Virginia comes into contact with other patients of Meyerling who are further along in their pregnancies than she is – and none of them are having a happy time of it. Not the couple that has given birth to a genius daughter thanks to Meyerling’s intervention only to see that gifted daughter kill their preexisting mentally handicapped son. Not the woman who, driven mad by the weird effects of her pregnancy, stabs herself repeatedly in the stomach but only manages to put herself – rather than her baby with its cockroach-strength resiliency – in critical condition. And absolutely not the lesbian couple (whose non-pregnant half is played in a rare serious turn by comedienne Kathy Griffin) who engage in a bloody battle to the death as the mother-to-be realizes that she can’t share her love with anyone except her baby and decides that she needs to bludgeon her girlfriend to death with a hammer.

Produced by Roger Corman, The Unborn is ruthless in a manner that horror fans are sure to approve of, cheerfully going for as many appalling, tasteless moments as possible. With such highlights as a live mental meltdown occurring on a morning TV talk show (a very pregnant Virginia, promoting her new book, tries to get the word out to the world – hysterically shouting to the camera that “they’re eating us alive!”), a grimy back alley abortion that fails to slow the stride of a determined super-fetus (nobody puts baby in a dumpster!), that same aborted – but still extremely frisky – baby murderously wielding a long knitting needle, and a climatic decision from Virginia that can only be considered to be a perverse ode to motherly instincts, The Unborn is a rousing addition to the killer baby sub-genre.

A word of caution: The Unborn is not recommended to casual genre fans that limit their horror diet to the absolute cream of the crop. For them, the merits of The Unborn would be hard to discern. But if, like me, you’re the kind of dedicated (some might say foolhardy) genre buff who has spent thousands of horrors scrapping the bottom of the barrel, renting every last horror title that their local video store stocks in the hopes of discovering a neglected gem, The Unborn is the kind of rewarding find that makes that often thankless task worthwhile (or at least momentarily tolerable).

Like a good B-movie should, it goes to a few funky places that your typical studio genre film wouldn’t. Amid the mostly sanitized horror product of the early ‘90s, The Unborn’s scrappy nature and occasionally humorous winks (like a close-up of a blood spattered Baby On Board sign) helped it to stand out and over twenty years later, it still holds up as a modestly mounted but gonzo thriller that keeps throwing curves at the viewer until the final frame.

The mewling mutants of The Unborn might not be the bundles of joy that their birth mothers were hoping for but horror fans ought to consider them to be prime candidates for adoption.

Originally published on 5/21/12 at Shock Till You Drop. 

Max Jenke Is DOOMED!

As yet another comic book adaptation rules the box office landscape with Man of Steel's opening bow this weekend, turn your attention to one of the most famous failures in that sub-genre - 1994's legendary Roger Corman-produced Fantastic Four. Never given an official release, the Corman FF remains a popular item on the bootleg circuit.

Filmmakers Marty Langford and Mark Sikes are seeking to expose the story behind this fascinating misfire, a film that struggled with very limited means to do justice to the characters that formed the foundation of the mighty Marvel Universe.



Despite the movie's shortcomings, there's a sweetness and an earnestness that shines through and a clear desire to honor the essence of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's fabulous foursome. And when you're talking about trying to mount an adaptation of a comic that features characters who can stretch their body at will, burst into flame, turn invisible and project force fields, and transform into orange rock all on a $1 million budget, you're talking about working some real miracles! As a film and comic book fan, that's a story that I'd love to hear, told in the words of the people who were there.

Marty and Mark are currently raising funds for their film, entitled Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's Fantastic Four at this link. Give it a look and see if you'd like to contribute to their cause.

Help make sure this film is not 4-gotten! It's Documentin' Time!

Four-Get Me Not

Thanksgiving isn't a day for ordinary, run of the mill turkeys - they've got to be exceptional birds and a cinematic turkey that's got impeccable credentials is the never-to-be-released 1994 adaptation of The Fantastic Four. Produced by (Oscar winner!) Roger Corman at the astonishingly low price of (choke!) $1.98 million, this shady enterprise was never was meant by Corman and Constantin Film to be a theatrical release, it was just a bid to retain the studio's film option rights - although that mercenary goal turned out to be news to FF's hardworking cast and crew, and to a legion of comic fans that were kept waiting for Marvel's First Family to make it to the screen.

I was one of those fans and I followed the progress of this movie avidly. I still have an issue of Film Threat magazine, in fact, with a terrific FF cover story that gave plenty of evidence that, while this wouldn't be top of the line filmmaking, it would be showing plenty of fidelity to the comic. The cast, at least, looked like dead ringers to their four-color counterparts and as this was still in the days before comic adaptations were an industry to itself, any live-action adaptation - especially when it came to Marvel properties as the company was a few years off from getting their act together with 1998's Blade - was welcome.

Having said that, The Fantastic Four is justifiably known as being atrocious. But let's give credit where credit is due - on a budget too small to even have done a proper adaptation of The Punisher, never mind the Fantastic Four, director Oley Sassone did a heroic job of squeezing every dime to its limit. The movie may be shamefully underfunded but the Human Torch (Jay Underwood) does flame on (although he only does a full body flame once, at the climax), The Invisible Woman (Rebecca Staab) does disappear (a budget-friendly effect if there ever was one!), Mr. Fantastic (Alex Hyde-White) lives up to his rubbery reputation (his stretching powers requiring the most ingenuity from the FX department), and The Thing (Michael Bailey Smith) looks every inch like the orange rock-encrusted hero from the comics (this suit is seriously great and must've been where most of the budget went). The chemistry between the cast is strong and from their obvious commitment to the material, you wouldn't think that this was never meant to be a 'real' film.

I fondly remember being in the Springfield, MA, video store that I used to work in when we discovered to our joy that the tape of Carnosaur (Corman's knock-off of Jurassic Park, which managed to beat Spielberg's movie to theaters) had the Fantastic Four trailer on it. A small crowd of staff and customers rewatched that trailer at least five times on the spot and while I don't think any of us believed we'd be seeing that film in a theater, a video release had to be coming - after all, we just saw the preview!

But that was never to happen. Instead, the movie has become a permanent fixture on the bootleg circuit. In years to come, long after after every obscure, out-of-print title has made it onto some legitimate format, The Fantastic Four will still be found at vendors tables at conventions. For a few years after it first started appearing at cons, my friends and I kept searching for better quality dubs than what we had already gotten but after a try or two, it was clear that we already had the best version available. The best that can be said about the condition of the copies I've seen is that they're watchable - although in today's Blu-Ray age, I find that it's far harder for me to suffer through bad VHS dubs (of bad movies, at that!) than it used to be.

For The Fantastic Four, though, it's worth risking a headache every once in awhile. A lot of bad movies have the reputation of being so bad they're hilarious but this is one of the few I think really deserves that reputation. Dr. Doom's exaggerated hand gestures alone (when making his ransom demands he spells out the numbers in the air as he says them!) are gold and I know my life as a movie and comic fan wasn't quite complete until I saw Mr. Fantastic use his limitless ability to stretch his body to trip henchmen with his elongated shin.

If some feel that I've spoken too fondly of this movie and that I haven't savaged this legendary failure as much as it deserves, let's just say I decided long ago to adopt this turkey. Because any movie that ends like this deserves to live forever:

To everyone in North America, have a Happy Thanksgiving!