Birth of a ...

With today and all being the celebration of the birth of year-end-mass-commerce, er...Jesus Christ, I thought for fun, and to help you digest your feast of Roast Beast (if you are inclined to do such a thing on Christmas Day), we'd kick off a special December 25th version of the ScreenAnarchy-O-Meter with 5 'untraditional' births. (Yea, I know, it was the conception that was immaculate, but bear with me on this) Now from the image on the left, I got to include a sixth entry, one that is iconic enough that it almost goes without saying. One might envision a list heavily populated with Takashi Miike films - heck, Even in his ostensibly labeled children's film the man manages to work in a deformed cow-fetus-birth as harbinger to The Great Yokai War). Better experts than myself on the subject of Japanese exploitation cinema could probably have a field day with this, but from the jack-of-all-trades fellow around these parts, the list may be a bit more vanilla. To resist going to the entire Alien franchise, and in particular John Hurts original chest burster scene which is legendary enough that he did the scene not once, but twice - the second time for Mel Brooks of all people - was not easy (and by mentioning it here anyway, it means I've failed!)

Just a warning folks, when you have scenes this extreme and full-on gross, it's probably an important point in the film, so *spoiler warning* is in full effect after the jump. So without further labouring (wah. wah. wah.) an introduction...

À l'intérieur - One of the ScreenAnarchy favourites of 2007. A Hitchcock-seasoned bloody suspense picture involving a female serial killer and a 9 month-plus pregnant woman; on Christmas Eve, no less. How fitting to todays ScreenAnarchy-O-Meter (you could even say it was planned that way). As the film has not really played wide anywhere yet, nor has it been dumped to DVD via the Weinstein company (who know not what a gem they have), any further details would be too spoiler-driven for most. Lets just say that the baby is born at one point, and it ain't pretty.

V: The Final Battle - while not technically a cinema-released film, this iconic 1980s miniseries was a widely watched piece of television back in the day. For those of us in our young teenage years, it was gripping stuff. Particularly the closer of one of the mini-movie episodes (not likely to be forgotten) and the delivery of the baby conceived via carnal knowledge of Visitor and Human. The entire sequence is up on You-Tube if you are interested here (note the smooth faced Robert Englund). Oooh. Tongue.

Braindead - Lionel Cosgrove has some serious mother issues in Peter Jackson's splatter-fest, a film that remains King of the Hill for the sub-genre. His mother wants complete possession of him, and when a buxom young Latino girl begins to take over his attentions, well, it is war. Enter a zombie-infected Sumatran rat-monkey and all hell truly breaks out, starting with Lionel's Mum. The film is famous not only for its extremely gory creativity, but also for its sheer quantity. This is most evident during the climax of the film. How do you top a hundred zombie-party-guests being ground up and ejected by a defiantly raised lawnmower? Somehow, Jackson and company find a way by having a 20 meter tall steroided-zombie-Mum try to stuff her fully grown son back into her womb in an instinctual attempt to completely reclaim him from cutting the apron (or umbilical) strings. But at this point Lionel is having none of that and he carves his way back out of Mum's stomach (using some sort of magical amulet-doo-dad) releasing hundreds of litres of ah...well...fluid. Mum, in the most undignified manner possible (echoes of giving birth in general) drops back into the shattered and flaming remains of the Cosgrove home, legs and bum in the air. Oh yea, and did I mention the other zombie baby?

Who Can Kill A Child? - A lot has been said about these parts regarding Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's fabulous daylight-horror film. It's one of those lost classics that took its sweet time to come to R1 DVD outside of grey-market-versions. The climax of the film may be when the answer comes to the question posed by the title. However, the showcase sequence is without question when the leading lady, who happens to be quite pregnant, realizes that her child has been possessed from the inside and tears her apart internally. The expression on Prunella Ransome's face is of abject horror as awareness dawns on her and she beings punching her own stomach to stop what's coming. The effect is this generates is greater perhaps than could be accomplished with pricey special effects, and the breach (of sorts) is represented with three simple trails of blood running down her white legs. It is an effective and lasting image and not for the squeamish.

The Brood - One of David Cronenberg's earlier works has Samantha Eggar pod-ing out demon spawn children to physically act out her rage-filled desires and emotions. The climatic scene where you see her lift that white robe followed by biting the stomach-attached-pod to release the child is carried out with an unflinching camera. Her licking off the blood like a cat with her kitten is shocking and evil and maternal all simultaneously. The scene goes on to revel and wallow in its imagery in an attempt to demonstrate the connection between animal instinct and human nature. She nurses the evil spawn-ling like an entrenched grudge. Now that Cronenberg has taken a lot of the truly icky-stuff out of his films in favour of more subtle visuals, The Brood, from way back in 1979, has a way of sneaking up on you and leaving your jaw on the floor.

A few more 'fun' births for completeness sake, a few extra stocking stuffers:

Tsui Hark's Time and Tide features the delivering mother having a full blown gun-fight in the middle of labour.
Tim Burton's Big Fish has baby Finney/MacGregor ejected across the hospital floor in a game of postpartum shuffleboard.
I seem to recall particularly a nasty birth in the opening moments of The Fly II.
James Gunn's highly underrated Slither has one of the great all time conceptions followed by the mother literally exploding her litter of space slugs.
And, finally, Fruit Chan's Dumplings has probably the most graphic on-screen abortion I've ever witnessed. The fact that that scene just blends into the other grotesque sights on display is a testament to how good the film really is.

Happy Christmas, boys and girls.