This is an updated version of a review that was originally published in Bleeding Skull! A 1990s Trash-Horror Odyssey.
A lifetime ago, I lived in a gentrifying neighborhood. Where, on one block, you could find cashed-out tech bros, struggling single moms, research academics, working-class families, drug dealers, and a chalk outline of a body. My street was lined with old Victorians: some of which were beautifully renovated and others in disrepair. Just around the corner was the most adorable house; it was pale yellow with white trim, and it had a pitched roof with wooden shingles. While it needed major repairs, you could tell that in its heyday it looked like a birthday cake. And just like a birthday cake, there was a stripper inside. Turns out, the house was a brothel. Eventually, the police raided it and arrested several johns and prostitutes.
Now, if this house were in a movie—say, The Suckling—you’d still have the johns and prostitutes, but you’d also have a deformed, murder-hungry fetus with razorsharp teeth and severe mommy issues.
A young couple arrives at a dilapidated brothel, the kind you’d find in my old neighborhood. But this one offers an additional service: abortions. It’s really a one-stop shop, like how you can get fish sticks, sweatpants, and an oil change at Costco. Rebecca is pregnant. Her boyfriend wants her to abort, but she doesn’t want to. She explains it’s her body and her choice, and she wants to give the baby up for adoption instead. But he doesn’t give a shit because he’s an asshole who, like the state of Texas, doesn’t care for a woman’s right to choose. It’s just “easier” if she gets an abortion. So there they are, at a “reputed house of prostitution and abortion clinic.”
Rebecca talks to Big Mama, who tries to convince her that abortion is the clear solution to her problem. Big Mama wipes gore from a wire hanger. “Having a baby when the time is right is the right thing to do.” She is correct. She is also practicing medicine without a license or a working sink. At the behest of Rebecca’s absolute shitbag of a boyfriend, Big Mama drugs the young woman and performs an abortion. Big Mama tosses the bloody fetus down a sewage pipe, where it ends up in a pool of toxic waste. You probably know where this story is going, and you are right.
The fetus grows and changes, its skin bubbling and steaming. It has gigantic eyes and a bulbous head. Its skin is slimy and wrinkled. Its hands turn into large sharp claws. It looks like a demonic E.T. hooked on bath salts. The Suckling has arrived, and it wants its mommy!
Meanwhile in a bedroom, a girl strips while a man opens a briefcase full of dildos, fake breasts, and other toys.
The next 85 minutes erupts in glorious mayhem. There’s gore, gunshots, and gurgling toilets. There’s a pimp with a heart of gold, a prostitute on the verge of a mental breakdown, and a john who begrudgingly chisels away at a door. There’s about 100 feet of umbilical cord, and there are major problems with major appliances. There’s also a battering ram. I love battering rams. They’re grossly overlooked in horror films. We get bombarded by knives and guns and chainsaws, which, OK, fine. But battering rams always get the job done.
The Suckling is a spectacular triumph. It’s a movie you watch and think, was this made just for me? Because it has everything you love: exploding heads, severed hands, a fully articulated beastie, and spinning dildos. The monster effects are a feat, but the cinematography and script are just as strong. There are tracking shots, jaunty camera angles, claustrophobic sets, incredible stop-motion animation, and quick edits that make the film barrel forward. There are dynamic storylines and arcs, and characters you love to hate. The film is at times funny and playful, foreboding and grim. All of this makes The Suckling one of the best and brightest films to grace the pages of this site, or of any site.
This movie is designed to offend—after all, it’s about abortions and prostitutes. It features sexual violence and murder. But like the best exploitation films, The Suckling is deceptively intelligent and dances nimbly around both sides of a charged issue. On one hand, it’s a movie about the dire consequences that occur when a woman doesn’t get agency over her own body. Rebecca had an abortion against her will, and disaster ensues. On the other hand, it’s a movie about the evil of abortions. If you end the life of an innocent human, a beastie fetus will come back for vengeance. The Suckling pits both sides against each other, and we get to watch.
The final scene is one of the greatest ever in film history. Just when you think it couldn’t get better, it does, and you’re left simultaneously cheering gleefully and clutching your pearls like a church lady.
