Being Film #13 for Hooptober 2025
I never thought I’d see a film like Hausu again. That movie, a psychedelic fever dream from Nobuhiko Obayashi, was off the walls and inventive in a way I never expected, and never expected to see again. I am so happy to be proved wrong by Devil Fetus, an on the surface low-budget Hong Kong horror flick that stretches every single dollar to provide some hilariously over-the-top effects and set pieces, going to some bizarre corners in a delightfully schlocky mess I enjoyed the hell out of.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Okay, stop me if you’ve heard THIS one before: a woman is drawn to a jade vase after the demon engraved on it looks at her. She brings it home where said demon comes to life and has incredible sex with her, much to the dismay of her husband who walks in on her and smashes the vase. Oops! He gets infected/possessed and jumps out the window, she dies and gives birth to said devil fetus IN THE CASKET! Like I said, same old, same old, right? Well let’s jump ahead a decade and now the rest of the family has to deal with the pesky devil once it’s released again. You have wizard battles, laser beams, possessed honey dogs, and some many more things I never thought I’d see in a movie, until I did…in DEVIL FETUS…
You get a little bit of everything in Devil Fetus from an effects standpoint: there’s some serious “man in suit” action with the demon, animated effects with astral travel and psychic bullets, some stop-motion work, tons of practical gore and icky set pieces (one unlucky character is crushed by a shrinking room, but we inexplicably get a pane of glass so we can witness the actual “splat”); there’s even a sequence that feels like it directly inspired the scene where JoBeth Williams is thrown about her bedroom in Poltergeist.
But for all of that, you do have to deal with some period mores that are frankly icky in a different way. Having your (admittedly) possessed villain cross dress and masturbate furiously makes no sense in the film, with nothing to ground or base the actions beyond “hey, isn’t this freaky and transgressive?” No, it’s not, and while you can argue folks didn’t know better in the early 80s, hey, it still doesn’t fly for me.
Thankfully those moments are brief and as disconnected as so much else of Devil Fetus, which allowed me to revel in its inherent weirdness. Our hero Kent, played by Eddie Chan has some definite charm, coming across at times like another famous Chan, albeit without the acrobatic kung-fu. The rest of the cast is okay; all are more than game for the insanity director Lau Hung-chuen throws at them. I won’t say Devil Fetus is a great movie, but it certainly is an exuberant one, and one I would push on friends who are just off-kilter enough appreciate its level of weird.
Cinema Dual 
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