Splatter: Naked Blood [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Let's face it, you're not here for a story.
Yeah there is one, with a deep message about excess.
But you're here for the blood.
And when it rains, boy does it pour.
If you're freaked out by self-mutilation, give this one a pass.
I personally had to pause this movie a number of times to make it through.
It takes a while for the gore to get going,
(there is a story here after all)
But once it does, grab your umbrella.

Here's what it's about:
Eiji infects his mothers 3 patients (all women testing out a new contraceptive)
with the ultimate pain-killer,
A pain-killer that turns pain into mounting pleasure.
This in turn, has disasterous effects.
One pateint is obsessed with eating
Another patient is obsessed with beauty
And the last suffers from extreme insomnia.
(She hooks herself up to a cactus, in order to sleep. Why? I have no idea)

***GORE SPOILER***
In this flick you'll see:
- one woman eat herself alive (hands, eyes, nips, and bajingo)
- another pierce herself to death (and I mean pierce)
- & a guy crawl into a woman's open chest cavity.

Sound up your alley?

MORAL OF THE STORY:
The pain of life cannot be masked by excessive pleasure.
It will consume you.

This is not a movie for everyone, not only because of the extreme gore fx, but also because of the deep message underlying the story which is far from conventional. Don't be fooled by the DVD artwork, that looks like an ad for a campy and cheap film, even though the film is indeed "cheap", in the sense of the financial limitations of a "pink" japanese production. However, as proven by so many Hollywood disappointments, money is not the ingredient for an interesting and thought provoking film, which Naked Blood surely is. Perhaps it is the lack of financial compromise which allows director Sato (like other japanese directors, especially "pink" directors) to present such a complex story (which seems like a simple one, but really isn't), filled with allegories, metaphors, and bizarre but beautiful images which are extreme indeed, but instrumental in the shock to the viewer sought after by the director. I believe that the essence of art is to leave a mark on those contemplating; any kind of mark, not only a pleasant or nice one, and this film really achieves that, by leaving a distinctive impression on the viewer, comparable perhaps to that of "Irreversible" or "Tetsuo", and even that of "Un chien andalou", the Bunuel masterpiece, which also sought to shock and unsettle the spectator. In that sense, Naked Blood is, in its very unusual and bizarre way, a masterpiece.

Naked Blood (Hisayasu Sato, 1995)

I spent the first forty-five minutes of Naked Blood wondering why it had been so highly touted to me. I then spent the final thirty cowering in the corner, crying for my mommy, wondering if that distant, fading light in front of my eyes was actually my sanity. When this flick switches gears, man, it forgets it has brakes at all. Not to say it doesn't have its flaws, some of which are fatal, but gorehounds will likely be extremely impressed with a few scenes here.

The story opens with Eiji (The Great Yokai War's Sadao Abe in his first big-screen appearance), a brilliant high school student who, taking after his scientist parents, has developed what he believes to be the perfect painkiller-- a drug that, instead of introducing new elements into the recipient, pumps up the body's production of endorphins. Can't go wrong with the all-natural, right? Lacking test subjects, however, he decides to try the drug out by slipping a few drops into an experimental contraceptive that his mother, Yuki (Masumi Nako), is in the final stages of testing. He hides across the street and videotapes the test through the window, resolving to observe all three of the suspects afterwards to see if there are any ill effects. One of them, Rika Mikami (Risa Aika), catches him the next day, however, and the two of them end up so besotted with each other that they forget the other two. We, however, are not as easily spared. And side effects? Oh, yeah. There are side effects.

Compared to American horror films, Naked Blood is about as good as you'd expect from the Asian horror market, which has a baseline far above that we're currently locked into in this country (which explains the recent rash of Asian horror film remakes glutting the American market). Compared with other Asian horror flicks, however, this one leaves a lot to be desired. It does have the usual, and quite welcome, traits of very strong character development, excellent atmosphere, and over-the-top special effects; that said, the well-developed characters are still shallow (two are so stereotypical we never learn their names, but are only called in the credits by their stereotypes), screenwriter Takitoshi Watari tried to work in a mystery subplot as a seeming afterthought that's predictable enough for a half-blind ten-year-old to solve about ten seconds after he realizes there is a mystery plot, and the acting ranges from the barely competent to the unintentionally hysterical.

I cannot call Naked Blood a good movie by most standards, but it's like a particularly ugly train accident: you just cannot look away once it explodes. And you will not be able to dodge the falling body parts. I've been a fan of extreme horror cinema for a long, long time, and there was one scene in this movie that even I couldn't bring myself to watch. If that's the metric by which you rate a film, Naked Blood gets top marks. ** ½