Cover Art

Credits

Director: Hisayasu Sato Starring: Misa Akia, Sadao Abe, Mika Kirihara Screenplay: Taketoshi Watari Music: Kimitake Hiraoka Country: Japan AKA: Splatter: Naked Blood, Nekkedo buraddo: Megyaku, Megyaku: Akuma no yorokobi, Naked Blood: Megyaku

Umm. well… yeah. So, Naked Blood. One of video's more craptastic titles, but a damn fine film, regardless. Eiji is a child prodigy who has developed a drug he calls "My Son" that retards the pain response in the pain receptors, instead giving a pleasurable high. He puts the drug into drips containing an experimental contraceptive drug being tested at his mother's hospital and films what happens to the women being tested, each of whom has a nasty, undesirable and bloody reaction to it.

I'm quite sure there's no other film in the world that features the line, "You must empty your heart first. Then entrust everything to the cactus." Sorry, sorry, cheap laughs at the expense of poorly translated, out of context subtitles are a specialty of the house. Of course, as we all know this kind of irresponsible scientific behaviour of Eiji's is destined to fuck up big time, and it certainly does that here in spades. The combination of the contraceptive drug and My Son produces the effect whereby not only is pain negated, it is translated into an almost orgasmic delight, and without wishing to spoil anything for anyone, makes one of the test patients into a rather extreme piercing fanatic, another into an auto-cannibal and the other…well…

My only real gripe with this film is that the director has obviously tried to be arty at the same time as he has being supernally violent, and given the type of film this is, it does it a tremendous disservice. The whole sub-plot with Rika's insomnia and hooking herself up to the cactus every night via some weird headset in order to be able to dream is just plain laughable and could have been addressed in a less intrusive and absurd fashion, methinks. The fucking scene towards the end with Rika, Eiji and the cactus was like something out of Burroughs, and well, a little silly.

I couldn't help but be reminded of David Lynch while I watched this film. There's a similar kind of oneiric logic here that echoes that in Lynch's films. Or maybe that should be an "illogic". Regardless, linear straightforward storytelling is not at a premium here. And in terms of who actually kills who in this gruesomely bloody film, I really can't say. That's not a cop out; we see some characters die twice, one of the bastards gets three goes. What is this, a video game?! Honestly, it becomes annoying more than anything else.

And then there's the whole family relationships issue. This is a scary thing in this film, whether it's the father-son, mother-son (definitely uncool in this flick), or husband-wife relationship, they're all horribly dysfunctional here, if not positively destructive and warped. Honestly, after watching this, Kairo, and Audition, I'm really, really glad I'm not Japanese.