tonymo1977
"Splatter: Naked Blood"One of the better, simplistic formulas to shake the foundation of the genre in quite some time, has arrived. A few aspects that can be appreciated about "Splatter" are the minimal expenditures of plot twists. Director Hisayasu Sato( "Night of the Anatomical Doll", "Soft Skin") hides none of the script(written by Taketoshi Watari) behind any closed doors for the imagination to guess against. Every bit of this film is in plain view. As the film develops along its 76 min trek to absolution, no punches are pulled. What IS lacking in script writing, is made up in a major way in the special make up department. The world famous Yuichi Matsui (Kill Bill: Vol 1 & 2, The Ring I, II and IV, Audition, Imprint, Ichi the Killer and The Grudge I &II. Please don't make me go on, this guys resume is beyond world class.) circumnavigates the classic effects that made him famous, ranging from disgusting, imaginative, to vomit inducing!It's just one of those very simple films, budget is not extravagant, the story is not overly imaginative. The acting is decent, although the sound editing is great. You can hear every stab, gouge and slice in Dolby Stereo Surround. On the spectrum of short, time wise, there is a bit of a wait to get things rolling, however when the time is right and the meat of the story(or special effects) starts to develop....you know that saying..."when it rains.....it pours? Yeah....like that!A young scientist prodigy Eiji (Sadao Abe) is working on his latest experiment, a formula aptly named "MYSON" designed to relieve pain. He feels it is very close to completion and is ready for clinical trials. His mother Yuki (Masumi Nakao) is herself a scientist, specializing in fertility. As her son comes to visit her, she is in the middle of her own trials. Three women are currently involved in a contraceptive experiment. Eiji arrives and asks if he may sit in on his mothers work for a bit. She denies him and asks him to leave her to her work. The opportunity to share his medical breakthrough passes and while his mother is turned the other way, he reveals a vial of his formula and inserts it into the IV bags, unbeknown-st to his mother and the three women.These three women play a pivotal role in the film, their characters have very distinct attributes that make more sense later in the film. Girl #1 ( Plant Girl) has a 6 foot cactus in her apartment....yeah, kinda weird, however, maybe she is a plant lover! Well, NO( or maybe yes, just in a very odd, loving way). She just happens to have a virtual reality machine hooked up to the plant and to her(when she puts the head set on), so she can communicate with the plant, have virtual sex with it....yeah...really not sure why she has it set up to the cactus.Girl #2 ( Glutton Girl) She loves food, good food and all food she can get her mitts on. Girl #3 (Vain Girl) She loves designer clothes, looking her best at all times and of course looking at herself in the mirror.Our young Eiji follows his test subjects from a far, watching from building tops or a few blocks away, carefully observing their responses and effects to the "MYSON" cocktail.I thought this was a horror film with a great FX Director...where is all the good stuff at? I haven't seen a single drop of High Fructose Corn Syrup( I mean Blood)! Patience my young Pad-Wan; patience!Without giving away too much, I will issue a:*Mild Spoiler Alert*These girls have been subjected to an unknown, untested substance, with out their knowledge. This "MYSON" increases the secretion of endorphins' from the pituitary gland when pain is felt, giving the women increased pleasure when any pain is induced (or extreme body mutilation...let the gore begin).When the makeup effects arrive, they come wielding, kitchen utensils, cooking oil and much, much more! Yuichi's work can be seen in many Takashi Miike films and he generally doesn't disappoint. This is another occasion where you will get all of your money's worth.I'm compelled to tell you a small amount of what you can expect from the horrifically graphic, in full view scenes of "Splatter: Naked Blood". Scene #1: Glutton Girl cuts off her vagina......and......EATS IT!!! Scene #2: Glutton Girl sticks a fork in her eye, pulls it out, optic nerve and all....and....EATS IT!!Splatter is carried specifically on content. Nothing about the films writing is anything to get excited about. Anyone can write stick fork in eye..eat eye. Sure to the non-gore watching community, stomachs would be turning in knots, however enlist the expertise of master effects director Yuichi Matsui and those stomachs turn into empty ones. Not the best characterization and plot development, however, If shock is what you like; you must see this film, it was for me! When the good stuff rolled in, it was in tsunami like waves. Watch it!BruceVain
EVOL666
Despite the hard-core gore scenes that many people talk about in this film, NAKED BLOOD is a surprisingly intelligent entry in the Japanese "extreme gore" genre.Eiji is a young science prodigy who develops a drug he calls MY SON, that stimulates endorphins in the body so that pain is diminished, and in some cases can even become pleasurable. Eiji's mother is also a scientist who is experimenting with contraceptive drugs on three young women. Eiji decides to test his serum by spiking the drugs that his mother is experimenting with. The three women are unknowingly given the MY SON along with the contraceptive drugs, and Eiji begins to observe the women to see what the effects are. Over the course of the film, we find that one of the women is obsessed with food, another with her appearance, and the third is kinda a weirdo with extreme insomnia. The drug slowly begins to have profound effects on the first two women...The one obsessed with food begins to experience pleasure from eating her own body parts, including her finger, labia, nipple and eyeball (all in extremely graphic and awesome detail)...The appearance lady becomes obsessed with piercing herself (also in graphic detail, but not quite as cool as the eat-herself-lady)...and at first, the insomniac doesn't appear to have any real symptoms. When she finally does, this is where NAKED BLOOD really takes off in terms of story-line...I personally think NAKED BLOOD is a great film for what it is. The graphic gore scenes are very rough, but honestly make up only a fraction of the film's running time. This film intelligently deals with subject matter such as pleasure vs. pain, obsession, ambition, betrayal and heredity. I have to say I was expecting an all-out bloodbath (which is usually all I want to see from these types of films...) but was very pleasantly surprised to see a real "movie" amidst the bloodshed. Very highly recommended, but only for those that can handle this new wave of Japanese splatter. 9/10
fertilecelluloid
Hisayasu Sato's NAKED BLOOD is one of his most technically polished exercises in cinematic therapy; it states its premise clearly and uses that premise to present provocative imagery.Sex and control are favoured themes of Sato, but sex is not the focus here; controlling how our minds process stimulation (good and bad) is.The nerdish son of a a doctor -- she is testing a new contraceptive drug on three female patients -- mixes his own home-made drug, "My Son", with his mother's. His invention allows the test subjects to experience pleasure when they should be feeling pain.A woman saws off her vaginal lips and eats them; she then gouges her eye out with a fork and eats it; she also removes her nipple and eats that, too. The special prosthetic effects are effective, but the over-the-top sound effects render them cheesy (unfortunately).There are other displays of grotesque gore including pens, hooks and needles pushed through flesh, but this is not a horror film in the classic sense; it is quite slow moving and almost academic in its detail.Sato's direction is concise and clear. His focus on TV monitors, computer imagery, Super 8 and degraded video ties this feature to the obsessions of his very considerable oeuvre.The film's most obvious inspiration is Cronenberg's VIDEODROME. From the headset through which one can experience the dreams and nightmares of another to the wholesale corruption of flesh, Sato was clearly taken with the themes of the Canadian filmer's original but flawed achievement.An audacious, clinical work.
