Story:
Eiji is a young and determined amateur scientist; his
ultimate goal at the present is to develop the ultimate
pain killer. With this serum, which simply consists
of transforming the pain into pleasure, Eiji really
thinks that he can change and help the whole of humanity.
One day his hard work completed he decides that it is
the time to test his new serum, which he called MySon
in the memory of his dead father.
His mother, who is a professional scientist, is
conducting medical and inoffensive experiment on three
young women. Eiji decide to mix his serum MySon with
the experimental product that his mother his working
on. Eiji now just have to spy these women with a camera
for the following days to take some note on the secondary
effect of his miraculous potion. But thing get out
of control when the girls start to hurt and mutilate
themselves with a strange pleasure at doing it. Eiji,
who during the following day befriend one of the three
girls, decide that he has to do something to stop
this madness.
Review: Not being a big fan of Japanese Gore-Sexploitation
movies, I still found myself curious about these kinds
of films. My last experience with these types of movies
was a real disappointment but I decided to give a
chance to another one, just for the heck of it. I
was expecting again a horrible experience but this
time it didn't turn out that bad, it was more enjoyable
and tolerable than before. This time the movie centered
more on the development of the story and the characters,
unlike other movies of its genre that just try to
show you exploiting useless rape scenes and extreme
gore.
The movie starts very slow and takes the time to
build up an interesting story about an ambitious young
man who only thinks about himself and doesn't care
of the consequence his actions. The story of Naked
Blood has a lot of meaning in it and unlike other
Japanese exploitation movies; Naked Blood uses its
story not only to shock people but to make them think
about the emotions of the characters. The movie may
not have reinvented the genre but has at least accomplished
to give us a decent story, something that most of
the time was used as a pretext to show disturbing
scenes.
Naked Blood, which is directed by Toshiyasu Sato,
who take a step away from his regular rape-sex movies;
delivers more than just a mindless exploitation movie
this time. It would not be fair to see the movie as
just another exploitation film but we can't hide the
fact the Naked Blood is not the big meaningful movie
that it has tried to be. The story is very simple
in all but it also tries to surprise you with a couple
of interesting twists and a good ending, at least
that makes the story surprisingly enjoyable for that
kind of film. Technically, the movie is also a lot
better than what I expected. Some scenes looked really
well and it was apparent that the director paid attention
to what the movie will end up looking like. The movie
is maybe not ground breaking in the cinematic department
but it didn't look like an amateurish movie that most
of these films look like generally. And for a movie
filmed in less than 7 days, it was not too bad.
The biggest challenge that the movie had to overcome
was to make the characters likable. A really big challenge
since usually in these types of films most the characters
are there just to be killed, raped or both. Eiji,
the main character, which is the starting point of
every atrocity happening in the story, was in general
very well played and looked like one of those stereotypes
disturbed Japanese teen kids. His mother was also
great but was maybe the hardest character to understand,
spending a lot of time in front of those old family
videos to remember her lost husband, she was a little
strange but never to a point of total annoyance and
misunderstanding. The three main female actresses
were probably the most important characters of the
movie, since everything fell on them without warning.
The story takes the time to let us know each one of
them, telling us their problems and their joy in life,
which will turn against them in their near future.
Of the three girls, the movie centers more on Rika,
the girl that Eiji will become obsessed with, she
is also the strangest girl of the unfortunate trio.
The movie, which has a running time of only 75 min,
is not filled of extreme gore from start to finish.
The movie has a really slow buildup and really takes
his time to let us understand the story and his characters.
But when the gory scenes finally appear, they may
not last very long but they are very intense and shocking.
These short disturbing moments are very well made
and some of these effects really look convincing on
screen. A few examples of these scenes consist of
extreme body piercing a la Night of the Living Dead
3, self mutilation, cannibalism, extreme burst of
blood and more. Even if the movie has a lot of sexual
allusions, there's only one sex scene in the whole
movie. This scene, at least, was there for a reason
and had some importance in the story, unlike other
exploitation movies that like to throw at us rape
scenes just for the fun of it. Amateurs of intolerable
violence will enjoy these violent moments a lot, but
as I said, there are only a few of these scenes in
the entire movie. But maybe that was a good thing
because I'm not sure If could have stand a full hour
of sadistic violence of that level.
Mixing an interesting story concept with decent
characters and well made shocking scenes, Naked Blood
is not just another one of those extreme Japanese
exploitation movies but also a movie that tried to
push things in a different direction and have a small
dose of intelligence in it. Giving the feeling that
the spectator is a like Peeping Tom in this weird
aggressive universe, Naked Blood holds and gains the
difficult bet to be at the same time symbolistic,
kind of poetic and shocking. Naked blood is for sure
not everyone's cup of tea but if you are curious and
like your gory/extreme movies with a decent dose of
intelligence, you should give a try to this movie.