"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

Naked Blood is one of those films that makes you wonder just what Japanese (an Asian) cinema film-makers are drinking. Perhaps the same thing that those folks at Id in Texas were drinking (you know, when they made Doom and Quake).Anyhow, geo-political pre-judice asside (and I am totally kidding about it, okay?), this movie is excellent as a B-movie. It is engrossing and continues to take unexpected turns.Unfortunately, some parts of it are not explained very well, if at all, and it could be accused of being totally pointless. Some people claim that they see more on re-watching it, but, those people are just drinking something strange.Unlike an A-movie like Pi (the Greek symbol), Momento, or Sixth Sense, this movie won't be improved much by multiple watchings. Yes, they are some subtle things but they are also huge holes which simply can't be filled, except with imagination.The story ... I don't know if to say that it ended ... or that it was more of a dissolving into nether. That might work for those who believe in Mugen Afterlife (i.e. transition to nothingness after death, metaphorically embodied in a story in which there is no implied ever after, but rather, a dissolving of the entire framework and the characters that comprise it), but for the average domestic / Western / non-nihilist person, we'd like to know that the characters lived happily (or even sadly, or painfully, or tragically) ever after....So, overall, 7 / 10: Solid B movie, but, too weird (both plot-wise and in content) for most people.

I should start off by saying that I am a huge gorehound. I like movies that take things to the extreme. I heard of this movie through watching the infamous Guinea Pig series. A person from IMDb specifically told me if I liked that series that I should love Naked Blood. After a few months of searching for this title I finally came across it. What I thought was going to be a straight splatter fest turned into a rather psychological film that just happened to have some really disturbing elements to it.The storyline is not really what is in the forefront of the movie, more or less, it was the atmosphere and moodiness of the film (and of course the gore), but I will give a brief description anyway. A 17 year old boy genius has created a serum that if injected will turn pain into pleasure. He decides to test it on three girls and the results are exactly what you think they might be.This film is so much more then that brief description, though. There is a lot of bizarre elements to the film that in one viewing couldn't possibly be understood. Hell, I don't even know if multiple viewings could sum up what the meaning of this film is. If you have seen this movie, you should know what I am talking about. If you haven't seen this then just watch it for yourself.In my opinion, this was a great movie. Easily becomes one of my favorites. If you can find it, buy it. 9/10

This is a very interesting movie and a little hard to review. It starts out as a teen scientist develops a brain altering drug that is supposed to cure pain. His Mother is a research scientist conducting a research project with three women concerning birth control. Her Son slips some of his drug into his Mother's experiment to test it out, and then watches especially one of the patients to see what happens. This evolves rather slowly at first as we watch subtle changes in the three women. One is obsessed with food, another with her appearance, and the one he follows around is the strange one. She never sleeps and spends much of time with a virtual machine like thing connected to a cactus. Yes, a cactus. What happens soon, is the drug starts doing its thing and two of the women start exhibiting bizarre behavior, but not the cactus lady. The food lady becomes obsessed with her own body, and basically starts eating her own body parts. Oh yea, this is WAY over the top and the gore just keeps a coming once it starts. The second lady becomes obsessed with pain, and begins sticking all types of piercings into her body. It seems the drug does do away with pain, but causes an addiction where as the lady has a compulsion for more and more self-inflicted pain. The cactus lady is not showing much of any changes, but her world is pretty bizarre regardless of the drug. This becomes pretty confusing as dream sequences pop out of nowhere and seem to put a different spin on everything that has been going on. Did the other two women die from the drug, or did the cactus lady actually kill them? To be honest, I don't have a clue, and that would be a spoiler anyway if I did. Disturbing, yes, very very disturbing. Confusing? Not at first, but the dream sequences bring in a new element that is a little difficult to figure out. This has some spectacular gore, mainly with the food lady that eats herself. I've never seen anything like that in my life, and that alone puts this movie in a class by itself. This movie also has a Gozu (ending) type scene that is absolutely incredible. Disturbing, surreal, ultra-gory, those are all good descriptions of this fascinating movie. This one is for hardcore gorehounds.