Naked Blood (V.O. Nekeddo Buraddo: Megyaku)

Japan, 1996

Director: Hisayasu Sato

Genre: Horror/Science Fiction/Gore

Screenplay: Taketoshi Watari

Cast: Misa Aika, Yumika Hayashi, Mika Kirihara, Sadao Abe

Plot

Young Eiji manufactures a serum to “turn pain into pleasure”, with which he intends to “save humanity”. He calls this drug “My Son”.

Eiji inherited his passion for experiments from his parents, both scientists. His father, who (while he was in gestation) tried to create a substance that would make “eternal life” possible, disappeared one day, slowly sinking into the ocean, before the astonished eyes of his wife, who was filming from the shore, and never came back.

The mother, concerned about the world’s hyper-population that may be “the great threat of the future”, has created a contraceptive substance, which she is about to inject into three girls. Eiji asks his mother to allow him to witness the experiment, but she objects. So the young man (who has previously inoculated the contraceptive mother with a dose of his own drug, the one that seeks to “turn pain into pleasure”) takes a camera and records the experiment from a neighboring rooftop.

The girls have distinct and distinct characters. One is a glutton, whose greatest pleasure is to eat; another, on the contrary, is extremely concerned about her physical appearance, her main interest is to be in shape and dress fashionably… The third, Rika, suffers from chronic insomnia (due to a shock, since she started menstruating); she is the shyest and has misanthropic traits.

Eiji, equipped with his camera, continues to watch the girls to check the effects of his serum. He is especially attracted to one of them, the introverted Rika (who saw him while filming from the rooftop). He follows her through the subway, she discovers him and they end up becoming friends. Rika tells the precocious scientist in a kind of botanical garden that she has the ability to hear the sounds that plants make. Then they head to her house. Rika lives with a giant cactus, and although she can never sleep due to her insomnia, she wears a kind of brainwave-emitting helmet that enables her to relax and even dream. A similar helmet is applied to the cactus.

Meanwhile, the other two girls who participated in the experiment begin to notice the effects of the substance created by Eiji, which “transforms pain into pleasure”.

The one who is obsessed with her physique, after doing her gymnastics, contemplates herself in the mirror and begins to insert metal rods into her flesh; first in her earlobes, then in her arms and legs, all over her body; reaching sensations of an orgasmic nature. He cannot stop piercing himself compulsively.

For her part, the gluttonous woman, who is cooking something in tempura, feels an irrepressible desire to eat herself (!)… Seized by a lascivious voluptuousness, in an extremely grotesque and delirious scene, she cuts off the lips of her vulva to taste them; then she amputates a nipple and swallows it, and finally she also tears out one of her eyes with a fork, to swallow it…

Both end up bleeding to death. Eiji’s experiment to “save humanity” has turned out to be a fiasco, a catastrophe. However, no adverse effects are seen in Rika, who was also inoculated with the “My Son” drug.

When Eiji’s mother learns of the death of both young women, she immediately summons the third, the survivor, to her office for analysis and to investigate what could have been the cause of the mysterious bleedings. The scientist knows nothing about the substance “My Son” and even less that “her son” had added it to the contraceptive she created.

From now on, the plot becomes confusing in its final stage. Eiji also learns the frustrating outcome of his experiment, and, in despair, he “says goodbye” to his mother and leaves to meet Rika at her apartment. Rika returns from the scientist’s office, whom she has disemboweled (? ) although she is still alive, dying in a hospital bed… Eiji injects himself with all that is left of the “My Son” and then has intercourse with Rika in a scene reminiscent of tantric-lysergic; after which the girl (like an arachnid “black widow”) proceeds to slit the throat of the wretch with a cuttex…

Meanwhile, on the bed where the mother lies with her belly open, the ghostly apparition of the father (her husband) occurs; who after telling her that “now they will be together forever” enters the woman’s bloody bodily orifice, which then closes after which she expires.

The delirium ends with an epilogue in which Rika is seen in a caravan with a boy who appears to be Eiji II, in an American desert with cacti. Rika sets out to spray (as a biker) some kind of “chemtrails” across the desert…

Comment

This bizarre Japanese film is a positive surprise. It is not, as expected by the cover, a gratuitous splatter like the “Guinea Pig” saga, with viscera and blood plasma spurts galore, but an intelligent thriller, shot directly to video and with very few means (which increases its merit).

The (few) gore scenes are very well dosed, and are therefore extremely shocking and effective. The sequence where “the glutton” self-mutilates and eats herself is probably one of the most disturbing of the genre.

The plot is somewhat reminiscent of the story of Frankenstein, where a scientist also tries to defy the laws of nature. In Mary Shelley’s novel, Victor Frankenstein (who wants to create life) manufactures a golem, a disgusting monster from pieces of corpses; which will bring as a consequence multiple misfortunes upon him and his people.

In “Naked Blood”, Sato introduces us to not one but three “mad scientists”: the father in search of “eternal life”, the mother tries to find the “perfect contraceptive” to avoid “world overpopulation”; the son with his “My Son” serum wants to transform “pain into pleasure” to “redeem humanity”. All good intentions that will bring nothing but disaster.

Highly recommended, although obviously not for all palates.