TRAILER: Cinema Release: Goemon

Film: Goemon

REVIEW: DVD Release: Blood

Film: Blood
Release date: 3rd May 2010

Certificate: 15

Running time: 81 mins

Director: Ten Shimoyama

Starring: Aya Sugimoto, Kanji Tsuda, Jun Kaname

Genre: Horror

Studio: MVM

Format: DVD

Country: Japan

Japan seems to produce more than its fair share of vampire exploitation films. So, in an already saturated genre, it may have been easy to miss Ten Shimoyama’s Blood, released as it was conspicuously close to Chris Nahon’s much higher profiled and budgeted Blood: The Last Vampire. However, the shorter titled of the two films shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

Kanji Tsuda is Detective Hoshino, a clever, driven young police detective who’s been busted down for exposing some corrupt politicians. To keep him out of trouble, and out of the spotlight, he is assigned to a dead-end case in a back-end police department, investigating a murder trail which has long since gone cold.

Hoshino soon becomes entangled in more than he bargained for, as the case deepens and sees him on the run from a vicious cabal of vampires, and entangled with a beautiful female vampire who is determined to make him one of them...

From the opening action scene, which sees brutal swordplay, a beautiful woman and crimson blood liberally splattered on white snow, we know exactly what we’re in for: a stylish, gory affair with very little substance, but plenty of style. The women are stunning, but the men are stoic and largely one-dimensional. The action is well choreographed and executed, and the whole thing is peppered with gratuitous sex scenes, which are largely tame and inoffensive, but should appeal to the target audience.

The link between vampirism and sex has always been there, of course, and what makes it so intriguing is that the link is implied. Blood, however, has no time for such subtleties, and the biting and blood gives way to soft porn – and vice versa – with monotonous regularity, and without pause for breath. You sometimes get the feeling that the vampiric storyline is simply an excuse to drench the screen in blood and add a supernatural bent to all the style and nudity. It could just as easily be substituted for any other popular supernatural phenomenal, and the film would not suffer in the least.

On the plus side, after a recent slake of films which have made it look fundamentally unpleasant to be a vampire, it’s refreshing to find a film that actually makes vampirism look fun again. For all those sick of the moody, angst-ridden sincerity of Twilight, etc., you might just find Blood a welcome relief, and it’s all done with a knowing sense of humour which is so essential in this kind of verging-on-slapstick horror. There’s also some good gore – especially some clever swordplay that leaves sharp blades inventively placed in various excruciating parts of the anatomy.

The cast look like they’re having just as much fun as the director reading out some pretty silly dialogue, and posturing in beautiful over-the-top locations. The camerawork is solid and occasionally very impressive, and while the soundtrack treads over very familiar ground for an Asian horror (pumping electro-rock, clichéd ominous drones and creepily angelic choirs) it does the job adequately.

Sadly, though, towards the final third, the film becomes increasingly repetitive and uninspired, and really starts to suffer from the lack of inventiveness and humour, which showed real promise at the start. The main character, for example, who begins as a clever, fun Japanese take on the hard-bitten, frustrated detective patting his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief as he wanders the streets chasing down a dead-end case, is before long reduced to a cardboard cut-out horror hero running for his life. The world-weary, overworked and ultimately corrupt police chief shows equal promise but ends up being tragically underused.


A reasonable, bog-standard shocker with some artfully composed shots, good action, and all put together with an infectious sense of fun. Passable. LOZ