A Flower of Flesh and Blood (1984) Review
April 15th 2010 19:03
A word of warning to the squeamish: the following review may be a bit disturbing to some folks, and the movie I'm reviewing will certainly
be disturbing to anyone who's not either blind or some kind of psychotic. Perhaps the most rare film one could ever see would be a snuff film, where someone is actually murdered on camera. While we've all heard rumors about Eastern European gangs killing tourists and selling the tapes of the murders on the black market, no organization either national or international have ever been able to verify the existence of a black market for snuff films. Even the infamous “Faces of Death” videos have been revealed by their creators to be a mostly fake, with only a few stock footage shots of real deaths thrown in for a degree of accountability. Now, I'm not really interested in seeing a snuff film should a real one ever become available (Please don't send me any) but “A Flower of Flesh and Blood” is about as close as I'll ever get to seeing the genuine article.
Rarest of the rare, this pre-internet viral video was made by Director Hideshi Hino who made a series of sick and uber-violent films in the 80's with “Flower of Flesh and blood” being his crowning achievement. Claiming to be based on a real snuff film sent to Hideshi. It was popular in Japaneses porn shops and fringe video stores before being brought to the US by bootleggers and horror grindhouse distributors.
The movie is hardly a movie at all, only running 40 minutes and working without much of a story. The film plays out like this: A man stalks a woman into a vacant street, drugs her and drags her home. He ties her to a table, and brutally cuts her to pieces while she's alive (all the while dressed as a Samurai for unknown reasons) After the sickening murder, he arranges her disembodied limbs with flowers in a display that Martha Stewart would defiantly object to. That's pretty much it! Aside from the Samurai guy's grotesque speeches, justifying his horrid act, there is no dialogue. Honestly, the film is beyond disturbing, normally the bad guy gets it in the end but with this gruesome little piece of infamy, you don't get a happy ending. It's not poignant, or making a statement, it's just there to be nasty and vulgar. I have to give it to the special effect people because the dismemberment looks surprisingly real. Nothing here is stylized, and there's no artistic cut away when things get nasty, nothing is implied, and everything is shown in the most horrid detail a grainy VHS from the 80's can give you (Let's hope this one's never transferred to blue-ray). I'm no gore lightweight, I've watched autopsy footage, operations, and some of the goriest slasher films ever made and they often made me laugh, but this movie made my skin crawl, it's just plain evil.
The Most interesting side note to this film is the legend that movie star Charlie Sheen saw this video at a party and contacted the FBI to alert them that he'd witnessed a murder. FBI investigated and found it was just a fake, but it did generate interest in the movie in the states. There's plenty of mystery surrounding this film, but a word of warning: it is as bad as everyone says it is, even worse. It's gory, disgusting
and vulgar, without a shred of redeeming quality. Frankly, it would be just as disturbing if they never showed a drop of blood, the subject matter alone is enough to make anyone cringe. Why it was made, and why people insist that it's “The best Japanese Horror movie of all time” is a mystery to me. Watching “A Flower of Flesh and Blood” is not a good experience, and I only present it here as a film oddity and do not recommend you watch it. Yeah, I know this will likely make MORE of you want to watch it, but trust me you won't enjoy it. Now here's a picture of some puppies tohelp get your mind of this movie, and on to something cute and wonderful, let's never speak of it again.
Believe it or not, this is the least disturbing screen shot I could find from this movie. Enjoy
Rarest of the rare, this pre-internet viral video was made by Director Hideshi Hino who made a series of sick and uber-violent films in the 80's with “Flower of Flesh and blood” being his crowning achievement. Claiming to be based on a real snuff film sent to Hideshi. It was popular in Japaneses porn shops and fringe video stores before being brought to the US by bootleggers and horror grindhouse distributors.
The movie is hardly a movie at all, only running 40 minutes and working without much of a story. The film plays out like this: A man stalks a woman into a vacant street, drugs her and drags her home. He ties her to a table, and brutally cuts her to pieces while she's alive (all the while dressed as a Samurai for unknown reasons) After the sickening murder, he arranges her disembodied limbs with flowers in a display that Martha Stewart would defiantly object to. That's pretty much it! Aside from the Samurai guy's grotesque speeches, justifying his horrid act, there is no dialogue. Honestly, the film is beyond disturbing, normally the bad guy gets it in the end but with this gruesome little piece of infamy, you don't get a happy ending. It's not poignant, or making a statement, it's just there to be nasty and vulgar. I have to give it to the special effect people because the dismemberment looks surprisingly real. Nothing here is stylized, and there's no artistic cut away when things get nasty, nothing is implied, and everything is shown in the most horrid detail a grainy VHS from the 80's can give you (Let's hope this one's never transferred to blue-ray). I'm no gore lightweight, I've watched autopsy footage, operations, and some of the goriest slasher films ever made and they often made me laugh, but this movie made my skin crawl, it's just plain evil.
The Most interesting side note to this film is the legend that movie star Charlie Sheen saw this video at a party and contacted the FBI to alert them that he'd witnessed a murder. FBI investigated and found it was just a fake, but it did generate interest in the movie in the states. There's plenty of mystery surrounding this film, but a word of warning: it is as bad as everyone says it is, even worse. It's gory, disgusting
Now don't you feel better?
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