Moved from being an "Update" to it's own post with a plot synopsis. Just so you don't think Senor Shrink is one of those time traveling types here to soul scalp us (I'm not sure exactly what this is, but it doesn't sound good).
Some Wise Guy wrote:“Here are a few tidbits about this blood thing. In ALL blood groups there exists a common microbe that in essence is THE LIFE FORCE ITSELF. During experiments that our team conducted we heated the blood to 700 degrees F and also put it in Liquid Nitrogen. This microbe which is visible only with a highly modified dark field microscope that was custom built for us was STILL ALIVE. We have also tested this on ´mummy dust´. This microbe is STILL alive after 5000 years plus when the mummy dust is placed in a ph perfect solution the same as the “live blood”, it returns back to ´life´.”
And then we have the satanic vampire cult blood drinkers who seem to be convinced the “life is in the blood.”
If this is not making sense to you, i suggest the following movie, Legend of the 8 Samarai, as they swim in a pool of human blood.
The movie, "Legend of the 8 Samurai" holds the key, and the trailer is only 2:11 long. And just so I don't make any enemies, I'll warn you all. It's not gory or scary or anything, it's not even the video itself but the music. Some people think that "music is the universal language," but they're idiots. Anyone not raised in this foreign culture may find this strange combination of moans and "the sound of a cat getting run over" not only "not music," but offensive. So there you are, don't say I didn't warn you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbhbhqOCS8o
SATOMI HAKKEN-DEN (LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI)
Eight Samurai opens with true horror: the opening theme music is some of the worst American 80's pop I've ever had the misfortune to hear. I'd always assumed that this and the equally awful ballad that comes later in the film were tacked on by the American distributors. Much to my surprise, I discovered that the Japanese version is also infested with these same bad pop tunes.
After the credits, we find ourselves outside the gloomy Hikita Castle, where a huge and bloody battle has just been fought. The evil Lady Tamazusa and her son, Lord Motofuji, leaders of the Hikita clan, have defeated the rival Satomi clan and executed its leaders. The victory is particularly sweet for the pair, since they'd been killed -- that's right, killed -- by Satomi warriors a hundred years before, and have been thirsty for revenge ever since. A century ago, Tamazusa had been burned alive in her castle; Motofuji had escaped, but had been horribly disfigured by the fire. Tamazusa has now returned as a sort of Japanese vampire, while Motofuji requires the skin of innocent victims to restore his horribly burned flesh.
As Tamazusa surveys the carnage in the combined gloom of nightfall, ominous storm clouds and the smoke of battle, she stops to cackle with glee over the severed heads of her enemies. But then she counts the heads, and her mood changes: one head, the most important one, is missing! Somehow, Shizu-hime (that is, "Princess Shizu") has managed to escape. This is particularly distressing to Tamazusa, since a mysterious prophecy hints that Shizu is the one person who can bring about the downfall of the undead Hikita clan.
You see where this is going, don't you?
Of course you do, but remember: we have another two hours and five minutes before the foregone conclusion arrives. So hang in there. It's going to be a rough trip in places, and it will be made even rougher by the background music. Most of it's not as bad as the opening power ballad (though the "Love Theme from Legend of the Eight Samurai", which gets vomited up by the soundtrack towards the end of the movie and over the final credits, is nearly as awful). Still, the music is out of place and painfully uninteresting. There's a chord called the "diminished" chord; it's made up of two or more minor thirds piled on top of each other, and it's used sometimes to create tension because it sounds incomplete and ambiguous. The tension dissolves in tedium, though, when the diminished chord is all you hear, over and over again... and that's what we get to accompany many of the scenes between Tamazusa and Motofuji.
The dreadful music distracts us from some astonishingly colorful visuals in these scenes. Tamazusa's lair, deep underground in a hidden cavern, looks like something from Mario Bava's worst Technicolor nightmare. It's got green-glowing walls, scores of guards in crimson armor, sacrificial altars with the requisite torture tools, and a huge, black, bloodthirsty statue of Mitama, the Spirit of Evil. The Mitama idol is buried up to its forehead in rock, and behind it, embedded in the castle wall like a ghastly tapestry, are hundreds of twisted corpses. It's against this backdrop that we eventually learn the true, sickening relationship between Tamazusa and her son -- a very close family, the Hikitas. It just wouldn't be a Fukasaku movie without a moment like this, calculated to be mildly unsettling to the mainstream audience of the day... though frankly, it's hard to beat the scene in Samurai Reincarnation in which the sexually-ambiguous Christian samurai zombie villain begins to seduce his young acolyte while convincing him to rape his girlfriend on her father's grave.
(pause)
They just don't make 'em like this any more, do they?
In the meantime, the Princess Shizu is fleeing for her life with her two surviving servants. We're given to understand that the young Princess is quite the little spitfire, aching for a chance to take up a sword and avenge her family (though in the event, she never really gets the chance to do anything, except be menaced by the Bad Guys and get rescued by the Good Guys). Shizu refuses to eat the meat her manservant has cooked for her, because she can't tell what it is (and the girl will get no sympathy from anyone who's ever eaten lunch in a public elementary school). When her servant tells her -- it's snake, caught at no small risk to himself so that she might eat and stay strong -- she forces herself to choke it down.
The plan is that Shizu should try to make it to the castle of her uncle in Musashi, where she would raise an army to come back and drive out the Hikitas. To help them evade capture, the Princess is dressed as a young peasant boy; apparently,there weren't enough peasant clothes to go around, as Shizu's one surviving lady-in-waiting is still dressed in royal robes. The refugees are crossing open terrain in moderately good light3 when -- surprise! -- a band of Hikita riders catch sight of them. The old man throws the Princess into a ditch so she won't be seen, while the lady-in-waiting runs on ahead as a sort of decoy. The riders slay the old man and capture the fake Princess, but the real Shizu-hime manages to escape unnoticed.
Back at the Hikita Headquarters, Tamazusa and Motofuji prepare to carve up the girl they think is the Princess. The girl's death will serve three purposes: to stave off the prophecy, to feed the Evil Spirit with royal blood, and to repair the last bit of Motofuji's disfigured face. However, just as Motofuji goes to work with his ginsu knives, the statue of the Evil Spirit starts hollering "TREYF!" and making vast, godly gagging noises. Obviously the girl on the slab is no true Princess. Tamazusa immediately begins chanting her deepest apologies to the Powers of Darkness; and boy, is Motofuji's face red (except, of course, for the bits that are all black and gangrenous... but you get the idea)!
...
Dôsetsu then tells Shizu-hime the tragic history of her ancestors, and why he, Daikaku and the six other fighters he's looking for (the hakken-shi, or Eight Dog Warriors) are her only hope. He illustrates the story with a scroll, on which the significant events have been painted. The illustrations act like a medieval Japanese version of the freeze-frame montage of the French New Wave... a technique that Fukasaku used in his yakuza films, but which also pops up a little incongruously in Samurai Reincarnation.
The Satomi story goes something like this (deep breath):
When the Satomi clan's Lord Yoshizane defeated Lord Sadakane and burned Hikita Castle, Lady Tamazusa placed a curse on the Satomi clan. Years later, in a desperate battle with Lord Anzai, Yoshizane cynically promised his dog Yatsufume the hand of his daughter Fuse in marriage if he would bring back the head of his enemy. When the dog promptly brought back the head of Anzai, Yoshizane was forced to live up to his promise. The dog took his bride off to a distant land, where she played her flute for him (Dôsetsu even gives Shizu-hime the actual flute!) and bore him half-man half-dog children. But Yoshizane was so appalled at the idea of his grandchildren barking at the postman and peeing on the tatami that he sent his warriors to kill the dog. Fuse ran to defend her canine husband and was shot dead, but as she died, eight glowing orbs (originally eight beads from a Buddhist rosary, one for each of the Eight Tenets of bushido) sprang from her body; and with her dying breath, Fuse proclaimed that these eight stones would become incarnated as eight warriors, who would some day save the Satomi line from extinction. In the meantime, Jessica has started sleeping with Paolo, who is secretly engaged to Brionna even though he is unaware that she is really the long-lost daughter of Don Alfonso who was stolen by the Old Gypsy Woman in revenge for the death of Leandro in a duel with Eldanir the warrior, who brought the magic sword Sildenafil to the very halls of the evil Grokknarr, but who was turned at the last moment into yesterday's newspaper by Yllomer, god of warm-water laundry, for yodelling in his sleep. Got all that? There'll be a quiz.
...
Suspecting nothing, Shizu-hime goes off for a quick bath (Fuakasaku has an uncanny knack for knowing when to leaven the action scenes with the occasional naked chick -- again, cf. Samurai Reincarnation). As she's soaking, nude and vulnerable, she sees Tamazusa creeping through the bushes. Shizu-hime jumps from her bath in terror, but when her protectors rush out to help her, they're stopped by Mama Daikaku. Except it's not Mama Daikaku -- hers was the eyeless body Shinbei stumbled over a few scenes ago. It's really a Hikita demon in the old woman's shape. To everyone's horror, especially Daikaku's, she insists she must eat Shizu's eyes. Then the "old woman" rips off her face and turns into a gigantic centipede.
From naked chicks to flying swordsmen and giant rubber monsters. Now this is cinema!
And now it's an all-out battle, as the four reluctant allies take on Tamazusa's monster. The animated centipede is a close kin to every rubber-suit-and-piano-wire monster Japan is famous for, though you don't always get to see a big rubber beastie going hand-to-hand with a band of fearless samurai. Once again, just when all seems lost for our heros, the power of the crystals comes to the rescue and destroys the centipede-demon. The crystals also take a horrific toll on Tamazusa, who has been waiting on the sidelines. Faced with the combined mystical might of four crystals, she temporarily reverts to her true form as a withered corpse-woman, and staggers back to Hikita Castle.
Fortunately for Tamazusa, she has a handy pool of blood to immerse herself in, so she may restore her youth and beauty. Once again, we interrupt our story for the requisite naked chick; but -- since this is the Ultimate Evil Woman -- we get to see a heck of a lot more of her. There is no plot so diffuse, nor character development so weak that it can not be redeemed by a naked chick dribbling handfuls of blood down her body... that's what I always say.
With Tamazusa on the retreat for the moment, and half the Dog Samurai assembled, things appear to be going fairly well for Shizu-hime. This is the cue for Shinbei to re-enter the picture. It just so happens that Shizu, walking with the others back through the woods, steps into his Princess-trap, and it also just so happens that Shinbei is able to abduct the girl before her mighty heros can do anything to stop him. This bodes ill for the hakken-shi being able to defeat the Forces of Evil, when they can't even protect the Princess from the Forces of Barely Competent.
We follow Shinbei and the Princess through the inevitable "cute abduction" sequence, in which we're supposed to accept Stockholm Syndrome as shorthand for "falling in love".
Shinbei takes Shizu-hime back to his village... except that the village isn't there any more. Tamazusa's riders have learned that the Princess passed through the village un challenged, and have taken their bloody revenge. The huts have all been burned to the ground, and all the villagers have been slaughtered... except for two small children, who are left wandering in the ruin. As Shinbei and Shizu look on in horror, more Hikita warriors ride after the children. Though Shinbei makes a half-hearted attempt to save them at the last minute -- good going, -- the children are butchered.
General rule of thumb for a Fukasaku movie: Kinji spares nobody on principle.
...
The only real problem with the big battle scene is that our courageous Princess has absolutely nothing to do. For half the battle, she's tied to a table; for the rest, she hovers on the sidelines, stepping out from time to time to parry a single blow, or to trip and need saving. Early in the film, we were given the impression that this girl was a real fighter, but when the action really starts she reverts to nearly-helpless-eye-candy mode.
Which brings us, eventually, to the epilogue.
The character of the film absolutely demands a happy ending, uncharacteristic though this may be for a Fukasaku film. Here we're given a send-off that not only manages to turn Bakin's Confucianist moral completely upside-down, it also represents something of a slap in the face to Bakin. At the urging of seven ghostly voices, Shizu and Shinbei both abandon their respective duties and run off together. That's right: Shizu-hime, who had the chance to be a strong female ruler (a rarity in her era), gives up her position to follow her Man. "Bushido, shmooshido," calls the disembodied voice of Dôsetsu, "we went through all that honor-and-loyalty crap, and look where it got us! Feh! You two have Romantic Love, and that's all that's really important... so go on, get outta here, ya crazy kids!" And so our two lovers ride off into the sunset, off to make their own way, living off love alone...
...in feudal Japan.
One can only hope it will work out better for them than it did for Bakin himself.
...
From
http://www.braineater.com/satomi.html
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: Just to prove that the world is stranger than something else, I just discovered I own this DVD! I looked it up, just to see... and found it in the Sonny Chiba - Martial Arts Collectors Edition. Something about this was familiar, so I looked in our "rarely used" DVD section and found it! It was given as a gift to my wife by someone who she was doing business with 17 years ago... I know this because a sticky note is still attached to the box. Inside are plastic boxes, both still wrapped and never opened. Hot damn!
