Watashi no akai harawata (hana)

Low-grade, Japanese obscurity Women's Flesh: My Red Guts consists of two shot-on-video segments depicting gruelling scenes of graphic self-mutilation, all designed to appear as gut-churningly real as possible: in the first, a woman chews off one of her fingers and chokes herself to death with a scarf; the woman in part two stabs herself in the leg with a fork, cuts open her belly, chows down on her guts, slices off her tongue, and eventually kills herself by thrusting the fork into her forehead.

There's no plot to speak of and hardly any dialogue—just plenty of extremely bloody imagery designed to appease fans of ultra-violent, transgressive pseudo-snuff. This super-sick effort certainly has the right look and feel to it—the makers have gone out of their way to give their work an authentic home-made feel, complete with crappy, z-grade image quality, amateurish video effects (solarised and negative pictures), and a lo-fi soundtrack—but the film does tend to drag on far too long for its own good leading to a fair amount of tedium. At about half the runtime, the whole thing could have been much more effective.

N.B. Like the others who have commented on this film, my copy also featured a couple of trailers for some really harsh documentaries.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

Actually I wonder why this kind of movies are being created. On the other hand I could ask same question about many other things, like some music genres. This movie is from 1999 by the way.

Two females seem to suffer from past traumas. Both commit blood-filled suicides with way more imaginary/graphic ways than just shotgun-to-mouth. There is no dialogs at all, porn-movie-like music plays on background while the girls are getting cut and so on. If you like blood, more blood, toothbrush, a fork, and japan shock, this is a have-to-check-this-out. If you like mainstream horror, this is not for you. In fact, maybe 3rd attempt as sober, I managed to watch this from the beginning to the end. Some scenes could have been shorter, that's why only 8.

At the end of the DVD interesting trailer about a (short?) movie called "A Dead Person" (from the same co.), lots of smashed heads, very bloody corpses, severed heads, dead babies and so on.

Two segments, two snuff movies with the same actress who self-harms. Cruelty and loneliness are at the heart of Women's Flesh my Red Guts, and also appetite. The film is melancholy, touching and the makeup is exceptional: it's ultra-graphic and refined/sober at the same time. Tamakichi Anaru is the director with the most realistic approach in my opinion. Realism is subjective, so I will say that my realism and his match up best. This woman's self-mutilation had to be realistic to convey emotions. There is obviously a certain sensuality too.

When the loneliness is too great, the suffering of the mind too great, is the body the last defense? Is it strong enough?

One of my favorite films.