Watched it again cuz it’s Christmas time and it’s still just as batshit beautiful as ever. Love the snowy rural Wisconsin setting and that house is so cozy looking. Wood paneling all over the place but not that awful trailer park ugly kind. Love the mood. Love the random interludes of Eurohorror violence. Love the bananas finale with those faces everyone makes. Fighting evil spirits with the powers shooting out of your hands makes you look like someone shoved a dildo up your backside with absolutely no warning. Good times!

I’m not sure I ever realized this before, but did bad 80’s hair girl’s orgasms awaken samurai demon?? There’s only one answer I want to hear on this question.

Rewatched this for an article I’m working on and damn it is just completely my type of bananas.

A samurai spirit demon in the middle of northeastern rural ‘murrica in the dead of winter with some European inspired kills and camerawork, horrible acting, animated special effects, and wonderful 80’s atmosphere. This movie is a f*cking TREASURE and Vinegar Syndrome has wisely treated it as just that.

Bananameter: 🍌 100% PURE 🍌

It's amazing what a decent transfer can do for your perception of a movie you've only seen in terrible quality, when I watched Blood Beat 4 years ago [closer to 5], I complained about the incessant classical music that plays over a majority of the movie, but on this watch I found it complimentary, even beneficial to the slower portions, Vinegar Syndrome did this singular, visual spectacle of a Christmas experience proud.

The Vietnamese/French director, Fabrice A. Zaphiratos brought a Samurai ghost to rural Wisconsin and turned it into a slasher villain and we're not even really questioning why, while it's strange--it's also memorable, where it's maybe slightly confusing--it's also enchanting, listening to the beating pulse of psychic energy, watching the flashes of a supernatural glow, Blood Beat is a movie you won't soon forget.

95

Finally, some honest Wisconsin representation.

Imagine a rural Midwestern translation of Hausu but edited and scored like Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. That is this bewildering, enthralling WTF oddity.

Borderline avant-garde. Plays by it's own rules. Doesn't give a shit.

Wisconsin psychics
battle a French samurai.
Inexplicable.

It’s like Ninja III: The Domination, but with less money and less basic filmmaking competency. That dog was cute, though.

Good? Bad?..... Good?

Fuck knows. It's like the After Last Season of horror films, I can't rate it properly because I can't even comprehend it. Completely transcends the medium.

3.0/10

#6 From my 2019 OCTOBER HORROR CHALLENGE, was a late addition to my list, due to what I felt was a lack of true B movie insanity. Equal parts European arthouse and trashy American no budget slasher, becomes almost avant-garde but moves at a glaciers pace. I can pretty comfortably say I've never seen anything like this before, just wish I had enjoyed it more because on paper it's great.

Listen, I like the people who like this movie, but I cannot, in good faith, trust them ever again.

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.