Bad Movie Tuesday: Blood Beat (1983), a boring Samurai possession B-movie in Wisconsin with a bunch of psychic malarkey.
MY CALL: This movie is terrible! I think a film student had a Samurai costume and erected a terrible film round it. MORE MOVIES LIKE Blood Beat: Maybe Ninja III: The Domination (1984). That’s all I’ve got.
When Ted brings his girlfriend home for Christmas, his mother insists that she somehow (cosmically) knows her. Likewise, Sarah feels strangely in the house with her, as if she’s always watching her. After Sarah discovers a chest in the guest bedroom containing samurai armor and a katana sword, weird stuff starts to happen.
What genre is this thing? I’m not playing around. Here is the actual IMDB synopsis: “A woman who lives in deer-hunting country in rural Wisconsin is possessed by the spirit of a Japanese samurai warrior.” This sounds strangely similar to Ninja III: The Domination (1984). But this isn’t really accurate. I’d say a spectral samurai shares a psychic link to a teenage girl who experiences sexual euphoria when the Japanese ghost kills, and for some reason the girl’s boyfriend’s mother also shares a psychic connection to the girl. Very sensible plot.
Writer and director Fabrice A. Zaphiratos simultaneously debuts and ends his filmmaking career along with his cast of largely one-film actors. But, despite the very B-movie nature of this release, the writing is indicative of a genuine desire for the audience to know and understand the characters. It may not be “good” writing, but some effort is there at least.
That said, everything else about this film might just be as bad as you’d expect. Most kills occur entirely off-screen, generally sluggish pacing, naturally there’s some gratuitous nudity, the dumbest erotic night terrors I’ve seen, videogame laser special effects, a horribly glowing rotoscoped Samurai, and a lot of psychic crap that added nothing to the movie… except for giggles.
I giggled a lot at the stupidity of it all.
The best scene in the movie (which still sucks) involves the contents of a kitchen pantry nearly beating a man to death. Of all things, I think a cardboard container of Quaker Oats nearly killed the guy. This ghost samurai needs to improve on his magic. It’s truly terrible.
As for recommendations, those of you who might enjoy something like this… you know who you are. 😉
Movies, Films & Flix 
If the only film like this is Ninja 3, then it must be something really bad!
Truly special… and truly bad. I bought his for 20 bucks thinking this would be some obscure gem. Sure, B-movie aficionados and Bad Movie podcasts “love” it. But this exists purely to ridicule.
I hope you’ve still got the receipt…
I’m afraid this thing is mine unless I want to try to sell it used. But now it will remain in my collection as a scarlet letter. Or… with the right amount of beer and company, a “bad movie night” selection for the future.
I’ve loved this film since I tracked it down on VHS forever ago. It’s just so enjoyably strange and bizarre.
Bizarre is a good word for it–even on the writer’s part. I mean, who came up with this…? Why Christmas break in Wisconsin? Psychics were randomly plunged into 70s-80s horror at the time, but still that’s a weird choice for the mother. And why a samurai? Why not “any angry poltergeist”? lol