Actress Matsuko Uehara (Lisa Akikawa) formulates a gruesome plot to transfer her brain into her teenage daughter Sakura (Rie Imamura) in order to steal her beauty. Suffering with a peculiar skin condition that creates a mould-like disfigurement, Matsuko leaves acting, holing up in her country residence for many years. When her daughter is old enough, she takes her to a room at the back of the house which houses a strange contraption. Her daughter Sakura is terrified to see that the machine is intended to remove her brain and replace it with her mothers and attempts to escape. Following the operation, Matsuko (now in Sakura’s body) begins an affair with her piano tutor. Meanwhile, the tutor, KazuyoTanigawa (Naoko Amihama) is plotting with his wife (Chihiro Tago) to steal the fortune of the Uehara’s. Their plot is threatened when an investigator Takamatsu (Shinya Kashima) turns up at the house.
Based on a manga by Kazuo Umezo, with a script by director Kenichi Yoshihara, “Baptism of Blood” is an enjoyable B-movie gothic horror, with an absurd premise that nevertheless provides a few gory shocks. The sequence in which the brains are exchanged is disturbingly graphic, with excellent special effects. The rest of the film is remarkably bloodless, instead relying on the eerie scheming of the protagonist for its thrills. It is hard to take the film seriously given the premise, but both Lisa Akikawa and Rie Imamura do a fantastic job with the melodramatic plot. The film moves along at a good pace, with the sub-plot of Tanigawa and his pregnant wife, detective Takamatsu, and a late stage twist, helping keep things fresh. The final turn of the tale is fun and helps make some sense of what goes before.
Interestingly given the title (in Japanese simply “Baptism”), the references to Christian theology appear largely incidental. Sakura attends a Christian high-school and we see Matsuko wearing a crucifix, but religion’s often dangerous obsession with youth, beauty and virginity, is an underused thematic element. Matsuko’s disfigurement is an unfortunate physical signifier of her sinister nature, again a more traditional, folkloric, take on good versus evil, with the dynamic of a mother yearning for her daughter’s beauty. The final twist confuses things considerably as it reveals that both Matsuko and Sakura are not entirely stable individuals, leading us to question the reality of what has happened. There are darker themes present here, most obviously in the sexual predator Tanigawa who needs little encouragement to begin a relationship with the teenage Sakura. The film is very much a traditional gothic horror in modern guise, with illicit desires, a mad scientist, and a heartless female villain, dealing with themes of sexual abuse, voyeurism, and a dangerous coveting of youth. A fun film for the sheer audacity of its premise and worth watching for the aforementioned brain-swapping sequence.
