Senrei

This movie is a lot like "Freaky Friday", except rather than being a G-rated Disney movie, it's a horror movie full of bloody gore and perverted sex. And instead of a mother and daughter switching bodies, the mother is a disfigured and very evil former actress who only had the daughter so she could later transplant her brain into the fresh, young, unmarred body of girl. And instead of having zany misadventures after she "becomes" her daughter, the first thing the mother does is seduce her daughter's handsome piano teacher (who earlier showed an unhealthy interest in transplanting SOMETHING ELSE into the body of the young girl). She moves in with him and his (at first) unsuspecting wife, all the while a police officer begins to investigate the bizarre goings-on. . . Actually, maybe this is NOT that much like "Freaky Friday"--it's actually far, far better!

This movie doesn't really fit with most Japanese movies I've seen (a lot of the cast look Amerasian or Eurasian, so maybe it was originally intended primarily for export). There were a lot of gory Japanese horror movies in this era like "Organ", "Entrails of a Beautiful Woman" and "Naked Blood", but even in the one gory scene in this movie, the director and FX team seem much more interested in the ridiculous but fascinating--and fully automated--brain transplant machine than in showing a lot of viscera and grue. The movie starts out with a long sex scene involving the mother back in her acting days, which suggests this might be a "pink" (softcore sex) film, but after that the sexual content becomes much more suggestive (if also much more perverse). The actress who plays the daughter is a little older than Jody Foster/Lindsey Lohan were in the Disney films, and maybe old enough to do sex scenes, but she clearly was not cast for that purpose (she actually seems to use a body double for her few innocuous nude scenes). I expect this would probably disappoint both gorehounds and perverts with schoolgirl fetishes, but I liked it. How many films go from softcore sex to "Mommy Dearest" to gory medical horror to evil Lolita/"Bad Seed" thriller? And wait until the end, which borrows heavily from a famous Hitchcock film. This is an entertaining and quite enjoyable film.

If you are familiar with the films of that weirdass Canuck, David Cronenberg (as I am) you will recognize that they have incorporated his staple clichés all over this movie. Transformation of the body, the "new flesh", alternate realities, etc....the whole enchilada. Even the brain-transplant machine looks like it stepped out of one of his movies. You make of that what you will, I'm just flabbergasted. Weird, sick, depraved, somewhat slow-moving. If you're "turned off" by movies by Greenaway, Cronenberg, or Lynch you'd better stay well away from this one. However, if you are the sort wo can sit through BOXING HELENA without flinching, this is your cup of tea.

Based on a comic by THE most famous Japanese horror comic artist Kazuo Umezu, the movie's title "Senrei (Baptism)" is somewhat misleading because there is no baptism or Christianity anywhere in this movie. In its place you will experience baptism of Umezu style horror.

The good of this movie is Rie Imamura's performance as the daughter that is (supposedly) being groomed to be the vessel to accept her mother's brain. It's not as creepy or weird as it sound's but ooh what a delight to see the hidden eroticism spread throughout the movie.

Fellow manga artist colleague of Umezu's, Kyoko Okazaki has described this story as "The most erotic comic without explicit sex", and the movie closely follows the core value of the original comic.

Kazuo Umezu himself makes cameo appearance as the usher in the insane asylum that holds the girl's arm.

Like many of Umezu's work that's been transformed into film, the original comic precedes the movie by several decades (in this case 22 years).

Not many horror movie succeeds in mining the erotic content of the story, but check this one out, and you will see the master's touch in its horror, and beauty.

Oh yes my friends, this is a movie that could have been made only in one country on this beautiful planet - and that's exactly the country it WAS made in. Japanese filmmakers possess some really unique sensibilities and they can easily get away with things that could seem ridiculous when done by someone else - because they are not merely having fun, they mean it, man. See for yourself: this is a film that contains a very explicit scene of a girl's brain transplanted into a body of her evil mother (and WHAT a scene it is!) - and it isn't a first-class splatter-fest as you might think judging by this, but a psychological drama! Probably with a deep message...... I must admit that I'm not a true professional when it comes to Japanese movies en masse (that is to say that probably they are all like that...), but still this is a truly unique film that's definitely worth watching - of course, only if the sight of a skull getting opened by some bizzare heavy machinery and the brain getting dragged out is just your cup of tea....