“Let me ask you something, Have you ever tried to stab somebody during sex?”Not your typical question one expects to hear on a first date. But Rose is not your average girl. She has a little problem. When she gets sexually aroused, she has an uncontrollable urge to murder!
Love Blade is a twisted bloody pleasure, kinky, funny, and off-kilter to the very end. I liked it!
The heroine’s voice-over is a welcome borrowing from film noir tradition, a narration that betrays her self-doubt. And for good reason. Rose (Tiffany Arscott) remains a virgin, afraid to commit to a sexual experience for fear of repeating another murder, like we see in the beginning of the film. Luckily she has friends. 
Caught dumping one of her bodies into the river she meets Bob and Lou (local shutterbug Bob Herron and director Jason Rudy). Impressed, they turn into a hitwoman for the mob. Bob doesn’t have all that much to do, but Jason is likeable and endearing as an understanding mentor to Rose’s confused killer. I would have enjoyed some more business with him, maybe sharing more of their working relationship with us. There is a too brief but funny montage of her going after several of her victims, including local DJs Roger Carpio and Shaun Slaughter, as well as visual effects dude Crazy Dave (“Don’t know where he got that appellation”, says Rudy’s Lou.)
But then she meets a girl she likes, a waitress named Sam (Rae Wright, frequent TFO cast member). In a sci-fi plot development reminiscent of director David Cronenberg, Sam takes Rose to a underground support group for people who have the same problem she does. Apparently a Dr. Kay artificially caused it all with some cutting-edge children’s vitamins in the 80s, and is now trying to help those grown-up children who are afflicted.
As the mad doctor , Will Robinson was fantastic and bizarre to watch, just as he was in Rudy’s previous movie, Sukeban Octopus Pot. His ugly wig was supremely distracting (looks kinda like horror host The Ghoul), but his weird character and unique phrasings were so intriguing that you gladly forgive this non-realist intrusion. Rose is not sure if she even wants the group’s help, says she’ll have to decide for herself. The support group reminded me of a less campy John Waters cast, with its’ odd menagerie of compassionate killers and societal outcasts.
Quite a different movie from the predecessor, it’s definitely not a direct sequel. Two of the characters from the girl gang in Sukeban show up in a cameo in Love Blade and even reference events from that film’s aftermath, but this film doesn’t follow their story, it follows Rose, the young woman with a terrible problem – sexual arousal brings with it dark, homicidal urges.
As Rose, Arscott is good, kinda deadpan but likable, and I think the role suited her pretty well. She brings a world-weary quality to the role that has a peculiar charm, and her matter-of-fact portrayal is a large part of why we buy her outrageous persona and behavior. And that’s a good thing for a film that relies so heavily on one character.
The story moves along pretty fast, even though it has it’s somewhat languidly paced moments, with lazy traveling pans across a scene, and lengthy shots of people doing things, like walking down halls or making coffee, that perhaps could have been tightened. The film’s generous application of blood and boobs balance that out, however.
The soundtrack’s use of pop music, including local artist Chelsea Wolfe, is so very present that it occasionally verges on overwhelming. When it is shut off in one scene for a while, the silence itself makes for a dramatic impact. Beyond the music, the use of sound itself is vital to the film’s success. In an opening scene in which Rose’s lover is stabbed in the throat, we hear him gurgling his death rattle long and loudly. He seems to be doing a call-and-response with the incidental music, an gruesome example of the kinds of interesting creative “accidents” that pepper the film.
There’s a big jump evident in the technical proficiency in the 8 months or so between from Sukeban to Love Blade. It has some pretty (and pretty cool) use of contrasting colors, and the lighting is good, much better than in Sukeban. Real damn good in parts, with some colored filter work evident in Rose’s narration scenes.
Rudy’s editing and camera choices are capable and quirky, with some odd framing and shots that seems a little too close. His use of avant-garde techniques here shows a growing control of the camera. I noticed double exposures, over-lighting, throwing the artificial grain in there to make it look less “video”, blowing up the picture, etc., to name a few.
Overall the acting is OK, and definitely seems more prepared. The story itself is great; I was always wondering where he was going to go with this idea; a highwire act that he maintains till the very end. Rudy manages to evoke sympathy for a character who consciously feeds this dark, destructive pert of herself. The humor helps. There’s lots of humor to be found here, even perhaps more than is evident in some of the line readings.
In its own way, it’s a cute love story. It’s also a self-empowerment story of a sort, because she takes a liability and makes it something that supports her financially. You might even say it’s kind of heroic in a twisted way, because people have to deal with the cards they’re dealt, and carry on.
It’s an arty and personal film (like it’s a personal problem) and full of deviant sex and explicit violence. Obviously it won’t appeal to everybody. But is that such a great thing, appealing to everybody? Fuck “everybody”, anyway. This film will be appreciated by the more adventurous filmgoers, and shunned by the rest, who won’t be able to see beyond the weirdness to grasp the humor and affection the film shows to it’s subject.
All this and a surprise twist ending.
For more info check out the myspace page for Love Blade: http://www.myspace.com/sukebanloveblade.
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