EVOL666 Being that this film is of a very specialized genre, I'm going to rate it against the few other films of the harakiri genre that I've seen, not necessarily as a horror film on it's own merits.This one has a girl dressed in military garb gutting herself. She takes her knife, wraps it in cloth, and shoves it into the left side of her abdomen. She slowly pulls the knife across her stomach to the right-hand side, and her guts spill out. This all takes somewhere in the ballpark of 20 minutes...That's it...Anyone who has had the "pleasure" of seeing this sort of material knows that it's pretty much all the same thing from film to film - at least the ones that I've seen, namely - girl is wearing some sort of costume-like outfit or traditional Japanese robe, girl shows tits and maybe panties, girl caresses her stomach and midsection for a while, girl guts herself. I have seen 2 notable exceptions to this in Tamakichi Anaru's WOMENS FLESH, which is a far more graphic and "disturbing" take on the harakiri genre, as the lead in that film not only disembowels herself, but then decides to chew on her own guts. That one is pretty rough...and also in the same directors PSYCHO: SUICIDE DOLLS, which has a pretty average harakiri scene, but is shown in closer detail, and the "gut-pulling" scene in that one is pretty protracted and rough, too. So to sum up...in terms of judging against other harakiri type films, I would give LOST PARADISE a 7/10, as it is not the worst of the genre, but also not the best. As an "enjoyable" film - even for a hardcore horror/gore fan - 3/10, as there's just nothing to it. I think I'll leave this genre alone for a while, there's just not much going for it and I find myself steadily on the fast-forward button, waiting for the pay-off which USUALLY isn't worth it...

pellenase This is NOT a horror-film, Nothing to be afraid of here, keep moving, go on. Nothing to see here.Horrible? Oh yes. Gory? Check. A big V on that. But most of all, its terrible. I have seen the inside of a belly, its not a pretty sight, not ugly either, it depends on why you can see it (I prefer the doctors cut, I think, but then again, I have never seen the ax-slayers cut in real life. I could be wrong). Anyhow, those guts was not human, and that is a good thing. They wasn't even close, and that is a bad thing. You can SEE that they have been packed, compressed (At the butcher shop: Yes, I take some from that cow over there, and that goat liver looks cool, and throw in some fish guts while you're at it. Can you wrap them up in plastic for me, hate the smell. Do you have any blood? some red blood?), awful. If you need human guts, go for a pig. You can fool your local police with that one. Stay away from personal road kills like snakes, cats and ducks.And then the knife work. I have seen it worse, in Satánico pandemonium. Why not try to make it look real? Just a little bit? a tiny little... try?Works best in fast forward, even the soundtrack sounds better in double speed. Maybe we need a Charlie Parker for the white-noise electronica genre? You know, double-tempo and all that jazz?

Argwaan Always looking for movies that can still shock me like Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood or August Underground: Mordum did, I stumbled upon this short movie of a woman performing ritual suicide.Yes, that's the "story", a woman performing ritual suicide. With a setup like that you can assume the director wanted to at least shock his audience, but he fails miserably because of the bad special effects (we never see a wound, just lots of fake blood and what is probably animal intestines).Well, maybe he wanted to make a fake snuff movie, like the movies mentioned earlier? This doesn't work either because of the many camera angles and the artsy beginning and ending of the movie.Having said this, it's still at the very least an interesting movie, worth hunting down if you like rare and weird stuff, and it has some nice atmospheric noise music, but it's definitely not for everyone.Rating: 3/10

HumanoidOfFlesh "Lost Paradise" is directed by Masami Akita,who is also one of Japan's leading noise musicians under the name Merzbow.With a soundtrack by the director himself,this intense and ultra-gory seppuku film shows a young woman taking her own life by an act of ritual harakiri.Dressed in militaristic attire,the girl(Asako Mochuzuki)kneels,removes her jacket and opens her shirt to the waist,exposing her naked breasts and stomach.Lowering the waistband of her white panties,she caresses her belly before taking up a sacrificial knife,whose blade she wraps in a white bandage.Pressing the point into her left side she punctures the flesh,then slowly and deliberately pulls the knife across to the right.First blood leaks out,then as the gash widens her entrails start to ooze onto the floor.She continues to cut,her moans strongly reminiscent of those made by the actresses in porno films.Finally she collapses,still groaning,in a lake of blood and coiling viscera.Her death throes are extremely protracted."Lost Paradise" is an extremely gory Japanese shocker which looks as real as possible.I was really shocked whilst watching it and that's a compliment.The suicide scene is extremely long and painful to watch,because it lasts 18 minutes.The soundtrack by Merzbow is truly disturbing and hard to forget.This film is not entertaining,so fans of mindless teen horror should not bother.Check it out,but good luck finding a copy.