#journalsim

As people grew curious and started to ask the user questions, more details about the anime were posted by the user, leading to a very large internet investigation that has spanned several years. As the search has continued, its validity as a real piece of media has come into question on multiple occasions, with the original story being suspected as fake and with people who claimed to have viewed it being proven to just be internet trolls, the search for any information has been made all the more difficult.

As much as I would love for this piece of media to be real, it seems highly unlikely that it is and is just an internet hoax. The original poster’s story has the red flag of a typically made-up story, “I cried myself to sleep right after watching that vid because I just didn’t even know anymore...” has almost become a stereotype when it comes to ending a story about lost media and just makes it seem like a piece of creative writing. Most new evidence found is quickly proven to either be from a different anime or fake and the misinformation flooding the internet is making the investigation slow in momentum.

With that being said, this has not seemed to have harmed people enthusiasm and dedication to the search. Even now, communities are still working together in hopes that they will somehow find a missing detail that can help identify any new information.  Multiple pieces of media thought to have been lost have been documented and found many years after the fact such as the Dragon ball Harmony Gold dub or Luigi Cozzis colourised version of Godzilla but most of these had proof of their existence with TV and cinema releases respectively and were not born out of speculation or conjecture in the way Go For A Punch was.

It could be argued that, despite the original, Go For A Punch has more validity now than it ever has, having the internet so captivated by the idea and unveiling the guro genre to many people that may have not been interested in it beforehand, that fans now turning their attention to try and develop their own interpretation of this anime. A group by the name Team Saki are slowly creating their own vision of Go For A Punch with character sheets and set designs and in September released a short storyboard trailer.

The film opens to Horace, the leader of a roaming cult of satanic hippies, performing an occult ritual in the woods outside of a small town, when a young girl, Sylvia, is noticed observing the group, but Andy, a young man, who she had caught stealing a chicken in the afternoon and befriended, tries to defend her. The rest of the group give chase and attack her, beating her mercilessly. After managing to make her way back into town the next morning, she is found traumatized by her younger brother, Pete, and Mildred, the towns baker, who take her home to her grandfather, the local vet.  

After their van breaks down, the cult has no choice but to make their way into town for supplies. They buy food from Mildred, who is unaware of what has transpired, who lets them know that the town is scheduled for demolition and they can stay in a vacated house for the night.  

After Sylvia overcomes her state of shock, she tells her grandfather what has happened and he confronts the cult, only to be beaten and force-fed LSD. As Horace is about to kill the old man, the cult members convince him to stop as Pete arrives outside, demanding to know what is going on. Angered by what the cult did to his family, Pete hatches a plan of revenge by obtaining tainted blood from a rabid dog to lace food to sell to the cult.  

After eating the contaminated food, except for Andy, who refuses to eat, the cult starts to show signs of infection and exhibit violent behaviour, causing some of them to flee into the night. One member of the group is picked up by construction workers from the local dam, who take her back to their lodgings to calm down, she proceeds to have sex with a few of the workers and infect them. Roger, head of site construction and Mildred’s boyfriend, discovers his workforce are now all infected with rabies and is chased, along with the local doctor, down to a lake filled quarry but their assailants are scared away by the water that has collected.  

The remaining members of the cult attack each other in what remains of the town whilst Pete, Sylvia and Andy, who has expressed regret for what had happened to Sylvia, try to find a means of escape. The group find Mildred hidden inside the bakery, but as they are let inside, Andy is attacked and killed by a rabid construction worker and the store is breached but Mildred manages to kill one as they escape outside to her car. Surrounded by Rabid workers and cultists, the car is flipped over and all looks lost until a group of armed police, led by Robert, gun down the remaining infected and save the trio from harm.  

The film was originally title Phobia but was changed after production to be more fitting for a double feature and renamed I Drink Your Blood to be paired with I Eat Your Skin, a film that went by the name Zombie and was shelfed for 6 years before Jerry Gross obtained the rights to release the film under this double feature.  

The film was the first to receive an X rating for violence alone and was re-edited and scenes reshot to receive a M rating and a cinema release. It is rumoured that David Durston based the character of the cult leader, Horace, on actual cult leader Charles Manson, who was made famous for ordering his cult to go on a killing spree in 1960’s California. With the film being marketed and released a year after Manson’s conviction, Jerry Gross wanted to cash in on the public’s fascination and disgust with the case. In 2009, David announced that he planned to remake the film, which he had started work on the films script, unfortunately, David’s death in 2010 has causes the project to be permanently shelved.  

The cinematography is fairly competent but has many scenes where crew members are visible making them feel somewhat rushed in production. The use of its soundtrack adds both tension and unintended comedy to certain scenes, composed by Clay Pitts, the synth heavy soundtrack being atmospheric and unsettling in some scenes but becomes hilarious during chase scenes. The practical special effects are very well done for such a small budget and hold up 50 years later, with great blood work and realistic props, it’s one of the films core strengths. I’m not going to lie; this film was never going to win any awards. With a fine mix of over and under acting by the cast of relatively unknown actors, a campy exploitation story and unique 70’s soundtrack, this film falls perfectly into the category of “so bad its good”, and my is it good.  

Although the film is based on an ancient Korean folklore, the film is said to be propaganda against western consumerism, the dangers of unchecked capitalism and the importance of the power of a collective and one’s role in said collective. Though it is speculated the director Shin Sang-ok left his own message in the interpretation of the film, the monster being Kim Il-sung, leader of North Korea at the time, using an uprising for his own personal benefit.

This film is controversial through the means that its director was ‘hired’. In 1978, North Korean intelligence agents kidnapped Shin Sang-ok's then ex-wife, actress Chio Eun-hee in January, 1978 on the orders of Kim Jong Il, then director of the Motion Picture and Arts Division of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, whilst in Hong Kong after she was offered a lucrative film role. Six months later, Shin was also kidnapped whilst in Hong Kong searching for her. Sung was kept unaware that Choi had been captured by North Korean agents and, after two failed escape attempts was subjugated to a prison sentence, after his release, he was finally reunited with Choi at a dinner party March, 1982. Kim Jong-il expressed that he wanted Shin to direct a film to enter in an international competition, knowing that the strong internal propaganda of his own films does not have the same appeal to an international audience, allowing Shin to take a more open approach to different subjects to garner spots in worldwide competitions. Some years later whilst on a trip to Vienna, under the pretence of finding a financial backer for Kim’s latest film, the pair managed to inform the US embassy that they were under duress and was seeking asylum. They managed to lose their caretakers and make it to the embassy, ending their ordeal in March, 1986.  

Before their escape, Shin and Choi made a total of six films for Kim Jong-il, An Emissary of No Return (Doraoji annun milsa, 1984), Love, Love, My Love (Sarang sarang nae sarang, 1984), Runaway (Talchulgi, 1984), Salt (Sogum, 1985), The Tale of Shim Chong (Simcheongjeon, 1985) and their final film being Pulgasari (1985) which is said to have had the biggest budget. The special effects were done by the same Toho staff that worked on the Godzilla films, being tricked into thinking they were filming in China for an unrelated company.  

The Film was released by Korean Film Studio in North Korea in 1985 but did receive an international release, being released in 1998 in Japan, 2000 in South Korea and had a US cinema release in New York as part of Columbia University Japanese culture center's year-long “Godzilla” festival in 2006, having a DVD release later in 2016.

The film is beautifully shot with great use of colour, amazing set designs and its soundtrack, portraying the struggle of the people very well. The special effects are very well done for the time and holds up very well by today’s standards with great character acting by Kenpachirô Satsuma, who started playing Godzilla in 1979’s Godzilla v’s The Smog Monster. It has great pacing, never seeming to slow down for story like other Kaiju films of the time, with huge medieval battle scenes against the Kaiju is a nice change to the usual formula. Though at times it seems like a family film, it has graphic depictions of peasants being beaten and tortured, capital punishment and actual animal remains that would suggest otherwise.  

The film could have been just another obscure non-Japanese Kaiju film such as Yonggary 1967 from South Korea or Gorgo 1961 from UK/US but it has carved its own path as a unique and very enjoyable film and having gained a lot of attention over the years due to the shocking story of Shin and Choi’s eight-year detention really helped spread its reach to all over the world.