Red Like Blood Seeps Out After 10 Years

Red Like Blood, a found footage thriller, was so realistic that audiences who saw it in 2006 thought it was a snuff film. Three actors almost died while filming it between 2003 and 2005.

Red Like Blood was directed, written and produced by Filip Halo, who made Chalatsis. It stars Maira Savaidou, Filip Chalatsis (OFF SCREEN), Panagiotis Xanthopoulos, Electra Goniadou, Sofia Marmaridou, Nick Samaras and Stella Trokana. The movie has English subtitles; otherwise it’s all Greek to me. The film is also known as Κόκκινο Σαν Αίμα.

Found footage movies weren’t all the rage when Red Like Blood was first released. The actors were “professionals who played amateur actors that cannot act.” The filmmakers admit that the opening vignettes look “very fake and weird.” This might make you think of the old B-movie promotions, and even the stage play Dracula, which had nurses in attendance in case of fainting.  But no, the audience found the film “truly unbearable to watch” “even by documentary standards.”

“A very dangerous method of film-making, a technique that pushes actors beyond their limits, ending up losing their control and sense of reality,” reads one synopsis.

“Three actors got almost killed during the production, due to real knives that were used on set, with no insurance or security.

“The movie looks so realistic that many people think that it had no script, no dialogues, no acting, which is the exact opposite of what happened. The production was carefully planned and shootings began in December 2003, ended for the first time in June 2005 and additional footage was shot in 2006, because the movie was totally anti-cinematic, very difficult to watch because it looked unnaturally real, more real than a documentary.

“The technique was intentional and it imitated real camera movement of amateur film-makers, how they lose their focus or cannot follow the action, actors never heard the word CUT during production, and they eventually ended up fighting each other for real. There is a hidden power in such daring film-making that plays with the idea of what snuff and found footage actually is and how far it can go.”

The filmmakers shot more footage prior to the film’s release in 2006 to make the “ANTI-CINEMA” film look more like a movie. They left in the snuff but added narration.

“A young female reporter has the brilliant idea to create a fake video report on everyday crime, ranging from fights between couples that end with murder, friendships that end up ruined forever, incest, rape, to even drugs and accidental deaths,” reads a second synopsis.

“She finds a friend who is obsessed with his camera and asks him to do the mockumentary for her voluntarily. He agrees and both start recruiting amateur actors, friends and people who like the idea playing in front of the camera.

“The first couple of stories look very fake and weird, until the girl in the second story has a nervous breakdown and almost kills the other actor in the scene with a real knife - who plays her brother in the story and constantly rapes her- probably because she had personal issues with a similar subject.

“For the third story the cameraman does the editing by himself and it looks like a short movie, something that the female reporter doesn't find amusing. For the fourth story she doesn't even want to be around, cause it deals with drugs and needles. By the time they are ready to shoot the fifth and final story, both are very tired and want to finish up as fast as possible.

“The two girls who "act" in the fifth story, are friends in real life, who had an issue with an ex-boyfriend, and the beef between them is resurrected during the filming process. They totally forget that the camera is there, the "victim" keeps pushing as part of her acting, and the other girl loses her temper to a point that she can no longer control herself..."

A remastered version of the original Red Like Blood is available. A dubbed English and German version and a director's cut version are also planned.

SOURCE: DREADCENTRAL