Description of Sôichi Umezawa's Vampire Clay (Chi o sû nendo) from the Wisconsin Film Festival: "Here's a new one for ya: a batch of contaminated modeling clay menaces a small group of students at a provincial art school, turning them into misshapen, bloodthirsty monsters. The trouble begins when top student Kaori returns from Tokyo to Aina Academy in the countryside. A better artist than most of her classmates, Kaori discovers the clay left behind by the building's mysterious previous owner and uses it for sculpting assignments. After Kaori accidentally activates the clay while mishandling a sharp blade, Kaori's teacher and the other students of Aina must all face their own gory confrontations with the shape-shifting, flesh consuming blob, while solving the creepy mystery of its origins. VAMPIRE CLAY marks the feature directorial debut of Soichi Umezawa, a visual effects and makeup artist with a strong cult following whose creations have been featured in other Japanese genre movies like ALIEN VS. NINJA. Umezawa's creatures and gore effects are noted for their complete lack of reliance on digital trickery and some of the more outlandish sequences in this fun and unpredictable horror gem recall Rob Bottin's legendary (and gooey) practical effects work on John Carpenter's THE THING."
