blood-and-guts

[bluhd-n-guhts]

adjective

1. dealing with or depicting war or violence, especially in a lurid manner.

   a blood-and-guts movie.

2. concerned with fundamental needs, problems, values, etc..

   The blood-and-guts issues will determine the election.

Example Sentences

But this is not a blood-and-guts show business exposé — it’s a diaphanous portrait of a woman who, like Anderson herself, wafts through life like a marabou feather.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

It communicates on an instinctive, blood-and-guts level, not through “West Wing”-like dialogues on policy.

Read more on New York Times

“I think this will be a pretty feisty, blood-and-guts race,” he said.

Read more on Seattle Times

Three recent murders — a shooting, a stabbing and what appears to be a death caused by claws — resemble those from the “twisty, blood-and-guts, psycho-thriller revenge tales” that Holly wrote under the pen name Horace Bellow.

Read more on Seattle Times

Armiliato’s conducting was notable for bringing out the score’s dynamic range; much of this orchestral performance was subtle and delicate, rather than the blaring blood-and-guts that is still the verismo stereotype.

Read more on New York Times

Related Words

• bloodshed 
• butchery 
• crime 
• havoc 
• killing 
• mass murder 
• slaughter 
• slaying www.thesaurus.com
• warfare