[Editorial] Films To Ruin Your Day: Guinea Pig Series

Artwork by Sludgework

(TRIGGER WARNING: This article and every film in the series contains multiple triggers including sexual violence, extreme gore and torture. Please proceed with caution when watching these films if those things are likely to upset you.)

When it comes to Japanese horror, there’s no shortage of day (or life) ruining content. From Tumbling Doll of Flesh to Splatter: Naked Blood, the Land of the Rising Sun is home to some of the most fucked-up films, violent and disturbing movies on the planet. From 1985 to 1990, a series of films shocked Japanese audiences, allegedly inspired a string of violent femicides and reportedly disturbed Charlie Sheen so much that after viewing he made a report to the FBI believing he’d just witnessed real snuff. The series has fallen into legend and infamy, is a must-watch for gore hounds and has more recently seen a spurt of re-interest due to the Disturbing Movie Iceberg meme. Those of sensitive dispositions turn back now. It’s time to dive in and explore the disgusting, disturbing and downright distressing Guinea Pig series.

Guinea Pig: Devil’s Experiment (Ginī Piggu: Akuma no Jikken, a.k.a. “Unabridged Agony”) 1985

dir. Satoru Ogura

The intended order of the Guinea Pig series has been debated for years among extreme horror fans, but Devil’s Experiment is generally considered the first entry. The film opens with a message from director Satoru Ogura, claiming that the following footage was sent to him as a documentation of the ‘experiment on the breaking point of bearable pain and the corrosion of people’s senses’. Needless to say, the next 45 minutes of Devil’s Experiment revel in the exploration of true cruelty.

The film is divided into ten different segments, all named for the method of torture portrayed in them. Maggots, pliers, hot oil, animal innards and even sound torture are all used to humanize and debase the unnamed woman, and the eye-wateringly realistic practical effects used will have even hardened gore hounds wincing. After the flesh of her body has been pinched and torn, her eyes pierced by needles, her eardrums burst and her body burnt, the men become bored by their own inhumanity and leave her to hang in a bag from a tree – like an animal forgotten by humanity.

Fans of faux snuff often hold Devil’s Experiment as the jewel in the crown of the controversial subgenre, and for good reason. Watching the unnamed woman (admirably played by Mio Takaki) descend from tortured screaming to faint moans and finally losing consciousness altogether is a harrowing experience that really feels like you’re watching something you definitely shouldn’t be allowed to. 

Aside from its incredibly graphic content, what makes Devil’s Experiment that much more terrifying are the similarities seen in the very real kidnap and torture of Japanese high schooler Junko Furuta (WARNING: this link details incredibly disturbing and graphic REAL events) - no definitive connection has ever been made between the two events but it’s testament to the cruelty that humans can wreak both in reality and fantasy. 

Guinea Pig 2: Flowers of Flesh and Blood (Ginī Piggu 2: Chiniku no Hana)1985

dir. Hideshi Hino

Content-wise, Guinea Pig’s second film is not too dissimilar from its predecessor, although arguably Flowers of Flesh and Blood offers a more stylized, poetic flow. It’s also the most famously controversial entry, allegedly watched by murderer Tsutomu Miyazaki aka the ‘Otaku Murderer’ before he committed a string of unspeakable child murders. This led to widespread moral panic throughout Japan, while overseas, Flowers is the film that inspired Charlie Sheen’s aforementioned call to the feds. 

Like Devil’s Experiment, Flowers also unravels an agonizing tapestry of torture enacted upon another young woman. But unlike the seemingly senseless nihilism of the group of men from its predecessor, Flowers’ antagonist seems to harbor philosophical delusions of the nature of murder. The red-lipped, rotten-toothed samurai (Hiroshi Tamura) sets to work hacking the young woman to pieces with an assortment of rusty tools, all the while waxing lyrical to the audience about the beauty of massacre with an almost soothing whimsy. The gore is, while excruciating, extremely impressive and anatomically detailed down to the stringy white tendons popping free from the wrist of a hacked off hand. There’s some spectacular use of colour and sound; the gloom of greenlit dungeon and quivering, cherry red intestines soundtracked by soft, mystical synths grants Flowers an unsettling, dreamlike serenity which sharply contrasts with the unrelenting brutality of Devil’s Experiment. It’s for these reasons that Flowers of Flesh and Blood is often considered the most popular of the series.

Guinea Pig 3: Shudder! The Man Who Never Dies! (Ginī Piggu 3: Senritsu! Shinanai Otoko) 1986

dir Masayuki Kusumi

If you’re planning a non-stop binge of all the Guinea Pigs in one day, first of all, are you okay? Second of all, you’ll be pleased to know that the third entry into this sordid saga is a welcome reprieve from the suffocatingly bleak representation of the dredges of humanity seen in the first two films. Shudder! He Never Dies is, quite frankly, a ridiculous black comedy that combines two of Japan’s most plaguing social issues: corporate office culture and suicide. 

Belittled by his boss, mocked by his coworkers and trapped in a dull, dead-end job, our hapless hero, salaryman Hideshi (Shinsuke Araki) attempts to kill himself. When he finds out that not only can he not feel pain, he’s also immortal, all hell breaks loose in Hideshi’s apartment as he takes great giggling delight in slicing and dicing himself with all the gleeful clumsiness of a toddler experimenting with new textures. Eventually, after pulling all his internal organs out, Hideshi ends up as nothing more than a decapitated head on his living room table, worrying less about his missing body and more about the mess in his apartment.

Lighter on the gore but still a fair amount of splatter, the sheer ridiculousness of He Never Dies makes it a great party watch for those ‘WTF Japan?’ moments. Hideshi’s resolute determination to return to the office after he has whittled himself down to nothing more than a head is a sardonic comment on the immense pressure placed upon Japanese workers to be at work promptly no matter what – body or no body.

Guinea Pig: Mermaid in a Manhole (Ginī Piggu: Manhōru no Naka no Ningyo) 1988

dir. Hideshi Hino

It’s long debated among fans exactly where Mermaid falls in the order of the series, or if it’s even considered part of it at all. Whether it’s a true Guinea Pig or not, due to its gruesome subject matter straight from the mind of Hino, Mermaid is regarded as one of the more creative of the series, with just as much gag-inducing gore as the rest. Although Mermaid is an excursion into pure repulsion, the story is a haunting psychological horror that almost deserves a diluted cut so that those without iron stomachs can enjoy the harrowing currents that Mermaid’s story swims through.  

When a grieving and uninspired artist happens upon the titular fishy female sick and dying in a sewer where he used to play as a child, he takes her home and finds himself enamored and artistically stimulated by the various vibrant fluids oozing from the open sores and plump, popping pustules that begin to grow all over her torso. Once again, the SFX work on display is truly outstanding, with the Mermaid’s body and shimmering tail gradually destroyed by sickness to a nauseating state of what looks like fleshy botfly larvae (do NOT Google if you’re easily sickened!) and worm-infested blisters full of milky paint pus. Among all the goop and gore is a melancholy tale of the futility of trying to reclaim something that exists so purely in your memories from childhood. As the manic artist tries desperately to immortalize his rotting mermaid through the medium of painting, he realises that the image he held so dear can simply not exist outside of his rose-tinted reflections, leading to a nauseating revelation with consequences more real than he first thought.

Guinea Pig 5: Android of Notre Dame (Ginī Piggu: Nōtorudamu no Andoroido) 1988

dir. Kazuhito Kuramoto

The Guinea Pig series only foray into science fiction, Android is a futuristic Frankenstein tale of one scientist’s (Toshihiko Hino) desperate attempt to heal his sick and dying sister, by using the healthy body parts of an unwitting guinea pig test subject. Fans of fellow cyberpunk grotesquerie Tetsuo: The Iron Man will spot a familiar face in the form of Tomorô Taguchi, who takes the role of a blackmailing businessman and ends up with a fate not too dissimilar from Hideshi’s in He Never Dies. 

At this point, expecting a clear narrative from any of the Guinea Pig films is futile, and while Android does try to present a creative take on fusing flesh and metal, it’s just not really that interesting. Long stretches of conversation add nothing of substance and will leave you chomping at the bit for the film to actually do something, and the acting chops are nothing to write home about. It’s also possibly Guinea Pig’s least repulsive entry, which might explain why it’s generally considered less popular and is sometimes forgotten all together when the series comes up in conversation. There’s still gore, although the latex and silicone are much more obvious, but it’s presented in a careful, surgical manner which, combined with Android’s slow pacing, leads to a lackluster feel.

Nevertheless, it’s still a member of the Guinea Pig family, and Android’s influence can even be seen today – most recently in Timo Tjahjanto’s segment of V/H/S 94, the aptly named Test Subject. Given the larger budget and more effective scares in Test Subject, it would probably fit better into the series as a whole than Android does.

Guinea Pig 6: Devil Woman Doctor (Ginī Piggu: Pītā no Akuma no Joi-san) 1990

dir. Hajime Tabe

Bonkers, batshit and oozing camp, Devil Woman Doctor is a bizarre and divisive way to end a series that started in a vicious exploration of the depths of human cruelty. Presented in anthology form, this Monty Python-esque (yes, really) comedy follows a drag queen doctor as she attempts to cure a number of ailing victims who have tried and failed to find a cure in traditional medicine. The Devil Woman’s patient roster is full of some ridiculous characters, including a family who suffer from quite literal explosive fits of anger, elastic penises, sentient organs, poo-monsters and more. The Doctor herself, played by drag artist Peter (who film fans might know from the hauntingly beautiful and much more serious drama Funeral Parade of Roses) is a fantastic narrator, rolling her heavy-lashed eyes in exasperation as her patients’ afflictions and wittily quipping straight to the audience in a way that’ll have you brandishing your money at the screen ready to tip her performance.

For those who were hoping Guinea Pig would continue down its path of dark depravity, its ‘final’ entry – again, the order is debated - might come as a disappointment and is regarded (alongside He Never Dies!) by some as the weakest entry in the series given that it makes a marked departure from extreme horror into slapstick. Devil Woman Doctor is still gory, but the clownish splatter is unlikely to ruin your day in the same way as Flowers or Mermaid. Quite the opposite – if you’re down in the dumps, visit the good doctor and she’ll cheer you right up with a hefty dose of cartoonish buffoonery. 

For anyone curious to push their boundaries and dive into the world of extreme horror, Guinea Pig is a comprehensive place to start, given its legendary status and (the first two films at least) having changed the face of extreme AND found-footage horror forever. If you still don’t find yourself ready to process the first two films in the series, Mermaid is a great place to cut your teeth on gore – depraved, disgusting yet fantastical enough to not bear the weight of the misogynistic violence of Devil’s Experiment or Flowers of Flesh and Blood. And when you think you’re ready to watch those two, He Never Dies! and Devil Woman Doctor will be there to restore your faith in humanity by being as goofy as possible. 

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