Review: Guinea Pig 3 (1986) & 4 (1988) ***[GORE CONTENT ALERT]***

Well, after the first two, the third installment of the Guinea Pig series takes a totally different angle. Departed from the mock-snuff nature of the earlier series, part 3 - He Never Dies has a plot and is comedic!

The loser

The basic plot is, there's a guy who is a typical Japanese salary man who happens to be some sort of loser, always get scold by his boss and never gets the girl (damn the situation sounds so depressingly like mine). One day, after several days not turning to work, he decided to cut his wrist, and find that he feels no pain and couldn't die. So he proceed mutilating himself and even fool his colleague to his place to look at him. How fun is it? To add more to the camp, the video starts and interrupted a few times of visual of a white guy dubbed in Japanese explaining what we see is a documentation of a immoral man in this world. I think the whole idea is making this video looks like an episode from some foreign TV show, say a poor man's version of Ripley's Believe it or Not.

He's not dreaming and neither are you

Gore wise...less impact compare to the first 2, but still gore. Viewing someone cutting the wrist is not disgusting, but psychologically disturbing. But the actor is funny though, and the subtitle is decent enough to makes you laugh as well.

What can be more funny that this?

There are some trick shots employ to create the effect and they are not hard to spot, although I really hope the special effect to be perfected to a point we can never spot anything. For a Japanese 1986 production, the effect is on par with Hollywood. Thing is, Hollywood studio will never pass such ridiculous treat!

Guinea Pig 4 - Mermaid In A Manhole takes a darker tone. Director by the same man inspiring Guinea Pig 2, this is a story of a curious relation between an artist and a mermaid he found in a manhole. The manhole is build on a river, which has been the artist's fortress of solitude, and also the place where he first met the mermaid when he was a kid. After his wife died or bedridden, don't quite remember, he often visit the manhole for inspiration, or simply just to escape. This is how he meet the injured mermaid and bring her home to treat her and to paint her as well.

Artist found mermaid

Eventually the mermaid dies and the artist dismembered it. Story ends with a twist that the police (brought by suspicious neighbours) found no mermaid but his dismembered dead wife along with her stillborn baby. But they do found an unidentified fish scale. So, the end is left ambiguous of if there really was a mermaid, or the whole episode is just the artist psychotic hallucination due to the trauma he suffered for losing his wife? Rather sour and disturbing story.

Finally he can't take it anymore, bloody scene.

Gore wise, the idea not so realistic. The injury the mermaid suffers, the lacerations as a result and it bleeds and pus coming from the wound has rainbow colors which the artist use to paint. We get to see the mermaid vomits some worms and the nicely act psychotic artist chopping of the mermaid into pieces at the end. The effect is good enough and real enough, just the rainbow color pus reminds us that this is just fantasy. Overall, still a damn disgusting entry, but the mermaid does have nice figure.

This episode is more to disgust rather than gore.