Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment (1985) Review | Asian Horror Movies | Horror Extreme

If you are a sicko looking for 43 minutes of Japanese, unnecessary, sadistic violence in a plotless scenario intended solely to offend the viewer, push the boundaries of what is acceptable in film and provide snuff porno for serial killers throughout Europe then look no further than the first instalment of the Guinea Pig movies, The Devil's Experiment. The movie doesn't provide the goregasm that Flowers of Flesh and Blood provides but the intensity of the pure unwarranted violence and eventual climax leaves a much bitterer taste in the mouth than any of the future attempts a sickness. Considering that The Devil's Experiment was queefed from Satan's vagina in 1985 the imagery and the callous pointlessness of putting this on film still far out-shocks anything recently labelled gorno or torture porn. This is just torture with an underlying merciless bondage and degradation theme making the whole experience seem rapey even though there is not even the slightest indication that there will be a money shot.

The premise is simple... kidnap a girl with an inoffensive motherly haircut and torture her with more and more extreme methods to determine the point at which she wants to die... film it, send it to the Tokyo Police in a discreet brown envelope and hope it get's released as a movie. The carefully constructed torture experiments are numbered and titled to enable the viewer to know what is going on in case it is not totally obvious what is taking place and between activities the guinea pig is kept hung up a tree in a net. On the menu for the defenceless kidnapee is hit, kick, claw, unconscious, a sound, skin, burn, worms, guts... with needle for desert... and rather than the kidnappers keeping their lips sealed tighter than pharaonic circumcision they want you too see their experiment.

That's about as in depth that it is possible to be about the storyline, this movie is meant to be a pseudo-snuff exhibition of cruelty and it doesn't pretend to be anything else and the fact that there are no morals or lessons to be learnt from this brutality makes it all the more disturbing. Experiment number one sets the scene nicely and although it is the least painful of all of the experiments the relentless execution of numerous slaps to the defenceless victim has its nastiness compounded by the nonchalant attitude of the kidnappers and the cold and very calculated manner in which they carry out their work. This is not simply a movie showing some quick shock torture and geysers of blood, the gore is quite minimal but the duration over which the defenceless sufferer suffers is what makes for harrowing watching, the sound torture (which involves headphones and a loud noise) takes place over 20 hours transforming the victim from slightly miffed to a dribbling wreck... all in the name of science... and probably for a bit of entertainment.

Devil's Experiment will leave you feeling dirtier than a hooker at a curry-night scat party and whereas similarly repulsive movies such as Cannibal Holocaust allow the dirtiness to be cleaned by pretending to have some moralistic meaning and message to society, this movie pretends nothing. This first Guinea Pig movie is pure brutal exploitation of a kind rarely seen, possibly never seen as far back as the mid-eighties and still probably should be seen nowadays. This movie will divide the viewers into those that cannot see why such brutality can even be called entertainment and those who see this as the start of a genre that dares horror and exploitation to take things as far as possible to highlight the nasty areas of society that people would rather pretend do not exist.

There is no happy ending to Guinea Pig (although there is an awesome eye-gouging scene) and I am personally surprised that it was Flowers of Flesh and Blood that became the most infamous part of the series as the happenings in this snuff ape are much more convincing than surviving total dismemberment from a lipstick wearing samurai. I would not recommend that anybody sees this and by that I mean everyone should see this but don't say it was me that recommended it. This is one sick little puppy that should stand proudly among the annals of Asian Horror simply for having the man-sack to put this out there but I doubt there is any re-watch value.

"For the uninitiated in this sick franchise the first one will have a impact on your life more than your daughter coming out of the closet" ~ Josef F. (Austria)