Guinea Pig: not all that
 

Last night I watched the first Guinea Pig film, The Devil's Experiment, and I must admit to being disappointed.

This film is invariably included in any list of the "nastiest" films and maybe I was expecting more because of the hype. The truth is though, I don't rate it.

If I'd been watching it believing the opening text to be true ("I found this tape..."), I might have been a bit disturbed by it, thinking it was real. Even without the benefit of knowing it not to be real though, I think I'd have worked out that it indeed wasn't.

Throughout the film, the girl's reactions to what is being done to her just aren't what they should be. She should be screaming like a banshee in pain. The fact that she isn't means that it's obviously not real. I wouldn't want to watch it if it were real but if she were to be more convincing in her acting, the film would be more disturbing.

And then there are the notorious scenes: nothing affected me at all up until the scalpel in the hand. The hot oil, maggots and innards just didn't bother me. I'm not saying I'm "hard"; just that I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief, partly because of the girl's innaction.

The scalpel made me whince a little but the hammer to the hand just made the hand look rubber. And the final scene with the eye was again a little whincing but nothing more. I didn't want to look away and neither did I feel nauseous.

Perhaps it's because the film is twenty-odd years old, or perhaps I'm just jaded. The truth is, I didn't find this film at all disturbing.

It's the kind of thing you might expect to see playing on a loop as a modern art installation and as an exercise in stripping away characters, story etc. and just leaving the torture, it works on some levels. As a disturbing piece of film though, it didn't work for me at least.

I watched Guinea Pig with my wife, who is of the "it's just a film" bent and she wondered what all the fuss was about. We got to discussing why I watch these films and my reasons are many (a seperate debate) but include a desire to be affected by a film. She said that she didn't think any film could be so convincing as to disturb her and challenged me to do exactly that. I played her the fire extinguisher scene from Irreversible and she was indeed disturbed. I'm not sure I have a point, other than that both of us were more disturbed by a scene in a non-horror film than any film thus far which sets out to disturb.

I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the Guinea Pig series as some look to have quite worthy stories to them, as well as extreme gore. I did start to watch The Men Behind the Sun last night and only switched off because I was going to bed. I think I may view that differently to Guinea Pig as what I saw was quite sobering viewing.

One thing I would comment upon regarding Men Behind the Sun is that I don't believe the talk of a real cadaver being used for the live autopsy on the mute boy. The heart removed from the body was beating, leading me to surmise that this was simply a special effect; and a very good one at that.

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And your point is?

How about some constructive use of this forum?

rather like the .gif they're pointless trash.

They've got a point.

Devil's Experiment/Unabridged Agony exists primarily as a provocation, not as entertainment.

Therefore all reactions to it - shock, disdain or apathy - are valid and a result of the experience (one could say this about all films, but zero-budget mock-snuff productions made in Japan the 1980s have a reputation and notoriety allowed to seperate them from everything else).

As word-of-mouth spreads and films like these are hauled up from the underground with shiny DVD re-issues, it is only a matter of time before hushed whispers about the danger of viewing them become scorn and rejection.

But art like The Blair Witch Project capitalised on the public need for horrific "real/found" footage to exist, and even when general scepticism turned to conempt there is still a deep interest in such films where the front is so boldly manipulative it is hard not to be seduced by curiousity.

In conclusion, films which pretend to be "real" divide us into believers and non-believers, and divide the latter through testing the viewer's strength in handling the weight of disbelief.

Personally, the "not-real" Devil's Experiment is a very grim but nontheless compelling 45 minutes, with its initially unsensational approach to the mock-snuff concept (too many efforts since try too hard and are compromised by over-acting), juxtaposed with some nicely bad-taste ideas (such as the maggots and the meat-chucking) and ending in a grand guignol eye-piercing that was one of the first examples of exteme Asian cinema to make an impact on today's hardcore fans.

As The Flower, The Flesh & The Blood is another film to upset the "what's the point of it?" crowd, consider the impressive visual effects (though the impact of some are unfortunately spoiled through ridiculous sound effects) which put bigger budget Hollywood horrors to shame.