Guinea Pig 2: Flowers of Flesh and Blood

Guinea Pig 2: Flowers of Flesh and Blood, Starring and directed by Hideshi Hino (1985).

Everything that we now know about Charlie Sheen from his drug abuse, porn star addiction, severe mental problems and conspiracy theories, most people would in this day and age side with Chas Balun. According to Snopes, in the 60's, Ed Sanders a guy in the hippie punk band The Fugs interviewed someone from the Manson Family about a headless victim in a secret sex tape that no one was able to track down but it was labeled "snuff". That was the first case of a hardcore scene that ends in death and of course tons of movies came out after about the subject, starting with Michael and Roberta Findlay's controversial, laughable and dull as shit flick Snuff.

Now that this bullshit is on Blu-ray, I'll die of embarrassement all over again!

Sheen pushed the panic button over at Chris Gore’s party, where he put on a crazy video compilation, it offended the dopey actor and he alerted the feds. Gore already had it out for Chas, bashing him in Film Threat, as a scumbag who ripped off the directors that he claimed to admire. We've covered this before but Chas not only loved these rare films, which were all censored in the U.S. at the time, but he went out of his way to champion them as more artistic and brilliant during the time when they were regularly trashed. He took it to the underground to get the message out there before the internet existed.

I saw this film back in the 90’s when it seemed as if it could’ve been a genuine snuff flick, Skunkape had a copy and we giggled and made fun of the dopey looking back alley rapist Samurai (who reminded us of our T.V. Production teacher Mr. Bolton). This teacher had the most lethal, paint peeling, shit-smelling breath that it was a form of torture just to be too close to those rotten choppers.

everybodies doin' it from Col. Sanders, Alice Cooper to John Waters.

Balun also sold the making of special, which showed all the latex effects and fake gore. If you do a brief amount of research, you’ll find truckloads of YT teen film critics making snarky comments or dissecting the entire film series 1-6 that were produced usually in front of their overstocked shelves of horror DVDs and posters. I’ve successfully neglected to review all of the short films, even though I was fascinated by what each of the creative staff of Deep Red thought of Chas getting unfairly busted, because it put them all in serious jeopardy at least for a short while.

A mysterious underground snuff tape showing up in your mailbox could never happen again. In the future of 2017 of course if you really wanted to, you could easily seek out beheadings, snuff or Serbian Film reality bullshit if you choose that depraved route, it’s all up to your own discretion and moral compass or whatever sick shit gets you off. Or you could not even try all that hard and accidentally watch every Human Centipede film on various streaming devices. Why would you though, as Max Renn (James Woods) character in Videodrome struggled with, why do it for real? It’s so much easier and safer to fake it. You know things are really fucked up when that kind of shit is run of the mill. 

I'm still haunted by James Woods trying to explain this flick to Peter Griffin.

Hideshi Hino, a talented comic book artist took this idea or philosophy and constructed his own version of what a genuine snuff film might look like. There’s an interview with him from Vice.com that said the production team behind the first movie approached him about a minimal project, which was the basis for Flower of Flesh and Blood. Hino actually put on the makeup, donned the silly looking helmet for the Samurai role and got really down and dirty. He didn’t receive that much hostility from the feds, at least as much as CB did, which is fucked up considering he created this piece of shit and Deep Red just sold a bootleg of it.

I used to see ads for Hideshi’s comic Panorama of Hell and Hellbaby in the Fantaco catalog, there’s even a cool maggot eaten action figure which came out (that's pretty fucking expensive and hard to find). Hideshi's artistic talents are more provocative and interesting than this film here, which like the first one is just basic torture porn—aka the bullshit Eli Roth thinks is valid performance art.
It begins with amateurish subway footage and an after dark chloroform situation happens. It does have a scary voyeuristic shot on video quality.

I hope this toy is under my tree this year.

A rubber glove wearing ghoul in lipstick and white face make-up (Hideshi), sharpens up some loud surgical instruments and starts carving away like a grandma on Thanksgiving. That’s kind of how it begins, he kills a chicken and blabbity blabs about how poetic her blood and bones cracking are. It’s all done in a slow masturbatory way and it’s no fun at all, super creepy, nihilistic, icky and deranged. I mean if there was a story or purpose other than to get the jollies of some freako going, then maybe I could file it under something in the vein of Grand Guignole Japanese style, but it’s insanely boring and just foul. It ends with him severing her head, popping out her eyeballs and he sings a hellish lullaby. The End.

This short film has certain elements in common with Nekromantik. There’s a the jar of organs, maggots slithering into the camera and all that jazz but it’s basically too boring for its own good. A totally unpleasant yawn fest, it's basically gorenography but I guess it was influential on creating one of the dumbest sub genres: torture porn. Until next time, I’ll save you a straight jacket for the loony bin of Japanese snuff depravity because I plan on reviewing all of these whether they all suck or not.

NEVER TO BE SEEN!

THE PATENTED GUINEA PIG UP CHUCK CUP!

Guinea Pig (1985)

Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment (1985, dir. Satoru Ogura)

This "Guinea Pig" series reboot is a great idea!

Review by Goat Scrote

     Yes, this is the first one in the series that got Chas Balun in all that hot water with the FBI! 

     Although there are several repulsive scenes, “Guinea Pig” doesn’t even come close to living up to its reputation as an extreme shock classic. The entire thing is only 43 minutes long and there is no story to spend time on, yet it’s halfway through before actual blood flows. Since this movie seems to have no purpose for existing other than to showcase blood and guts, that means there is a whole lot of purposeless violent filler occupying screen time. With no context for the violence it just seems like a meaningless exercise in misogynistic torture fantasy. If that sounds like your thing, you may dig it. My personal reaction to "Guinea Pig" was boredom and distaste (not a good combination), except during the brutal finale which features artfully disturbing imagery and an outstandingly horrifying gore effect which is a must-watch for gorehounds and practical SFX nerds.

     Three men torture a woman, and she dies. There it is, the complete plot, in every detail. The abusers are anonymous and the victim never says anything. No one in the film is individualized or made into an actual character. There’s no explanation except that the project is claimed to be a series of experiments exploring the limits of suffering. Each “experiment” opens with a title card hinting at what kind of punishment they will inflict this time. This film is genuinely nothing but torture porn (and I use the term without malice), although they actually leave a lot of the worst of it out of view even during the gruesome and explicit final scene. They sacrifice quantity of gore for quality, which is usually the right trade-off.

     The movie presents itself as something which was obtained illicitly and redistributed, in a “Blair Witch” style marketing maneuver. Most of the time the perpetrators faces aren’t shown, which further lends to the feeling that we’re watching something we’re not supposed to be seeing. I suspect it was these facts combined with the plotless pseudo-porno presentation which confused certain drug-addled celebrities into mistaking “Guinea Pig” for a real snuff film.

Part 2: Flower of Flesh and blood was the tape that freaked Charlie Sheen out enough to alert the FBI. Here's what Dennis Daniel said about the embarrassing event after he lent out the tape. Well, when I finished with it, I sent it to my pal Chris Gore at FILM THREAT. He ended up lending it to a friend who watched it with Charlie Sheen, of all people!  Sheen thought the shit was REAL!!! He contacted a friend of his in the FBI and before you know it, I got a call from an FBI Agent saying that it was a federal offense to send snuff films through the mail! We’re talking 20 years in prison!!!!  I had remembered that Chas told me there was a tape called THE MAKING OF GUINEA PIG, so the FBI said I had to give him the contact info for the person who sent me the tape and they needed to send that “MAKING OF” tape as well. So, I had to call Chas and tell him all this. Needless to say, he was not pleased. I actually called him on his birthday and he was having a fucking grand old time till I called him with the info. Remember, Chas was a California hippie dude of epic proportions…the fact that I gave “the man” info about him was not too cool…but I had no choice. He was my only hope to prove it was fake. It all worked out in the end but it really sucked at the time.

     It begins with a woman handcuffed to a chair and several men dressed in black beating her. They rub salt in her eyes. They club her with a bag full of coins while one dude chills in the background casually enjoying a soda. Some time later, they throw her on the ground and kick her while verbally abusing her. Next they torture her with pliers pinching and twisting her skin. The most absurd torture arrives when they spin her around a whole lot on an office chair. After way too much time lingering on that, they force Jack Daniels down her gullet, and spin her around some more until she pukes.

     The second most absurd "experiment" is when they torture her with headphones roped to her head, playing something which sounds like a perfectly ordinary Merzbow recording. This goes on until she is a drooling wreck. Around 22 minutes into the runtime it starts to get gory as they pull out her fingernails. She is tied up and asleep when they start pouring boiling oil on her arm with a cringe-inducing sizzling sound. That’s one seriously fucked up alarm clock.

     Next up is the maggot torture. They pour maggots on the burns and sprinkle a few on her face just for the hell of it. She seems to be unconscious through it all. Maggots are pretty fucking gross, and the thought of them eating the dead flesh on her arm is unsettling. The entire maggot scene is about getting under our skin with psychological creepy crawlies.

     For their next amazing trick, the torturers throw raw meat and real animal guts on the woman. The guys, mostly off-camera, giggle and breath heavily like masturbating morons. She is unconscious, and the gut-throwing goes on and on for what feels like a really long time. Finally she wakes up and screams. Again, it’s pretty gross to have guts all over you, but mainly I am bored at this point in the movie. If you've cooked chicken or turkey in your kitchen, you've handled things just as gross as this. Like the maggots, it's something a quick shower can take care of..

     Things get drastic near the end. They move on to surgical incisions and smashing her hand with a sledgehammer. It does look pretty realistic. For the finale, they chain her head down and shove a long needled into her eye socket sideways. The eye socket floods with blood and the eye is skewered until it pops right out. Fulci and Bunuel would probably approve. It closes with what appears to be her corpse, dangling inside a net in the woods.

     After it was over I felt all the emotional involvement of having watched a practical f/x demo reel. It was very hard for me to connect with this movie, since I couldn't see any purpose beyond serial-killer stroke material or showing off their gore effects prowess. I would've liked it better as a five-minute short, and I don't think anything significant would be lost that way. I know that they were doing their very best to present something deeply disturbing, but other than a handful of short sequences, I had to fight to avoid letting my attention wander.

Recommendation: Only watch the ending, unless you are a huge fan of torture porn and fake snuff.

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer

Joe Coleman's poster that appeared in The Horror Handbook.

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer. Starring Michael Rooker, Directed By John McNaughton (1986).

Even though I love this film, I’ve avoided it for several years. It’s extremely depressing, disturbing and generally unpleasant. I decided to revisit it the other night while drunk as a skunk and it’s still a brilliant and harrowing independent film with guts to spare. The violence is ugly, unrepentant and disgusting but for some reason it picked up a buzz from some high-brow critics like Siskel and Ebert. That’s actually where I first saw a clip of it and couldn’t wait to check it out. My dad actually freaked out at me for wanting to see it, years later I taped it off Cinemax. It really resonated with the thumbs up, down guys—they defended it against the tide of irrational censorship and convinced others to watch it. These same critics, who demanded their audience boycott slasher movies in the 80’s, it seems were major fans of this John McNaughton film. They saw it as not exploitation but delivering a message more so than the typical brainless exploitation and it doesn't glorify the violence. Once the ultra- conservative Bush/Reagan era bit the dust in the 90s, it seemed as if these types of gritty realistic horror films were given more of a chance under the context of an artsy film. Of course, now it’s a billion times worse in the current society and political climate but that’s irrelevant to this review.

I'll have you know Amerikkka is great again!

In the Deep Red Horror Handbook, Chas spoke about this film in his chapter “I Spit in Your Face: Films that bite”. Balun placed it among what he categorized as “drano enemas” like Nekromantik, Deadbeat and Dawn and Last House on Dead End Street, all films that were impossible to find at time in 1989 for the average video junkie. They were the kinds of movies that got inside and ripped out your guts. He praised its low tech, high caliber acting and was unsettled by the fact that McNaughton makes Henry so fucking likeable and never indicts him.

all the girls want to know, who's the cutest boy on death row?

The two main characters are based on actual murderers like Florida’s Ottis Toole, who killed and ate Adam Walsh and even had a cannibal BBQ sauce that was listed in Mike Diana’s sick zine Boiled Angel. Also, Henry Lee Lucas and Otis’ sister Becky existed but she was significantly younger. They took these true crime figures and gave them their own spin, even though it’s biographical most of the details are rearranged or fictionalized, like the fact that in reality Henry and Ottis were gay lovers.

See I'm straight, I got a Jesus shirt!

It begins with the aftermath of different murder victims, we hear the disturbing audio of their last moments as Henry (Rooker) goes about his day. Tom Towles is in my opinion the most frightening aspect of this entire film, he’s a pervy, learing sexual predator who constantly is on the verge of a conniption fit over nothing. He doesn’t have the concept of “dial it down” and at one point kicks in a T.V., when he can’t get the rabbit ears to work. I like Siskel's theory about this scene, where Otis equates people as objects and only knows to deal with them thru savage violence or screaming at them until they comply. This leads to one of my favorite cinematic characters possibly ever, the fat-assed television salesman played by Ray Atherton. He looks like a mutant, deformed version of the Comic Book guy from The Simpsons. Atherton was not an actor but a producer of sleazy movies like FART: The Movie and Death Scenes 2, I can’t make this shit up folks!

WORST HAT EVER.

Henry (the film not the character) acts as a scared straight for the dangers of buying pot from some scumbag dealer, instead of going the dispensary route. The scene where Otis, sells dope to a high school kid and tries to molest him was most likely shown to legislatures as a reason to enforce these new pot laws—yeah right!   

The part that was seriously effective and unnerving to me occurs when Henry (Michael Rooker) and Otis (Tom Towles), “go out for a beer,” which is code for let’s go out to assault and murder an entire family in the burbs. That moment, which they capture on a camcorder is played endlessly on a loop as the slobby, perverted sister rapist Otis snoozes in his grundies in front of the boob tube.

SPRING BREAK!

This movie was shot in 1986, but remained unreleased for 3 years because of hypocrisy and censorship. There’s something viciously organic about the mutilation and graphic violence that really turns up the gas on the nightmare fuel. That aspect was why I haven’t revisited it since high school. Even though, the film is very uncomfortable, it is worth re watching and carries the fury that most serial killers movies wish they could accomplish. Rooker of course went onto super stardom with The Walking Dead and Guardians of the Galaxy. Towles played a guy who's dog had rabies and bit Elaine on Seinfeld, he appeared in a few Rob Zombie movies then died tragically from a stroke a few years ago. This director never made a film that impressed me all that much sadly, this however is his finest moment.


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