Unearthed Films brings us another gore double feature, bringing to America these much-bootlegged Japanese horror legends in authorized editions.
While the first two Guinea Pig movies (DEVILS EXPERIMENT and FLOWERS FOR FLESH AND BLOOD) were pretty much only straightforward pseudo-snuff films, the entries that followed became more oriented toward stories and characters, and Japan Home Video became the new distributor. HE NEVER DIES cleverly inverts the premise of the earlier entries by presenting a tale of self-torture and mutilation, injecting it with a welcome dose of humor. A host named Rick Steinberger introduces the story though he's supposed to appear as like the host of a Fortean phenomena documentary program, he looks more like an insurance agent discussing flood protection. He tells the "true" tale of Hideshi (Masahiro Sato), a meek Tokyo office drone who lives in a filthy one room basement apartment. In an agony of boredom, Hideshi stays home from work for three days (nobody notices), and in a delirium, slashes open his wrist with a razor. To his surprise, after a few moments the bleeding and pain stops completely. Experimentally, he jabs a pen through his forearm, again without pain. Distressed, he chops off the hand completely and even slices into his throat, but is disappointed to find that he cannot be killed. Strangling doesn't work either. A failure at suicide, Hideshi calls coworker Elvis (Keisuke Araki) Nakamura over to scare him. Elvis' girlfriend Kyoko (Eve) goes looking for him and is shocked at the mess Hideshi has made disemboweling himself, and gets Elvis to help her clean up the place. Full of wry laughs and decent shocks, those that can stomach it should find this black comedy worthwhile. Sato gives a solid performance while pulling himself apart. The end credits play back some of the gore effects in reverse!
After it was revealed that a murderer may have copied some of the crimes portrayed in the Guinea Pig tapes, producer Satoru Ogura took advantage of the media uproar by releasing more entries in the series. Cartoonist Hideshi Hino contributed what is considered the series' artistic high point, MERMAID IN A MANHOLE. Lonely painter Hayashi goes to a sewer for inspiration, sketching objects he finds there and recalling when there was a river there. On one visit, he's surprised to find a mermaid. She tells him (telepathically) of how she was stranded there when the river dried up, and he sees that living in the sewage is infecting her. Hayashi takes her home with him and keeps her in a new bathtub to recover, and so he can paint her. However, her infected sore grows and multiplies, hemorrhaging frequently. The painter brings her fresh fish and medicine, but the sores continue to spread. But the mermaid seems even more determined that he complete paintings of her than he is, insisting he use the different colored pus from her sores as tints. Before long, the spreading tumors cover her whole body, and sprout ever larger worms. Finally, she begs him to put her out of her misery, but when nosy neighbors come calling they find quite a shocking scene.
Hino creates a terror tale that is both grotesque and lyrical, incorporating the medical horrors of David Cronenberg, the alien nightmares of H.P. Lovecraft, and the snake-spewing gross-outs of Chinese black magic movies. The fantasy setting makes its repellent f/x easier to take, and it's obvious that the prosthetics don't go far below the water line. Sure, the blood and gore make one uneasy, but the real discomfort here is the hardship of caring for a terminally ill loved one. It's not exactly what one expects from a series that aims for shock above all other goals.
Both features suffer from their shot-on-video format (which was a strength of the first two episodes), and the narratives looking shoddy and fake. The disc includes the informative essay on the history of the series from Unearthed's website, and a small image gallery. "Theatrical trailers" for the first six flicks are actually just brief clips from each.
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