Guinea pig: Android of Notre Dame

Android of Notre Dame: 4/10: Demented DNA dabbling dwarf seeks to cure ailing sister (her ailment isn't specified but I'm guessing Ali MacGraw disease as she becomes prettier the sicker she gets). He gets a living dead girl to experiment on from a blackmailing body procurer (Tomorowo Taguchi who has only one expression but it's a doozy and kind of reminds one of a Japanese Phil Hartman). Taguchi gets greedy, the living dead girl decomposes, the sister gets sicker and the dwarf goes to a bad place.

The script sometimes writes checks the F/X can't cash (The legs and flying saw blade scene is particularly unconvincing) And the movie concentrates so much on the anatomical gross out it starts looking like an alien autopsy film. Yet an overall goofiness survives throughout.

Maybe it was the complete lack of humor (This is straightforward Poe style moralizing), the video quality that reminded me of a Canadian television movie, or the fact that after watching companion feature Devil's Experiment anything looks good but this little film wasn't all that bad.

If you like Japanese horror, and there are many reasons why horror fans should, avoid this SOV piece of garbage. Not scary, not shocking, not entertaining. It does not make a horror film simply to throw lots of ketchup around and try to look gory. How this flic ever achieved a commercial release is a mystery to me.

I didn't exactly know what the hell was going on since I saw this in Japanese without subs, but from what I could piece together the plot involved a dwarf scientist trying to find a way to bring his dying girlfriend back to a healthy physical state. Along the way he does lots of bizarre and graphic experiments on naked women (and he always nods his head after doing *ANYTHING*) and holds some guy captive who apparently tried to sucker him out of a business deal. The movie was certainly interesting to watch, and as with the rest of the series the special effects were for the most part phenomenal; but it just wasn't as gritty, humorous, or disgusting as the other GUINEA PIG films. However, I still feel that it's a worthy effort.

None of the urban mythology surrounding some of the other Guinea Pig films applies to this one which is just a mad scientist tale involving quite a bit of gore. It does not resemble a snuff film in any way, nor is it supposed to appear to be anything more than a movie. The effects are visual amazing, but are not all that realistic, not that androids have ever been dissected before in reality.

It's only about an hour long and the production values are low, but still it might be worth tracking down. The story is interesting enough and deals with the ethics of killing someone to save another person's life.

Another daft entry in the extremely gory Japanese Guinea Pig series, The Android of Notre Dame sees a demented dwarf scientist attempting to discover a way to save his terminally-ill sister.

When a mysterious stranger contacts the little guy offering to sell him a female body for use as a 'guinea pig', it looks as though he might be on the verge of a breakthrough—but he botches the experiment and, in a fit of rage, mutilates the corpse (repeatedly stabbing it in the chest with a scalpel).

Soon after, the stranger turns up on the wee fellow's doorstep, once again offering a corpse in exchange for money. This time, however, the scientist decides not to pay for his next cadaver—killing the visitor instead (by removing his legs with a buzz-saw booby trap), and using his re-animated severed head in a series of tests.

Eventually, the girlfriend of the dead guy comes looking for her beau, but also becomes a victim of the dwarf, thus providing him with a suitable body into which he can finally transplant his sister's 'consciousness'.

A rather tongue-in-cheek effort, Android of Notre Dame is far removed from the first two Guinea Pig movies, which attempted to be as nasty and as realistic as possible: this one features lots of hokey gore and unconvincing surgical procedures (including a particularly messy scene featuring rough 'n' ready rib removal) which make it a fairly entertaining experience for those who like their horror rather twisted and laden with blood, but not in the least bit disturbing.

As far as I am concerned, mad dwarfs, gratuitous violence and naked women always make a film watchable, so I wouldn't consider AOND to be a complete waste of 51 minutes, but those expecting anything quite as horrific as Flowers of Flesh and Blood (Guinea Pig 2) will be rather disappointed.