Guinea Pig: Mermaid in the Manhole

I think during the 80's, while Cronenberg and the like were showing their special effects skills, some daring Japanese directors were ready to show their might on the screen and it led to these films. All of them were put together to showcase nothing more than special effects with almost no story line whatsoever. Except this little gem!! I have to say, these films are definitely heavy on the gore, and they are way good at the special effects. They definitely caught me off guard when I saw them without knowing what I was sitting down to watch. But that's where it ends, special effects for gross out factors (which the Japanese do very well). But again, this one is a bit different than the others, so don't just write it off like perhaps "Flower of Flesh and Blood" or "Devil's Experiment".

First off, this has the artist element, as the crazy man who paints the scum and filth inside of a sewer would. And it has a very strange feeling almost from the get go. An almost bizarre art house quiet despair right from the get go. You can almost smell the rotting filth just by watching it. And that's exactly how I can explain this film, as if you watch an animal get hit by a car and watch it die, and subsequently rot to a bloody mess on the side of the road. But that's only an allegory to what the movie looks like, as the movie is perhaps an allegory to a deeper meaning.

While this film is certainly vile, and has loads of gross out factors from stem to stern, it has a certain humanity to it. Almost a beautiful love to it. And that is where this movie stands out from the others.

If you've seen the others and haven't seen this one, then definitely watch it. If you've wanted to see them, and haven't yet, definitely watch this one. If you like gross out gore cinema, then definitely watch this one. If you're weak in the stomach, then steer very far away from any of these films.

This is a rather strange entry in the Guinea Pig franchise but one that is a must see after a while because in the beginning it looks rather childish and stupid but slowly it turns into a squirmfest to end in a gorefest.

When a painter wants to return to a sewer were he has been before entering the manhole to go into the sewer he comes across a girl laying in the filthy water. Coming closer he notices that it is a mermaid. Somehwo he has seen her before but by getting closer he sees that she has some kind of infection. He picks her up and takes her home to place her in a bath. She do ask to be painted by him and to use the colored puss coming out of her infection. Until then it's a bit ridiculous but the painter gets addicted to her and when the infection gets worse and she almost dies the worms come in.

It's from that point that this horror flick turns into a gruesome flick. First out of the puss do come the worms but if that's not enough she starts vomiting worms being alive and it's not faked. Naturally the mermaid do dies and the painter can't take it anymore and starts to cut her up. At the end we do have a twist and this gory flick is over.

It's a rather good entry into the franchise because it do has it flows. The worms can make viewers decide to turn it off but for people into Japanese stuff this is your thing.

Gore 3/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

This is a sick movie. A young painter finds a dying mermaid in the sewer and he takes her home. Then the mayhem begins... This is actually a real movie compared to the previous "Guinea Pig"-movies. It´s not so sick an it got a certain cinematic style. Still I wouldn´t recommend it to anyone but hardcore-Japanese-splatter-movie-fans. I give it 5 out of 10.

It is hard to describe the viewing experience for this movie. Even if you have seen the other Guinea Pig series movies, this one is on another level of disturbing. Where the first three are gory, they are also just straightforward dismemberment stories. They are simple and shocking, but no really new ground from hundreds of other horror movies. Mermaid in a Manhole is a different story. It focuses on disease and decay. It captures the lead character's descent into insanity. Then, once the viewer has gone through all this for the first two-thirds of the movie, we move to the dismemberment.

I like the psychological angle of this story and I think it makes this installment much better than the first two, but it is hard to watch and appreciate. To some degree, it reminds me of Nekromantik in that the story is intriguing and pushes the viewer to think about what is happening, but the images are so terrible that it is hard to want to.

I saw this in the middle of the night, and it wasn't subtitled. Still, I figured out what it was about, despite the fact that I don't speak it's language. It's about what appears to be a painter who rescues an injured woman who begins to rot and spew pus. As she dies, he uses her goop as paint. The film's ending is depressing as it appears that he wasn't playing with a full deck.

The overall tone of the film is bad enough without the bizarre situation, but the fact that the film literally doesn't race makes the outcome more of an effective idea that could be better implemented with a little less patience. Still, when the screen isn't drenched with guts and pus, it's pretty to look at. This is, i guess, a part of some strange series of films in Japan that deal with special effects gore and realism. This works in both areas, but also happens to have a little more to offer.