Guinea Pig 3: He Never Dies (1986)

Director: Masayuki Kusumi

Stars: Shinsuke Araki, Ivu, Masahiro Sato

IMDb

A man gets depressed because his girlfriend has dumped him for a friend. He tries to attempt suicide but to no avail, so he decides to scare the guy that stole his girl, by throwing his own guts at him.

Right, so where were we? Ah yes, the “Guinea Pig” series. We’re at part three now and after the first two films, maybe you’re expecting another possibly more graphic snuff film to accompany the previous efforts. If so, then I may be about to shock you by saying this isn’t a snuff film, this is actually, wait for it… a comedy! That’s right, Guinea Pig did it way before the REC franchise. Was REC 3 even a comedy? I don’t care, it was stupid! Bonus mini review right there. Anyway, is this funny? Well, I suppose, kind of, I can’t really remember. I guess we’ll find out soon enough. One thing I can tell you though is that it’s pretty gory, and that’s the main thing, right, kids? So after being all disturbed and horrified by the shocking scenes of the first two films, it’s time to get your laughing pants on as the crazy Japanese gore-meisters go all slapstick on our asses. Hold on to your sides, as they may well just split.

He…

It starts out with an American guy, Rick Steinberger (See, I told you he was American), talking in English as someone dubs over him in Japanese. This is slightly frustrating but hey, it’s not the film’s fault. He basically tells us that what we’re about to see is all true. Of course it is, Rick, of course it is. When the film starts proper we see a man called Hideshi sitting at a table attempting to slash his wrists with a stanley knife, but he gives up when he realises that it hurts, so instead he delves into his record collection and puts on some weird Japanese punk song. It’s actually a decent tune with the singer shouting “kill me” repeatedly. This accompanies the title sequence and continues as we join Hideshi at his mundane job where he gets a bollocking from his boss for generally being crap. There’s also a random scene where a couple decide to go on a date to see the Michael Douglas classic “A chorus Line”. Good choice, guys!

Oh, Rick’s back. He’s now explaining that Hideshi has gone slightly mental because of his job and has locked himself in his room for four days. He also tells us that if we want to know what happens next then we need to keep watching the film. Yeah thanks, Rick. So let’s see what Hideshi is up to. We get a montage of him in his room doing stuff like playing guitar, exercising and watching TV. At one point he even draws faces on his feet and performs a little puppet show, proving Rick and his whole mental theory right. Eventually, he decides he’s had enough and slits his wrist, and in true Guinea Pig style, the effect is wonderful and we see it in an unflinching close-up. He sits on the floor for about a minute trying to come to terms with what he’s just done until he suddenly realises that it doesn’t hurt and blood isn’t pissing out of the wound.

Never…

Confused, Hideshi jabs a pen through his arm but again there’s no pain, so he goes one step further and chops his whole hand off and then slices his jugular. It’s at this point that he realises he can’t actually die and starts bemoaning the fact. He has another go, this time trying to strangle himself with some rope, but of course it doesn’t work and he comes to the conclusion that he might be a zombie. He phones the emergency services and tells the operator he cannot die. The operator’s obviously all like, “what you on about?” and so he explains that he cut himself but the bleeding’s stopped. The guy says that’s a good thing and well, the conversation doesn’t go much further. Next he calls Nakamura, the “A Chorus Line” guy, and tells him to bring around some garden shears and a hatchet. Even though it’s midnight and he’s in bed with Kyoko, The “A Chorus Line” girl, he agrees. This should be fun.

So they arrive at Hideshi’s place and Nakamura heads inside as Kyoko waits in the car. For some reason, Nakamura puts on an Elvis mask to surprise Hideshi, but he’s the one that gets the real shock when Hideshi appears with a set square rammed into his head. As Nakamura cowers in the corner, Hideshi walks over to him with his arms stretched out in front of him like a zombie, and tells him that he can’t die. He then proceeds to cut his stomach open seppuku style and takes out the contents and throws them at Nakamura until he faints. This is pretty funny actually. Hideshi then tries to decide what he’s going to do for an encore as Kyoko starts to get impatient in the car. She eventually goes to see what’s keeping Nakamura and when she enters, she screams as she sees Hideshi’s disembodied head on the table chatting away. In a massively bizarre twist, it turns out Kyoko isn’t screaming at the head, but at the mess that Hideshi’s made, so she starts frantically cleaning up as Hideshi says he feels great again. After another interesting talk from Rick Steinberger, where he tells us that maybe we too could be immortal, the film ends showing us the main gore effects in reverse.

Dies!

Well there’s certainly worse ways to spend fourty minutes than watching this. For instance you could tattoo a picture of Angela Lansbury’s face on your leg, walk around a school with your trousers back to front, count to two thousand, four hundred, or punch a cow to death. Basically it’s bloody good fun and the time just seems to fly by. Unlike the rest of the films in this series, there’s not one dull moment of filler, in fact, this could easily have been padded out to twice it’s length. Although I’m a bugger for snuff films, this is probably my favourite Guinea Pig so far, and the next one’s good too. It’s just parts five and six I’m really dreading as the series has gone way down hill by that point, but all that’s to come. I’m recommending this to any fan of horror as it’s gory in a much less brutal way than the others and well, it’s just fantastic. Cheers!