Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films,
2015
Images from the Internet
Unearthed Films
73 minutes, 2014 / 2015
www.unearthedfilms.com
www.mvdvisual.com
The cruelty
is perpetrated by a bunch of guys: The Director (Scott Gabby) on 8mm camera, another
camera person with a VHS camcorder (David Hood), a Second Unit on 8mm (Rogan
Russell Marshall), and the bulky guy with the “Hard Times” tattoo on his pecs, credited
as The Actor (Eight the Chosen One) who does all the dirty work. All the men
wear masks, as the Director tells the Actor what to do (“Always start on the
left, never on the right!” he commands repeatedly). We see the action through
the lens of those cameras. This is supposed to be the 1980s, and that’s why the
old equipment.
This
DVD is also loaded with extras. To start, there is the trailer, which I have not included below due to its extremity (the one I've linked was supplied by MVD and stars Eight the Chosen One, and can lead you to the actual trailer, which as the words "Series 2" in the title). The next one I watched was the 40 minute
single-camera interview with two cast member who are also aficionados in their own right: Pete Townsend look-alike Jim Van
Bebber (The Editor), who is the director of films including Dead Beat at Dawn (1988) and The Manson Family (2003), and Scott
Gabbey (The Director), who is also president of Ultra Violent Magazine, as well as an actor. While a bit long, it
is chocked full of interesting stories and back-stage anecdotes, so it mostly
kept my interest. The only thing I found annoying, and I may get picked on for
this, is the constant calling of the two actresses as “the girls.” None of the
rest of the cast and crew is called “the boys,” but the N-word does make its
presence.
Images from the Internet
American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and
Gore
Written, directed and edited by Stephen
BiroUnearthed Films
73 minutes, 2014 / 2015
www.unearthedfilms.com
www.mvdvisual.com
If
you are looking for a complex and deep storyline about searching one’s soul and
the meaning of life, well, you’ve come to the wrong place. The premise is that
two women are kidnapped, given a nerve inhibitor drug so that they can’t move,
a shit load of LSD, and then are systematically tortured and eviscerated until
dead. Except for a brief prologue and coda, all the action takes place in one
room, and filmed mostly in real time and chronological order. Yep, what is
promised and that is what is delivered.
The Director, Second Unit, The Actor, the first Victim |
This
is certainly a minimalist film just as the premise is a single note struck over
and over again. That’s not to say it’s redundant, but it is pretty
straightforward, making it less of a distraction from the hacking and sawing
and poking and pulling. There is a kind of Zen to it all, I suppose. Look, I’m
going to admit that I like a good story with my gore, even with something like A Serbian Film (2010) or Collar (2014), but the core of the
matter is the look of the gore¸ which I will get to shortly.
First
of all, the actresses who play the victims (Caitlyn Dailey and Ashley Lynn
Caputo) are in films after that, so it’s a story of a snuff film, not an actual
one. I say that specifically because of two reasons. First, it’s all “found
footage” of a sort, as the film is shot by the actors in the story. There is
the occasional break while the 8mm stock is replaced, and then it goes on.
Second, I have to commend the SFX people, Oddtopsy, because the body parts look
real, with the right flexibility and tone. I watched the whole bit-by-bit
vivisecting things without turning away…okay that’s a lie. I did turn my head
with the eyeball stuff, one of my admitted Achilles heels with this kind of thing.
Of
course, the questions that arises through this is the why they are doing this. It’s obvious the VHS guy is being
blackmailed (“Remember, we have your kids, so don’t fuck it up!”) into it about
a third through, which further, again, the reason for the extremity of the
torture. Early on, the Director mentions that the women were specifically
chosen for their “role,” and I wondered if that could be a further clue to the reason for the actions. It feels like
this is just the first of a series, but according the one of the commentary
tracks, it is not. I was hoping it was so perhaps we’d learn piece by piece
(pun intended), sort of like the conspiracy arc of Lost or The X-Files, more
of the background story over time.
For
me, the major problem is not that this is a gorefest, and superbly done at
that. Okay, it’s partly that it is two women who are tortured, not a male, but
that’s not the biggest issue I had though it made me uncomfortable, nor that
the characters live way past the level of what a human body can actually
endure. It is as follows (this is my issue which is mine, too; aheeeem): When
you just have splatter that is one tone and consistent, without a context for
the action, it gets kind of, well, mind-numbing. I’m not saying this is a
boring film, I’m saying it becomes a little bit tedious. Chop, saw, poke. Saw,
saw, poke, chop. Chop, chop, poke, saw, chop. Spam eggs sausage and spam (oh,
what a giveaway; sorry…).
I do
understand that this is part of a homage to the Japanese underground Guinea Pig series that had bootleg tapes
passed around, and was infamous for its unprecedented levels of unrelenting violence
and graphic sadism, especially the second of the series, Guinea Pig: Flowers of Flesh and Blood (1985); there is an indirect
mention in this film when the Director comments, “Let’s bleed this flower out.”
It makes sense, too, as Unearthed Films also released all seven of the Guinea Pig films in a deluxe DVD box
set. It’s also probably part of the reason the film is set in that decade.
The Actor |
An
almost 5-minute music video of “Chambers of Perdation” (appropriately meaning
"Chambers where there are attacks") by the band Perdition Temple (for
those that don’t know, “Perdition” is the time spent in hell). The song is
classic death metal with the chucka-chucka guitar sound and the solos, and the
growling, distorted voice where you can’t make out a single word (captions,
please!). It is interspersed with graphic clips from the film, so don’t look
for it on VH1, but perhaps in a future Metal
Retardation release from director Bill Zebub?
I
was looking forward to seeing the 21-1/2 minute “Preproduction Video,” to see
some of the behind the scenes work, and wasn’t disappointed. We see the face
masks being made, Gabbey rehearsing his lines, and the full body casts. They
don’t show how they do the internal body gore, I’m sorry to say, but still very
enlightening.
The
first commentary I watched was of director Steve Biro and fellow director / actor
/ director of photography of this film, Jim Van Bebber, who contributed to the
interview segment above. Van Bebber tends to commandeer the conversation, often
loudly interrupting Biro to the point of annoyance, but there is also a fuck of
a lot of information that I didn’t get from the film that I learned from this
commentary, including some religious significance, and the relationship of the
two women. It is also the closest that it comes to explaining motive (just the
fact that the two women were named after Biro’s ex-wives says a bit).
The
final commentary is Biro again, but this time with main person who did the SFX
for the film, Marcus Koch (pronounced “cook”). I always start at the end of the
extras and work my way through to the one I’m looking forward to the most.
However, though there is some info, this commentary was particularly a letdown
as there was hardly any talk about the effects, and a lot of it was repetitious
from the other extras. At the end, Biro mentions that Koch will direct the next
American Guinea Pig, which should be
interesting as he knows what he is capable of doing, SFX-wise. Brio also disses
commentaries, saying how only the fanatical watch them. Yes, but it is precisely
those enthusiasts who are the fans of this kind of extreme fare.
Between
the film and its two commentaries, I essentially sat through the film three
times, not counting the clips included in the likes of the music video. What is
the end result? Yes, this is an extremely brutal film for both the characters,
and the audience. But it is bound to reach the audience who it is directed at,
which is the point, so in that way, it is very successful. It has an
interesting look via the mix of 8mm, 16mm, and VHS, and if you can keep your
eyes on the screen, it will keep your attention, in the same way a magic trick
is performed. I guarantee there will be moments of “How the fuck did they do that?!?!?!” To me, that screams achievement.
I’m
also curious to see how they top this one.
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