Guinea Pig: He Never Dies Movie Review
Nobody does it quite like the Japanese. When it comes to all out gorefests, they certainly know a thing or two. I’m sure the majority of you are familiar with the stories surrounding the series, so no need to get into that. I recently picked up the entire set of these, and noticing that one wasn’t online, I felt it was important to finish off the set. Now I had seen a few of these movies a few years back, and thoroughly enjoyed them for what they were. An hour or so of the most brutal gore effects I think I’d seen at the time. So realistic in fact, that I was almost convinced that at least some if had to be real. When I popped in He Never Dies, I figured I’d be getting myself into another Devil’s Experiment or Flower of Flesh and Blood. The last thing I expected to find was a comedy - and a pretty damn good one at that.
The film begins with some professor telling us about a strange phenomenon, in which a man was unable to kill himself. We are then shown our hero(?), Yoshio (Masahiro Satô) a down-on-his-luck office employee. He is the constant butt of inner office jokes, can never seem to find a nice girl, and is humiliated almost daily by his harsh boss. Tired of all the abuse he feels at work, Yoshio locks himself in his apartment for days. When he doesn’t receive a phone call, he realizes that everyone has forgotten about him already, so in a fit of rage, he slits his wrist. He slumps to the floor waiting to die, but nothing happens. He feels no pain, and the wound has stopped bleeding. Confused, he attempts to kill himself a few more times with the same effect. When Yoshio finally comes to the ironic conclusion that he can’t die, he decides to use his new found secret to his advantage by extracting some revenge on his co-workers.
It might sound morbid, but I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. There were just so many hilarious scenes, it was hard not to laugh. For instance, when Yoshio first realizes he can’t die, and while slitting his throat and waiting for something to happen he spits blood everywhere, then looks at the camera and says “This is nasty.” Maybe it’s a visual thing, but I could not stop laughing. I think part of it comes from the fact that Masahiro Satô did a great job of pulling off these physical gags. This movie is plain and simple, a slapstick comedy with A TON of gore. And believe you me, there is a lot of gore. Not as much as other Guinea Pig titles, but still enough to make even the most hardcore gore hound happy. Where else do you get to see a man tear out all his organs until all that’s left is his ribcage and spinal cord?
This was a really great movie, but it would have benefited from being a tad longer. They could have easily tacked on another 30+ minutes of Yoshio terrorizing more co-workers, or just having fun mutilating himself. That seemed to be the only major problem with the film, the running time. The ending was a bit of a letdown as well, as it didn’t stick to the style of the rest of the film, but this was a pretty minor flaw in the grand scheme of things. The end credits were nice as well, as they played all the dismemberment and self mutilation scenes in reverse, which really looked odd to say the least. Overall it was a very funny movie. Even the graphic scenes were done in such a way that was humorous. The only reason they might seem graphic to some people is because of how realistic they look. I know I speak for more than just myself when I say that this is exactly what horror fans around the globe are looking for in a film. In that regard, Guinea Pig delivers.
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