GUINEA PIG 4
MERMAID IN THE MANHOLE
MERMAID IN THE MANHOLE
Back in the day, being sometime around the day in question,
Charlie Sheen, so the story goes, was getting down and so on at
some party or other, when one of his cool Hollywood accomplices
suggested they check out this video he got hold of. What it is, he
probably said in a sinister tone of vocals, is a video all about a
woman gets fucking killed right there in front of us.
It was a snuff flick, was what this coked-up sex-fiend wanted the
party to believe.
Only Charlie Sheen, though, seems to have been gullible enough.
Anyway, what happened was that the video was screened, and Sheen
was so shocked and disgusted that he picked up the phone and
reported this diabolical artefact to the FBI.
Charlie Sheen, so the story goes, was getting down and so on at
some party or other, when one of his cool Hollywood accomplices
suggested they check out this video he got hold of. What it is, he
probably said in a sinister tone of vocals, is a video all about a
woman gets fucking killed right there in front of us.
It was a snuff flick, was what this coked-up sex-fiend wanted the
party to believe.
Only Charlie Sheen, though, seems to have been gullible enough.
Anyway, what happened was that the video was screened, and Sheen
was so shocked and disgusted that he picked up the phone and
reported this diabolical artefact to the FBI.
Probably his friends weren’t too keen on this idea.
“Fucking hell, Sheen, I’ve got coke and crack-ganja pouring out my
eyes and you wanna phone the FBI? What the fuck’s up with you,
anyhow?”
The FBI investigated the flick, and discovered it to be none other
than Guinea Pig 2 – Flower Of Flesh And Blood, a particularly
nasty number, for sure, but as artificial as the noses of most
folks at that motherfucking party.
It maybe didn’t occur to them that probably authentic snuff videos
don’t bother with things like P.O.V shots and so on. I imagine
that if a fella might be in the process of killing somebody, he
doesn’t want to have to bother with tricky editing and the like.
Anyway, it didn’t do much for Charlie Sheen’s credibility, is what
I’m guessing. “Oh fuck, here comes Sheen. Don’t tell him we’re
going to see Candyman, whatever you do. Next thing the fucking
MI5'll be sweeping the theatre.”
What it did do, however, was ensure that a fairly obscure Japanese
straight-to-video horror series became a fairly obscure Japanese
straight-to-video horror series with the added bonus of being the
flick that Charlie Sheen fucked his guts up over. I gotta get me
some of that, thinks various internet people.
Any the hell way.
Following the release of Flower Of Flesh And Blood, the Guinea pig
series took a more surreal approach to the delivery of puke-
inducing messiness. The first two flicks, being the Sheen number
and the first instalment, The Devil’s Experiment, were little more
than exercises in sadism and elaborate SFX. In both, a woman is
kidnapped (first by a bunch a miscreants, then by a maniac in a
samurai outfit), and repeatedly tortured and mutilated for the
duration of the 45 minutes or so running time.
The third flick, however, He Never Dies, was a splatter comedy
about a fella tries again and again to kill himself. Like
Groundhog Day, except with more slashed wrists and less Bill
Murray. It paved the way from more outlandish fare like Android Of
Notre Dam, being a Sci-Fi influenced number that took it’s cues
from Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, dealing with a bunch of
experiments on a dismembered head.
Which brings us to the fourth, Mermaid In The Manhole, being the
subject of this incisive motherfucking critique.
What Mermaid In The Manhole concerns itself with, is being the
story of a painter who takes his inspiration from items he finds
in a stinking, maggot and worm infested sewer, a sewer that used
to be an idyllic river back when he was a youngster. To this end,
the first five seconds of Mermaid… are more unsettling than any
number of motherfucking Cabin Fever’s.
Dig this; before the first damn credit has even hit the screen,
we're blessed with images of utmost putrification and decay,
maggots crawling through all sorts of abandoned filth, and,
especially unnerving, a dead infant lying in the stinking water.
The painter plods through it all, discovers the infant, and next
thing we know he’s busy painting it in his apartment.
By which I mean painting a picture of it, and not making the
actual prop blue or some shit.
To be honest, his paintings are a bit shitty. The Duke would be
inclined to assume that the reason he chooses such eye-catching
imagery for his dabblings is because no motherfucker in their
right mind would glance upon them for a second if it was stuff
like flowers or maybe a nice cathedral. What a shitty looking nice
cathedral, the critics would spit. Best to fling some dead infants
in there, if you want anyone to look at it without laughing
themselves incontinent.
Anyhow, during one of his adventures in the shit-stream, he comes
across no less an item of cryptozoology than a mermaid. Not for
the first time, either, since we discover that he saw her once
before, when he played here as a child. Now, of course, she
doesn't have the gorgeous river to swim around in, and so instead
has to sit in this filth, a horrible infection growing ever-more
disgusting on her chest.
What transpires is that the painter takes the mermaid to his
apartment, keeps her in a bathtub, and proceeds to paint her
portrait. However, the boils and tumours rising from the mystery
infection swiftly begin to cover her entire body (although,
interestingly, not her breasts), and before long all the painter
can do is wait for the boils to explode and then collect the
resultant puss in jars so as he can paint with it. The mermaid
doesn’t want help, she just wants to see the painting completed.
What the fuck this is, is incredibly unpleasant. Worms and maggots
and all manner of crawly things start crawling out of the lumps,
and before long the painter’s down on his knees pulling them out
of her by the handful, aided by some Looney Tunes squishy sound
effects.
It’s enough to make a fella fairly nauseas. Best to wait, though,
if you’re thinking about being sick, since in a second the
mermaid, who by now looks lawsuit-inducingly close to The Toxic
Avenger, starts puking over the edge of the bathtub, bucket-loads
of worms and black spit coughed up over the floor.
What it is, is a bit like Splash, except Tom Hanks finds Daryl
Hannah up to her knees in shit, sitting in a sewer alongside some
dead dogs and babies, and then takes her home, Daryl Hannah
rotting away whilst he pokes her with razor blades and stuff for
to pop the gargantuan tumours swamping her form, but not her
breasts.
“Fucking hell, Daryl Hannah, you look just like The Toxic Avenger
right now. Thankfully, though, I can still see your breasts, clear
as day.”
Anyway, here’s what you might not expect to uncover in a flick
dealing with a mermaid pukes up worms over a bathtub. Mermaid In
The Manhole is a remarkable, utterly brilliant film. However, it’s
also pretty worrying, with regards these points right here;
For one, you could argue that what this is, is nothing more than
an hour’s worth of a woman suffering unimaginable pain, for our
viewing pleasure. I’m not gonna get into the logistics of whether
this is a woman or some kind of fish-fiend (and a cannibalistic
fish-fiend at that, since she seems very fond of a plateful of
salmon), the fact is that she’s heavily sexualised throughout. At
times, her groans and screams are worryingly orgasmic. And there’s
the small matter of her breasts being on display throughout. Even
when you can’t tell her eye from her nostril, you can still see
her breasts, just there, sticking out of the bulbous mass.
And another; The whole endeavour is strikingly nihilistic.
Everything, no matter how beautiful or divine, eventually turns to
shit. Boil-riddled, maggot infested shit, is what we all end up.
Whether its gorgeous rivers, or puppies we used to love, or
mermaids, every damn thing ends up puking out worms in a bathtub.
These assessments, however, in so far as The Duke would assume,
are a bit of the old knee-jerk waltz.
Hideshi Hino previously directed the Sheen-troubler, so chances
are these things right here were his intentions. But all sorts of
intentions end up mangled in the fuck-glands during the process of
creation.
Believe it or not, Joel Schumacher even intended some of his films
to be watchable.
First of all, in so far as “emotions” and such are concerned,
given that it’s barely an hour long, Mermaid In The Manhole ticks
a dizzying number of boxes throughout. It’s nauseating, then it’s
beautiful, it’s kinda funny, then it’s heartbreaking, it’s
intelligent, then it just fills the soundtrack with daft squishes
and so on, it’s thought-provoking, but it’d rather provoke your
last meal to bounce the fuck out of your face. It’s laughable, and
then it presents imagery for a couple seconds that is genuinely
terrifying, and irrationally so. You don’t know why her hair
blowing about her face in slow-motion, complete with reverb-laden
moans on the soundtrack, instills genuine fear, but it does.
There’s also an irony at work, although probably unintentional. It
talks about the decay of society, the transgression of beauty into
filth, whilst at the same time, you could argue should you wish,
it’s a product of that exact degradation.
It talks about disease, obviously, and about a fella’s inability
to cope with the physical decay of someone he loves. We learn that
his wife has disappeared, although we’re not sure, and that she
was suffering from stomach cancer. The ending makes the
metaphorical hoopla pretty clear. The painter is tipped into
madness by his own grief.
If you wanna go ahead and draw parallels with The Motherfucking
Cinema Of Kirsten Dunst, it’s like Eternal Sunshine Of The
Spotless Mind with more maggot-puke. The Painter is like Jim
Carrey’s character, unable to cope with a painful development, and
so regressing into his own head in order to erase all traces of it.
Or something like that. What the fuck, man, it’s a flick about a
motherfucking mermaid puking worms over a tub.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
“Fucking hell, Sheen, I’ve got coke and crack-ganja pouring out my
eyes and you wanna phone the FBI? What the fuck’s up with you,
anyhow?”
The FBI investigated the flick, and discovered it to be none other
than Guinea Pig 2 – Flower Of Flesh And Blood, a particularly
nasty number, for sure, but as artificial as the noses of most
folks at that motherfucking party.
It maybe didn’t occur to them that probably authentic snuff videos
don’t bother with things like P.O.V shots and so on. I imagine
that if a fella might be in the process of killing somebody, he
doesn’t want to have to bother with tricky editing and the like.
Anyway, it didn’t do much for Charlie Sheen’s credibility, is what
I’m guessing. “Oh fuck, here comes Sheen. Don’t tell him we’re
going to see Candyman, whatever you do. Next thing the fucking
MI5'll be sweeping the theatre.”
What it did do, however, was ensure that a fairly obscure Japanese
straight-to-video horror series became a fairly obscure Japanese
straight-to-video horror series with the added bonus of being the
flick that Charlie Sheen fucked his guts up over. I gotta get me
some of that, thinks various internet people.
Any the hell way.
Following the release of Flower Of Flesh And Blood, the Guinea pig
series took a more surreal approach to the delivery of puke-
inducing messiness. The first two flicks, being the Sheen number
and the first instalment, The Devil’s Experiment, were little more
than exercises in sadism and elaborate SFX. In both, a woman is
kidnapped (first by a bunch a miscreants, then by a maniac in a
samurai outfit), and repeatedly tortured and mutilated for the
duration of the 45 minutes or so running time.
The third flick, however, He Never Dies, was a splatter comedy
about a fella tries again and again to kill himself. Like
Groundhog Day, except with more slashed wrists and less Bill
Murray. It paved the way from more outlandish fare like Android Of
Notre Dam, being a Sci-Fi influenced number that took it’s cues
from Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, dealing with a bunch of
experiments on a dismembered head.
Which brings us to the fourth, Mermaid In The Manhole, being the
subject of this incisive motherfucking critique.
What Mermaid In The Manhole concerns itself with, is being the
story of a painter who takes his inspiration from items he finds
in a stinking, maggot and worm infested sewer, a sewer that used
to be an idyllic river back when he was a youngster. To this end,
the first five seconds of Mermaid… are more unsettling than any
number of motherfucking Cabin Fever’s.
Dig this; before the first damn credit has even hit the screen,
we're blessed with images of utmost putrification and decay,
maggots crawling through all sorts of abandoned filth, and,
especially unnerving, a dead infant lying in the stinking water.
The painter plods through it all, discovers the infant, and next
thing we know he’s busy painting it in his apartment.
By which I mean painting a picture of it, and not making the
actual prop blue or some shit.
To be honest, his paintings are a bit shitty. The Duke would be
inclined to assume that the reason he chooses such eye-catching
imagery for his dabblings is because no motherfucker in their
right mind would glance upon them for a second if it was stuff
like flowers or maybe a nice cathedral. What a shitty looking nice
cathedral, the critics would spit. Best to fling some dead infants
in there, if you want anyone to look at it without laughing
themselves incontinent.
Anyhow, during one of his adventures in the shit-stream, he comes
across no less an item of cryptozoology than a mermaid. Not for
the first time, either, since we discover that he saw her once
before, when he played here as a child. Now, of course, she
doesn't have the gorgeous river to swim around in, and so instead
has to sit in this filth, a horrible infection growing ever-more
disgusting on her chest.
What transpires is that the painter takes the mermaid to his
apartment, keeps her in a bathtub, and proceeds to paint her
portrait. However, the boils and tumours rising from the mystery
infection swiftly begin to cover her entire body (although,
interestingly, not her breasts), and before long all the painter
can do is wait for the boils to explode and then collect the
resultant puss in jars so as he can paint with it. The mermaid
doesn’t want help, she just wants to see the painting completed.
What the fuck this is, is incredibly unpleasant. Worms and maggots
and all manner of crawly things start crawling out of the lumps,
and before long the painter’s down on his knees pulling them out
of her by the handful, aided by some Looney Tunes squishy sound
effects.
It’s enough to make a fella fairly nauseas. Best to wait, though,
if you’re thinking about being sick, since in a second the
mermaid, who by now looks lawsuit-inducingly close to The Toxic
Avenger, starts puking over the edge of the bathtub, bucket-loads
of worms and black spit coughed up over the floor.
What it is, is a bit like Splash, except Tom Hanks finds Daryl
Hannah up to her knees in shit, sitting in a sewer alongside some
dead dogs and babies, and then takes her home, Daryl Hannah
rotting away whilst he pokes her with razor blades and stuff for
to pop the gargantuan tumours swamping her form, but not her
breasts.
“Fucking hell, Daryl Hannah, you look just like The Toxic Avenger
right now. Thankfully, though, I can still see your breasts, clear
as day.”
Anyway, here’s what you might not expect to uncover in a flick
dealing with a mermaid pukes up worms over a bathtub. Mermaid In
The Manhole is a remarkable, utterly brilliant film. However, it’s
also pretty worrying, with regards these points right here;
For one, you could argue that what this is, is nothing more than
an hour’s worth of a woman suffering unimaginable pain, for our
viewing pleasure. I’m not gonna get into the logistics of whether
this is a woman or some kind of fish-fiend (and a cannibalistic
fish-fiend at that, since she seems very fond of a plateful of
salmon), the fact is that she’s heavily sexualised throughout. At
times, her groans and screams are worryingly orgasmic. And there’s
the small matter of her breasts being on display throughout. Even
when you can’t tell her eye from her nostril, you can still see
her breasts, just there, sticking out of the bulbous mass.
And another; The whole endeavour is strikingly nihilistic.
Everything, no matter how beautiful or divine, eventually turns to
shit. Boil-riddled, maggot infested shit, is what we all end up.
Whether its gorgeous rivers, or puppies we used to love, or
mermaids, every damn thing ends up puking out worms in a bathtub.
These assessments, however, in so far as The Duke would assume,
are a bit of the old knee-jerk waltz.
Hideshi Hino previously directed the Sheen-troubler, so chances
are these things right here were his intentions. But all sorts of
intentions end up mangled in the fuck-glands during the process of
creation.
Believe it or not, Joel Schumacher even intended some of his films
to be watchable.
First of all, in so far as “emotions” and such are concerned,
given that it’s barely an hour long, Mermaid In The Manhole ticks
a dizzying number of boxes throughout. It’s nauseating, then it’s
beautiful, it’s kinda funny, then it’s heartbreaking, it’s
intelligent, then it just fills the soundtrack with daft squishes
and so on, it’s thought-provoking, but it’d rather provoke your
last meal to bounce the fuck out of your face. It’s laughable, and
then it presents imagery for a couple seconds that is genuinely
terrifying, and irrationally so. You don’t know why her hair
blowing about her face in slow-motion, complete with reverb-laden
moans on the soundtrack, instills genuine fear, but it does.
There’s also an irony at work, although probably unintentional. It
talks about the decay of society, the transgression of beauty into
filth, whilst at the same time, you could argue should you wish,
it’s a product of that exact degradation.
It talks about disease, obviously, and about a fella’s inability
to cope with the physical decay of someone he loves. We learn that
his wife has disappeared, although we’re not sure, and that she
was suffering from stomach cancer. The ending makes the
metaphorical hoopla pretty clear. The painter is tipped into
madness by his own grief.
If you wanna go ahead and draw parallels with The Motherfucking
Cinema Of Kirsten Dunst, it’s like Eternal Sunshine Of The
Spotless Mind with more maggot-puke. The Painter is like Jim
Carrey’s character, unable to cope with a painful development, and
so regressing into his own head in order to erase all traces of it.
Or something like that. What the fuck, man, it’s a flick about a
motherfucking mermaid puking worms over a tub.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
