Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment is a 1985 Japanese found footage horror film written and directed by Satoru Ogura, notorious for its incredibly graphic violence.
The film is presented under the In-Universe guise of being a real recording that was sent to Ogura on tape several years prior to its release, as is explained in its opening text. The tape shows three men having kidnapped a woman, who they then subject to absolutely vicious torture under the purported goal of measuring the human pain threshold and seeing how much suffering she could tolerate before dying.
This film has 5 sequels, a 1991 Clip Show of the goriest scenes, and a 4-film Spin-Off series made in the US.
- Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985)
- Guinea Pig: He Never Dies (1986)
- Guinea Pig: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988)
- Guinea Pig: Android of Notre Dame (1988)
- Guinea Pig: Devil Woman Doctor (1990)
- Guinea Pig: Slaughter Special (1991)
- American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore (2014)
- American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock (2015)
- American Guinea Pig: The Song of Solomon (2017)
- American Guinea Pig: Sacrifice (2017)
The film series garnered a good deal of controversy in its day because of its violence. Several of the films are suspected to have influenced Serial Killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, a.k.a. the Otaku Murderer, whose murders led to a moral panic against otaku in Japan similar to the Satanic Panic in America. The second film of the series in particular, Flower of Flesh and Blood, was famously mistaken for a Snuff Film by Charlie Sheen and reported to the authorities, which earned the movie in question a fair share of notoriety.
The 1990 film Lucky Sky Diamond is sometimes grouped with the series as Guinea Pig 7, despite having no "official" connection to the other Guinea Pig films.
This film contains examples of:
- The Bad Guy Wins: See Downer Ending
- Big Bad Duumvirate: The torturers who kidnap Yegg are a group of three men.
- Bunker Woman: Yegg is trapped in a house by sadists who want to see how much pain she can take.
- Direct Line to the Author: According to the Opening Scroll, the director found the film years ago and decided to release it to the public.
- Denser and Wackier: The Sequels He Never Dies and Devil Woman Doctor are Black Comedy films rather than straight horror movies.
- Downer Ending: The film ends with Yegg's presumably-dead body hanging from a tree in a bag, and the men getting off scot-free. There is a slight Hope Spot in a text scrawl stating the text is under investigation, but nothing comes of it due to the sequels having no plot connection.
- Eye Scream: The final experiment is one of the men slowly shoving a needle through Yegg's eye.
- Fingore: The third experiment involves Yegg having her knuckle skin twisted with a pair of pliers. The sixth has her fingernails being ripped off.
- Gorn: Surprisingly little for a Torture Porn, with there being very little blood barring a few experiments. That said, there are scenes that feature closeups of maggots eating flesh, the eighth experiment has the men throwing animals guts on Yegg while she sleeps and the final one has a Gross-Up Close-Up of Yegg's eye being stabbed with a needle.
- Loud of War: The fifth experiment has Yegg forced to listen to a piercing shriek for 20 hours.
- Messy Maggots: The seventh experiment has Yegg's flesh burned and maggots placed on the wounds.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The first experiment has the men hitting Yegg a hundred times with various objects. The second is them doing similar, but with kicking.
- No Name Given: While the victim is named Yegg, the torturers are never identified.
- No Plot? No Problem!: The film presents itself as experiment footage, so narrative isn't really a concern.
- Sadist: The three unnamed men abduct a random woman and gleefully torture her so they can test the limits of human pain.
- Torture Porn: The film's based entirely around a bunch of sickos torturing a woman to test the limits of pain.
- Torture Technician: The antagonists are a group of men torturing a woman to test the human body's pain limits.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The fourth experiment, which involves spinning Yegg hundreds of times, ends when she vomits everywhere.
