American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore (2015)

Too much of everything

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I haven't watched a single original guinea pig film. Reading the synopsis for these films was more than enough for me, due to them having no real story. I stumbled upon this and my curiosity got the best of me . So this film is four guys dismembering two girls while filming a snuff film. Now where to begin ? The film is shot on bad quality vhs cameras to give the illusion of a snuff film except it shows the people actually filming this snuff film so the illusion is lost immediately. The acting is terrible, porn quality, as you would expect . The jokes are unfunny. The girls are being injected with lsd so they don't react at all and all you are left with is 90 minutes of some guys exercising in special , gore effects. Having the victims not reacting takes any shock element away from the film but considering the level of "acting" we could expect from these girls maybe that's a blessing. The film is also too long, at least the Japanese films knew how to keep things short , this drags on for what seems like an eternity.Oh and there's a "shocking" ending with a cute baby crying and a kid, obviously having the time of his life being in a movie and all, that we are supposed to be repulsed with because these buffoons are supposed to slaughter them for their next , more extreme , snuff film. Seriously guys , the Italians did it much better in the late seventies/early eighties. You had a guy eating his intestines in anthropophagus, necrophilia and gore in beyond the darkness, a girl puking her insides in city of the living dead and so on and so on. Of course these films had a disturbing story too while this 90 minutes "film" will test your patience. For curious people that can stomach gore effects and have a lot of time in their hands only.

As has been stated in pretty much every review for this movie it is vile, disgusting, disturbing... I didn't even want to watch it actually, but I forced myself through it. Just so I could get it out of my queue. I have a huge backlog of horror movies that I want to watch and alphabetically this one was first... First of all there is no plot whatsoever in this movie. Thank god! I loathe to think that If they actually went through the trouble of giving the victims some personality where you might have felt sorry for them. As it was I don't even recall knowing their names until the very end.Anyway since this movie is basically all about the special effects and I am really not an expert on them, I am just a viewer. I thought the limbs being sawed through on the first victim looked pretty good. I'm more of a tool guy so I believe the saws he used would not have sawed through bone very well. When he cut the eyeball I was totally sick to my stomach because eyeball gore always gets to me. Although I really don't think an eyeball would ooze a clear liquid. Also not that I would want the movie to be any worse, but I think the paralysis drug and LSD to make them total vegetables through the whole movie was kind of lame. It's basically an autopsy on a living person, but they might as well be dead... I don't know. If the girls got to scream, beg for their lives, or you know act a little bit this movie would have been infinitely more disturbing.As for the second victim, I wasn't very impressed by her being skinned. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine skin doesn't just peel off like a banana peel. The second victim also just seemed very rushed to me... Not that I wanted this movie to be any longer...One final observation... I was kind of amused at the one guy with the resistance mask constantly berating the bull headed masked guy. "Start on the left, always on the left." During the clothing removal. Then once the torture begins this was all tossed out of the window as he always seemed to begin on the right...I would have given this movie 3 stars if a cop came in at the end and shot all three of these guys in the head and then proceeded to vomit in the corner after viewing the horrible scene. Nope this movie gives you one minute of a baby crying instead as if the movie really needed to be any more disturbing...

In 1991, actor Charlie Sheen contacted the FBI after watching Japanese gore-fest Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985), convinced that what he had seen was a genuine snuff movie; the bureau's investigation was eventually dropped after the makers of the film demonstrated that the on-screen dismemberment of a woman that had so shocked Sheen was nothing more than a impressive display of special effects.American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore sees Stephen Biro of Unearthed Films teaming up with make-up expert Marcus Koch to go one better than the infamous Japanese splatter classic by depicting an even more disturbing display of human butchery—the systematic physical destruction of not one, but two women by a gang of sadistic film-makers, who record every last nauseating detail on film and VHS tape.Bouquet of Guts and Gore starts with the abduction of the unfortunate females by a gas-mask wearing weirdo hiding on the back seat of their car. The action then cuts to a makeshift studio where the women—now strapped to operating tables—are revived, injected with a neuromuscular blocking agent and given a dose of LSD, after which their outer garments are removed. Twenty two minutes into the film and the gory stuff finally begins, Koch and his special effects team pulling out all the stops to make the on-screen torture and butchery as convincing as possible.The first victim (the one on the left… always start on the left!) has her hand removed, followed by a foot and then the leg at the knee. The second leg proves to be more of a challenge, the bone requiring some serious effort. An arm comes off next. The head provides some particularly revolting moments, with a spot of Un Chien Andalou-style eyeball trauma and the administration of an extreme 'Chelsea Smile' using a saw. The torturer then disembowels his victim, bleeds her out by removing the tourniquets from her stumps, and then cuts out her heart.The second girl has the skin stripped from both arms, the flesh peeled off her legs, and her chest opened up. A lump hammer is used to smash in her teeth and a cigarette is stubbed out in her eye, the guy pushing his thumb deep into the socket for good measure. The woman's rib-cage is then snipped away with bolt-cutters to reveal her heart still beating (how these women remain alive during such trauma is one of my minor bugbears—but more of that in a mo). The finishing move this time is a frenzied slashing of the neck with a sharp knife (followed by a little chainsaw action).As extreme horror movies go, this is definitely amongst the most gruelling I've seen, Marcus Koch's stomach churning effects ensuring a satisfyingly gruesome time for anyone brave enough to watch. Stephen Biro's direction is in keeping with the original Guinea Pig movie, capturing the horror in a suitably matter-of-fact, in-your-face manner. If I can find any faults with the film, it's that the action becomes a little repetitive at times (amputate the left leg, amputate the right leg, skin the left arm, skin the right arm etc.), some of the performances are a little ropey (there's a touch too much dialogue for my liking), and, as I've already mentioned, it's hard to believe that the women would stay alive for as long as they do under the circumstances (pseudo-snuff needs to be believable to be truly effective).Despite these issues, I have no qualms about rating this sick little splatter flick 8 out of 10 for being so amazingly bloody and ballsy, and wonder whether the makers dare go where they threaten with the final scene. Only a sequel will tell.

I was fortunate enough to have a chance at reviewing this film. I sat in a dark room eagerly awaiting the brutality to begin. It was delivered in spades. This is a cold and heartless work of seething hatred. Two victims are utterly destroyed in gruesome detail. "Graphic gore" just isn't enough to describe it. The masterful FX work by Marcus Koch is perfectly captured with vintage equipment via James VanBebber. For a first time director, Stephen Biro brings the pain. Its a feast of agony and suffering. I hope you're hungry. If you are into the original GP series, you'll be right at home viewing this one. If you are a sick and twisted fiend for gore, do yourself a favor and watch this as soon as possible. If you are curious bystander, just know what you're getting into.