Story:
There isn't really much of a story to speak of in this
film. It poses as a "documentation" found
by someone, with text scrolling at the beginning to
explain it. It cites that the following video was created
by three unknown men, and contains a woman being tortured
in order to test the limitations of pain. Then, after
the film, we find out that the names of both the three
men and the victim have never been discovered. So in
reality, it's a fake snuff film. At least it doesn't
pretend to be more than that.
Review: Popping in this disc, I could feel
the sweat trickle off of my face and hit the ground,
echoing like an anvil drop in a deserted valley. I
was expecting the worst, but for the sake of loyal
KFCC readers, I strapped myself into my iron chair,
and fastened the eye-pryers for 42 minutes of hell...
"Devil's Experiment" is the first in the
controversial Japanese "Guinea Pig" series.
Eschewing any form of story, it is 42 minutes of three
mysterious Japanese men torturing a helpless woman.
From the get go you should be able to tell if this
is your bag or not, but I will press on.
The film is divided into segments, each one detailing
a different form of torture and severe pain inflicted
on the woman. It starts off simple enough, with the
first two sections being titled "Hit" and
"Kick" respectively. It's easy to guess
what goes on in these portions, but for the slower
to draw, the woman gets slapped in the face a couple
hundred times, then kicked while writhing on the floor
and being yelled at. Nothing too severe. At this point,
I realized I was surely up to the task at hand, and
bravely pushed myself forward.
One of the next sections is the most ultimately hilarious
of all. Titled "Unconscious", it shows the
woman being strapped to a chair and spun around 200
times, stopping periodically to be force fed a healthy
swig of Whiskey. Uncontrollable laughter dominated
these few minutes, and I felt great! "This movie
is weak, nothing gross at all!" I chuckled to
myself, while forcing my own healthy swig of Jack
Daniel's down.
So without going through the remainder of the segments
in detail, for the sake of the 5 readers who will
see this film after reading this, I'll run down some
highlights. There's boiling water, worms being thrown
on the wounds, torture by decibel levels and a group
of giggling men tossing guts at the woman. The best
effects come at the end, however. With a notoriously
realistic "needle" segment. Not much more
needs to be said on that one, but it is one of the
few parts that had me yelling, "That's real!"
I can say the film is partially successful in at
least conveying the feel of a "fake" snuff
video, but it didn't explore enough on the limitations
of pain. I didn't feel the sense of urgency in the
female. It seemed too routine. Like, "First we
will hit you, then we will kick you, then we will...",
you get the picture.
While all of this is good and fun, none of it really
constitutes a film worth recommending to anyone. I
can't say I was shocked, and the violence wasn't a
problem to me in the least (though it's safe to say
it WILL offend some). While some people are very adamantly
against this type of film, and others will defend
the series to the death, I fall in neither category.
My indifference to the film really stems from the
fact that I found it to be dreadfully boring. For
the sake of this review, I resisted hitting the fast
forward button numerous times. As much as I wanted
to enjoy it for what it was, there simply isn't much
entertainment to be found here. Good for a laugh one
time through, then afterwards enjoy the bittersweet
memories...
