‘Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood’ – A Blood-Soaked Masterpiece of Sadistic Artistry

Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (ギニーピッグ2 血肉の華, Ginī Piggu 2: Chiniku no Hana) starts with a warning: “Do not sell this film to anyone under the age of 18 due to the cruelty and brutality in this film.” (You don’t have to sell me. I’m already sold.)

The prologue sets the stage and expectation that what you are about to see is documentarian in purpose and form, similar to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre intro.

“It was in April 1985, the time of full cherry blossoms in Tokyo, bizarre cartoonist Hideshi Hino received one horrible parcel from an unidentified person who calls himself an enthusiastic fan. The parcel contained an 8mm film with 54 still pictures and a 19 page letter. The letter told the cartoonist that a horrible and bizarre crime seemed to have been performed by the person of aesthetic paranoia in some secret place.  The 8mm film was considered to be a vivid and authentic film showing an unidentified man chop the body of a woman into pieces and put her into his collection. Therefore this film should not be shown to other people (reviewer note: like you and me). Hideshi Hino newly created this video as a restructured Semi-Documentary based on the 8mm film, pictures and letter.” 

An assortment of Japanese Girls and Ladies are filmed walking thru Tokyo unaware.  The camera actually blinks at one point as if noting a living point of view. The camera as literal eye.

One lady, in particular, is followed and, well, stalked. First by foot. Then by car. 

Eventually she notices then starts to run in high heels; faster.

He screeches the tires, stopping directly in front of her. He gets out of the car, face obscure enough to not be identified, and runs after her. He smothers her face with some chemical. She is unconscious. Her pink high heel falls off her foot in the struggle and the attacker focuses in on the shoe. The graphic title for Guinea Pig 2 is over a bleached/distorted graphic in Japanese. Only the 2 is discernible without translation which makes it all the more mysterious and menacing back then to Western voyeurs.

A disturbed painting shows a skinned man with tentacles going up his rectum and out of his mouth like a tongue and around his eye ball.

The lady is tied down to a metal framed bed and drugged. She is gagged with a white towel, dressed in an unrevealing black outfit but for a red belt. She looks around and there is blood spatter on the walls in multiple directions and a tiny crate with implements of torture in the corner.

She wriggles but she is bound tight to the bed. A sharpening sound is heard.  The incessant sharpening soon becomes like masturbation in rhythm and ferocity.

We see the sharpener. He is dressed in an authentic Samurai Warrior helmet and uniform.

He slowly looks over at the bound lady; face enshrouded in darkness until…. a sudden zoom in on his powdery white, menacing face. She wriggles harder now but to no result.

The Samurai slaps on the surgical gloves and menaces about with a mini sickle. He grabs a chicken and states “Look! This is your fate!”

He cuts off the chicken’s head. This Samurai’s teeth are blackened in parts as he grimaces. The chicken blood squirts everywhere. He drops the body and the blood oozes out in slow motion. Then he empties some powder in water and stirs by finger and tastes it for potency. Then a syringe is filled with this substance ready to inject into the flailing, crying, bound lady.

He lifts up her skirt, feeling her leg up and injects into her upper thigh. She’s subdued. He removes the gag. Then dabs his finger in her bloody injection spot and tastes her blood on his tongue. He smiles.

Next: shears. He removes her black dress revealing red under garments. Then down to red panties and bra.

Later, still bound, the lady is under a white blanket. The Samurai lifts a poker. Picture a giant corn poker with a handle that looks like a couch leg with only one central prong.  He pokes her and twists it around. She writhes in discomfort despite her medicated state.

The Samurai notes to the camera “She is drugged and feels no pain but rather pleasure instead when stabbed like blossoms of blood.” Ah, the cherry blossom metaphor! “Every stab is a new bloom.” How very Strawberry Fields, but a nice metaphor, given the circumstances.

“There is absolutely nothing more beautiful in life than this. This is an ideal of beauty. First blossoms from her wrist.“

He cuts deeply and bloodily into her wrist; very, highly realistic. He cuts outer skin then inside is the bone and veins that are uncut underneath. It’s about, at this time, that I do not blame Charlie Sheen for freaking out and picking up a phone and calling the FBI to check this video out.

The severed hand grips tightly in rigor mortis. 

The hand is laid down, and it continues to grip on its own.

Samurai proceeds to cut the other hand off at the wrist.

Next blossom: “Severed from shoulders and from her red lips.” 

He then starts to cut her arms off starting with putting his knife into her underarms to remove each arm. The joints require a chisel and hammer to break through. Tap tap tap! Tap tap tap!

The mid-severance of the handless arm is followed up as it twitches uncontrollably and very realistically. Definitely not what a drug addled Charlie Sheen wants to see.

The Samurai lifts the dismembered arm to admire it. The arm socket bleeds out profusely.

Fade to black.

Next: Samurai says, “Last moment is a big flower that emerges around her petal.”

We see the girl with her hands separated from her arms and arms separate from torso. The lady’s body moves around under deep sedation to show the disconnection on full sadistic display.

Now a manual meat saw. None of those gas powdered chainsaw type deals. What fun would that be?

The leg squirms but doesn’t bleed out as much as it really would. But it’s just bloody enough to keep you wondering.

Next chapter: “Now her bowels start dancing…” this might be a mistranslation on the captions. I permitted myself a brief, nervous laugh.

Master shot shows all four limbs removed from body. What next? A scalpel starts cutting into her stomach to disembowel her. He plays with her intestines. He removes all of her internal organs. This couldn’t look realer if they tried. The unfortunate lady spits out blood on the camera and all over her face.

Now a blossom necklace. We have an axe. In slow-motion the cruel Samurai cuts her head clear off. He picks up her head and French kisses it to lick up the blood. He then gently places the head back in its spot in line with the other severed parts. 

He stares at each one of his blossoms at a time and the Samurai’s face exudes, for lack of a better word, pride.

And we end with “the most beautiful part of a woman”, her eyes, which the Samurai handily scoops out of her sockets and kisses and sucks on dementedly.

Later the Samurai enjoys a smoke like after sex. “Finally, blood and flesh blooming perfect flowers. Now I will put them in my collection.”

The Samurai starts to sing like a moaning ghost, a song for the dead, similar to the way the Forest Witch Spirit used the vocal style which is drawn from Japanese Noh theatre, which is a haunting low growl and deep mourning sound to provide an otherworldly chanting effect more precisely called “utai.” We are serenaded by this ‘utai’ as we see his collection including: animal parts, pictures of dismembered bodies, death masks, a funny face skin that was laid out flatly (a tad fake looking), a giant vat with a rotting body, and a mask made out of skin. Then multiple chopped hands in a vat of blood and a maggot farm coming out of other hands arranged in a potted planter with vines. The ‘utai’ continues: “The darkness of hell is boundless. It is a lullaby of hell.” He sings this as maggots eat a human skull and worms eat other random rotting corpses. He then commits another limb to the pool of blood in another vat.

The final scene: we see him stalk another unsuspecting girl. 

The video epilogue suggests there were at least two criminals: the killer and the cameraman. The caption insists police have a secret investigation the details of which will reveal the true killer soon.

Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood Uppers:

What I just saw was a masterpiece. Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood is recommended as a pinnacle, apex achievement amongst all the films reviewed here at Severed Cinema. It is a work of practical craftsmanship and artistry on every level. This is the quintessential underground master class of realism and sadistic cruelty. It is not just the best film of its type in the Guinea Pig series, or just the purest form of its purpose, expression, and execution (pardon the pun), but it is likely the best of its kind in the torture/pseudo-snuff genre as a whole. The tasteful lack of music, but for the final ‘utai’, the fully immersive performances by the Samurai, Hiroshi Tamura, and the victim played by Kirara Yugao, lighting in this dark little corner of reality, the anatomical precision of the practical effects which are still till today the best I’ve ever encountered. So realistic were they that Tokyo Police cited Guinea Pig 2 as being partially responsible for the accuracy and precision of a ‘copycat killer’ Tsutomu Miyazaki (a.k.a. the Otaku Murderer) who abducted and mutilated and murdered four young girls and sexually molested their corpses, according to Wikipedia in addition to the urban legend that Chris Gore provided a copy of Guinea Pig 2 to Charlie Sheen who believed it was real causing the FBI to investigate and interview distributor Charles Balun and even the direct, Hideshi Hino himself. Soon thereafter a ‘Making of’ video was released, and I must say, it is the most bizarre thing ever to see the Samurai and victim laughing together and joking as the graphics experts experiment and practice the effects ahead of time. Absolutely surreal! They are so pleasant and friendly and warm spirited that you must wonder how they were able to flip the switch so drastically when filming began. True believers. (But just for a second, can you imagine if the ‘Making Of’ as well, was all just staged footage as a distraction before the actual murder?) I guess the final determining factor must have been that ‘the victim’ Kirara Yugao was still alive after the filming, granting that it wasn’t just a look alike actress before the similar woman was murdered as a ‘stunt double’. But I digress.

Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood Downers:

That stretched out face on the wall at the end stuck with me as unrealistic flesh. Very rubbery. It’s a shame when you get 99% of a movie looking so real for them to have a rubber mask thrown in at the end as if it was a real face. It was like a cockroach running across a pristine white wall. I mean it had eyeballs. If they just removed the eyeballs, it might have worked but it just was misplaced in that ending and diminished what was otherwise a perfect film. One minor cut and it would have been completely perfect. But this is a very minor downer. Very, very minor.

Otherwise, every element of this film is exactly as it was intended to be. 

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Overall, if you are a fan of torture, gore, sadism and dismemberment, Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood is the film for you. Enjoy and make sure you don’t share this with anyone under 18 due to the cruelty and brutality on display. That is for adults only, don’t you know.

Highest possible recommendation by Severed Cinema.

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AKA: ギニーピッグ2 血肉の華,Ginī Piggu 2: Chiniku no Hana, Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood

Directed by: Hideshi Hino
Written by: Hideshi Hino
Edited by:
Produced by: Satoru Ogura
Cinematography:
Music by:
Special Effects by:
Cast: Hiroshi Tamura, Kirara Yûgao, Anja Blagojevic
Year: 1985
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese (English Subtitles)
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 42min

Studio: Sai Enterprise
Distributor: Midnight 25, Sai Enterprise, Orange Video House, Unearthed Films

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