American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore (2014) review

There are some films in this world that exist purely to horrify viewers and force them to question their own sanity and morals. Many of those films are found on the underground of the web and best left there, but it seems more fun to take a shovel to their names and make sure the innocent are corrupted by the macabre, which is why American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore was created.

Two women, mother and daughter, are abducted, and then brutally tortured to death by three men wearing masks and capturing the experience on film. In terms of storyline, there really isn’t much more of a synopsis to be given here, but if you’re familiar with the origins of this film, then you’re already aware that one does not watch a Guinea Pig film for an intelligent and thought-provoking script. This depravity ridden film comes from extreme cinema lover and hero, Stephen Biro, the founder of Unearthed Films, which is the production company best known for keeping the extreme cinema genre alive. Biro is also the sickened producer behind Philosophy of a Knife, the 2008 follow-up to Men Behind The Sun that looked at the horrific experimentations performed on prisoners during WWII. Even some extreme cinema fans are unaware of the inspiration for Biro’s latest endeavour into sadism, which comes from the 1989 Japanese horror film Flowers of Flesh and Blood from the Guinea Pig series. This series is notoriously known for the aforementioned film due to it’s realistic gore scenes, that depict a woman being bound against her will (as is usually the case) to a bed and repeatedly mutilated until her carcass is barely recognisable other than her dismembered limbs and the crimson streams that pour from her. Although totalling a few years to it’s name, Flowers of Flesh and Blood is still just as impactful and brutal as when it was first released in Japan and mistaken by Charlie Sheen as a genuine snuff movie.

Biro’s Bouquet of Guts and Gore is the perfect homage to its inspiration, and even goes further with it’s stomach-churning acts of violence, that may just be some of the worst ever put to film. What Biro does try to do with his version is to add more of a reason behind the butchering, as it seems that audiences often feel a film is lacking in substance when we aren’t given an explanation as to why these men are hacking bodies to pieces… With a film like this, there really isn’t the need for an explanation or added substance – the substance comes from the SFX and pure disturbing content, which is the reason most of us watch a film like this. It’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the satanism aspect and that these men have a producer on their backs for this content, but what more needs explaining other than humans are fucked up and here is a movie that depicts that? The only aspect that adds to the film with this supposed story, is it gives a more realistic feel to the snuff movie take as we see the three men filming the ordeal and giving direction to the Baphomet mask man.

Now let’s follow in the Baphomet’s steps and plunge our fists inside the exposed digestive system of the corpse that is Bouquet of Guts and Gore. The scenes that are presented to the audience in this mind-fucking film are some of the most intense acts of violence, even so much so that it seems  you would have to spend some serious time thinking about how the mechanics of such a severe slaughtering. Both women are subject to the worst of the worst; from degloving an entire leg (which is the act of completely removing the skin from a body part whilst keeping the muscles and tissue intact), seductively fingering eye sockets and brutally breaking through rib cages with the same kind of blunt sheers you’d take to the overgrown hedge in the front garden. It’s like being gang raped in the eyes, and also the ears as one of the most gut-wrenching part is the sound effects of bone being sawn into and teeth being hammered… This film will push your limit. This film is fucking brutal, and that’s the best way to give it a description. It has been some time since the integrity of my stomach has been tried and tested by an extreme film, but there was not a single second within 72 minutes that wasn’t filled with pure barbarity and depravity. 

American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore is going to delight your visceral sense with it’s blood slathered carnage and relentless degradation of the human body in incomprehensible ways. As a homage or a continuation of the Guinea Pig series, it goes above and beyond the expectations to sit alongside one of the most notorious Japanese films in the extreme genre. This film should have gained far more infamy for gore whores, and should be considered a perfect example of how to execute not only the cadaver of human morals, but also a film that considers this subject matter. And the ending will shock you beyond words, but only if you can endure hell itself.

Verdict: 5 out of 5 

Trailer and full film: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/agp/113757102?autoplay=1