IT CAME FROM JAPAN! Android of Notre Dame (1988)

Guinea Pig: Android of Notre Dame is probably the LEAST horrific entry in the series.

Revisiting Android of Notre Dame, the gentlest and most sensitive of the infamous Guinea Pig movies …

Android of Notre Dame is the fifth entry in the notorious Guinea Pig series. If you’ve never heard of the Guinea Pig films before, oh boy, this might take a while.

There are officially six entries in the franchise, which doesn’t have an overlapping story or chronology. The first two entries — 1985’s Devil’s Experiment and Flower of Flesh and Blood — are straight up gorno puke-fests about women being tortured and vivisected — and are largely considered unwatchable garbage that feel more like special effects demo tapes than actual movies. The films ALLEGEDLY inspired the infamous Japanese child murderer Tsutomu Miyazaki, with Charlie Sheen (yes, THAT Charlie Sheen) going as far to contact the FBI after thinking Flower of Flesh and Blood depicted a REAL on-camera homicide.

The next four entries, thankfully, take a different direction. He Never Dies and Mermaid in a Manhole veer off into more phantasmic territory, telling weirdo stories with tongue-in-cheek humor and even manage to convey a little emotion. By the time the series got around to Android of Notre Dame, it had become something of a culturally distaff Tales From The Crypt, only with WAY more nudity, grossout gore and bizarre sexual depravity.

Android of Notre Dame is helmed by director Kazuhito Kuramoto. Some websites say it came out in 1988, others say it came out in 1989. Regardless, it feels late 1980s Japan as hell, and that’s obviously a compliment.

The title is a bit of misnomer. Yes, there is an android in the movie (in fact, it’s the central character of the film), but it DOESN’T take place in Notre Dame. No, it’s set in then-modern day Japan, replete with all of the delightful consumer ephemera of the day. Do you know how happy I was when I saw that translucent plastic landline phone with all of the glowing interior parts?

As for the story, well, it kinda has one. You see, there’s this mad scientist who has a whole bunch of equipment up in his suspiciously lavish laboratory and he’s trying to drum up a miracle cure for his dying sister. Now, what she’s dying from is never made explicitly clear, so let’s just say it’s the same thing that killed Ali MacGraw in Love Story.

Of course, our mad but well-intentioned scientist guy need a couple of guinea pigs of the human variety to test out his miracle cures and what do you know, they don’t go very well. I don’t want to get TOO graphic describing what goes awry, but let’s just say this is the kind of movie where up-close shots of a dude pulling the ears, eyeballs and tongues out of corpses are actually some of the LEAST gross moments of the film.

We keep waiting for the big Tales From The Crypt style twist and sure enough, we get it when the corrupt salaryman type who inexplicably has a back-up supply of fresh bodies gets his legs cut out from under him — and no, I don’t mean that metaphorically — before becoming the NEXT guinea pig subject.

Saying much more about the movie kinda spoils the fun, but rest assured, there is some CRAZY stuff going on in this one. It’s about as darkly comedic as something can get without becoming unrelenting, humorless horror, to the point it makes stuff like Re-Animator and Dead Alive look like Marx Brothers movies. The special effects, of course, are downright fantastic and stomach-churning to the nth degree. Thankfully, there’s a bit more playfulness to this one, as the bulk of the mayhem is hoisted upon an unfeeling character who probably deserves everything he gets. Apologies to the late, great Dolly Parton, but this movie pretty much IS 9 to 5, if it was directed by Clive Barker or something.

Not that I even need to say this, but a movie like this is not for all tastes. It’s weird beyond description and gross as all hell, but it’s not without a LITTLE charm. The aesthetics of the film definitely make you nostalgic for the era and even at its grossest the film still has a surreal, borderline cartoonish naivety to it. It’s a sick movie, but it’s not a mean-spirited sick movie. And that makes all the difference.

I guess you could say it’s a guilty pleasure. The entire movie is less than an hour, so even if you don’t like it the flick moves along at a brisk pace and never overstays it welcome. As far as the Guinea Pig series goes, this is probably the most accessible and approachable, which speaks volumes about just how disturbing and nihilistic the REST of the series is. As far as extreme horror goes, this is a pretty good test of judgment — if you can sit through this one without puking, you’re probably ready to venture down the septic tank and try out some of the OTHER arthouse horror gorno anti-classics of the era. And if Android of Notre Dame proves too much for your stomach to handle? Well, you can always watch Halloweentown again or something.