Watch Guinea Pig: Mermaid in the Manhole For Free

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

A painter takes to visiting the sewers to find inspiration for his art; there he discovers a beautiful but seriously ill mermaid who he takes home and places in a bathtub. As the mermaid's condition grows progressively worse, with tumours spreading all over her body, she implores the artist to make her the subject of his work, using the seven colours of pus from her sores as paint.Bodily fluids; worm vomiting; a dead foetus; graphic dismemberment: Mermaid in a Manhole certainly packs a lot of tasteless imagery into into its 63 minutes, but compared to the sadistic ultra-violence of director Hideshi Hino's earlier Guinea Pig movie, Flowers of Flesh and Blood, this one is a walk in the park: for the most part, Hino replaces realistic gore with messy, multi-coloured goop and absurd, misshapen growths that are too divorced from reality to be truly stomach churning. Even when the mermaid dies and the distraught artist maniacally chops up her body, finding a fully grown dead foetus inside her body, the fantastical nature of the story prevents matters from being too disturbing.That is, at least, until the film's ambiguous ending, which suggests that the mermaid never really existed and that the artist, driven insane through a sense of loss, has actually hacked up his heavily pregnant, terminally ill wife. Now that's a lot nastier than him chopping up a mythical creature, doncha think?

The film's cinematography is done in a way that induces thoughts of soap operas. You know, that "overly polished, but attempting to look like real life" style. It is quite a change from the typical "movie" style that the opening credits are done in. I'll have to give it another watch to see how I really feel about that.The plot of Mermaid in a Manhole is that a lonely man, simply called The Artist, has recently lost his wife and is seeking inspiration for his paintings. His secret place is a sewer which used to be a lush river, whose banks he used to hang out on during his childhood. One day, his beloved pet/animal friend is dead and he frantically seeks to use it (I'm not sure what the animal was, by the way… it looked too big for a rat, but too mangy for much else) as artistic inspiration, when he encounters a mermaid. He becomes enthralled and obsessed with said mermaid, and decides to take her home – you see, she has some sort of funky flesh-eating infection, and he believes he can cure it. Also, by taking her home with him, he can just sit and paint her all day.Mermaid in a Manhole is a very quiet film. I mean that in a couple ways – first, while there is a lot of dialogue in parts, in most parts, there is silence with only the environmental sounds as the backdrop to the scenes. It's quite nice, and adds to the realism that the film was going for. The cast is very small, which also aids to the quiet of the film. In fact, you don't really see more than those four characters until the end.Now, with the above stated, I have to say that the amount of over-acting in this film is astounding. Most of the over-acting comes from The Artist (Shigerui Saiki). The man can overdo it with the best of them. The nosy neighbor does her fair share, as well. The Mermaid (Mari Somei) and The Artist appear to communicate telepathically – actually, The Mermaid appears to do all of her communicating telepathically and hams up her voice-overs just as well as the other two. In fact, I think the only one who doesn't ham it up in this is the boyfriend/husband/brother (their relationship is unclear) of the nosy neighbor – and this is possibly because he has so few lines.Though Mermaid in a Manhole is included in the Japanese splatter library of film, it's really not as gory or disgusting as you would think. Sure, it's not for the weak-stomached, what with its bleeding/worm spewing flesh eating mermaid virus, or the pus paint in seven colors. But, I certainly have seen much worse.If you want something that is extremely cheesy and fairly entertaining, with subtitles, I would recommend it. It's certainly not a bad film, but it definitely isn't good.

A painter finds a mermaid in a sewer. Then she starts to get sick. "Paint me," she insists.There's gore and disturbing scenes, but the story itself seems to have a depth to it. Even if there really isn't much of a story at all. I blame my love for the movie on my psychology degree, and my own dreams. The sewer is the unconscious. He takes the mermaid from the sewer to save her, to make art out of her -- only she's infected. But if she came out of his unconscious, then really, isn't he the one that's infected?There is definitely a sort of Cronenburg, Kafka, "Picture of Dorian Gray" feel to the movie. Repulsive, and yet I couldn't stop watching, even as I squirmed in my seat.Definitely not for everyone, but what's there is powerful -- even though the acting and special effects sometimes make the movie feel more like camp than true horror.

WARNING, may contain minor spoilersI watched this film mainly out of curiosity, given the reputation of the entire Guinea Pig series, and I must say that I am a bit disappointed. While I started really hoping to get totally sick, I wind up laughing at the screen halfway. The problem is that it is very easy to see pass the supposed blood and gore see paint and plastic. I can literately feel the little plastic hoses that squirt out those multi-coloured paint from the puss. When the mermaid's face is deformed by the disease, the face looked more like a plastic mask glue on the actress than something supposedly revolting. And it is obvious that the actress never did put the worms in her mouth, since you never actually see her barfing them out (the camera pans down away from her face at that point). It's really just a clever camera trick.But it isn't for the lack of trying. That are some genuinely shocking moments in the film, such as when the artist discovered what was inside the mermaid when he chopped up the mermaid after she died. So I am not saying that the film is not disgusting, but I found the low-budget and dated special effects to be laughable.Story-wise I did like that the film is short and not overly complicated. Obviously the main drawing point is the gore, but there's a pretty decent story as well about lost love, and life in general. And The ending just added an extra layer of mysteriousness into the mix, leaving the viewer thinking just what exactly has transpired.I still haven't figured it all out myself.