With his sister suffering from a life-threatening disease, a dwarf scientist is struggling in his lab to find the missing link that could make his sister well again. He experiment on animals, but it does not seem to do the trick, eventually a man named Kato calls him up and offers him the body of a 21-year old female corpse. It's a strange offer, but the little scientist accepts in order to save his sister from her ill condition. It doesn't take long before his experiment fails again due to that the corpse was not fresh enough, and to save her he needs a much fresher one, preferably from someone that have just died..
I'm not gonna go as far as to say that I'm a fan of the Guinea Pig series, because that I'm really not. Although I've been somewhat eager to check out every film the series have had to offer, that is except for the sixth one that I've yet to see and hopefully it will be better than this, Android of Notre Dame. What it comes down to with all that is Guinea Pig, is that the series is very hyped, but that has little to really show for. I gotta admit that I really like Mermaid in the Manhole as a proper film, which was the fourth installment, and while the others are all right to watch, don't expect them to be the "worst" you've ever seen because they're really not. I guess that whole rumour with Charlie Sheen hyped the series up quite a bit, but even so, they're just not that extreme.
This is where things really start to go down-hill though for those that have followed the series. Devil's Experiment and Flower Of Flesh And Blood kinda lived up to the hype and are still extremely gory films, even though a lot of things in them just looks too fake. Then there was He Never Dies and after that Mermaid In A Manhole, both of which were quite different from the two previous films, but that provided something new and maybe even more "crazy" (not talking about actual gore, but rather weird stuff.) But this fifth installment sure is a failure as it is not whacky in a good way, nor will it satisfy the gorehounds. To tell you the truth, it's actually quite the snooze-fest and even though it only runs for 51 minutes, the film still feels way too long.
 
Problem with Android of Notre Dame (gotta love the title though) is that even though it tries to be bizarre, it just doesn't come off as being half as bizarre as its two precursors, nor is it as gory as the first two films. It of course has gory scenes to offer, but they're not too many and they do not make you cringe the way you want to, they're simply just there for show, a show you'd regret buying tickets to. It's not all bad and I would say that it has one or two scenes where the humour comes through and works somewhat all right. Problem though is that you have to sit through so much crap inbetween, so when the good stuff finally hits, you're already pretty much bored out of your mind, and so it just slips by somewhat unnoticed.
The production value is not very high and most things look pretty fake, not to mention quite shitty. If it would've had a strong story I'm sure the look of things wouldn't have bothered me much, but even if the story may have worked on paper, on film it was just badly executed. Another thing is that no one in this film is very likable, or even remotely likable for that matter. The scientist it deals with who wants to save his sick sister is just one mess of an actor and it's very hard to take him the least bit seriously. No, this is not working at all, stay away.
Android of Notre Dame may have a few things to offer, but those are so few that in the end of the day, it's not worth the time spent. The whole film felt a bit like an extremely bad parody of Re-Animator where the makers have totally misunderstood all the things they tried to copy.. not saying that they did copy it. Take my advise and run if someone wanna show you this film. If you're a die-hard fan of the series, I guess you wanna check it out and as long as you don't expect anything at all, I guess you'll be fine...once it's over that is.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Za ginipiggu 5: Notorudamu no andoroido
MOVIE YEAR: 1988
DIRECTOR: Kazuhito Kuramoto
WRITING CREDITS: Kazuhito Kuramoto
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Toshihiko Hino, Mio Takaki, Tochirô Taguchi
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 51 min
RATING: 2/10
Guinea Pig 5: Android of Notre Dame Website/IMDB Click here
Guinea Pig 5: Android of Notre Dame Trailer Click here
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