The first film in the series, Guinea Pig: Devil’s Experiment has a “plot” that can be easily summarized as “three men torture a woman for forty-three minutes.”
Typically, anthology films will feature a common theme or wraparound story and in this case, Mexico Barbaro uses Mexican folklore as a unifying factor for the segments.
Yes, the insane premise of 964 Pinocchio (a.k.a Screams of Blasphemy) does certainly hold a lot of potential for a Tetsuo-style journey into another gloriously bizarre living nightmare.
The most important thing however, is to keep the elements that made the original film work in the first place, which Aja has done while infusing it with his own style of gorgeous brutality.
Writer/director Richard Powell takes a surreal approach to the story, clearly influenced by the kind of body-horror featured in Cronenberg’s most seminal work.
Now, despite all the negative complaints I’ve leveled against the film, I do have to say that as far as the viewing experience goes, the film is actually quite watchable.
