Film Review: Genki Genki 18

REVIEW:

We all have our limits when it comes to repulsion and disgust. Some people are hardcore gorefiends who are constantly testing their limits, who relax to the Guinea Pig and August Underground films. Others are repulsed by the blood and gore of something as seemingly tame as Gremlins. And most horror fans fall somewhere in between. Myself, I’ve always been more of category A: I haven’t found a level of gore that I couldn’t handle, although all the puking in films like Madness of Many and the Vomit Gore series have certainly done their best to break me. But through it all, I have stood strong. I’ve persevered through the various Italian cannibal films depicting real animal deaths, I’ve seen Bob Flanagan put a nail through his penis, I’ve even found myself mostly unmoved by things like 2 Girls, 1 Cup and the like. And I’ve now been reviewing “extreme” cinema here at Horrornews.net for four years, and not a single film has been “too much” for me. Until now…

Are you familiar with these “genki genki” films? If not, now is your chance to learn (or turn back and read almost ANY other review on the site, which I would almost even recommend). Daikichi Amano calls himself the perverted master of fish and girls, and while some call his photography “art,” he is the first to say no, it’s not art, it’s porn. Now, the thing is, his photos are pretty messed up, lots of nude girls wrapped up, covered in, or in some way surrounded by inhabitants of the sea. Tentacled creatures, eels, fish, snails, frogs, bugs…you name it, they’re in there somewhere. The thing is, in comparison to the output of Amano’s adult film company, Genki Genki, these photos are nothing. They’re tame. The videos are not, and that’s what we’re talking about today.

Genki Genki 18, also known as “The Fish That Has is Crunched and the Wound is Received” (which I can only imagine is a shaky translation from Japanese to English), is about a girl and two dirty, nasty dockworkers (this is an assumption; I don’t know where they work, I just know they haven’t showered recently and have access to a plethora of fish). These aren’t the kind of films that are found on IMDb, so I don’t have the same type of cast and crew information I would normally bring you, but I do know the girl is Rui Miduki. Basically, the two guys have her chained up, they paw at her, chew on her hair, and tear her clothes off, then start rubbing and slapping dead fish on her. These fish are later torn apart, their guts spread all over her, shoved in her mouth, and used as additional lubrication while the guys have sex (or rape?) her. There are money shots on the fish, there are clusters of guts shoved into every orifice, and there are even power tools used toward the end to add to the mess of gore and bodily fluids. And this all goes on for over an hour and a half.

So yeah, there you have it. I have so many questions and absolutely no answers to provide. I have never been one to judge someone else’s kink or fetish, and I still won’t now, but I will probably go out of my way to not see this or any other similarly themed movies any time soon. I guess I just don’t get it, but after doing some research on the internet, it turns out there are quite a few people who do. Although, I do have to admit, I did get a tiny chuckle out of it…this is an upsetting, disturbing, shocking film of rough sex/simulated rape and literal buckets of fish guts, but don’t worry, the scary, offensive genitals are blurred out.