Another daft entry in the extremely gory Japanese Guinea Pig series, The Android of Notre Dame sees a demented dwarf scientist attempting to discover a way to save his terminally-ill sister.
When a mysterious stranger contacts the little guy offering to sell him a female body for use as a 'guinea pig', it looks as though he might be on the verge of a breakthroughbut he botches the experiment and, in a fit of rage, mutilates the corpse (repeatedly stabbing it in the chest with a scalpel).
Soon after, the stranger turns up on the wee fellow's doorstep, once again offering a corpse in exchange for money. This time, however, the scientist decides not to pay for his next cadaverkilling the visitor instead (by removing his legs with a buzz-saw booby trap), and using his re-animated severed head in a series of tests.
Eventually, the girlfriend of the dead guy comes looking for her beau, but also becomes a victim of the dwarf, thus providing him with a suitable body into which he can finally transplant his sister's 'consciousness'.
A rather tongue-in-cheek effort, Android of Notre Dame is far removed from the first two Guinea Pig movies, which attempted to be as nasty and as realistic as possible: this one features lots of hokey gore and unconvincing surgical procedures (including a particularly messy scene featuring rough 'n' ready rib removal) which make it a fairly entertaining experience for those who like their horror rather twisted and laden with blood, but not in the least bit disturbing.
As far as I am concerned, mad dwarfs, gratuitous violence and naked women always make a film watchable, so I wouldn't consider AOND to be a complete waste of 51 minutes, but those expecting anything quite as horrific as Flowers of Flesh and Blood (Guinea Pig 2) will be rather disappointed.
