After making his directorial debut with American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore (link to review), Stephen Biro (leader of the extreme label Unearthed Films), expertly writes and directs his second feature film viz. American Guinea Pig: The Song of Solomon, bringing to the screen an incredible extreme gore version on exorcism.
American Guinea Pig: The Song of Solomon made its European premiere today, December 2, along with American Guinea Pig: Sacrifice, during the final evening of the The Optical Theatre Film Festival. The two films were presented by Italian screenwriter Antonio Tentori.
Outside the standards of the filmography belonging to the exorcism strand, American Guinea Pig: The Song of Solomon is a seductive heap of horrors and impiety, a demonic shell in which religion, faith and goodness are bent by evil with terrifying consequences.
Always respecting the extreme style of the saga, The Song of Solomon shows off truculent and magnificent practical effects, crafted by the expert hands of Marcus Koch (effects designer and director of the second installment of the saga i.e. American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock) and Jerami Cruise.
The splatter/gore spectacle begins with a self-swallowing during a prayer to God and then continues in bloodbaths with self-harm and injuries of all kinds (eyeball extractions, regurgitated viscera, snapping limbs, slashed wrists...) until it reaches an exasperated battering of the flesh.
Canadian actress and director Jessica Cameron gives voice and body to the possessed woman, giving the audience a valuable performance that frames her in a constant, murky state altered by possession. A generator of discord and propagator of conflict, this handmaiden of evil clouds the minds of those around her, destroying any glimmer of faith and leading her victims to commit self-damaging and desecrating acts in the name of the Devil.
Around her, a group of priests (well played by Jim Van Bebber, Gene Palubicki, David E. McMahon and Scott Gabbey) slump, weak, succumbing to the darkness.
In this sacrilegious march toward the defeat of the Christian religion, attempts at exorcism thus fail miserably by elevating American Guinea Pig: The Song of Solomon To bloody hymn to blasphemy.
The influences are. The House and The Exorcist but also Stephen Biro's passion for demonology, theology, and the struggle between good and evil, themes also covered in his books Hellucination, Dialogue With the Devil and Satan Reborn.
Plot: Mary (Jessica Cameron) becomes the target of demonic forces following the death of her father. As the Church tries to save an innocent soul from devastating demonic possession, famine, drought and chaos are the first signs of the end of the world. The coming of Christ is still far off because, before him, the Antichrist will have to reign over the earth for seven consecutive years. This is the true nature of Solomon's song: to give the world what it has been waiting for for a long time, namely, Evil.
In the cast: Jessica Cameron (An Ending, Mania, Save Yourself), Jim Van Bebber (The Manson Family, Homewrecked), Andy Winton and Gene Palubicki (previously seen in AGP: Bloodshock), Scott Gabbey (AGP: Bouquet of Guts and Gore), Maureen Allisse (The Manson Family, Roadkill), David McMahon, Josh Townsend, and Stephen Biro himself as the protagonist's father.
