Movie From the Past - Guinea Pig 5 : Mermaid in a Manhole - 1988

Guinea Pig: Mermaid in a Manhole (ギニーピッグ マンホールの中の人魚, Ginī Piggu: Manhōru no Naka no Ningyo) is a 1988[1][18][19] film written and directed by Hideshi Hino, based again on his horror manga works.[17][20] Sources differ on whether it is the fourth or sixth film in the series.[1][15][20] In a 2009 interview with Vice, Hino said that he had "nothing to do with" the fourth Guinea Pig film,[5] implying that he does not consider Mermaid in a Manhole to be the fourth entry in the series. However, Stephen Biro, co-founder of the home video distribution company Unearthed Films, listed Mermaid in a Manhole as the fourth film in the series.[1] In his book The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films, Salvador Jimenez Murguía claims that it was "the sixth Guinea Pig film to be produced, although it was released fourth."[19]

The plot of Mermaid in a Manhole follows an artist who has become estranged from his wife. One day while visiting the sewers beneath the streets of Okinawa, he encounters a mermaid that he had once met as a child.[20] After noticing that she has boils growing on her body, the artist offers to help her, and brings the mermaid to his house to continue illustrating her. Over time, her illness gets worse, and eventually she begins suffering the symptoms of a horrendous infestation in which countless worms of various sizes burst out of the boils on her body. On the verge of death, she begs the artist to kill her, and he does, stabbing her to death then dismembering her body. Later, the artist's two neighbours, who were intrigued by what the artist had been doing after one of them found a fish head in the trash, go to investigate, but flee after they come across the artist holding the pieces of the mermaid while listlessly singing about her death.