The Guinea Pig Affair: Charlie Sheen’s Brush With the FBI

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
It should almost go without sayingthat someone such as myself who loves
Halloween also loves horror movies.
In fact, I used to do a podcast thatfocused exclusively on horror films,
particularly the Forgotten Obscurities.
And every horror fan that's interested inthe esoteric side of the genre eventually
becomes aware of the Guinea Pig series.

(00:36):
Their reputation precedes them.
They're often mentioned assome of the most depraved
films ever committed to tape.
The Guinea Pig series has an aura aboutit, and over the years it has developed
an almost urban legend quality to it.
To the point that it becomes difficultto separate fact from myth and rumor.

(00:57):
Much of the information floatingaround about these films is inaccurate,
and while the oft repeated loreof the Guinea Pig films may be
titillating, how much of it...
Is actually true.
Welcome to Mount Mole Hill.
A place where even the smallestmysteries become mountains.
I'm Chris and this week I'm delvinginto some of the controversies

(01:20):
surrounding the guinea pig horror films.
This story involves copycat killers,famous Hollywood actors, snuff films, the
FBI, and a healthy dose of hobby drama.
The guinea pig films.
Are they real snuff films?
Did they inspire real murders?
And did a phone call from CharlieSheen launch an FBI investigation?

(01:43):
Let's make a mountainout of this molehill.
This whole thing startedwith one man, Satoru Ogura.
Ogura set out to make a seriesof films that would push
the boundaries of bad taste.
He wanted to create the most vilefilms imaginable, and decided that the

(02:04):
best way to do that would be to createa series of simulated snuff films.
Ogura has no credits to his nameon IMDb prior to Guinea Pig, so
presumably the start of the series isthe start of Ogura's career in film.
After wrapping pre production for thefirst entry in the series, 1985's Devil's
Experiment, Ogura approached horrorHino, author of Hell Baby and Panorama

(02:31):
of Hell, seeking a collaboration.
Hino was impressed with Ogura'sideas and quickly wrote a script
for the second film in the series,1985's Flower of Flesh and Blood.
The first two entries werefilmed back to back in 1985.
Devil's Experiment, directed byOgura and distributed by Orange Video

(02:52):
House, was released in 1985, andsold very well on the video market.
The Hino directed Flower of Fleshand Blood was released soon after
to capitalize on the success ofDevil's Experiment, and to keep
the guinea pig momentum going.
The runaway success of Devil's Experimentis due not only to its effects, which

(03:12):
are quite convincing even today, But alsobecause of its simulated snuff aesthetic.
The original release of Devil's Experimenthad no opening titles, no credits,
and nothing else that would otherwiseidentify it as a commercial production.
The marketing material claimedthat Devil's Experiment was
in fact an actual snuff film.

(03:34):
And the commercial viability of thesetapes was immediately apparent as Flower
of Flesh and Blood was a top ten videostore bestseller in Japan during the
first two months after its release.
This isn't just among straightto video films either.
Flower of Flesh and Blood was evenoutselling most of the major Hollywood
releases for two months in a row in Japan.

(03:57):
After the release of Flower of Fleshand Blood, the guinea pig videos
began to take a new direction.
The third installment, 1986's HeNever Dies, directed by Masayuki
Kusumi, was still extremely violent,but it eschewed the pseudo snuff
feel of the first two installmentsfor a more traditional narrative.

(04:17):
And even introduced comedy into the mix.
He Never Dies, along with the release ofa behind the scenes making of documentary
soon after, put to rest any lingeringconcerns in Japan over whether or not
Devil's Experiment and Flower of Fleshand Blood were authentic snuff films.
The Guinea Pig series continuedto find success with the release

(04:39):
of the fourth installment, 1986'sDevil Woman Doctor, written by
Ogura and directed by Hajime Tabe.
And an accompanying featureon the making of the film.
Devil Woman Doctor is by far the mostcomedic entry in the Guinea Pig series.
Devil Woman Doctor is often listedas being the sixth installment in
the series and it is even listedas such on the Wikipedia page

(05:02):
for the Guinea Pig franchise.
Where it's placement in the series isswapped with 1988's Mermaid in a Manhole.
And Devil Woman Doctor is erroneouslylisted as having a 1990 release date.
This likely stems from someincorrect information on the
now defunct guinea pig films.
com site that claimed to havereceived production information on

(05:24):
the series from producers in Japan.
Which listed the production datefor Devil Woman Doctor as 1990.
Based on my research,this cannot be the case.
For one thing, the Orange VideoHouse release of Devil Woman
Doctor is distinctly labelednumber 4 on the box art.
There are also some statements made bydirector Hideshi Hino, which we will get

(05:47):
into in a moment, that further supportDevil Woman Doctor as the fourth entry.
After the release of Devil Woman Doctor,the rights to the series were sold
by Orange Video House to Japan HomeVideo, and again, things get murky.
Japan Home Video did not continueto number the entries in the Guinea
Pig series, so there is a bit ofconfusion regarding the fifth and sixth

(06:10):
films, Android of Notre Dame 1988.
But Android of Notre Dame didnot get released until 1989.
Android of Notre Dame is often calledGuinea Pig 5, but that likely comes
from the confusion about Devil WomanDoctor's placement as the sixth entry.

(06:33):
My copy of Android of Notre Dame hasthe number 5 during the title sequence,
but it's unknown to me if that sametitle appeared on the original VHS.
Whatever the case, Android of NotreDame, written and directed by Kazuhito
Kuramoto, and Mermaid in a Manhole,written and directed by Hideshi
Hino, would be the last two properreleases in the Guinea Pig series.

(06:56):
Both of these films continued thedeparture from the roots laid down by
Devil's Experiment and Flower of Fleshand Blood, and employed a mixture of
traditional narrative and extreme gore.
Up to this point, the guineapig films had achieved a lot of
underground notoriety, but wererelatively unknown to the mainstream.
This all changed when the filmsbecame linked to a series of

(07:19):
brutal child murders in Japan.
On July 23rd, 1989 Twenty sixyear old Tsutomu Miyazaki was
arrested after abducting a smallgirl in a park, convincing her to
strip nude, and photographing her.
When Tokyo police searched Miyazaki'sapartment, they found evidence

(07:40):
linking Miyazaki to the murdersof four girls between the ages of
four and seven from August 1988.
to June 1989.
They also found 5, 736videotapes containing hentai,
anime, and horror films.
Among those tapes, allegedly,was Flower of Flesh and Blood.

(08:03):
The otaku murders, as they would cometo be called, otaku being a negative
Japanese term for people with obsessiveinterests, Created a moral panic in Japan.
There was a public outcry and manyin the media opined that the violent
movies that Miyazaki consumed,such as the Guinea Pig films, were
responsible for creating a monster.

(08:24):
The Tokyo Metropolitan Governmentconsidered putting restrictions on
the entertainment industry due to thehigh profile of the Otaku murders.
But ultimately, this did not come to pass.
It is also often claimed that Miyazakiwent as far as to re enact one of the
murders seen in Flower of Flesh andBlood, but in an interview with Vice in

(08:45):
2009, Hideshi Hino put these rumors torest, saying, A video from the Guinea
Pig series was discovered in his room.
But it was Guinea Pig 4, avideo I had nothing to do with.
This statement clarifies a fewthings about the Guinea Pig series.
First, it establishes that Mermaid ina Manhole is not the 4th entry since

(09:05):
we know that Mermaid was written anddirected by Hino, and here he is saying
he had nothing to do with Guinea Pig 4.
Second, it establishes that none of thereal life otaku murders were reenactments
of the guinea pig films because none ofMiyazaki's crimes match up with the events
depicted in Devil Woman Doctor, the onlyguinea pig film found in his collection.

(09:29):
The unwanted notoriety of theguinea pig series resulting from the
Miyazaki case caused a Japan HomeVideo to halt the impending release
of the seventh entry in the series.
The film, Lucky Sky Diamond, waseventually released in 1990, albeit
without the guinea pig label.
Once again, Satoru Ogura served asproducer, and the film was written and

(09:52):
directed by Izo Hashimoto, and followsthe tone of the previous four films.
In 1991, okra created a sort of greatesthits compilation using previous footage
from the films in the Guinea pig series.
Slaughter Special 1991, as itwas named, is the final video
to bear the Guinea pig label.

(10:12):
But it's not the end of our story.
In fact, things onlyget weirder from here.
Well, the Guinea pig films hadbecome notorious in their Native
Japan after the Otaku murders.
It wasn't until copies of themovie started making their way
outside of Japan that they beganto take on an urban legend quality.

(10:33):
In 1992, a of a copy of Flowerof Flesh and Blood and reported
it to the Swedish police.
In their ensuing investigation, Swedishpolice sent the tape to a medical examiner
who initially was unable to determinewhether or not the film was real.
Flower of Flesh and Blood made headlinesagain in 1992, this time in Great Britain.

(10:57):
When 26 year old Christopher Berthoudwas arrested for importing snuff films
into the country when he ordered videosof Flower of Flesh and Blood, infant
brain surgery, and Faces of Dissection.
From Blackest Heart Media, Britishauthorities quickly determined that Flower
of Flesh and Blood was not actually asnuff film, but to them, it didn't matter.

(11:20):
British authorities stated, This isnot an Asian girl alive being murdered,
but something that is so well simulatedthat that is the impression it creates.
Berthoud was found guilty, but given thatFlower of Flesh and Blood was not actually
a snuff film, authorities opted to fineBerthoud 600 in lieu of imprisonment.

(11:41):
On October 5th, 1996, TCI of California,the then owners of the San Francisco
cable TV system, began receivingcomplaints that a snuff film had
been aired on the Channel 53 publicaccess program, The Pain Factory.
The culprit, once again, was Flowerof Flesh and Blood, and after a

(12:03):
brief hubbub in the local media,once again, everyone realized that
it was not an authentic snuff film.
And at this point, the whole worldshould have been aware that the
Guinea Pig films were not real.
And yet, as Unearthed Films attemptedto release the Guinea Pig series
officially for the first time in the U.
S., they still ran into some issues.

(12:25):
Steven Biro, co owner of UnearthedFilms, stated that he went
through a lot of trouble to find acompany that would press the DVDs.
Bureau would send the guinea pig mastersto a DVD company and inevitably have the
masters return to him with an apologyfrom the DVD company explaining that they
would not be able to do the transfer.

(12:47):
Bureau stated that even the company thatpressed the DVDs for the infamous and
Traces of Death series would not do it.
Fortunately, Unearthed Films was ableto find a company that would press
the DVDs and the Guinea Pig seriesfinally got a proper US release in 2002.

(13:08):
But these incidents, outlandish as theymay seem, are not even the strangest
chapters in the Guinea Pig saga.
And if you don't believe me, justgo ahead and Google Charlie Sheen
snuff film and see what comes up.
You'll see a bunch of shortarticles like one on uproxx.
com titled, About that time CharlieSheen thought he watched a snuff film

(13:30):
and started an FBI investigation.
And you'll also see Reddit posts likeone that says, Today, I learned that
Charlie Sheen mistakenly thought he hadviewed a snuff film in 1991 and promptly
started an FBI investigation into whetheror not a real murder had occurred.
And this is how the storyis usually presented.

(13:50):
Charlie Sheen, possiblyunder the influence.
Watches a guinea pig movie, specificallyFlower of Flesh and Blood, and
calls the FBI, which launches afull blown investigation into the
authenticity of the guinea pig films.
Even the famous debunking site Snopes.
com presents the story in this fashionby way of a 1994 article in the San

(14:13):
Francisco Chronicle that claims,The FBI confiscated Sheen's tape and
proceeded to investigate all involved.
But is that how things really went down?
It's honestly almost impossible to tell.
And in order to understand why thestory gets so murky, we need to travel
back in time to the early 1990s.

(14:35):
A time before the internet waswidespread in American households.
A time when bootleg videotapesof obscure films were worth their
weight in gold in certain circles.
A time when underground film magazinescompeted to be their readers first
and only source for the latest ingross out, shot on video schlock.

(14:56):
And there are three such magazinesat the center of this whole Charlie
Sheen guinea pig controversy.
Deep Red, headed by Charles Chas Balan,Film Threat Video Guide, published by
Christian Gore, and Blackest Heart, runby Sean Smith, which is the same company
that sold Christopher Berthoud thosetapes that got him in trouble in the UK.

(15:20):
It's important to remember that VHStapes used to be very expensive,
sometimes costing between 50 and100 when they were brand new.
And even after eBay hit the scene, itwas still difficult to find certain
tapes that were in high demand.
The only ways to get one's handson films outside of the mainstream

(15:41):
were knowing someone that had acopy or ordering a bootleg tape.
And bootleg tapes were risky becausethere was no guarantee that the quality
would even be good enough to watch.
And magazines played a significant rolein helping underground film aficionados
of the time acquire these bootleg tapes.
There were more mainstream publicationsat the time that focused on horror

(16:05):
films such as Fangoria and FamousMonsters of Filmland, but they focused
mainly on popular American films.
Magazines of the bootlegging ilkprovided access to more obscure
films that would have been otherwisenearly impossible to get a hold of.
Japanese horror, Hong Kong Cat 3movies, rare uncut versions of films

(16:27):
that hadn't been officially released.
And there was fierce competition betweenmagazines to obtain and sell films that
their rivals didn't have, and at leastwhen it comes to Deep Red, Film Threat,
Video Guide, and Blackest Heart, therewas apparently no love lost between them.
And it wasn't uncommon for editorialsopenly bad mouthing the editor of a

(16:48):
rival publication to grace the pagesof one of these three magazines.
In issue 4 of Film ThreatVideo Guide, David E.
Williams says of Deep Red's Chaz Ballinthat He at least appeared to be one of us.
With Deep Red, Ballin wasa champion of horror film.
He appeared to be a modern day Forrest J.
Ackerman, consumed byhis love for the genre.

(17:11):
Obviously this was just a lie.
By pirating their legallyavailable works, Ballin is, for 18.
95 a tape, grinning ashe f s these people over.
In issue 2 of Blackest Heart, anarticle by Sean Smith and Timothy
Patrick says of Film Threat VideoGuide's publisher, Hypocrites suck.
Christian Gore swallows.

(17:32):
As the hot sh slides downGore's throat, we'll update you
on what a f ing prick he is.
Why do we have something against him?
Because he's a f ing prick.
Gore is a big f ing crybabywho stabs people in the back
whenever he can't get his way.
Well, we stab in the front, mother f er.
And it is exactly this enmity and theself aggrandizing impulse to one up

(17:56):
competitors that makes it difficultto determine how Charlie Sheen came
into contact with the Flower of Fleshand Blood tape in the first place.
Because each faction gives aslightly different version of events.
Chaz Ballon's version goes like this.
He obtained a copy of Slaughter Special1991 and became enamored with the series.

(18:17):
He became an outspoken evangelistfor the guinea pig films and the main
distributor of guinea pig films in the U.
S.
In 1991, one of the Deep Red staffersasked Balan to put together the
most disgusting video he couldmuster as a special birthday
present to be screened to a group offriends at a weekend get together.
Balan compiled a tape of horror'sgreatest hits for his friend, and

(18:40):
the opening segment on the tapewas Flower of Flesh and Blood.
The tape was a smash hit, and BalanceCompilation Video began making the rounds
in the East Coast tape trading scene.
Charlie Sheen saw Flower ofFlesh and Blood at a party by
way of Balance Compilation Tape.
The Film Threat Video Guide's versionof events is slightly different.

(19:02):
According to an article in issue 3 ofFilm Threat Video Guide written by Rowdy
Yates, Adam Rifkin obtained a copy ofan unspecified guinea pig film that was
presented to Rifkin as a real snuff film.
Doubting its authenticity, Rifkinwatched the film with Sheen,
and neither of them were able tosatisfyingly explain how the effects

(19:23):
in the film could have been achieved.
So they reported it to the FBI.
Blackist Heart's version is significantlydifferent from the other two.
They claim in an article written by SeanSmith and Timothy Patrick that appeared in
issue 2 of Blackist Heart that ChristianGore of Film Threat Video Guide wanted to

(19:44):
distribute the guinea pig films in the U.
S.
He bought a copy of the film from ChazBallin, but when Gore discovered that he
wouldn't be able to obtain distributionrights for the film, he gave a copy of
Flower of Flesh and Blood to Charlie Sheenand told him that it was a real snuff film
and that he should report it to the FBI.
The idea being that if Film Threat VideoGuide couldn't distribute the film,

(20:08):
no one else should be able to either.
So, which version of events is true?
Now, in my research, I wasnever able to find any primary
sources from Sheen himself.
It seems that, despite his penchantfor running off at the mouth,
he has never publicly commentedon the guinea pig incident.
There was an article titled, The SnuffFilm, The Making of an Urban Legend.

(20:32):
Written by Scott Aaron Stein that appearedin the May June 1999 issue of Skeptical
Inquirer that stated The incidentmade headlines, though, and was even
spotlighted on ABC's News Magazine 2020.
I spent quite a bit of time trying totrack down the episode of 2020, but
unfortunately ABC has not done a great jobof cataloging old episodes of the show.

(20:57):
I reached out to Scott Ehrenstein andasked if he had ever seen the episode of
2020 in which the Charlie Sheen guineapig incident was covered or, if he
hadn't, where he had first heard about it.
His reply was this.
Honestly, I don't recall, but it seemsto me numerous other articles detailing
the controversy at the time referencedthe 2020 interview I mentioned.

(21:19):
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
And he's right.
I did find other sources mentioningSheen's appearance in an episode of 2020.
But none of them predated Stein'sarticle in Skeptical Inquirer.
The only link between the GuineaPig films and ABC's 2020 that I was
able to find that predates Stein'sarticle was an editorial written by

(21:42):
Chas Ballin in issue 7 of Deep Red.
However, this article says that it wasthe Otaku murders that were featured
on 2020, not the Charlie Sheen debacle.
So it seems as though the Charlie Sheenguinea pig 2020 appearance is the result
of a game of magazine article telephone.

(22:02):
And I was also unable to track downthe purported episode of 2020 that
features the Otaku murders, so...
Until I can find evidence thateither 2020 episode exists...
I'll have to consider them apocryphal,just a couple more of the many rumors
that have been repeated time and timeagain since this whole incident occurred.

(22:23):
So since we don't havea statement from Mr.
Sheen himself, the only sourceswe do have are from others
that were purportedly involved.
In a letter from Chas Ballin dated April5th, 2002 published on the guineapigfilms.
com website, He reiterates his versionof events regarding a compilation
tape he made for a friend makingits way to Charlie Sheen via the

(22:47):
East Coast tape trading scene.
And contrary to the 1994 San FranciscoChronicle article quoted by Snopes.
com that states, The FBI confiscatedSheen's tape and proceeded to investigate
all involved, including Charles Ballin,an early distributor of the film.
Ballin said, The only semi directcontact I ever had during the aftermath

(23:09):
of this dulling debacle was a callfrom the red staffer I sent the tape
to, warning me of an impending callfrom the FBI who were investigating
the video as a real snub film.
Police.
Never got a call.
Ever.
I lost interest immediatelyand chuckled often as the s
tstorm soon lost its momentum.
Also of note on guineapigfilms.
com is a section quoting the JapaneseCinema Encyclopedia by Weiser and

(23:33):
Weiser that says that Charlie Sheendid not, in fact, call the FBI.
Rather, Sheen contacted the MotionPicture Association of America.
Who then contacted the FBI.
FBI agent Dan Kodling informed theMPAA that the films had already been
independently investigated by Japaneseauthorities and the FBI, and that

(23:56):
both agencies had determined that theGuinea Pig films were completely fake.
But back to how CharlieSheen actually got the tape.
We have Chaz Balin's version involvinga compilation tape circulating
through the Tape Trading Network.
We have Film Threat Video Guide'sversion that the tape was given to
Charlie Sheen by director Adam Rifkin.

(24:18):
And we have Blackest Heart'sversion, which claims that the tape
was sold by Chaz Ballin to filmthreat video guys Christian Gore,
who then gave it to Charlie Sheen.
Each account is quitedifferent from the other two.
And the question becomes, how doessomeone coming at this over 30
years later begin to untangle it?
There are still so many questionsleft unanswered, and the number

(24:42):
of people who could answer thosequestions is vanishingly small.
Chas Ballin passed away in 2009,and Sean Smith, by all accounts,
retired from public life in 2019.
Which leaves just one person involved,Film Threat Video Guide's Christian
Gore, who would be able to shedsome light on this whole affair.

(25:04):
Now up to this point...
I have been calling him Christian Gore,because that's how he was credited
in the Film Threat Video Guide.
But you may know him as ChrisGore, writer, director, author,
podcast host, and former contributorto G4's Attack of the Show.
Well, what's interesting about theCharlie Sheen, guinea pig video,

(25:27):
uh, FBI debacle is that I'm theone that got him the videotape.
That's the voice of Chris Gore,who was generous enough to take
some time out of his day and talkto me about this whole fiasco.
And the first question I had aboutthe whole thing is, what exactly
were the contents of the tape?
So there, there's also in my research, twoversions going around about the contents

(25:52):
of the tape that Charlie Sheen watched.
One version is that it wassort of a compilation tape put
together by Chaz Ballon of DeepRed that it just included footage.
And the other version is that itwas just, you know, uh, Bootleg
duplicate of an entire guinea pig film.
So yeah, it was the guinea pig film.

(26:13):
It wasn't his compilation.
It was the guinea pig filmbecause I had the guinea pig film.
So, and I think the way I got it was wewould trade tapes with so many people.
David E Williams, who wasthe editor, editor in chief
of film threat video guide.
I believe he got the guinea pigfilm from Richard Kern or someone

(26:33):
from the cinema of transgression.
It might've been Nick said.
At the time we were tradingtapes with so many people.
So, so that's what I wasdoing, you know, rather.
And then the thing was, is theywould send me their weird tapes.
So it really was, thecurrency was weird videotapes.
That's how we, that'show we did all of this.

(26:54):
And the movie in question, it wasflower of flesh and blood, right?
It's like a Sam, a guydressed up as a Samurai.
Yes.
That's it.
Yeah.
So I was friends with Adam Rifkinwho, uh, I'm still friends with him.
Uh, he's, he's really evolvedinto an exciting indie filmmaker.

(27:15):
So, so Adam Rifkin had made a, amovie called invisible maniac, which
was basically an invisible man story.
Kind of, it was an invisibleman, horror film mixed with.
A TNA teen sex comedy.
It was a guy who got invisibleand basically felt up young women
and they got naked in the movie.

(27:35):
Um, there was actually an adult filmactress whose name escapes me who
starred in the invisible maniac.
And that's how I met Adam.
He made that film.
Then he went off and directedthe chase with a Charlie Sheen.
And then he worked on a film.
Uh, called the dark backward.
Um, and we were going to havethat be our cover story for

(27:57):
film threat, the first issue.
And we covered the movie.
It unfortunately justdidn't make it to the cover.
Um, we had to put somethingmore mainstream on, right.
Uh, just to sell mags, but we stillcovered the movie extensively inside,
but I became friends with Adamand Adam and I, we would just get
into deep discussions about like.
You know, just weird videosand weird films we had seen.

(28:19):
And, you know, back when I lived inMichigan in the eighties, I was obsessed
with tracking down weird videos.
And a lot of it was you wouldtrade tapes with people.
So for example, I was trading tapes witha guy named Steve Bassett, who was a comic
illustrator for swamp thing, working with.

(28:39):
With Alan Moore, and he had sent meLegend of the Overfiend, which was not
legally available in the United States.
It's, uh, one of the, one of the, it wasthe first hentai thing I'd ever seen.
It was a hentai animated filmfeature, which was just bizarre.
It was like part Akira with hentai.
It was weird.
So...
I loved Legend of the Overfiend.

(29:00):
I thought it was fantastic.
So Steve Bassett sent me that, and thenI sent him weird tapes that I had made.
I did as a two part series of films.
I called, um, I was inspired byWilliam Burroughs and William Burroughs
had done a thing where he created athing called cut up tapes, he would
take audio and he would edit it.

(29:20):
And with these weird contrasts,it'd be like a song and then, you
know, some industrial machineryand then him reading poetry.
And it was the, he created this,William Burroughs had created these
bizarre series of audio cut up tapes.
And I was so inspired by that.
I thought that is weird.
I'm going to do the video version of that.

(29:42):
And so while I was in college,I was collecting like all this
weird, these weird footage.
Like I had, I had recorded every timesomeone who looked punk rock or new
wave was on the news or in a TV show,I saved it and I created a montage.
Cathode fuck and TV sphincterwere the names of the two tapes

(30:06):
and it was just weird stuff.
I had like a mcdonald's trainingfilm on courtesy and whatnot.
And I intercut that withthis punk rock footage.
There was purpose behind it.
That was like this whole cultureof trading tapes was a big deal.
And I gave, I gave Adam cathode fuck.

(30:28):
I gave him TV sphincter and he'dalways ask me like, Hey, then he says
to me, he goes, look, Harley Sheen isreally into these underground videos.
He loves underground videos.
How can we like, like,do you have anything?
And I was like, one of the films that cameto me, um, was a movie called Guinea pig.

(30:52):
And I, I promptly made a copyof it, gave it to Adam Rifkin
to give to Charlie Sheen.
So that pretty much clears uphow Charlie Sheen came into
possession of the guinea pig tape.
Although there have been a fewalternate versions of this particular
series of events, Chris Gore'sversion is the only one that could

(31:13):
possibly be corroborated by others.
Adam Rifkin and Charlie Sheen bothcould refute Gore's story, but to
my knowledge, neither of them have,despite ample opportunity to do so.
As this is a story that has been amatter of public record since at least
2013, when Gore briefly recountedthe incident on a track off his

(31:34):
spoken word album, Celebrity's Poop,titled, Video Dealer, True Story.
The next lingering question leftto answer about this whole incident
is, How did the FBI get involved?
Apparently, according to Adam Rifkin,he was so, Charlie was so shocked upon

(31:54):
watching this film, he was so taken aback.
Even though he'd been watchingthese weird underground VHS tapes
I was slipping to Adam, he thoughthe had witnessed an actual murder.
So, what Charlie Sheen ended up doingwas, he had a friend at the FBI.
Well, what happened was,they took it very seriously.

(32:17):
The FBI said you need tohand over the original tape.
So, um, after Charlie Sheen had reportedthis, I was contacted by the FBI
after Adam gave them my phone number.
I did an interview with theFBI discussing this tape.
I handed over the original tape.

(32:39):
And after a forensic analysisof the video, they determined
that it was in fact fake.
There's sort of this apocryphal story ofCharlie Sheen appearing on 2020 talking
about this that seems to originate froman article written by Scott Ehrenstein,
who you might know is the author of likethe Gorehounds Guide to Splatter Films.

(33:03):
And those kind of books.
Do you remember anythinglike that happening?
Or did you see this supposed 2020 episode?
I don't know about the 2020 episode.
I do remember that there was a newsreport and I just remember thinking,
well, they're going to talk about film.
I didn't even care about me.
Right?
I just cared about film threat.
Like, yeah.
We need some press.

(33:24):
We need press for film threat.
Any press is good press at the time.
Um, and this was a bignews story and film threat.
Wasn't a part of it.
I wasn't a part of it.
And that was disconcerting havingsaid that, um, there was a, there
was a news story that broke basicallythe, the FBI had given Charlie Sheen.

(33:46):
Uh, like a good citizen commendation forturning over this video and for alerting
the FBI to this, and it made it onto oneof those magazine style exploitation shows
like hard copy, none of, you know, myinvolvement in any of that or film threat
was completely excised from the story.

(34:07):
The angle, the angle that they took forthis news story on television was Charlie
Sheen is a good citizen and a good person.
Because he worked with theFBI and he helped them.
Apart from the version of this part ofthe story provided by Weiser and Weiser
in the Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia whichstates that Sheen turned the tape over to

(34:28):
the MPAA who then turned it over to theFBI, the other accounts of how the tape
made its way to the FBI seem to be inagreement with Gore's retelling of events.
At least in terms of thebare bone facts of it all.
But each version has its own spin to it.
Either highlighting or minimizingdifferent individuals involvement, and

(34:48):
attributing different, sometimes nefariousmotivations to the players involved.
And it all seems to stem from the factthat, as I've discussed previously,
the writers and publishers ofthese different Indie mags didn't
seem to like each other very much.
So what was the relationship likebetween Underground film magazines back

(35:09):
then, because in researching this, I'vecome across articles in Film Threat
Video Guide, Blackest Heart, and DeepRed, where writers of one magazine
are openly bashing writers of anothermagazine, and coming from the outside
is It's hard to tell if this wasall an end joke or was there genuine
animosity between you guys back then?

(35:32):
I think it was animosity withsome of the other people.
There wasn't with me.
We became more of a target becausein the space we were perceived
to be among the better magazines.
So we were always a target.
We had a target on our back.
I would kind of brush it off, makethem look stupid by making a joke.
In my magazine and having the lastword and then that was it, but I would

(35:54):
never actively go after someone becauseI thought that was kind of a waste.
Like, I don't want to actively goafter some movie magazine, but if
they send me something or try to fuckwith me, I'll fuck with them back.
But in a way that is funny, becausereaders don't care about that.
Like the readers of film thread do notcare about any of this gossip bs drama.

(36:19):
Right?
They don't, at the end ofthe day, they don't care.
If I can turn it into somethingfunny and a joke, that's that
was always what my tactic was,was to just make it into a joke.
I just wanted to be entertaining.
I wanted film threat.
I wanted people to read film threat coverto cover and with their mouth a gape at

(36:40):
I can't believe a magazine is doing this.
I want to sort of go back to the rivalrybetween film magazines, because in
an issue of Blackest Heart there'san article written by Sean Smith and
Timothy Patrick where they're really badmouthing you, personally, saying that
basically you bought a copy of one ofthe guinea pig films from Chaz Ballon.

(37:01):
Because you wanted to see aboutdistributing it through Film Threat
Video Guide, but when you realized thatyou weren't going to be able to get
the distribution rights, you gave thefilm to Charlie Sheen and encouraged
him to report it to the FBI as sort ofa, a way to get back at Chaz Ballin.
Is there any truth to that?
That, that is not true at all.

(37:23):
That is completely false.
I don't know why theywould make that assumption.
That seems pretty stupid, but no, I, um,one, no, I didn't want to like, look,
we wanted to distribute films legallyin the U S where we knew the filmmaker.
I didn't know who made guinea pig.
So I know Richard Kern.
I know you're boot caret, right?
Like I knew Steve Wang, it was filmmakers.

(37:44):
We knew.
Who owned the movie and those are thepeople, the filmmakers we dealt with.
I didn't know the peoplewho created guinea pig.
And also that probably wouldhave been a bridge too far for
us because of the content of it.
I mean, look, yes.
Even coming from me, I distributedat the time necromantic, right?

(38:06):
But, uh, you know, necromanticwas, it's obvious when you watch
necromantic, it's a narrative film.
It's a story.
You know, it's a horror film shot in supereight, but, uh, yeah, uh, that's not true.
That's someone who doesn't know anything,uh, coming up with some opinion about

(38:27):
something they don't know anything about.
Uh, I was there and yeah, Iwas not trying to do that.
That's, um, that's, uh, that's what theycall make news, which make news is when
you don't have the facts, you make upnews, you fill in the gaps, but your
assumptions are based on your biases.
Right.
So they had a bias towardsmaking me look bad.
And so that's kind of how they, howthey couched that that's pretty dumb.

(38:51):
Look, professional jealousy and anklebiters have plagued me my entire career.
My policy is always to just ignoreidiots and, uh, they can try to keep up.
I don't care.
Um, because I have built film threat,the brand over the years, I've always
been a target, I've always been a target.

(39:13):
And I don't care.
I, I always say, like, I, you know, I'mnot trying to get into big fights with
people, but at the time I recognizedthat I was definitely obnoxious.
I was definitely pushing thelimits in certain arenas and
I pissed some people off.
And, you know, if you're in this space.
May happen, so, and it happened.

(39:35):
I think it's important to point outthat Gore was in his early 20s when
he founded Film Threat and, at leastrelative to other indie mags of the
time, Film Threat was quite successful.
He was the new kid on the block and,in his own words, was a bit obnoxious.
And a lot of what Film Threat and FilmThreat Video Guide were doing at the
time was meant to push people's buttons.

(39:58):
So it's no surprisethat they actually did.
I love going to conventions and I wasthere and sometimes, you know, sometimes I
would catch people, you know, at the timegoing to conventions, then selling bootleg
copies of movies that we were selling.
And that was annoying to me because wegot that we were sending money to the
filmmakers and these bootleggers werenot sending money to the filmmakers.

(40:20):
I had heard that ChazBalin had beef with me.
Um, and I didn't, I didn't exactlyunderstand why he had beef with me, but
it sounds like Chaz looking at what he,his work, the had beef with a lot of
people, like he was, there were someconstant drama with him back in the day.
I was at a horror conventionand Chaz Ballin was there and

(40:41):
he tried to pour a beer on me.
I was at a horror convention in LA.
I heard that Chaz Ballinwas there as a guest.
Uh, I'm like, okay, cool.
Whatever.
And some.
Some weird simpy fan found me, and it'slike, Oh, I'm gonna go get Chaz Balin.
It's just this wimpy kid.
And like, all right, well, cool.

(41:01):
And Chaz Ballant, by the way, he's like,looks like a big biker at the time.
I know he's passed away, um, uh,years ago, but he was a big guy.
I'm like, look, I'm not small.
I'm five 10.
Uh, uh, but, uh, you know, um, he's oversix foot and looks like, uh, a biker dude.

(41:22):
So, you know, there you go.
Which is fine, but he, um, hecame up to me and he had a beer.
He went to pour it on me.
I deflected his hand and the beer spilledall over the simpy guy that got him.
It was awesome.
I could not have, you know, one ofthose things where it's like, you
think of the thing you should havesaid in the moment, or God, I should

(41:44):
have done this instead of that.
I actually did that thing.
And it's one of the few timesI can think like, Oh my God,
it worked out perfectly for me.
He tried to, went to pour a beer on me.
I just, I just moved his hand a littlebit and it went all over the doodoo.
Like went to get Chaz Ballant totell on, you know, like Gore is here.
Um, I mean, that was like, whatever peoplecan have their different interpretations.

(42:05):
I feel it's my obligationto tell you the truth.
As I see it happen to me, and I canonly tell you the one side of my
story, like Chaz Balin can talk aboutwhat an asshole I was, or he can talk
about, like, he can make assumptionsabout what I was trying to do.
I was trying, I wasn't tryingto ruin anybody's life.
I was trying to entertain, uh, CharlieSheen via my buddy, Adam Rifkin.

(42:28):
That's it.
Like, I was trying to give him a video.
I didn't think much ofit, um, at the time.
So, and it's not like anybodywent to prison over it.
I mean.
They ended up basically determining,you know, it wasn't a real thing, so
they still, Charlie Sheen came outlooking like just a guy who likes
to watch weird videos, I guess.

(42:50):
And if you've ever seen Flower ofFlesh and Blood and you're wondering
how Charlie Sheen could have possiblymistaken it for a real snuff film, bear
in mind, this was the early nineties.
The Guinea pig films had neverbeen released outside of Japan, and
the Otaku murders didn't receivea lot of attention in the West.
The number of people who knew aboutthe Guinea pig films, even in hardcore

(43:13):
horror circles, was very small.
Now, Guinea pig, to be clear,is a Japanese fake snuff film.
It is not real.
However, if you've on VHS,copied it, copied it, copied it.
I can see how someone.

(43:41):
So, after all this, what does thetrue version of events in the Charlie
Sheen Guinea Pig affair look like?
It goes something like this.
The editor in chief of FilmThreat Video Guide, David E.
Williams, got a copy of Flower ofFlesh and Blood via tape trading,
possibly from Richard Kern or Nick Zedd.
David E.

(44:01):
Williams gives ChrisGore a copy of that tape.
Chris Gore gives a copy to Adam Rifkin.
Adam Rifkin gives it to Charlie Sheen.
Charlie Sheen gives it to the FBI.
The FBI, like many other lawenforcement agencies before them,
determines that Flower of Fleshand Blood is not a real snuff film.

(44:23):
The media catches wind of the incident andforms it into a story about a Hollywood
actor being an upstanding citizen.
Time passes and the public perceptionof Charlie Sheen drastically changes.
So the story is now reframed asjust another instance of Sheen's
well documented eccentricity.
And the particulars and nuance ofthe story are all but lost to time,

(44:46):
surviving only in the memories of thescant few people who were actually there.
And it's a shame, really,because, at least in this case,
the truth of the matter...
Is much more interesting than theurban legend that was formed out of it.

(45:07):
Mount Mole Hill is written,produced, and edited by me, Chris.
With music by myself and Alex Painter.
A very special thank you to Chris Gorefor sitting down for an interview with me.
I'll post a link to the fullinterview in the show notes.
Special thanks to DK from Nerds, Geeks,and the Kitchen Sink for helping me
out, and to George from The Best LittleHorror House in Philly, and Bones

(45:30):
from the Five Day Rentals podcastfor providing the voices of David E.
Williams and Sean Smith.
All other voices featured in this episodeapart from my own are computer generated.
All of the sources used in thisepisode can be found in the show notes.
If you have a molehill that you'd likeme to turn into a mountain, whether it's
a mystery that you just can't solve,or just an interesting topic you'd like

(45:53):
me to delve into, please reach out.
You can email me at MountMolehill podcast@gmail.com,
or you can call and leave me avoicemail at 5 0 5 2 1 8 6 8 9 4.
Follow us on Instagram to see updatesand supplemental material for the show.
Thanks for listening to thepilot season of Mount Mole Hill.

(46:15):
Once again, thank you to anyonewho has listened to the show
or helped me out along the way.
And if you'd like to hear moreepisodes of the show in the
future, please, just let me know.
Thanks for listening.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Guinea Pig Affair: Charlie Sheen’s Brush With the FBI