The Human CentipedeIf you happen to get a flat tire while touring through the remote woodland of Germany one dark and stormy night, don't even think about stopping to ask to use the phone; just keep walking. (No offense intended to the good people of Germany.) The Human Centipede is a shocking and unsettling horror movie about a thoroughly mad surgeon named Dr. Josef Heiter (Dieter Laser), whose depraved vision of creating a "superior" organism involves stitching three living victims together from front to back and connecting their digestive systems in an abstract humanoid representation of a "centipede". To put it mildly, eww...
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The Human Centipede--officially titled The Human Centipede (First Sequence)--is best known by its infamous reputation, built up by filmmaker Tom Six's provocative claims that the film is "100% medically accurate". (Spoiler: it isn't.) Expectations about this obscenely gross Dutch body horror film are likely to color the experience for audiences with even a sleight understanding of the premise. In spite of Dr. Heiter's disgusting affront to the Hippocratic Oath, The Human Centipede pulls off a trick few low-budget, gruesome horror movies achieve: most of the offensive content is implied rather than shown. The specifics of the visceral operation are alluded to with detailed (if inappropriately cartoon-like) diagrams, used to instill terror in his victims, and diaper-like bandages conceal the connection between the "components" of Heiter's grisly opus. The unfortunate souls who become fodder for Heiter's warped experiment are a pair of vacuous, young American women--Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie)--as well as the "head" of the centipede, the Japanese Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura). Six has cited that his "inspiration" for The Human Centipede included the horrifying experiments performed at Auschwitz by Nazi war criminal, Josef Mengele. Dieter Laser depicts Dr. Heiter from this perspective, as a man whose arrogance makes him believe he possesses superior knowledge--who exists "above" lesser beings, who treats as objects or "pets". He even kisses his own reflection in the mirror, in love with his own "genius". At times, he shouts maniacally and scurries about like a madman--his mere presence is a force of irrational horror. At others, like when he explains his goal to create a "Siamese triplet"--first attempted with his trio of late rottweilers, collectively dubbed "3 Dog"--he is preternaturally calm; this heightens the terror in his victims, who realize that he is not acting out of emotion, but raw evil. In his surgeon's garb, he completes the look of a mad scientist; the bug-like sunglasses give him an alien edge as well. And with his German accent and rigid step, it wouldn't be surprising if he wore a swastika on his arm, completing the look of a villainous Nazi martinet.
The Human Centipede is ominous and deliberately slow-moving, as if it sadistically savors the discomfort it creates in its audience. The film's first act exploits traditional horror movie cliches--the women are lost in the woods at night, they get a flat tire, no cell phone signal, and so on. As Tom Six put it, this makes the shocking revelation of Heiter's experiment all the more horrible, because it exceeds the cliche horror movie tropes used to lure the audience into complacency. (If only the girls had stumbled across Dr. Frank-N-Furter's castle from The Rocky Horror Picture Show instead, things would be indisputably better.) Lindsay is the only victim who nearly escapes her captivity, leading to a tense game of cat and mouse in Heiter's home, including a standoff in his private indoor pool where Lindsay tries to evade Heiter's tranquilizer rifle by submerging underwater. One nerve-wracking scene involves her (foolishly) going back to rescue the sedated Jenny, and the camera constantly pans back to the entrance of Heiter's private clinic and torture chamber, as if "Herr Doktor" will poke his head through and shatter her delusions of escape at any minute. After the dreaded operation, the last half of the film is filled with constant despair, as the victims are forced to cope with the apocalyptic violation that has been done to them. Heiter humiliates them by treating them collectively as if he were breaking in a new, disobedient dog, feeding Katsuro from a dog bowl and making him fetch his newspaper. It is ironic that Heiter makes Katsuro the head of the "human centipede"; although Heiter speaks English well enough, he doesn't speak Japanese, which is the only language Katsuro speaks. That this was intentional fits with Heiter's twisted fixation of reinventing his beloved "3 Dog", since it emulates the "language barrier" between humans and dogs. Similar to Heiter's obsessive fixation on the number three, The Human Centipede is the first in a trilogy of over-the-top horror movies by Tom Six. The first movie shares more stylistically with Italian giallo horror movies, like those by Dario Argento; the second film is more reminiscent of the kind of body horror found in Tetsuo: The Iron Man, while the third banks hard into trashy self-parody of the Troma Entertainment variety. In a bizarre kind of "performance art" way, The Human Centipede series is a self-aware commentary on various horror film sub-genres, and carves out its own niche by pushing the envelope of good taste well beyond reasonable limits as a means to compare and contrast these styles.
Recommended for: Fans of a thoroughly unsettling horror movie, which is best viewed as a "commentary" on other horror films from which it takes inspiration. The Human Centipede requires a strong stomach, and is decidedly not for all audiences. The very end of the film might just represent the most vicious kind of torture which could be inflicted upon someone after all of the carnage and misery. (Depending on the audience, that could also describe The Human Centipede itself.)
The Human Centipede is ominous and deliberately slow-moving, as if it sadistically savors the discomfort it creates in its audience. The film's first act exploits traditional horror movie cliches--the women are lost in the woods at night, they get a flat tire, no cell phone signal, and so on. As Tom Six put it, this makes the shocking revelation of Heiter's experiment all the more horrible, because it exceeds the cliche horror movie tropes used to lure the audience into complacency. (If only the girls had stumbled across Dr. Frank-N-Furter's castle from The Rocky Horror Picture Show instead, things would be indisputably better.) Lindsay is the only victim who nearly escapes her captivity, leading to a tense game of cat and mouse in Heiter's home, including a standoff in his private indoor pool where Lindsay tries to evade Heiter's tranquilizer rifle by submerging underwater. One nerve-wracking scene involves her (foolishly) going back to rescue the sedated Jenny, and the camera constantly pans back to the entrance of Heiter's private clinic and torture chamber, as if "Herr Doktor" will poke his head through and shatter her delusions of escape at any minute. After the dreaded operation, the last half of the film is filled with constant despair, as the victims are forced to cope with the apocalyptic violation that has been done to them. Heiter humiliates them by treating them collectively as if he were breaking in a new, disobedient dog, feeding Katsuro from a dog bowl and making him fetch his newspaper. It is ironic that Heiter makes Katsuro the head of the "human centipede"; although Heiter speaks English well enough, he doesn't speak Japanese, which is the only language Katsuro speaks. That this was intentional fits with Heiter's twisted fixation of reinventing his beloved "3 Dog", since it emulates the "language barrier" between humans and dogs. Similar to Heiter's obsessive fixation on the number three, The Human Centipede is the first in a trilogy of over-the-top horror movies by Tom Six. The first movie shares more stylistically with Italian giallo horror movies, like those by Dario Argento; the second film is more reminiscent of the kind of body horror found in Tetsuo: The Iron Man, while the third banks hard into trashy self-parody of the Troma Entertainment variety. In a bizarre kind of "performance art" way, The Human Centipede series is a self-aware commentary on various horror film sub-genres, and carves out its own niche by pushing the envelope of good taste well beyond reasonable limits as a means to compare and contrast these styles.
Recommended for: Fans of a thoroughly unsettling horror movie, which is best viewed as a "commentary" on other horror films from which it takes inspiration. The Human Centipede requires a strong stomach, and is decidedly not for all audiences. The very end of the film might just represent the most vicious kind of torture which could be inflicted upon someone after all of the carnage and misery. (Depending on the audience, that could also describe The Human Centipede itself.)