The Human Centipede...

There hasn’t been a concept that has really gotten under my skin more than the one put forward in The Human Centipede.

To be an unwilling participant in a bizarre medical experiment—drugged and cut open with the medical expertise that is supposed to be used to help you, but here leaves you horribly, gruesomely disfigured—there really isn’t anything worse I could think up.

And trust me, I’m glad my depravity has limits. I would be lying if I said Tom Six, this film’s writer and director, shared similar limits.

The Siamese triplet, a joining of three separate organisms via the gastric system, is an awful, awful idea. One apparently first conceived as Six would joke that criminals such as child molesters should have their mouths grafted to the ass of a fat trucker.

The idea comes full circle here as Dr. Heiter, world renowned separator of conjoined twins, conceives a new operation that brings together instead of cleaving apart: the human centipede, first sequence.

The film doesn’t waste much time jumping into this idea either, setting up Dr. Heiter and his victims pretty quickly as they move toward the inevitable surgery.

What does work here is Dr. Heiter himself. He is one of the most memorable villains I’ve seen in a long time. Physically frightening with a deep, booming German accent and obviously completely insane, he’s played rather very well by veteran actor Dieter Laser. Even if he is wearing Crocs for a lot of the movie.

From the moment he proclaims that he doesn’t like human beings, the audience as well as the frightened young girls he has sitting in his living room, know something bad is going to go down.

And surely it does.

This film is at its strongest when Dr. Heiter is involved. He seems to bring out the best in the film’s actors. Especially the two female leads, whose performances are pretty weak and almost laughable until the doctor takes them into his lair.

These poor girls do pull their weight when confronted with the awfulness of the situation they find themselves in, and they are at their best when they are screaming, crying and running away. There is a lot of crying, especially toward the end.

The film does boast a particularly good escape sequence towards the beginning though. I really found myself rooting for the girl and even when other people in the theatre got angry for taking what they took to be a foolish course of action, I admired her for her tenacity and selflessness.

The chase sequence ends with a proclamation so horrible on Dr. Heiter’s part regarding the positioning of the runner in the human centipede itself, I couldn’t help but laugh. Not because it was funny, but because I didn’t know what else to do.

On this note, the relationship between the two kidnapped American tourists does work well. There is a very effective recurring motif of holding hands that is so just so basic, so utterly human, that you really can’t help but feel for them.

The girl’s performances, though flawed toward the beginning, do humanize them and make you feel as though they are just two, normal people with the bad luck to be caught up in some sick, sick man’s psychotic fuckery. So for that, I can’t fault them.

The film employs language pretty well too. The head of the centipede, who enters the film toward the middle, can’t speak English and the girls don’t understand Japanese. The girls and the Japanese man don’t speak German either. It just takes the isolation they are all experiencing up a notch, whether it be because they can’t speak or because they can’t understand what is being spoken to them.

The centipede itself is very disgusting. I won’t go into all that much for one because I don’t want to think about it and also because that’s what is going to bring most of you into the theatre. I will say the effect works and you won’t be disappointed.

All in all, I would never see this movie again. It just isn’t any fun. And though there is one point of cathartic release toward the end, it just isn’t enough. It is well made and shot very nicely. There is some very eerie imagery as well as utterly unsettling subject matter but nothing groundbreaking or worth a second viewing.

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. It wasn’t as awful, as life scarring, as I had built itself up in my head to be, so for that I was grateful. And it is a film that I’m sure will live on in infamy for some time, so see it you have the chance and desire.

I argued with myself whether or not to say this, but yes, it is worth seeing. Once.

For being so disgusting and unpleasant, I give this film 1.5/5 sutured, surgically attached stuck thumbs.

XOXO

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