Every day Robert Saucedo shines a spotlight on a movie either so bad it’s good or just downright terrible. Today: Forget the Hungry Little Caterpillar!
Yes, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) contains images and subject matter that not only skirts with depravity, it practically lambadas with it.
Writer/director Tom Six embraces the sort of nauseating hypothetical that Nazi scientists perfected during World War II.
That said, the film doesn’t come close to reaching the levels of bad taste that the average moviegoer’s imagination will concoct after hearing the film’s plot synopsis and seeing its trailer. In the end, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) doesn’t go as far as I expected and/or hoped.
Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie play Lindsay and Jenny, two pretty — if slightly stupid — American girls looking for some fun during a road trip through Europe.
When their car breaks down on a lonely German road, they do the only sensible thing there is to do and traipse through the woods in search of help. Unfortunately, instead of finding help, they find Dr. Heiter — a surgeon renown for his ability to separate conjoined twins.
Over the years, though, Dr. Heiter has gone a little insane and is now more than a bit obsessed with creating conjoined creatures of his own. But why stop at twins?
Dr. Heiter (played by Dieter Laser) is hard at work at perfecting his newest creation — the human centipede.
Jenny and Lindsay are the perfect subjects for this new creation — a daisy chain from hell. Using science that filmmaker Tom Six has gone out of his way to insure audiences is 100 perfect medically accurate, Dr. Heiter will remove the ligaments in his victims’ knees — forcing them to crawl on all fours. He will then sew their face cheeks to their ass cheeks — connecting their gastronomical systems in the process. This crude, if not so effective, method will turn three helpless victims into one conjoined monstrosity — a trio of terrified tourists who share the same digestive system (i.e. what the first person eats, the last poops out).
While The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (yes, the added “First Sequence” tag in the film’s title suggests that this is only the first in a series of films exploring human centipedes) is certainly disgusting in its premise and slightly shocking in its execution, it is, as far as films in this ilk go, rather tame.
Besides a few close-up shots of butt cheeks being sliced open and puss filled infected cheek stitches, most of the nasty is implied or shown off camera.
Instead, audiences are given the blissful joy of truly terrible dialogue, outlandishly overacted performances and some of the most joyful bad guy posturing since Elmer Fudd.
Dieter Laser’s performance as Dr. Heiter is a joy to watch. Looking like a cross between Lance Henriksen and a dehydrated Christopher Walken, Laser struts and poses his way through the movie — hamming it up as he chases his unwilling patients through the surprisingly long hallways of his residence/laboratory.
Between spouting off quote-worthy dialogue, firing tranquilizer darts into the asses of truck drivers and coming dangerously close to masturbating to pictures of his first experiment — his sweet three-dog knight — Dr. Heiter is a classic horror movie villain of the highest caliber.
More entertaining than Jigsaw, more depraved than Leatherface and more skilled at wiggling across the floor like a caterpillar than Prince Randian, Dr. Heiter makes the movie. Everything else is just window dressing.
While The Human Centipede may not have been the shocking be-all, end-all horror movie I was hoping for, it did provide entertainment. Even though it is available to rent on-demand at the moment, I recommend seeing the film in a large group to enhance your enjoyment of some of the movie’s less then quality qualities.
I am glad that not only was The Human Centipede made but that it has gotten some real taste of mainstream buzz. This is a good thing not only because it will hopefully encourage other off-kilter horror movies to get wide theatrical distribution but also it finally rewards that one person out there on the Internet whose sexual fetish involved multiple forced ass-to-mouth.
Enjoy, my friend. This movie is for you.
Robert Saucedo can’t wait until The Human Centipede vs. Mansquito. Follow Robert on Twitter @robsaucedo2500.
