Eat shit and die
A review requested by Mandy Albert, with thanks for supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon.
Do you have a movie you'd like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page!
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is perhaps the cult exploitation film of the 2000s. By 2009, when Dutch edgelord auteur Tom Six unleashed this particular vision upon the world, the horror audience had turned its back on exploitation, or at least what that word would have referred to back in the 1970s (as proved by the flat raspberry 2007's Grindhouse double feature received at the box office). At the time, if you weren't exploiting established intellectual property or the fallibility of the human body, Hollywood wasn't all that interested.
Perhaps that's why The Human Centipede echoed so loudly across the landscape of cinema when it came creeping across the pond on a hundred shuffling, vomit-caked feet. I couldn't say for certain. All I can say is that, from personal experience, the two films during my time in high school that you had to see if you were a twisted little shit were The Human Centipede and 2007's Teeth, the latter of which has made much less of a mark on pop culture at large despite being considerably better in almost every way.
So no, The Human Centipede is not the only exploitation film of the period worth noting. Cinema history doesn't work like that. But it's definitely the case where, even today, if you stopped a random person on the street and asked them to explain the basic plot of The Human Centipede, you'd probably have an 80% success rate. I don't necessarily recommend you do this.
All this to say, The Human Centipede is a big deal, love it or hate it.
And reader, I really thought I hated it. However, coming to it with the perspective of a grown adult with a lot more experience with cult cinema under my belt has really opened my eyes to its charms, limited though they may be. Let's grab our scalpels and dig in, shall we?
Yes, this is the movie about a mad scientist - specifically the German Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser, who has my third favorite name in film history behind Wolf Rilla and King Vidor) - who has an intense desire to create a human centipede. What is a human centipede? Three people who are attached to one another in a straight line by having their mouths sewn to the next person's anus, forming one long gastrointestinal tract where the second and third positions have to eat the poop of the first position. Duh.
The implication is that he achieved his riches by separating Siamese twins and just seems to have gotten sick of doing that day in and day out, which I honestly get. Work is rough.
Anyway, two of the three people in this centipede-to-be are the lost American tourists Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) and Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams), who find themselves with a flat tire while trying to find a German nightclub that probably would have landed them in a Hostel situation anyway, so pick your poison. Anyway Lindsay is the sorta smart one and Jenny is the sorta ditsy one, but their only true character trait is that they are both annoying. They happen upon Dr. Heiter's house where he acts like Dieter Laser at them for a while before drugging them, chasing Lindsay around a bit, and sewing them both to Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), a Japanese man he also kidnaps.
Thus begins a "trapped in a home by an unsavory person" thriller that plays just like Misery or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, only with a bonus scene of someone chowing down on fecal matter like they're a method actor in a shadow cast of Pink Flamingoes.
Much like the original Saw, the large part of The Human Centipede's reputation lies in how extreme it is despite not actually being as repulsive as it could be. Now don't get me wrong, it's plenty repulsive, it's just not gross for very long. Most of the truly gnarly stuff is dealt with elliptically. For instance, you do get some loving shots of, say, an ass being peeled open with a scalpel. It's not for the faint of heart. But the film carefully cuts past any of the actual surgery bits, and even once the centipede is assembled, the more grotesque angles are avoided, carefully blocked by surgical bandages or other people's body parts.
This is most likely the result of the budget not allowing for the kind of special effects that close-up shots would require, but whatever the reason, the overall effect largely comes from implication. This is a very nice thing for a horror film of any stripe to do when it desires to build tension. Now, tension might not be what you're looking for when you throw on a film called The Human Centipede that bills itself as "100% medically accurate." This is fair, but tension is what you get.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that the scenes leading up to the centipedening are positively thrilling, for the most part. Neither lead actress is particularly up to the task of crafting a dimensional horror victim to root for, and the script isn't giving them the barest hint of guidance, but they at least function on the fundamental level of "woman whose party outfit now makes her feel like a walking target for male lechery when transplanted from a club environment into the foggy woods."
On the other hand, Dieter Laser is profoundly, magnificently chilling in this role, crafting a villain whose motivations can only be guessed at in a fog of panic. He is deliciously unnerving, letting his stern features do the talking as he lurks in the back of the frame like a spider in a web. And when he gets to let loose, it's like dropping a lit torch into a box of fireworks, a performance that Klaus Kinski himself would have stood up and applauded when the credits rolled.
The Human Centipede is at its best when it's exploring how vulnerable Heiter's victims are to his delirious whims, when Six's camera is actively ushering the audience along straight into the maw of the beast. He and cinematographer
Goof de Koning (making a viable bid for fourth greatest cinematic name of all time) are making genuinely great use of deep-focus compositions here, alternating chilly elegance (Heiter keeps being framed with a pane of glass separating him from his victims to keep things extra opaque and distant) with voyeuristic handheld shots using objects blocking the frame to create a marvelously present sense of menace. The editing (by Six with Nigel de Hond) is also drum-tight, frenetic and disorienting in the opening sequence but strictly controlled during the cat-and-mouse chase through Heiter's labyrinthine home.
The only technical aspect that is really lacking at all is the audio recording and mixing, which sometimes leaves dialogue fuzzy or muffled, showing its seams as an incredibly indie release in a way that nothing else does.
Really, it's almost something of a marvel. It's just a shame that The Human Centipede loses steam the second the human centipede actually appears onscreen. This is when the film turns from its sort of "elevated Lloyd Kaufman" mode to a pretty bland thriller without any ideas beyond the one defecatory setpiece and such a grim sense of nihilism that by the end one is left with the question of "why did anybody bother with this in the first place?"
The climactic third act battle is essentially just a protracted sequence of both parties crawling slowly in the same direction for what feels like 30 minutes, letting every last molecule of air slowly leak out of the film before its downbeat final shot. And, to be clear, while I'm listing the poop scene as a highlight of this half of the film, it should only be considered such when taking the movie on its own terms. Personally, I could do without ever having seen it in the first place, but one must allow a film its mission statement.
But until the point the surgery happens, which is precisely halfway through the film, The Human Centipede is actually worth watching in so many more ways than I could have anticipated, even having seen the film before. Is it a movie I would recommend anyone actually sit down and watch? Hell no. Will I ever watch it again? I sure hope not. But as someone who was expected to be buffeted by a roaring cloud of flatulence, it was really rather pleasant to simply be met with a wet fart instead.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Do you have a movie you'd like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page!
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is perhaps the cult exploitation film of the 2000s. By 2009, when Dutch edgelord auteur Tom Six unleashed this particular vision upon the world, the horror audience had turned its back on exploitation, or at least what that word would have referred to back in the 1970s (as proved by the flat raspberry 2007's Grindhouse double feature received at the box office). At the time, if you weren't exploiting established intellectual property or the fallibility of the human body, Hollywood wasn't all that interested.
Perhaps that's why The Human Centipede echoed so loudly across the landscape of cinema when it came creeping across the pond on a hundred shuffling, vomit-caked feet. I couldn't say for certain. All I can say is that, from personal experience, the two films during my time in high school that you had to see if you were a twisted little shit were The Human Centipede and 2007's Teeth, the latter of which has made much less of a mark on pop culture at large despite being considerably better in almost every way.
So no, The Human Centipede is not the only exploitation film of the period worth noting. Cinema history doesn't work like that. But it's definitely the case where, even today, if you stopped a random person on the street and asked them to explain the basic plot of The Human Centipede, you'd probably have an 80% success rate. I don't necessarily recommend you do this.
All this to say, The Human Centipede is a big deal, love it or hate it.
And reader, I really thought I hated it. However, coming to it with the perspective of a grown adult with a lot more experience with cult cinema under my belt has really opened my eyes to its charms, limited though they may be. Let's grab our scalpels and dig in, shall we?
Yes, this is the movie about a mad scientist - specifically the German Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser, who has my third favorite name in film history behind Wolf Rilla and King Vidor) - who has an intense desire to create a human centipede. What is a human centipede? Three people who are attached to one another in a straight line by having their mouths sewn to the next person's anus, forming one long gastrointestinal tract where the second and third positions have to eat the poop of the first position. Duh.
The implication is that he achieved his riches by separating Siamese twins and just seems to have gotten sick of doing that day in and day out, which I honestly get. Work is rough.
Anyway, two of the three people in this centipede-to-be are the lost American tourists Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) and Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams), who find themselves with a flat tire while trying to find a German nightclub that probably would have landed them in a Hostel situation anyway, so pick your poison. Anyway Lindsay is the sorta smart one and Jenny is the sorta ditsy one, but their only true character trait is that they are both annoying. They happen upon Dr. Heiter's house where he acts like Dieter Laser at them for a while before drugging them, chasing Lindsay around a bit, and sewing them both to Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), a Japanese man he also kidnaps.
Thus begins a "trapped in a home by an unsavory person" thriller that plays just like Misery or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, only with a bonus scene of someone chowing down on fecal matter like they're a method actor in a shadow cast of Pink Flamingoes.
Much like the original Saw, the large part of The Human Centipede's reputation lies in how extreme it is despite not actually being as repulsive as it could be. Now don't get me wrong, it's plenty repulsive, it's just not gross for very long. Most of the truly gnarly stuff is dealt with elliptically. For instance, you do get some loving shots of, say, an ass being peeled open with a scalpel. It's not for the faint of heart. But the film carefully cuts past any of the actual surgery bits, and even once the centipede is assembled, the more grotesque angles are avoided, carefully blocked by surgical bandages or other people's body parts.
This is most likely the result of the budget not allowing for the kind of special effects that close-up shots would require, but whatever the reason, the overall effect largely comes from implication. This is a very nice thing for a horror film of any stripe to do when it desires to build tension. Now, tension might not be what you're looking for when you throw on a film called The Human Centipede that bills itself as "100% medically accurate." This is fair, but tension is what you get.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that the scenes leading up to the centipedening are positively thrilling, for the most part. Neither lead actress is particularly up to the task of crafting a dimensional horror victim to root for, and the script isn't giving them the barest hint of guidance, but they at least function on the fundamental level of "woman whose party outfit now makes her feel like a walking target for male lechery when transplanted from a club environment into the foggy woods."
On the other hand, Dieter Laser is profoundly, magnificently chilling in this role, crafting a villain whose motivations can only be guessed at in a fog of panic. He is deliciously unnerving, letting his stern features do the talking as he lurks in the back of the frame like a spider in a web. And when he gets to let loose, it's like dropping a lit torch into a box of fireworks, a performance that Klaus Kinski himself would have stood up and applauded when the credits rolled.
The Human Centipede is at its best when it's exploring how vulnerable Heiter's victims are to his delirious whims, when Six's camera is actively ushering the audience along straight into the maw of the beast. He and cinematographer
Goof de Koning (making a viable bid for fourth greatest cinematic name of all time) are making genuinely great use of deep-focus compositions here, alternating chilly elegance (Heiter keeps being framed with a pane of glass separating him from his victims to keep things extra opaque and distant) with voyeuristic handheld shots using objects blocking the frame to create a marvelously present sense of menace. The editing (by Six with Nigel de Hond) is also drum-tight, frenetic and disorienting in the opening sequence but strictly controlled during the cat-and-mouse chase through Heiter's labyrinthine home.
The only technical aspect that is really lacking at all is the audio recording and mixing, which sometimes leaves dialogue fuzzy or muffled, showing its seams as an incredibly indie release in a way that nothing else does.
Really, it's almost something of a marvel. It's just a shame that The Human Centipede loses steam the second the human centipede actually appears onscreen. This is when the film turns from its sort of "elevated Lloyd Kaufman" mode to a pretty bland thriller without any ideas beyond the one defecatory setpiece and such a grim sense of nihilism that by the end one is left with the question of "why did anybody bother with this in the first place?"
The climactic third act battle is essentially just a protracted sequence of both parties crawling slowly in the same direction for what feels like 30 minutes, letting every last molecule of air slowly leak out of the film before its downbeat final shot. And, to be clear, while I'm listing the poop scene as a highlight of this half of the film, it should only be considered such when taking the movie on its own terms. Personally, I could do without ever having seen it in the first place, but one must allow a film its mission statement.
But until the point the surgery happens, which is precisely halfway through the film, The Human Centipede is actually worth watching in so many more ways than I could have anticipated, even having seen the film before. Is it a movie I would recommend anyone actually sit down and watch? Hell no. Will I ever watch it again? I sure hope not. But as someone who was expected to be buffeted by a roaring cloud of flatulence, it was really rather pleasant to simply be met with a wet fart instead.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Categories: dutch cinema, horror, incredibly unpleasant films, torture porn
