A brilliant, Psycho inspired poster fit for a brilliant film.But is it really?
We all know the story: mad surgeon kidnaps three tourists in order to merge them together into a centipede by severing their kneecaps and sewing the lips of two to the assholes of the other two. A fine little premise that has already taken the film a surprisingly long way from its home country of Holland. Roger Ebert even published a (surprisingly positive) review of the film, which he awarded no stars rather out of shock than out of loathing. Believe it or not, the film has also inspired an online, Atari-style game from Newgrounds. It might just be a simple reworking of the classic Centipede, but I think it perfectly exemplifies the widespread, and somewhat misleading enthusiasm generated by the film's oddball premise. In our beautiful information age, where the love for novelties spreads like wildfire, something like this was bound to happen. Because although the web is perhaps the only truly democratic medium left in the world, its main function seems to remain the shoulder tap: "Hey, kid. Look at this shit!". And what the global village actually entails is worlwide public humiliations for some, and instant celebrity for others, no matter how undeserving. In this state of affairs, The Human Centipede is a world-renowned gimmick first, and a 92 minutes film second. Rarely has it been appraised for what it really is: a very conventional torture porn entry whose steam comes not from the celebrated centipede concept, but from Dieter Laser's manic performance as the main antagonist.
Obviously, the film was sold out for the sole representation programmed this year at Fantasia (a second presentation was added later due to the overwhelming response from Montreal gorehounds). People really want to see this stuff! It's just too intriguing, especially if you've got a vivid imagination. It keeps you up at night, wondering how a creature like the human centipede could function, if at all. This is without pointing the obvious fact that such a construction necessarily implies a lot of shit-eating. That said, you cannot survive on eating shit alone. It is impossible. By definition, shit is food residue from the digestive process. It is food that has no nutritional value anymore. Now, the film doesn't explicitly imply that the whole centipede should actually survive, but the antagonist certainly seems to think so. And this goes against the "100% medically accurate" gimmick packaged with the film. What happened is director Six actually consulted a surgeon back in the Netherlands about the feasibility of uniting three people ass-to-mouth. And the explanations of the mad scientist are supposedly the result of that consultation. And it serves the film very well. In fact, the high point of the film is without a doubt the slide show scene. In this scene, Dr. Heiter exposes his plan to his captives using detailed anatomical drawings showing every step of the unification process. And he talks in boring and repetitive technical terms as if totally uninvolved. This scene is much more evocative than either the actual operation scene or the aftermath because it "shows" you more. It shows you anything you can instinctly imagine when confronted with the mere possibility of such an enterprise. You start imagining yourself tied to a bed with medical straps, facing the most horrifying perspective of all. After that pivotal scene, the film was bound to go downhill, starting its slow slide away from that dramatic high into the familiar territory of "captivity" films. Because while the centipede gimmick is the main reason why spectators flooded into the theater, it is also the main narrative device of the film. Now I wouldn't go as far as saying that the second act is tedious, but I will just say this: it is almost totally deprived of tension. After the operation, only the tiresome grotesquery of the creature is showcased. And since the three victims are so unsympathetic, their ordeal is merely pathetic.
OH SHIT!!! (pun definitely intended)Some observers have mentioned that "horror fans don't care about medical accuracy", which is right most of the time, especially when considering how viscera usually look in gore films, not to mention in Herschell Gordon Lewis films. But in this instance, I would argue that it does matter. For one, I was particularly intrigued by this gimmick, not because I actually thought that the film could be 100% medically accurate, but because I wanted to know how Six could manage to pass it off as 100% medically accurate. It turns out he does a pretty good job of it, tapping, as almost every filmmaker does, in the public's gross lack of medical knowledge to suggest such an otherwordly operation. And this functions as quite a potent scare tactic: to convince the audience that they could actually find themselves in the protagonists' situation. Unfortuantely, what you also find out from the film is that you'd actually have to be quite stupid to get caught in that situation...
Fact is, our two heroines are so dumb that their actions have to be seen to be believed. First, they don't speak a word of German despite the fact that they are touring Europe. Typically American some might say, but dumb nonetheless. Then, they seem to want trouble: trying to locate a nightclub (in order to hook up with some "cute" guys), they get stuck in the woods of all places, the woods! Last time I checked, nightclubs tend to be located in the city. Anyways, the two girls eventually get a flat (how original!), and of course, they don't know how, nor are they willing to try, to change a tire. Instead they try to call for help, but guess what: they get no reception on their cellphones. When a car finally rolls by, you first think that it must be Dr. Heiter out to claim the girls, but no. An old, overweight and grumpy-looking German stops his car parallel to theirs and rolls down his window. The girls would have been saved at that point if they had only known a few elementary words in his language. Instead, they act as the two American turkeys that they are and try gesticulating an explanation. Amused, the old German starts poking fun at them, making perverted suggestions to the girls whom eventually pick up the German word for "fuck" and thus barricade themselves inside the car, watching their "friend" roll away while making obscene gestures. At this point, there seems to be only three valid options for Lindsay and Jenny: either try and change the goddamned tire without breaking their nails, wait it out inside the car or follow the road on foot towards civilization. But the two girls choose a perfectly good alternative instead: cut through the woods towards ?. And I do mean ?. When they finally reach Dr. Heiter's house, they make few other stupid mistakes, and eventually find themselves trapped in a makeshift operating room in the good doctor's basement. Honestly, this whole exposition scene is a laugh riot. At every stupid mistake, audience members went nuts with hilarity, which isn't something you should expect from this type of film, which has basically a very straight-faced approach to the material at hand. In my opinion, this here is a case-example of lazy screenwriting: using stupidity and clichés to propel the narrative. It does, obviously, add sort of a campy gloss to the film, but in the end, putting nail polish on a dirty nail will not make it any cleaner. Personnally, I was wholly relieved when the two girls finally had their mouths sewn to two anuses for they could no longer annoy me with their vacuous whining. And considering the fact that most people seemed to agree with me, we ended up rooting for the vilain, which somewhat defeats the purpose of an horror film, to make us either feel for the victims or identify with them.
In all fairness, our rooting for Dr. Heiter also has to do with the quality of actor Dieter Laser's work, which is probably the film's strongest asset save for the basic "centipede" idea. Apart from this guy, whom has appeared in over fifty TV and movie productions, the cast is entirely made up of unknows. And it makes a lot of sense too. You won't see any A-lister eager to play "the centipede's middle piece" in a low-budget Dutch horror film. So don't expect miracles from the two female leads, or from their male counterpart who spends the entire runtime shouting at Laser in Japanese. However, you should enjoy Laser's exquisite turn as the egotistic, misanthropic mad man. The German-born actor holds the entire film on his shoulders, whether when calmly explaining to the girls how he "hates human beings", angrily running after the escaped Lindsay, trying to convince a hard-ass cop to have a drink of (spiked) water, or dancing with a mirror while kissing his own reflection. As for the victims, they are not much more than expendable fodder. And although their ordeal might disgust us, we never really get to sympathize with them. Especially in light of the fact that their total muteness, and limited movement, in the second act tends to nullify their presence as actors.
Dieter Laser manages to create a complex antagonist, at once adedicated animal lover, violent sociopath and clinical surgeon.
All in all, The Human Centipede is merely another run-of-the-mill, campy gross-out film meant to cash-in on audiences' initial curiosity. The screenplay is mostly sloppy and borrows heavily from other, better torture porn films, leaving the entire success of the project squarely on Dieter Laser's more-than-capable shoulders. I must admit that the centipede gimmick makes for some pretty amusing moments, such as when the Japanese guy first has to shit and Heiter spurs him on with large gestures ("Feed her!", he says with delight) or when the escaping centipede has to climb a spiral staircase and the stitches around the girls' mouths start popping, but in the end, the film offers no more horror than you could imagine from the synopsis. It is a fun festival film, or a kind of collector's item that you keep in your library just to show unexpecting friends: "Oh that! It's actually a film about a mad doctor stitching three people up ass-to-mouth". Personnally, I was made aware of the film from a friend who had heard about it from the radio of all places. The interviewee had apparently told the reporter that it was "one of the sickest films of all time". And that's in this very insidious way that the film managed to generate a buzz. The film is actually nowhere near as sick as more serious, or more sexually-oriented horror films such as Singapore Sling or A Serbian Film (who seriously overshadowed The Human Centipede at this year's Fantasia filmfest). Nonetheless, my curiosity was so strong and my imagination so wild that I instantly decided to order my own copy online. During the following week, I actually lost sleep imagining how I could be transformed into a human centipede. When the DVD finally showed up at my door, I held it up with shaky hands and made sure I didn't eat too much prior to watching. Less than halfway through, I was eating cherry pie right from the tin plate. I felt stupid then to have trusted what some bourgeois radio interviewee who probably knew nothing about horror cinema had to say about this film. I felt betrayed not by the film itself, which remains an honest effort from a broke-ass director, but by the buzz around it, which seems entirely made up by self-important Internet critics and outraged media personnalities. Truly, The Human Centipede is worth watching if you're into that kind of stuff, but it is in no way a must-see. And it is definitely not the sickest film of all times. More on the funny side, actually. So don't believe the hype. Never do. Just grab some friends and some beers, put on the film, and take your Dr. Heiter banners out.
**1/2 Don't believe the hype: it is only Laser who makes this above average.
