Human Centipede

[inframan]

On the big screen. 
http://www.originalalamo.com/Show.aspx?id=7305

[AndyC]

On the big screen. 
http://www.originalalamo.com/Show.aspx?id=7305

Interesting review. So, he started out with the Canine Centipede, then moved on to humans when it didn't work? That's kind of bass-ackward. But I suppose it's the least nutty thing he does.

I'm kind of surprised the triple Rottweiler didn't work. Dogs love following each other around sticking their noses in each other's butts, not to mention eating poo. You might have to look closely to see they're attached.

Would you believe I finally decided to see this thing, and I can't get it here. I'd express my annoyance, but any appropriate expletive I can think of would sound like a pun in this context. Anyway, I think I can wait for the DVD.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

You know after thinking long and hard about this, I have decided that if this guy had presented at a MAd Science Seminar, he wouldn't even have made itto the poster session.   

Dr. Berzerk: So Heinrich, tell us about this human caterpillar of yours?
Evil movie guy: Centipede, sir.  I plan to stick two co-ed and a Japanese tourist mouth-to-anus as a sort of pilot study for a bigger creature.
Dr. Berzerk: You don’t say, where will you do this?
EMG: At my suburban house in Holland, very near a popular night spot.
Dr. Berzerk: One of the most crowded and crime free countries in Europe you know. 
EMG: Really?
Dr. Berzerk: And how will this creature feed?
EMG: Well, Segment A will eat, and pas their waste to segment B, and so on.
Dr. Berzerk: Um you DID go to medical school Heinrich?
EMG: Yes sir.
Dr. Berzerk: And no one mentioned that human waste is a poor source of nutrition.
EMG: Ummmmm.
Dr. Berzerk: Oh look, the buffet is open!  Hurries away.

[AndyC]

The truly tragic thing is that there is a lot of fodder for jokes here. The premise and what passes for medical accuracy are ridiculous, and it sounds like the performances are way over the top. But it's also too dark and disturbing and outside the mainstream for most of that potential to be realised. I was just thinking how much I'd enjoy a Rifftrax of The Human Centipede, but I doubt they'd do one for this movie even if they wanted to (also questionable). I think the content's too strong for Mike, Kevin and Bill's brand of humour. But in every other way, it's crying out to be riffed.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Andy,
 thats my thought too.  Its two steps away from 50's drive in fodder.   But they are big steps in messy territory. 
-Ed

[AndyC]

For sure. Stranded travelers ending up at the remote house of a mad scientist just as he's looking for human guinea pigs. I keep thinking of Bride of the Monster. Aside from the one shocking and original idea, it is a 50s b-movie. But that one thing is sufficiently upsetting to enough people that trying to have some fun at this film's expense is likely to meet with a good deal of disapproval. I couldn't describe the plot in vague terms to my wife without being stopped before I even got to hinting at how the people were joined.

[AndyC]

OK, I was finally able to see it, and it was not that bad. I think most of the horror is in imagining what the characters are going through, and I'd already done that.

I was surprised at how much I was laughing, both at the dark humour and some of the stuff that was played straight, but just came off as goofy and over the top. It actually blunts a good deal of the horror when the front end of the centipede is constantly yelling at the doctor in Japanese, and the doctor is carrying on like a kid with a new toy.

Likewise, the scene where... uhhhh... the food makes it's second of three stops... was not bad at all. You can't see anything, and I was distracted by the stream of subtitled apologies from the front guy, and the doctor jumping up and down excitedly and yelling "Feed her!" That was something that made the eeeevil doctor come off as less menacing, in spite of the over-the-top creepiness he put into the role - he didn't seem particularly sadistic, just completely nuts. A lot of the time, it seems like he's expecting his victims to be impressed, maybe even proud to be included in his great experiment. He's made something really cool (his entire motivation really), and he just doesn't get why everybody else has got to go and spoil it.

And now I have no doubt that the chick in the middle is going to be back in the sequel. In the end, it seemed fairly certain she would be rescued eventually, and she was the one who had been finding her inner strength all the way through and keeping a level head (like she had any choice but to keep her head level  ). From the way the operation was explained, it should be easy to reverse, leaving her with facial scars in the shape of an enormous evil grin. Or maybe it's more of a s**t-eating grin. I can see her coming back in a more heroic capacity, perhaps as a vigilante or even working with the authorities. I can't see them not having Dieter Laser in the sequel, since he was the best thing about this movie, but there was nothing ambiguous about his death, even if his glassy dead stare did look just like his glassy alive stare. But where bizarre and improbable medical experiments are concerned, not to mention cheesy sequels, you never know.

I don't think I'll watch The Human Centipede again, but it was OK.

[Trevor]

Where I come from, a centipede or millipede is called a songololo (pronounced song a lo lo) so this film's Afrikaans title would be Kak Songololo.*

*Kak is a rude Afrikaans term for #2. 

[Celx]

Everybody loves shock value no?
That movie is something I won't be watching though, I like a little more substance in my trash...

[AndyC]

 
http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/human-centipede-game/

[The Gravekeeper]

I might rent it sometime. That claim that it's "medically accurate" just cracks me up, though. I mean, traces of feces in food are enough to give people e-coli. Eating actual turds would probably kill a person. Even if they somehow didn't get a really nasty infection from the surgery or surviving solely on crap, there's still the fact that without any real sustenance everyone except the person in front would starve to death if they didn't die of dehydration first. Even worse, that would naturally result in one of the members of the human centipede dying. Y'know, so that someone (or someones) would have a corpse sewn to them. Ewwwww.

That took me, what, 2 minutes to think up exactly why, on purely biological terms, not ethical, the good doctor is an idiot for undertaking that experiment.

[inframan]

http://blog.originalalamo.com/2010/06/01/projectionist-goes-totally-insane-gets-human-centipede-tattoo/

[AndyC]

Of all the images to get, he gets the cheesy diagram from the slide show.

I just read that two of the actors will be coming back in the sequel. Front and rear are signed on to reprise their roles, which is weird, since they both appeared quite dead at the end. No word on whether the middle girl is coming back, or whether the doctor gets resurrected somehow. Those I would have taken as given, so naturally it`s a big secret.

Not much on what is going to be in the sequel, besides more people sucking ass. All I`ve heard is that it will be more graphic, showing more of the blood and s**t. Yay.

I thought the one thing this movie had going for it, aside from Dieter Laser and his creepy performance, was that it opted not to go for cheap gross-outs, keeping the visuals fairly sterile and letting our imaginations do the work. I think it handled the subject matter about as well as a horror movie could. Faint praise, I know, but it was about as tasteful and artistic as a movie about three people sewn ass-to-mouth could be. Again, not saying much.

I actually didn`t mind Human Centipede, and kind of liked it. The doctor and his insane antics seemed to take the edge off every really disturbing scene, and I tended to giggle more than anything. For me, it overshot horror and went straight into camp. I hope the sequel keeps that and doesn`t turn into Twelve Girls, One Cup.

[The Burgomaster]

I ordered the DVD yesterday.   

[Skull]

OK, here's my review of HUMAN CENTIPEDE, released to badmovies.org readers first:


There’s something in Hollywood that’s called a “high concept.”  It doesn’t mean what you probably think it means.  It refers to a plot hook that is so simple it can be compellingly summarized in a single sentence, like “a mad doctor turns three people into a human centipede.”  People will buy tickets to see it based on that easily digestible premise, so filmmakers can fill the remainder of the movie with whatever supporting crap they need to, just so long as it pads the film out to feature length.  The Human Centipede is a perfect example of a high concept horror film.  People are seduced into buying a ticket by the idea of seeing a human centipede, never minding the fact that they won’t see anything in the movie they didn’t already imagine when they heard the one sentence summary.  After watching the two minute trailer, it seemed like I knew everything that was going to happen in the film, so I was curious to see how director Tom Six would fill up the remaining 88 minutes.   The results of my study follow.  (Note: there aren’t really any spoilers in the following description, as there’s not enough plot to spoil).

    * HORROR MOVIE SETUP WE’VE SEEN 1,000 TIMES BEFORE:  Two hot, ditzy American tourists in Holland put on too much eye makeup, sensing that it will make them look cool, sexy and vulnerable when it smears in the rain after their caught in a downpour after their car breaks down late at night in a spooky woods and they have to walk to an isolated ranch style home where a doctor who looks like a Dutch Christopher Walken with acne scars serves them a drugged drink.  There is actually one valuable lesson to be learned in this segment: if you’re on a deserted road and find you have to rush into the woods to use the bathroom, don’t do your business right in front of the parked car of the only homicidal maniac to be found in a twenty five kilometer radius. 20 minutes.
    * RECOGNITION OF THE HORROR THAT’S ABOUT TO BEFALL THEM:  The dastardly villain proves he’s willing to go to any lengths in his villainy.  Recapitulating the trailer in case the girls didn’t catch it on YouTube, he then shows his helpless victims a helpful slideshow of the horrors he’s about to inflict upon them.  15 minutes.
    * FALSE HOPE 1: THE HEROINE ESCAPES!:  Realizing that there’s still a lot of time to fill up, the villain turns his back for a split second to allow the heroine to escape.  The villain gets more character development when he proves his dastardliness by refusing to let the girl go, even though she pleads with him.  Realizing there’s still a lot of time to fill up, the heroine relies on her ditziness and refuses to do the one sane thing anyone in her situation would do: run away as fast as possible and come back later with help for her friends.  10 minutes.
    * THE HORROR ABOUT TO BEFALL THEM BEFALLS THEM: Surgical tooth removal and buttock-flap creation, not as grisly as you might imagine.  Spooky music.  The human centipede is revealed!  5 minutes.

The movie has now achieved its purpose, but there’s still a ways to go.  So we get:

    * THE ACTUAL HORROR OF THE HORROR THAT BEFELL THEM DAWNS ON THEM: The implications of life as a human centipede are fully explored.  The evil doctor trains the human centipede to walk, fetch the morning paper, and eat from a dog bowl.  The story briefly and distastefully touches upon the elimination issue that was probably the first thing that came to your mind when you heard the premise.  The two girls who make up the second and third segments never fully adjust to life as a human centipede; just as they never stopped babbling in their pre-human centipede days, they never stop sobbing for the rest of the movie.  Ladies, I’m sure that daily life as a human centipede is hard, but at some point you just have to suck it up and stop whining.  The fact that their sobs are muffled by the buttocks of the segment ahead of them really doesn’t make it any less annoying.  15 minutes.
    * FALSE HOPE 2: THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE ESCAPES!:  The authorities start sniffing around to investigate all the mysterious disappearances.  This sets up a hope that everything will turn out alright.  This is intended to create suspense.  The human centipede takes advantage of the situation and escapes, sobbing all the while!  The human centipede briefly gets the upper hand but chivalrously decides not to take the doctor’s life or keep the precious weapon it found.  15 minutes.
    * CLIMAX:  The detectives forget their detective training, thus risking their lives, at crucial moments.  The saga of the human centipede takes an unexpected turn.  Dumb, but unexpected.  The ending is supposed to be a downer, but really, the authorities will arrive in a few hours, and how hard can human centipede reversal surgery actually be? 10 minutes.

So, the answer to the question of how director Tom Six would pad the film to fill up the extra 88 minutes of screentime turns out to be an ingenious and efficient one: he relies on tried and true horror movie formulas and clichés. The full movie is no improvement on the trailer, but it is 45 times longer. Now that I think back on it, the 2 minute trailer may have been padded, as well.

It looks like a no surpriser for me, I kind of guess what was going to happen by looking at the trailer and your summery confirmed 90% of what I was thinking.

Actually the 10% would be too cleaver for this movie. (I’d picture the psycho as a Dr. Phibes or Montag the Magnificent [Wizard of Gore] and his logic… well you can guess… Revenge on such and such characters so they are forced to eat poop ) very simple and very effective…

Cool at least I don’t have to waste my time watching a movie about a silly joke [from what I understand the concept is based upon a sick joke]

:)