Human Centipede

[AndyC]

Also it seemed to me that the sutures might not be enough to hold them together.  I don't think the flesh tissue from different specimens would fuse together to create a seal. 

Good point, and even if the tissue would grow together, it doesn't sound like they took it easy for a couple of weeks while everything healed. Stitches are easy to pull out unintentionally, never mind on purpose.

I guess technically two of the segments could return, but I don't know if that would be a major drawing card.  The two heroines were ditzy and annoying, just disposable victims.

I had heard that the rearmost was dead by the end, which would have worked better for a return in the sequel. I was thinking more along the lines of the survivor being hardened by the experience, and turning into a paranoid survival nut or something. She can't really go on being a naive, ditzy hot chick after going through that, between the emotional scars and the physical ones. It would be another great cliche, in the spirit of movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. The mad doctor survives and carries on making exotic pets for himself, while Middle Segment spends a couple of years tracking him down.

I would assume the doctor somehow survives, just because he is the real monster of the movie, and I can't imagine suspending disbelief enough to think more than one surgeon would be so driven to sew people together in a coprophagic conga line.

After discussing this movie so much, now I've come fully around to wanting to see it, if only to have first-hand knowledge of it. But the trailer has left me a little bit scared. I can watch violence, gore, and just about any kind of ghost or monster, but scenes of prolonged suffering, degradation and even annoying sobbing are just too unpleasant for me, dumb movie or not. The two-minute trailer provoked a reaction I've not had to a movie since I was a kid. But I really want to see it.

[Rev. Powell]

I had heard that the rearmost was dead by the end, which would have worked better for a return in the sequel.

I'm not sure she was.  She was certainly dying from malnutrition but I never saw her drop dead.

After discussing this movie so much, now I've come fully around to wanting to see it, if only to have first-hand knowledge of it. But the trailer has left me a little bit scared. I can watch violence, gore, and just about any kind of ghost or monster, but scenes of prolonged suffering, degradation and even annoying sobbing are just too unpleasant for me, dumb movie or not. The two-minute trailer provoked a reaction I've not had to a movie since I was a kid. But I really want to see it.

I'm afraid it may be that kind of "event" horror fans feel they have to see whether it's good or bad.  I have to point out that, unlike most people, I was not sickly fascinated by the concept.  I just find the notion of the human centipede totally absurd and hard to relate to; there's no fear because I can't really imagine myself in the position, and there's no empathy because I can't imagine anyone else in that situation.  So maybe I was primed to be unaffected by it.  I wasn't even grossed out or angered by the sadism because the whole concept is just too ridiculous for me.   

[AndyC]

I agree that taking a close look at the concept, this movie could be a punchline, with the title invoked for easy laughs. That's partly why I'm interested in seeing it. I like outrageously silly movies, the kind that are met with disbelief when you describe them to people. The other is that the surgery itself is so removed from anything somebody would do in reality (maybe Mengele in his day), it's hard to imagine how it would work, which just makes me think about how it might work.

And one of my first thoughts on seeing the trailer was actually that these people must have had some funny moments making The Human Centipede. Seems like the challenges of three people playing such a creature and moving around like that are not unlike some drunken party game. There are probably some hilarious bloopers.

But the unreality and sheer goofiness of it don't seem to make it any less disturbing for me. I tend to generalize such things, reduce them to the lowest common denominator. Sure, I can't relate to a human centipede specifically, but my mind breaks it down and looks at it in terms of bondage, mutilation, violation, humiliation, dehumanization, loss of individual identity, being completely under someone's control, not being able to talk, having some strange man's butt in your mouth 24 hours a day, eating nothing but someone else's sh!t, and the thought of gagging on a steaming log coming straight from the source. All the deeper implications, when removed from the silly concept, are pretty severe in this movie, possibly beyond what I could stand to watch (and I can usually watch anything). That's just the way I look at things.

Of course, all of this discussion has made it seem far less disturbing. That and the tendency of horror trailers to be scarier than the movies themselves, has got me thinking I might actually get a kick out of it.

[Doggett]

  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. 

I'm pretty sure that in their situation, all they can do is suck it up.



Anyway...
Clearly the film has worked on some level because, love it or hate it, we're all talking about it.

[AndyC]

I'm pretty sure that in their situation, all they can do is suck it up.

Eeeeewwww! Have some karma.

[zombie no.one]

@Rev. thanks for the review. that, coupled with the trailer, has convinced me I don't want to bother catching this one.

subject matter...possibly interesting, but it looks like another unsubtle 'nu-horror' saw/hostel type snore-fest, which I hate. (correct me if I'm wrong there, by all means)

[Mofo Rising]

Rev. pretty much bears out my first impression of the movie after the trailer. It looks boring.

I have enjoyed the discussion of the feasibility of it, if only it weren't in support of such a stupid movie.

Two things:

One, your body is fairly well compartmentalized. Nutrients don't just pass through unscathed. You have a lot of commensal bacteria in your GI tract, which is great for you when it's in your GI tract. E. coli is a prime example. You need this stuff in your GI tract to live, but if you ingest it orally it may well kill you.

Second, the major concern here would be fluid. From the trailer, it seems the secondary people in the centipede only get their intake from the previous person. You can not get enough water this way. Even if they connected the urinary tract to the next person, that wouldn't provide the water needed. First, there just wouldn't be enough. Second, any excreted fluid would have way too high an osmolarity. It's the same reason you can't survive on salt water. Discounting toxins, the secondary/tertiary people would be dead in days. An IV would alleviate this somewhat.

[AndyC]

Fluid was an issue that bothered me too. The only solutions I could come up with were either a tube through the nose or an IV drip. The doctor would have to be buying Lactated Ringers in case lots. The nasal tube or the IV would also take care of feeding.

I had other thoughts about the feeding problem. One was some sort of gastric bypass on the first two segments, to allow more nutrients to pass through, probably combined with a diet of foods that require a bit more breaking down. Maybe even resect some of the small intestine. It might be possible to work out a system that would require the three digestive systems to fully digest the food.

But that still leaves the problem of bacteria. I hadn't been thinking as much of natural gut flora as as I was things like salmonella. One of the reasons a dog can eat something like raw chicken (or poop for that matter) and not get sick is that they have a short digestive system that passes the bacteria before it has time to multiply. People keep it inside much longer, so it has a chance to become septic. I'm thinking the centipede would need regular doses of antibiotics, which could lead to more problems with nutrient absorption, among other things.

I had thought of even connecting their circulatory systems, which would more evenly distribute waste products as well as nutrients. That is not so easy to do, especially when you have to settle for random test subjects who show up at your door.

Urination was the other thing. Depending on the setup you'd need for feeding and hydration, sending the centipede outside to pee might not be all that convenient. So catheters might be necessary, or some kind of a kennel that requires constant sanitation.

And then there are things like hygiene, menstruation, growth of butt hair, etc. that are perhaps easier to deal with, but add to the overall complication.

However you do it, keeping a human centipede alive is going to be a full-time job requiring a lot of supplies, because no matter what you do, these are still three organisms hooked up to work in a way that they simply aren't constructed to work. Even if you're a total pervert who gets off on doing this to people, I can't see there being much time left over to actually enjoy it. And if your kick is turning three people into one organism, it's a total failure. It's still three distinct people and they can't live that way without a lot of help.

I mean, even a professional surgeon couldn't come up with a solution that didn't require some cheating to keep it alive.

[Trevor]

not being able to talk, having some strange man's butt in your mouth 24 hours a day, eating nothing but someone else's sh!t, and the thought of gagging on a steaming log coming straight from the source.

 

1. I've just finished lunch for today and I think forever. 
2. You've just decided me: I won't be seeing this. 

[Rev. Powell]

The discussion about the plausibility of the human centipede is more interesting than the movie.  If they had made a movie where they went into all the medical implications it would have interested me, but bored the core audience. 

[Raffine]

They could have made a heckuva pantomime horse:

[wickednick]

Just watched it, it's ok, not the most disturbing move I have ever seen, but that mostly because the concept is so goofy and I was laughing so much at some of the things that happened that I could never be truly disturbed by what was going on. The doctor in it is played very campy, with his german accent making it all the better. Everyone else falls into the same category of being fundamentally incapable of escaping any situation.
The idea of the movie, while disturbing just wouldn't work in real life. Sure the lead person is going to be fine, but the second and third are just going to die from lack of nutrition, and serious infections from the excrement that they have to consume. Plus I was thinking if someone throws up they choke to death and I know if I had some guy poop in my mouth my first reaction is not going to swallow it, I think my gag reflex would kick in.Another problem revolves around the sutures just not being secure enough to hold the three together. I would think they would rip out very easy and if it was me I would just pull the sutures out my self, no matter how much it hurt.

[AndyC]

OK, this has to be the best line in any review of this movie I've seen so far. Found it at http://pajiba.com

They’re vapid morons who are too stupid to change a tire, and every time they speak, you cringe at their stupidity, to the point where I found myself thinking, “f**k, when is someone gonna sew an ass to that chick so I don’t have to hear her prattle on?”

 

[AndyC]

Still perusing reviews for this thing, and finding them more entertaining than the movie probably is.
The latest quip that made me laugh - somebody called it "Two Girls, One Jap."

Roger Ebert's review is pretty good. He refused to star it, suggesting that a star rating really doesn't mean anything for a movie like this. Ebert was actually pretty generous in his critique, and gets in a few good chuckles. He also includes a helpful diagram.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100505/REVIEWS/100509982/1023

[Chainsawmidget]

I'm betting that this isn't nearly as nasty as I'm imagining it. 

So I'll pass on it and just keep it to my imagination.