What the...? ("Human Centipede")

[Crusoe]

http://www.britfilms.tv/index.php?id=8339

That's just unpleasant.

[ursus arctos]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

Why did I click the link?

I don't even usually hang out in Film.

[Stumpy Pepys]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

Sounds terrific. Can't wait.

[Mumpo]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

I thought that the picture after the first two stills of the guy lounging on the bed was from the film too. It threw me, I can tell you.

[ian.64]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

I'd heard about this and, once having gotten the gist of the whole thing, a few thoughts sprang to mind:

First off, I'm trying to get around the idea that you can base a horror film on the concept of welding someone's face to someone's arse to create one of the world's most unusual conga lines. I mean the concept of body horror is a potent one, but were I ambitious enough to do that, the last thing I would actually put down on my list of inspirational ideas is the story of three people crawling around with their noses buried in someone's bum cheeks. That's not horror, that a drunken bet in a pub lock-in at three in the morning.

Secondly, I feel unusually sorry and sympathetic for the actors involved for partaking in this Cronenbergian arse-crack fest. The casting sessions must have been something. You'll be on a journey of horror and emotion. You'll suffer the wild sensations of the terror of the soul. Oh, and you'll have your face parked an inch near someone's anus most of the time. Imagine after the film's been released and its gained exposure through notoriety of some kind (as it must, where the subject matter's concerned), and you're hereafter known as the Bumface Girl. Hey, did I see you buried up some guy's ass in that film?

Thirdly, a short internet venture brings us the fact that the director worked with an experienced surgeon to bring realism to the physical concept of a chain of people with their mouths connected to their ring-pieces. What I want to know is how you can actually find a surgeon who'll happily accept the notion of joining forces with someone for six months, reportedly, and settling down with them to design a future where hapless wretches will have their gobs stitched to someone's poop-chute. Sorry, love, just got to get the phone! It's that bloke again with that sphincter-gob idea he's had! In the daytime, saving lives on the operating table, in the nightime, solving the arse-face conundrum.

Fourthly, the idea of a bunch of people with their faces up stuck up each other's arses is simply, when thought about as a cold, stark concept, utterly ridiculous, and the one clip I saw struck me not so much as terrifying as totally dick-headed (I've probably let slip the idea of a sequel in that small phrase) and preposterous. I wonder if the director nurtured the concept while at film-school? Some directors wanted to make action films with Bruce Willis. Some wanted to make Wes Anderson flights of fancy. Some wanted to be another Martin Scorcese. This bloke dreamt of seeing a woman crawl around with her face up a bloke's crack.

Fifthly, the most disgusting thought occured when dealing with the concept of the mouth welded to the chocolate star. If you want the toilet, what's the alternative? If you're going to struggle around with your mouth glued to someone's anus, the thought isn't the existence of being a human centipede, it's wondering whether the guy you're attached to went to the House Of Steaming Curries before the operation, or decided to enter the Guinness Book Of Records for Most Baked Beans Consumed In A Single Night. Perhaps that's where the horror comes in.

It just sounds all so very wrong. But who knows? Should I see it, I may be moved and compelled. On the other hand, I may shout 'Oh, fuck off!' continually for its entire running time.

In any case, if I wanted to indulge in the concept of watching someone's face shoved up another's butt-cheeks then I'd watch Piers Morgan doing what comes naturally to him.

[Crusoe]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

Excellent, ian.

And if eating through someone's arse isn't bad enough, eventually you'd vomit in disgust - but that's not exactly going to help you either.

[delicatemoth]

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"Six is an advert garden artist as well as director of this mind-bending oddity and by the sounds of it, the lad will be out Cronenburging David Cronenburg with considerable ease."

Is this a common profession in the Netherlands or just an example of the perils of spellcheck?

[Incandenza]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

Saw this mentioned on Deadspin a few weeks ago. It just sounds too ridiculous to be scary.

[dalliance]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

Has anyone seen this? We watched it at the weekend and even if you can get past the difficult concept in the first place it's a bleak and tawdry piece of work.

The main character is not just a surgeon gone a bit mad, he's a brutal sadist who enjoys the suffering of his experiment as much as he enjoys the medical challenge of putting it together. I was kind of thinking Mengele might have been an inspiration. He's so comic book ridiculously over the top mad that it renders the film devoid of any meaning as to why he was so driven to do what he was doing.

At least he could act, he was the only one in the film who could. There are a couple of Rudi Voller circa 1990 lookalike policemen who turn up near the end who are comically wooden. And the most unpleasant bit of the film for me was not the creation of this creature, the medical stuff, the shit eating, the extreme dental work or the bits of the centipede dying off because it was not getting nutrition, no, it was the 30 minute plus sequence early on where the two American girls get a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere and wander about scared in the woods before happening upon the creepy Doctor's house in a forest.

Christ, their acting and their dialogue is purgatory, it's up there with some of the worst Friday the 13th style slasher bimbettes in peril ever committed to celluloid. Their best deliveries came through the medium of grunting when they had their mouths sewn to other anuses.

Anyway, to summarise, avoid this film.

[Guest]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

I've read quite a bit about this film because like Ian it just makes me think 'but why?' Why this exact concept? The supposed origins of it (a joke the director used to make about punishing paedophiles by sewing them to truckers) is totally at odds with all the attention to scientific detail and the idea of deranged Nazi-style experimentation in pursuit of some kind of "pure" goal. As Ian points out, you can't just have the crazed scientist decide to create one digestive system out of three because it's not going to work, ever, like this, and the poor kids are going to die of blood poisoning pretty quickly. Yes I know that it's theoretically possible and with the right medical attention the poor people could live for years, but emphatically not in the way that is the supposed intention. Similarly you can't have the crazed Frankenstein decide to 'train' his centipede as if that made sense in any other way than as simply further torture of his victims, because even for a psychopath this makes no sense. It's fascinating, sure, but it's like Farelly brothers fascinating. Comic in a way that's deeply at odds with the po-faced horror setting.

I guess what I'm saying is that successful horror stories about crazy scientists or crazy Nazis or whatever are successful because the internal narrative of the crazy person is logically consistent, however daft it looks from the outside. Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, for example. The idea that by wearing a suit made out of girls he can somehow find the answer to his own identity is crazy in a way that makes sense. This is not and that's got to be the failure, rather than the gross-out factor.
I'm interested in what you say dalliance about it being rubbish in terms of acting, &c. a friend who's a film reviewer said he thought it was really 'good' in those terms, he liked it purely as a satisfying horror experience, but he does tend to like stuff more than it deserves. I gather the mise-en-scene & other generic conventions are done in a more sophisticated & restrained style than the subject matter suggests & he found that contrast to be effective. Anyway I rather liked what Ebert said: 'I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.'

I've been wondering if I had to choose between seeing this & seeing A Serbian Film, which I'd choose. I don't know. It's easy and glib to proclaim all these new mainstream-extreme body horror torture porn films as political allegory a la Hostel, and obviously even by its title, A Serbian Film is trying to position itself as having something to say. I like the contrast actually in the titles: the specific concept in isolation of The Human Centipede and the grandiose posturing of A Serbian Film - 'look! it's important, all right?'.

But THC is also located in this area - it's about American & Japanese tourists in Germany, so it has to be. Whether or not there's any merit to the films' implicit claims to be satirising some aspect of international relations is probably, sadly, almost beside the point by now. These days, for a film to say something, it really only seems to require that it look like it's saying something, anything. And of course, this shouldn't have any bearing on whether it's actually a good film... but offering critics an angle like this to write about does at least create an illusion of complexity and depth if nothing else. And I say this as someone who quite likes the Hostel films and thinks they're better films than they're given credit for. And I am quite attached to the increasingly loopy eccentricity of the Saw franchise.

The trailers for the sequel are beginning to appear. Even before anyone had seen the first one, the director was promising that the sequel would be full-on disgusting to an extent that will make THC "look like my little Pony" which is kind of a hilariously self-aggrandising thing to say & also, sorry, really makes you think 'mouth writing cheques that the arse can't cash'. What it seems to mean is that the first film mostly isn't that graphic (apparently) and there's a lot of exposition & a lot of running around but the gross surgery stuff is hidden behind cartoon stick figure 'diagrams' and then a lot of bandages. As we all know, an effective way to generate horror; less is more. But if he's promising us that the sequel will go completely in the other direction - well, it sounds unlikely to work on any level other than pure exploitation. Then again, my little ponies are pretty fucking horrific when you look at them, so maybe he means something else.

[dalliance]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

I'm really surprised your friend found some of the conventional elements about the film satisfying, they really aren't. There's the central concept of course but the padding to expand it out to a 90 minute film is pretty dreadful. The director really has no idea about conventional film making.

I suppose the film is at its best (so to speak) around the point he has them imprisoned and starts explaining the medical process to them. That must be 50+ minutes in though, you have the extended and painful lost bimbos in the wood sequence, then one of the the girls escapes and you have an interminable chase sequence around his house which is utterly devoid of tension or imagination. The denouement when the police finally come is a horribly managed set piece, its just comical really.

I think I would struggle considerably more with A Serbian Film for the reason i struggled with Men Behind The Sun and all manner of Deodato cannibal films from the 70s - the animal stuff. Silly girls choosing to take on a role where they spend half a film sewn to the ass of someone in front is one thing, brutal films that use animal torture because it is cheap, legal where they are making it and easy gory is a whole level of badness I will not subscribe to.

[Toby Gymshorts]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

I read the synopsis of A Serbian Film and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want to watch it. Seriously.

[Guest]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

I'm really surprised your friend found some of the conventional elements about the film satisfying, they really aren't.

Here's his review... http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/films/the-human-centipede-first-sequence-film-review-35386.html

Re teh SPOILERZ****************************

yes that's how I understand it happens. I wouldn't even suggest thinking about seeing it if there's anything with animals in.

[evilC]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

Toby Gymshorts wrote:

I read the synopsis of A Serbian Film and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want to watch it. Seriously.

Same here. I'm squeamish and I can't handle violence against women, but that's not it. It just seems so unnecessarily unpleasant.

An allegory? Fine - make an allegorical film. But like that? Blimey!

[dalliance]

What the...? ("Human Centipede&#34

Here's his review... www.viewlondon.co.uk/films/the-human-cen...lm-review-35386.html

Each to their own I suppose, your comment that he is perhaps overly enthusiastic about stuff certainly holds true here.

He makes a few broad comments about the film being 'well made, darkly funny and brilliantly weird horror flick with a terrific central performance from Dieter Laser'. I contest the well made bit for reasons I mentioned above, darkly funny pah, it is absolutely lacking in any humour whatsoever. Really, none at all.

Brilliantly weird, well maybe the concept is but padding a single paragraph concept on paper into a 90 minute feature film dilutes it considerably when done as poorly as this.

Dieter Laser can act evidently, he just overacts the whole film as he struggles to find best how to pitch his character. I don't get Christopher Walken at all apart from a slight physical resemblance, it's more the Gary Oldman School of Excess that seems to have been his inspiration.