Written and Directed by Tom Six
Starring Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura, Andreas Leupold, Peter Blankenstein
Ah! The Mad Scientist. Horror fans aren't afforded too many mad scientist movies anymore. The Human Centipede sets out to give you a bastardized Baron Frankenstein who, instead of creating life from the dead, builds a monster from the living. Dr. Heiter is a wealthy and successful surgeon who specializes in the seperation of conjoined twins. Now mad, Dr. Heiter wants to create a new creature by joining three subjects into a single beast sharing a single digestive system. To Dr. Heiter's fortune, two American tourists, Lindsay and Jenny, arrive at his home when their car has a flat. After being drugged, the two find themselves in a nightmare along with Japanese tourist Katsuro - all strapped to gurneys or trolleys. The doctor proceeds to tell them of his experiments in great detail - soon they will be joined as one as a human centipede.
This movie is truly one-of-a-kind, but it strives to be much more than it ends up becoming. Surprisingly, it relies more on the implied repulsion of Dr. Heiter's actions that actually displaying them. There is very little gore and blood in the film where there is certainly many opportunities to splash it around quite a bit. And for a movie which mostly pristine white setting, I couldn't help thinking they were missing out on exploiting the graphic contrast. But it really is about the surgery, the procedure, of join three humans into one with a shared digestive track and all that that implies. It goes out of its way to suggest some overtly disgusting acts to varying degrees of success, from knee, face and butt surgery to swallowing excrement. Yeech, indeed. Keep in mind, implied doesn't necessarily mean convincing. The result is at most times as bit silly and unconvincing, more harrowing in its ideas than in its execution. Whether or not one enjoys this movie will most likely depend on their deciding if "that's crap" or accepting the notion it would/could work. Unfortunately for me, I was continually taken out of the event by asking questions like "wouldn't they suffocate" or "how could they eat all that fast enough" or "wouldn't they rip apart easily" and so on.
One of the films best sequences is when Dr. Heiter begins to describe the procedure to his captives. While he speaks in English, the two girls are screaming and crying most likely not hearing every word and Katsuro speaks only Japanese and doesn't seem to get what is going on at all. Dr. Heiter ignores all the chaos and slowly, calmly, precisely explains it all with each step displayed on a screen in deliciously simplistic outline drawings. Really, if the illustrations would have been too detailed, it would have been stupid. Another satisfying scene is the attempted escape of Lindsay and eventual recapture by Dr. Heiter. Once the experiment is successful and we have our Human Centipede, some of the training sequences are interesting including the (supposedly) most disturbing scene when Katsuro finally has to defecate to the Doctor's mad pleasure. "Feed Her!" he screams in delight. Another creepier scene is late in the film when a wounded Dr. Heiter is scurring around the house much like the Human Centipede he is chasing.
The filmmakers make some odd choices throughout the movie, such a putting our heroines in such a precarious position for the last act of the film that they are rendered mostly useless and Katsuro takes over as the protagonist. Another is the aforementioned lack of gore. This film all but screams out for it. It really promises something dangerously graphic and never delivers. The sets are also almost all bright, bright white and appear to be lying in waiting for a big ole splash of bright red blood to be thrown about. And the Human Centipede creature itself never truly expresses the horrific nature of what is going on.
The acting is all fine for this kind of film with Dieter Laser delivering a disturbing performance as Dr. Heiter, even if it ended up being a bit too reserved. I really wanted him to be more over-the-top than he ended up being. Both Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie are effective and the American tourist and are quite believable. Akihiro Kitamura is allow to excel toward the end and completely sells his participation in the experiment. The direction was a bit more straight forward than you might expect. There are little to no flashy tricks and techniques, which may be refreshing or frustrating depending on your expectations. The atmosphere was very clinical instead of horrific which I believe was the intention.
In the end, I was left a bit disappointed. But I will not soon forget the Human Centipede, that's for sure.
6 out of 10
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