You know how people are constantly thinking about what it would be like to have their mouth surgically grafted onto another person's anus?
Someone should really make a movie about that...
And so ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Human Centipede (First Sequence), a film that will make you cringe, squirm, laugh out loud, and wonder, "What the hell is wrong with these people?"
By now you know the story: Dr. Josef Heiter, (Dieter Laser, who plays the greatest evil scientist in the history of all evil scientists), is a mad doctor with mad skills who for awhile now has been kicking around the idea of sewing people together anus to mouth. It's kind of his thing.
So when two young women driving through the woods break down during a violent rainstorm and knock on the door of his nearby compound seeking shelter, he takes advantage of the situation by drugging and kidnapping them in a scene that is so ridiculously overplayed and yet so incredibly tense that any fan of psychological horror will immediately recognize it for the indelible set-piece that it is.
Shortly after, the two young women wake up strapped to hospital beds in Dr. Heiter's basement. It is in this sterile torture chamber that Herr Doktor, aided by his own crudely drawn illustrations and an overhead projector, describes to the girls exactly what it is he intends to do to them. The fact that he does so with a glee that would make any eight-year-old on Christmas morning seem clinically depressed is again both hilarious and terrifying. And that is the beauty of this amazing movie. The Human Centipede completely revels in its own absurdity, but will still scare the crap out of you. (Sorry. No pun intended.)
Director Tom Six obviously had fun during the making of this film. On almost every frame he has bestowed a sense of diabolical whimsy that makes the shocking and admittedly preposterous premise of the movie a little easier to digest. (Okay, that one was on purpose.) And much like the wonderfully over-the-top The Loved Ones, this movie has the viewer rooting for both the victims and the villain. It is that dichotomy that creates the story's almost unbearable tension.
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is probably the most ridiculous horror movie you will ever see (all due respect, Sharktopus). It is riddled with titters and tension, gross outs and guffaws, and it boasts the most insanely evil entity on celluloid since Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddie Krueger. Or possibly Alec Baldwin.
It is everything that great horror movies aspire to be: scary, tense, funny in all the right places, and memorable. In short, the real controversy concerning The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is not the gut-wrenching premise. (Yeah, that's three.) It is why so many critics seem to hate it while so many horror fans love it.
I give it six thumbs up.
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