The 2nd movie I chose to watch this week was the controversial film "The Human Centipede". I had heard about this movie about 4 or 5 months ago from some co-workers and read some online articles about it and it was causing quite a stir. Shortly after I saw this listed on my On Demand Pay Per View station to purchase through my cable company but never really was that interested. After reading more and more about it I thought Id give it a try so I borrowed my friends copy and decided I would add it to my marathon and see what all the hype was about. Below is my detailed review.
Oh where oh where to start with this one. Like I said before my intrigue from word of mouth really brought me to watch this movie and after seeing it I personally wish I hadn't. I don't really know where to start but I guess describing the film's plot would be a good start, right? There isn't much to it so here goes. Two American tourists who are visiting Germany get a flat tire and become stranded in the woods somewhere in Germany. In a desperate attempt to get help they walk through the woods and find a home belonging to a demented Doctor and ask to use his phone. This Doctor eventually drugs the women and then surgically connects the two girls and another Japanese man together to form a Human Centipede. That right there is basically the entire premise of the film.
The actors and actresses in this film did a decent job but they aren't any household names anybody would know because lets be honest who would really want to have their name attached to a movie with this reputation. The Doctor in the film looked a little familiar to me and looked as though he could have possibly played in a movie like Hostel or Turistas but I cannot confirm that and I didn't really do any research on looking into it because I just really didn't care. The two girls are played by actresses who are your typical New York 20 something party girls who were attractive but quite naive. The Japanese victim is quite vocal and screams and yells throughout most of the film and through subtitles probably has more lines than anybody else in the film except maybe the Doctor himself.
This film had a run time of only 90 minutes however I felt we saw way too much of the doctor. There were a lot of moments that this movie really lagged and was extremely slow and boring and it was very predictable at certain points in the film. Doctor Heiter was quite odd and strange and obviously demented and Dieter Laster played that pretty well but even with a decent performance by the doctor this film just never really gained any momentum. I actually found it quite creepy when the girls had just gotten their flat tire and an old perverted man pulled up next to them in his car. After some stupid and useless comments he just sits there in his car right next to the girls car staring at them. Very creepy. He eventually drove off and the girls when walking through the woods but that was by far one of the more creepy parts of the film.
I cant really say there were any particular scenes that I "enjoyed" in this film but there were some that made me cringe and I guess that is sometimes one of the qualities you look for when watching a horror film. I'm not a big fan of needles so the needle he stuck in the back of one of the girls neck was not a pleasant scene for me and neither was the one where he killed his first male victim by simply giving him what must have been a lethal dose of something through an intravenous line. No needles into a body part on that latter one but still, not a happy moment in the film. Then again there weren't really any happy moments in this film, at all. Lets move onto some more intense and unpleasant scenes.
I personally thought that the short graphic presentation of what the Doctor was going to be doing was actually almost as horrific and shocking as the final outcome of his surgery itself. What made the presentation so creepy was the calmness of Dr. Heiter as he was explaining everything ever while talking over Katsuro's screams. The images of one gastric system that flows thru three human being's was disgusting and evil. After the presentation was over a short time later one girl escapes briefly before failing into the Doctor's pool and eventually getting caught. A short time later we see the Doctor prepare for surgery and then we see just very short snippets of the surgery itself, nothing really graphic. I was actually expecting to see more graphic images and video of the surgery itself but I guess they left that our for more still shots of the Doctor himself just looking creepy.
After the three humans are connected we are treated (or tortured) with the visual image of three human beings surgically connected together. The Doctor is so amused with his work that he cries out in joy then kisses a mirror afterwards and treats the three as a dog. He is obviously obsessed with the three dogs he had before which he did the same thing too. Watching these human's be treated this way wasn't fun or entertaining and after about 10 minutes of it I asked myself why I am watching this? I guess once you see the finished product there isn't much else to see in this film. Its like that was it. I mean watching them desperately and unsuccessfully try to escape was sad as we all know it wasn't possible. Watching a human eat food from a dog bowl was not entertainment for me, I'm sorry. There is also a whipping scene that can only be heard and not seen, thank goodness. As the film moved toward the end the lead "centipede" stabbed the Doctor in the foot and then bite off a chunk of flesh behind his ear. Intertwined in the story was some cops who came to interrogate the Doctor presumably because of the disappearance to some people. They eventually get killed at the end of the film but not before shooting the Doctor straight in the forehead and killing him. Prior to the Doctor's death though was a scene where Katsuro takes a piece of glass and slits his throat and bleeds out and dies, yeah not a favorite scene of mine in this film. After the Doctor is shot we are treated to one final touching scene in this film and that is when one of the girls, the one in the back, reaches her hand up front to touch the one girl in the middle and then we see her fade away and die. It was one final touch from one friend to another and we are left seeing the one girl in the middle still alive and very much attached and alone in a strange place in Germany. Ok so I've already written too much so let me end it with this. Intrigue is the only reason I watched this and it ended up wasting 90 minutes of my life. A bore fest if you ask me and the shock of it all was minimal at best and more disgusting than anything else. I would easily pass on this one and not waste your time. I give this a D!
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