I know it has been endlessly written about, but you can blame this post on my cat, a Camp Icon in her own right. To explain: On Friday Gail had to go to the vet with some - to put it delicately - personal issues. After the vet felt a mass in her abdomen, x-rays were taken, and the horrible truth was revealed - she was full of shit. Literally. Gail is suffering from a condition called, no kidding, "Mega Colon" (vs. Small Intestine, if this were a SyFy original movie). The incredibly gracious vet spent half of Friday and all of Saturday doing unspeakable things to Gail that you don't want to hear about. She should be okay now, as long as I give her twice-daily laxatives and prescription food. I'm here to tell you that it's impossible to spend 72 hours obsessing over your cats' digestive tract without The Human Centipede coming to mind. It's just the way things are.The Human Centipede, like Snakes on a Plane before it, was an Internet-crowned Cult Classic before it even came out, thanks to its' wonderfully succinct title, and an even more delightful one-sentence plot summary:
A mad scientist kidnaps and mutilates a trio of tourists in order to "reassemble" them into a new "pet"-- a human centipede, created by stitching their mouths to each others' rectums.Okay, sure, I'll watch that.
It's infamy spread due to some savvy marketing; a trailer that played up the most salacious aspects (as though there were other ones), midnight premieres, and a video-on-demand release that spared embarrassment to those of us too wussy to say the phrase "... one ticket to The Human Centipede, please!", but a Mad Scientist movie is nothing without it's villain. Luckily in this area The Human Centipede does not disappoint. Dieter Laser, in addition to having the best surname in independent Dutch cinema ever, gives a performance that instantly ranks alongside Vincent Price and Gene Wilder. His jet-black hair and sunken face make it hard to picture him as anything BUT a Siamese-twin obsessed maybe-Nazi experimental German scientist, and that's before he even opens his mouth. He makes Dr. Heiter the kind of bad guy you want to root for, as he's so open about is psychopathic tendencies – he gives his victims a fucking PowerPoint presentation before he starts his experiments, for education!
There are three victims in the titular Centipede: Japanese guy (the mouth), Middle Girl (err…), and Ass End (obvs). The film is played pretty straight, so it’s hard not to sympathize with them a little bit, at least with Middle Girl, until you have suffered the screeching tones of their voices. The two American girls who make up the latter two-thirds of the ‘pede are so awful, so annoying, so plain old horror-movie DUMB it’s a relief when they are rendered unable to speak.
However, it’s not these characteristics that make The Human Centipede a true New Camp Classic – it’s the completely inappropriate Nazi allusions. Dr. Heiter is clearly modeled after horrible asshole Josef Mengele, the Nazi “doctor” infamous for his experiments on Jewish and Gypsy twins in concentration camps during World War II, who is currently burning in the hell which I do not believe in. This unbelievable attempt at social commentary in a movie about ass-to-mouth surgery is what really sets The Human Centipede apart. Plenty of horror movies use real-life current events as jumping off points, but to directly allude to Nazi human experimentation in a torture porn flick is just gauche, not that I'm trying to be judgy or anything. This is to say; it's not funny-haha like, say, Deep Blue Sea or Mommie Dearest, it's more funny-WTF-for-serious?!
The hacky writer/director, emboldened by sudden infamy, has promised a sequel, which would be a tricky undertaking considering that (SPOILER) everyone dies except Middle Girl (some fates are, indeed, worse than death) and somehow I doubt she'll be carrying on the legacy of Dr. Heiter. Plus, what's the point? How can the stakes possibly be upped? The movie itself is ruined by the one sentence summary, no visual can possibly be more lurid than what you picture, and The Human Centipede actually plays it pretty safe in that department (Though when you think about it, the entire function of the 'pede is to contain all those icky things that you're picturing - thereby negating the need for their visual representation, to a point).
To intellectualize The Human Centipede is to entirely miss the point. It's Grindhaus Sleazesploitation meant for you to one-up your friends on a drunken Sunday night. Hostel is for wusses, the 'pede is for connoisseurs. And if you're wondering, about halfway through The Human Centipede, Gail pooped.
-Ryan