The Human Centipede: First Sequence (2009)

Ashylnn Yennie and Ashley C. Willams play two American tourists sightseeing in Germany when they get a flat tire on a rural highway. Seeking help, they approach a mysterious house inhabited by a reclusive German surgeon named Dr. Heiter. Heiter kidnaps the two girls and plans to use them to create his masterwork: a centipede made from three humans sowed together mouth to anus, and with their kneecaps removed to prevent them from standing straight up. It doesn’t ever really become evident why Heiter wants this centipede, other than the fact that he is completely insane, and seems to desire to keep his creation as a pet and enjoy watching it suffer.

Heiter is played in a brilliantly creepy fashion by actor Dieter Laser who does a great job playing a convincingly cold and calculating sociopath who would make Joseph Mengle look like Ronald Mcdonald. The two female leads of the movie are terrible actress, but you only have to put up with their ham handed delivery for the first twenty minutes or so until their faces are sewn onto a Japanese guys ass. From then on they deliver an excellent performance of muffled grunts, moans, and shrieks and giving wide eyed expressions of terror as they swallow feces, and are forced to be “trained” by the sadistic Heiter.

The concept of the Human Centipede is perhaps its greatest strength and weakness. Once the characters are finally fused together in the horrific creation, there is practically no hope for them to resist the wild machinations of their captor. This makes the last fifty minutes consist of watching a parade of pure abject suffering and human misery. This dehumanization of the main characters makes for great horror, and is really the central theme of the film, but also makes the film lack tension and drive as the characters are literally helpless passive actors in the films plot. This causes the climax of the movie to rely heavily on a series of somewhat goofy and very convenient plot coincidences. Despite this drawback, I found the final scene of the film to be pretty creative and actually pretty haunting and disturbing way to end the movie.

I’m hesitant to say I was entertained by The Human Centipede as I found parts of the film difficult to watch, and I think anyone who is too entertained by this movie probably needs some psychiatric help. However, the concept of the film is so bizarre and out there that I think anyone who can stomach horror films should at least check this movie out (as far as outright violence and gore goes it is actually fairly tame). It’s not something I will probably want to watch anytime soon, but I am glad I checked it out.

6/10