The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
(2009) 92 Min.
Rated: R (gore, nudity)
Country: Netherlands
Director: Tom Six
Starring: Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura (北村 昭博)
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Two American tourists find themselves unwilling participants in a mad doctors quest to create a human centipede.
Synopsis:
Two American tourists, Lindsay (Williams) and Jenny (Yennie) are staying in Germany. While they drive out to a club at night they get lost along a rural road and get a flat tire.
Neither of them know how to fix a flat tire and the only passerby is a perverted German man, they wander off into the deep dark woods looking for help as it pours down rain.
The two girls stumble upon the home of brilliant but retired surgeon Dr. Josef Heiter (Laser). Dr.Heiter welcomes them inside and gives them drugged water to drink.
The girls are quickly drugged and wake up tied to hospital beds. There is a trucker in another bed in the room with them, but Dr. Heiter informs the trucker that he is not a match and so he will not fit the plan. The doctor injects the trucker, killing him. He’s subsequently buried outside in the garden.
Quickly the doctor brings home a drugged Japanese tourist Katsuro (Kitamura) and ties him to the third bed. He then gives an elaborate explanation and illustrated overview to his captives. He tells them of his plans to form a “human centipede” by sewing the mouths of two subjects onto the anuses of another so that there’s one continuous digestive passage. Also he removes tendons in the knees so they can’t get up and must crawl on all fours.
As the doctor prepares and drugs Katsuro and Jenny, Lindsay is able to free herself of her restraints with her mouth. She tries to escape but is captured again by the doctor. He tells her that because she tried to escape she will be the middle segment as it’s the most painful (since she will have surgery both on her mouth and anus).
After the surgery, Dr. Heiter takes multiple photos and tries to train the human centipede like a dog. Asking for Katsuro to hold a newspaper in his mouth and to come when called. He also belittles and beats them when they refuse.
Katsuro is forced to eat from a dog bowl. When Katsuro defecates Lindsay is forced to ingest it and pass it through to Jenny. In the evening they are kept in a small cage and their crying and whimpering noises anger Dr. Heiter.
He is inspecting the Human Centipede one day and realizes that Jenny, the last segment, has an infection and is oozing puss from her stitches. Dr. Heiter informs the others that she is dying and will need a replacement.
At that moment Dr. Heiter hears a knock at the door and finds two police officers looking for two missing American tourists. Dr. Heiter at first invites them in and is slightly friendly, but soon his temper flairs up and he grows into a rage after the policemen do not drink his water (which he drugged). They ask to see his cellar but he refuses and asks to see a search warrant.
The police leave assuring him they’ll get a search warrant within 15 minutes. Dr. Heiter then goes off check on the human centipede. Katsuro, however, has grabbed a scalpel from a nearby table. Once Dr. Heiter returns, he slashes Dr. Heiter’s leg and stabs him. While the doctor is passed out on the floor, Katsuro and the others hide in a bedroom.
Katsuro tries to break the large glass window with a lamp but only manages to crack it. He takes a glass shard and faces an approaching Dr. Heiter who has crawled on his knees and is badly injured. Katsuro screams at Dr. Heiter about feeling that this predicament is a punishment for him and cuts his own throat, committing suicide. Dr. Heiter is upset that the human centipede is dying and wanders off to hide as he hears the police banging on the door.
The two policemen return and break open the door. They search the house and find Jenny, Lindsay and Katsuro. The policemen are split up. One cop goes to the indoor pool and finds his partner is dead in the pool while Dr. Heiter is waiting with a gun. He shoots at the cop, but the cop returns fire and hits Dr. Heiter in the head, killing him. The cop falls into the pool dead.
Meanwhile, Jenny is dying and she gives Lindsay’s hand a squeeze as she succumbs to death. Lindsay is left alone still sewn to two other people as the film ends.
Review:
This film is pretty bad. And it’s not necessarily the subject matter that makes it repulsive. If one can suspend their disbelief for the practicality of the experiment at hand, the film still has flaws in story telling, cardboard characters and hammy acting.
Dr. Heiter, in particular, is fairly clownish. He cartoonishly explains his master plan to his victims. The two girls are pretty wooden in their acting. It’s not the worst acting ever, but it’s definitely not doing this film any favors. The characters themselves are flat and we don’t care about them since there’s not much character development. Any one of them could be removed and replaced much like the segments of a human centipede.
This movie opens with a scene of the doctor crying over a picture of his beloved three-dog and it’s supposed to be shocking instead of funny. It relies too heavily on the hope that you’ll be so disgusted and horrified by the mere idea of a human centipede that the concept alone will leave you satisfied with the film. But concept alone isn’t enough to carry a film. I will give it credit for the concept being unique, but a unique idea isn’t enough to earn a high rating and concepts in body horror have been explored in other movies before.
I will also give credit to this film for at least trying to play at tension in the scenes where Lindsay escapes and when the police snoop around. Yet it also somewhat feels like padding out an idea for a film that would otherwise be too short.
The premise is stupid and the film plays out in a fairly predictable way. This film can only be recommended to those who really feel the need to see what all the fuss is with a warning that the results are more dull and silly than horrifying. The film doesn’t quite reach the so-bad-it’s-funny sweet spot either.