Jack Marx Live

It might just be the sickest premise for a horror flick in motion picture history, and it premieres in two weeks in the United States. It’s The Human Centipede, a film that takes the “torture porn” genre into depths not previously fathomed, and which will surely not find its way onto Australian cinema screens without a fight. The plot of The Human Centipede deserves a decent summary and, in what is a most appropriate use of the word “spoiler”, I feel compelled to warn readers that what follows may not only ruin the movie, but lunch as well. It goes like this…

Two pretty American tourists, Lindsay and Jenny, on a road trip in the German countryside, have the misfortune of encountering that horror movie triptych: night, rain, and a flat tyre. While most of us would probably choose to sit matters out until the morning, the foolish pair make the decision to emerge from the vehicle and wander through the dark and slippery woods in search of assistance. At last, they come across an isolated homestead, whose inner lights seem welcoming enough. As fate would have it, the home belongs to one Dr Josef Heiter, a respectable surgeon who has made a career out of separating Siamese twins. Unhappily for Lindsay and Jenny, however, Dr Heiter has come to something of an impasse in his previously noble career, all that separating of human beings having played upon his mind, and not in a good way either.

The doctor invites the wet girls inside and engages them in an hour or so of tense conversation, during which they somehow fail to notice their host twitching and leering like an evil genius. One thing leads to another and, before long, they find themselves strapped to beds in a basement surgery, whose bleak outlook they share with Katsuro, a Japanese tourist who evidently suffered a flat tyre at some earlier inconvenience. It’s at this point that the girls demand to know the bad news from the doctor himself, and, utilising detailed diagrams and a somber bedside manner, Dr Heiter gives it to them straight.

His plan is to create a a kind of hybrid human by joining the three ‘volunteers’ in something of a permanent conga-line arrangement which he calls a” human centipede”. He will do this, he carefully explains, by surgically attaching mouths to anuses, uncoiling the gastrointestinal tract so that it runs through all three subjects, from front to back. It will not be easy - indeed, he tried it before on some dogs and wound up in a right old mess - but he’s got it all worked out this time and he’s keen to give it another try. Exactly why the good doctor thinks a human centipede is at all desirable, let alone necessary, is not made clear.

Not surprisingly, Dr Heiter’s visitors do not share his enthusiasm for the project, and they table their various objections most strenuously. But, alas, mad German scientists tend to frown upon the notion of democracy and, after much corralling of the errant guinea pigs and some seriously intense moments of surgery, the human centipede takes its first steps into biological history. As with so much experimental surgery, however, there are complications: Katsuro, who has scored what is arguably the premium position as the front part of the centipede, repeatedly refuses to do as he is told; the girls complain, wordlessly but nonetheless vehemently, whenever Katsuro has to ‘use the bathroom’; and Dr Heiter becomes increasingly annoyed at his sleep being disturbed by the midnight screams of his victims - a downside to the whole affair that seems not to have previously occurred to the muddle-headed doctor.

To cut a long story story, the ‘centipede’ only partially survives, but viewers will note that The Human Centipede comes with the subtitle: “First Sequence”. In other words, there is an unknown number of additions to be made to this dreadful piece of surgical horror.

Early reaction to The Human Centipede has been mixed, to say the least. According to the film’s writer-director, Tom Six, certain aspects of the film’s plot were kept from financiers until the very last moment, and several actresses stormed out of studios when deeper perusals of the script revealed the type of movie for which they were auditioning. Not even the actresses who eventually took part in the film were made aware of the plot’s more unpalatable details until such time as they had signed on for the job. Nevertheless, the film has been a hit at the few fringe festivals where it has screened, notably at LA’s horror festival, Screamfest, where it won Best Picture. Somewhat hilariously, Total Film described The Human Centipede as “slow moving” and “repetitive”.

As I say, I have serious doubts about this film making onto screens in this family fun park we call Australia, although I’m not sure how I feel about that. While I’d be the first to defend anyone’s right to screen or see The Human Centipede, I’m perhaps more ready than many to admit that what I’d be defending is one’s right to indulge in a bit of the old psycho-sexual sadism. What probably tempers The Human Centipede is that, unlike the Saw series, it’s just so breathtakingly silly as to be fascinating, in the tradition of The Man With Two Heads or The Creature From The Black Lagoon. Indeed, the genesis of the film is almost well-intentioned: Tom Six claims the initial inspiration came from an off-the cuff comment he made to friends one night, in which he suggested child molesters should have their mouths stitched “to the ass of some fat truck driver”.

At very least, The Human Centipede doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. Robbed of the right to use the old “based on a true story” marketing ploy, the film’s tagline is the no less intriguing: “100% medically accurate”.

We’ll just have to take their word for it.