Two young American ladies, Lindsey and Jenny, are visiting Germany. While driving through a forest they get a flat tire. And since they don’t know how to change a tire, they have to go on foot with their high heels through the forest while it’s raining to hopefully find some help. Luckily, they come across a house where the lights are on. They ring on the doorbell and out comes Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) who invites them in for a glass of water while he’s calling the car service.
You have a really lovely home. Do you live here with your wife?, asks one of the girls. No… I don’t like human beings, he answers in the most unironically way with his creepy German accent.
Okay, then. Thanks for the water, but now it’s time to leave. Oops, too late. Because Dr. Heiter has laced their water with some strong sedatives, and soon they’ll wake up in his lab basement, strained to their hospital beds. Because, you see, this doctor has a very special passion, and that is to make the world’s first human centipede. And according to the poster, this is done with 100% medical accuracy. So this is perfectly safe to try at home, kids.
The Human Centipede was, at the time, the most brutal – shocking – sickening – gruesome – gross – revolting – disturbing – disgusting (and add all buzz words possible) piece of horror film that has ever been made on planet Earth – and probably the most hyped and viral thing that only Megan is Missing (2011) could come close to. The buzz for this film was so colossal and huge that it managed to crawl its way into the mainstream pop-culture and was even mentioned as a parody game of Pac-Man in an episode of The Simpsons. There is also a porn parody titled The Human Sexipede. Anyway – people who haven’t even seen the film call it the most disturbing thing ever. But for most of us who have actually seen it, we can confirm that this is a prime example of how a morbid concept like this sounds so much more horrific on paper with a pretty brilliant poster design that is cryptic enough to toy with your darkest imagination.
Because this is not exactly the body horror you’d expect to see from directors like David Cronenberg, Brian Yuzna or the horror mangas of Hideshi Hino and Junji Ito. It’s not even close to being as gruesome and graphic as the title and the poster would trick you to believe. Yes, it’s supposed to look more realistic and grounded with the less is more approach, but still… It’s quite underwhelming, and nothing but comical to see the actors squeezing their noses between their ass-cheeks to make us believe that they’re Frankensteined together, as they’re moaning like they’re in some scat porn video. The only legit disgusting moment here is the snot hanging from the nose of the Asian guy, who got lucky enough to be the first link to the centipede experiment. I can’t imagine the actors being proud to be in this and have ever shown it to their moms and dads and their friends – Hey, look at this horror film I’m in where I’m eating ass and breathing farts.
There are many unique ways to be totally humiliated on screen as an actor, but this has to take the shit cake – only until the far more fucked-up sequel The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) came and said hold my anus. And there’s no wonder why actresses who showed up to the casting sessions walked out in disgust after discovering what they were about to sign on to.
The Human Centipede was mostly filmed in a residential home in the Netherlands with primarily four actors and a small budget. The film could have been so much worse, but our villain, Dr. Heiter, makes sure to keep us entertained. He looks like an elderly meth-addicted Robert Pattinson with stage four cancer. A solid-looking mad-scientist villain, in other words, with an electric performance by the eccentric German actor Dieter Laser (1942-2020) which makes this film worth a watch alone. And speaking of meth… Dieter approached his role with method acting, didn’t mingle with either cast or crew between the takes, and pretty much kept to himself. According to Dieter, the white jacket he wore was by a real Nazi doctor from WW2. He took the role so seriously to a point where he started to feel some Nazi guilt, and got into a fight when he accidentally kicked the Asian guy. Welcome to showbiz. Tom Six views the film as a reflection on fascism and his fear of doctors and hospitals.
But at the end of the day, The Human Centipede is an unintentionally twisted, silly little comedy that got hyped out of proportions just because of its title alone, and it’s not to be taken seriously for even half a second. Our old friend Roger Ebert, on the other hand, hated the film so much that he gave it zero stars – which should be enough to pique your curiosity, if you ask me.
Writer and director: Tom Six
Country & year: Netherlands, 2009
Actors: Dieter Laser, Winter Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura, Andreas Leupold, Peter Blankenstein, Bernd Kostrau, Rene de Wit
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1467304/
Sequel: The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2011)
