That's a Pretty Funny Looking Centipede

.Here's what I think happened: Tom Six was struggling to think of a truly ghastly and shocking hook for his new horror film, and was coming up empty. Everything, it seemed to him, had been done already. Every conceivable bit of grotesquerie that might make an audience vomit or flee had either already been done in the 70s, or by the Japanese, or by Pasolini all by his lonesome. Disconsolate, Six tried to unwind with a little on-line pornography, when he stumbled across a particular type of video, and thought, "Well now hey..." As a result, we now have The Human Centipede. Thanks a lot, porn.
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The Human Centipede is, of course, the new arthouse shock-horror film that's now being talked up everywhere that might be likely to talk up such things, and Tom Six is its writer-director. The reason the film is on anyone's radar is because of the premise, which is very nearly described by the title. That premise is as follows: in Germany, two hard-partying American girls (Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie) find themselves lost in the rain and trees of the semi-rural German countryside when they stumble upon the house of a mad doctor (Dieter Laser), who drugs them both. Adding to his new cache of guinea pigs a Japanese tourist (Akihiro Kitamura) who he kidnaps off-screen, the doctor -- who publicly specializes in separating Siamese twins -- conducts his dream surgery/experiment, and slices and grafts and stitches his three victims together, connecting them mouth-to-anus, forming what he calls a "human centipede".

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And voilá -- instant shock classic, I suppose. Because make no mistake: that premise is the movie. Well, that and Dieter Laser, who I'll admit has an undeniable presence, and provides the film with a better central performance than it deserves. But outside of that the film is curiously inert and unimaginative. Stylistically, it's positively barren, unless by "style" you're willing to count the fact that the inside of the doctor's house is mostly white. I can recall no setting of mood through framing, or pace, or anything that might indicate that Tom Six has a filmmaker's eye. The only thing he brings to the table, if you want to view this as a positive, is that centipede idea, and here's the joke about that: it's not even that shocking. On paper, yes, sure (but also kind of stupid, and strained, and inorganic), but in execution what you end up with is three people on all fours whose lower torsos are swaddled in bandages, and whose faces are connected to the next-one-along's posterior also by bandages. Besides some hint of Joker-style scarring on their cheeks, bandages do the work that, in most horror films, would be handled by the make-up department. The final effect of this is of three people not surgically grafted together, but rather tied together, and not even that securely.

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Please understand, it's not that I desired to see this idea presented in a more robust and direct manner, but I would think that if you're going to have this idea in the first place, and like it enough to base an entire film around it, you'd at least have the courage of your own convictions and go ahead and actually do it. But no, this shocking film is almost ridiculously unshocking, and I was left wondering why anyone even bothered. And it's not even that the film has other things on its mind: there is a particular biologically unavoidable bit of awfulness inherent in this whole human centipede idea that is addressed, and it's handled by having Kitamura, who plays the front of the centipede and therefore is the only one who can speak, say "Oh no, that's about to happen!", followed by a shot of the girl behind him making eye motions that indicate she'd rather it didn't happen. That's it, and this biological imperative is never made apparent as an aspect of their daily torture. Again, I'm glad I didn't see anything like that, but I say to you, Tom Six: This movie was your idea, motherfucker. You shoulder the burden of thinking things through, and showing, or addressing but not showing -- depending on the form, structure, and style (which you don't have) used to make the movie -- what can reasonably be extrapolated from your premise. I shouldn't have to do that for you.

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The final question about The Human Centipede is how we're intended, finally, to take it. Quite a few people are claiming that it can only work if viewed as a black comedy, and I'll grant that Laser's performance does feed that theory at times, but if that's the tone Six was aiming for, he misses for one very simple reason: it's not funny. Not in the "such things shouldn't be joked about" sense, but in the "I didn't laugh when I guess I was supposed to" sense. So with that out of the way, we're left to wonder how it works as a horror film. The answer is "Not that well". Among the reasons for that is the poor execution of the film's only horrible idea, and that colors everything else. I could also argue that the three victims don't exist as human beings, even before they get turned into a centipede, but that would be okay if I ever believed they were truly suffering, which, because I don't find pretty clean-looking bandages to be inherently terrible, I didn't. The closest the film comes to achieving horror is at the very end, when we reach what could probably be regarded as the inevitable punchline. This coda is pretty unspeakable, but we reach that point because one character behaves in a way that is completely illogical, and which in no way reflects their behavior up to that point. So the one moment that might actually have an impact isn't even come by honestly.

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Like I said at the beginning: thanks a lot, porn.

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The Collection Project Film of the Day:

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One thing I've heard more than once from admirers of The Human Centipede -- and so intended, I can only conclude, as praise for what Tom Six has given us -- is "This isn't Hostel." No indeed it is not, because Hostel (d. Eli Roth) is much better.

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There's no question that Roth's film -- about a small group of horny male tourists finding themselves up-for-sale in a Slovakian club that offers human beings as high-priced murder victims -- is a flawed film, but viewed in relation to The Human Centipede it seems positively inspired. Roth has taken a lot of flack over the years, sometimes for good reason, but I think it's impossible to deny that the guy has talent. My frustration with him as a filmmaker is that he sometimes lacks follow-through, but watching Hostel again today I was once again impressed not only by his eye, and sense of tone (the opening credits of Hostel have more style, mood, and sense of creeping dread than the entirety of The Human Centipede), and, more than anything, his ability to craft small moments amidst the over-the-top mayhem. There's the moment when one of the clients of the Slovakian murder club, a German man, realizes that his victim can beg for his life in a language that he, the client, understands (he bought an American, but the guy happens to know German), and the client then loses almost all sense of power. Or Rick Hoffman in a brilliant turn as an American client, whose aggression and sociopathy almost overwhelm his ability to speak. Or the Japanese client (Takashi Miike) , who says of the club, "Be careful -- you can spend all your money in there", as though he were just leaving a casino.

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Hostel is full of little touches like that, and when you get right down to it, I think that's the real difference, because The Human Centipede has no little touches. There's no eye for detail, or humanity, or behavior, and no ear for human speech (Roth has a bit of that, too) beyond the level of competency. Hostel is, whatever you think of it, a real movie, and The Human Centipede exists only so people can say "Can you believe they made a movie about stitching people's mouths to other people's asses?"