Showing posts with label human centipede. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human centipede. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE II (FULL SEQUENCE) (2011)
To call The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) one of the most disgusting films ever made is probably a misuse of the phrase "one of." This pronouncement would no doubt be music to the ears of Tom Six, its director, who desires so desperately to offend that he didn't blink once when the UK banned his film from release. They claimed it could actually cause harm to audiences.
Shock filmmakers like William Castle used to market their films with promotional gimmicks: The House on Haunted Hill featured "Emerg-O," in which a fake skeleton emerged from behind the screen; and the producers of The Screaming Skull famously offered free burial services to anyone who died of fright from watching their film. Six should have taken their cue and offered vomit bags at the entrance and a free therapy session on the way out.
The British Film Council's claim does more than lend Six's film intriguing notoriety and free advertising: it plays right into his theme. The Human Centipede, you remember, was about a mad surgeon who surgically attached people together mouth-to-anus in order to create the title creature. The Human Centipede 2 is about a mentally unstable man who's obsessed with the original film and decides to create his own. You see? They were right.
Martin (Laurence R. Harvey--no relation to the other Laurence Harvey, I assume) is the archetypal psychotic case. He's a parking garage attendant living with his abusive mother (Vivien Bridsen), who constantly derides him for ratting out his pedophile father. Oh, and he loves The Human Centipede. In the first few minutes we see him watching the end of the film, then he dutifully rewinds all the way back to the beginning and starts again. Of all the atrocities committed in the film, I think this is the most horrifying. Very soon he gathers victims of his own and puts into action his plan to create a bigger centipede.
The point--I suppose--is that violent movies inspire violence in those who already have a predilection toward it. This idea comes not without a huge portion of ego. The notion of someone being driven to murder by a movie is interesting, but the possibility that anyone could be inspired as such by The Human Centipede is slim. It may have had a dastardly premise, but it was the biggest bore of a shock film I've ever seen. It lacked the courage of its convictions to be either a classy suspense film or a splatter fest.
Six avoids that pitfall this time around by upping the gore ante extensively. While the first film surprisingly pulled its punches in the disgusting department, this sequel delivers what many were probably expecting all along.
One of the most disconcerting things about The Human Centipede II is how well-made it is. It's beautifully shot in black and white. The atmosphere is chilling and Mr. Harvey's performance is quietly affecting (he never speaks a word). A tongue-in-cheek appearance by Ashlynn Yennie (the C spot from the original) is surprisingly clever.
Mr. Six is, I fear, not a rabid splatterer but a legitimately talented director whose cinematic ambitions have been outweighed by his desire to offend. The movie doesn't simply offend; it's exceptionally good at offending. Six shows quite a bit of restraint in his use of gore, as many brutal moments are left off-screen. But rest assured that this is not because of any human decency; rather, it's because he knows that what's implied is often more disturbing than what's shown. He knows that too much in-your-face violence is numbing, so he is careful only to show what is necessary. Here is a movie that is finely tuned to be as squirm-inducing as it possibly can.
It all culminates in a final half-hour that is the closest a movie has ever come to making me vomit. But to willingly watch a movie like The Human Centipede II is to ask for it. The titular creature is cobbled together in sloppy and sick fashion. Martin, being no doctor, screws up from time to time, sometimes at the expense of his subjects. There are scenes here which are a trial to sit through. The bit involving the pregnant woman is particularly unforgivable, which I'm sure was precisely Six's intention. The supposed climax involves the brief addition of the color brown to the palette.
In its own way, The Human Centipede II is an effective social comment, though a tad self-defeating; it brutally mocks anyone who watches it by equating their curiosity with that of a mentally challenged lunatic. But Six's work here is less graceful than, say, Michael Haneke's Funny Games, in which the movie never quite lowered itself to the level of its villains. Here, the movie drags us right down into depravity with its lead character.
So what do we make of The Human Centipede II? Is it a good film or a bad film? Well, let me put it this way: there's not a thing it sets out to do that it doesn't accomplish. It's without a doubt the Human Centipediest movie that's ever been made, and if you watch it, you get exactly what you deserve.
Note: I've been predicting ever since the release of the first Human Centipede that Tom Six has a career ahead of him. Not unlike John Waters, as soon as his notoriety as a purveyor of trash jettisons him into the mainstream, he'll make some actual good films. The IMDB reveals that his next film is... The Human Centipede III. For Christ's sake.
See also:
Shock and Yawn: THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) (2010)
Thursday, September 29, 2011
A Torturously Okay Prediction: THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2, why the first one was no good, and why the second one will not be any better
The first Human Centipede was a success, probably for the same reason that "2 Girls 1 Cup" could be considered a success. You make a movie that's about nothing but a guy sewing people's lips to anuses, and curious thrill-seekers will come, if only to see what it's all about. I was one of those thrill-seekers, and what it's all about turned out to be not all that much.
Now that we're on the verge of being subjected to a sequel, The Human Centipede Part 2 (Full Sequence), the British Board of Film Classification has offered what has turned out to be a de facto publicity boost to the film: they've banned it from release in the UK. An interview in last Sunday's New York Times reveals that the film's director, Tom Six, is only passively upset at the board's rejection. "My God, this is brilliant for the marketing," he says.
The Human Centipede 2 would be far from the first film to trumpet its censorship in other countries to boost ticket sales. It was 33 years ago that I Spit On Your Grave, a sadistic and artless rape-revenge dud, played the same card. Movie critics like Roger Ebert trashed it for being the cold, manipulative piece of waste that it was, and played right into its hand. It gained a cult following and even spawned a slick Hollywood remake last year.
The Human Centipede appears to be going for the same sadistic, gut-wrenching reaction, but the problem isn't that it's too sadistic, or too artless, or even too fetishistic. The problem is that it's its own Hollywood remake. Far from being a grainy, bargain-basement snuff film lite, The Human Centipede is beautifully shot, artfully created and designed, and boring. Though Ebert awarded the film zero stars, the same rating he gave to I Spit, he backhandedly praises Six's effort in making a proud midnight movie that avoids being purely an exploitation film.
The trailer for Part 2, though it occupies a different universe and a different style, looks to be just as Hollywood. The gorgeous black-and-white photography recalls an old Universal monster movie. Its new antihero--a stocky introvert played by Laurence R. Harvey--reminds us of Peter Lorre in M. This is far from a mere exploitation film; it looks as if Six is trying to elevate his crude premise into a real film.
And there's the problem. There's no room in the mouth-to-anus business for a real film. Just as the first Human Centipede spent too much time lingering on the existential pain and suffering of the six-legged creature at its center, Part 2 appears to be more a harrowing exploration into the mind of a tortured madman than a celebration of bodily invasion.
But reports do say that the film is much more disgusting than its predecessor. Though I do take issue with the notion of any film being banned by a country's government, the British Film Board is dead right in their description of the first film, which was given the OK for ages 18 and up: though "undoubtedly tasteless and disgusting, it was a relatively traditional and conventional horror film." The second, they say, is much more disgusting and may even put audiences at risk. At risk of what, I am not sure, other than flushing a hard-earned $10 down the toilet.
The idea of a film causing actual harm to a person watching it actually plays right into Six's hand as well. His sequel takes the meta route and sets itself in a world where The Human Centipede is a successful cult film, and inspires a sociopathic copycat to give the experiment a try. I had enough trouble believing that a sick Nazi doctor would be so dumb as to think an experiment like this would be worth anything. I, like the film board, was not too worried about it inspiring any copycats.
By going meta, Six takes a big risk. Audiences have not typically responded well to movies that turn mirrors on themselves and say, "Wow, aren't we great?" An audience is far more likely to take to a sequel that stays within its own universe. Look at how much money people have spent on the Saw series, or on Final Destination, or Friday the 13th.
And then look at how much money they spent on Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. That was an uncommonly intelligent sequel which took an entirely different approach from its wildly successful original. The Blair Witch Project was a monumental hit with a revolutionary marketing strategy, and a sequel was immediately called for. But rather than continue with their found-footage, lost-in-the-woods, documentary-like motif, the filmmakers hired Joe Berlinger, the documentarian behind Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, to make a traditional horror film set outside the realm of the original, in which Blair Witch was a cultural phenomenon and has inspired copycats to venture into the woods themselves.
Berlinger also raised questions about the idea of documentary footage itself. What happens when documented footage disagrees with real life? Does video lie? How can we ever know the truth? Interesting stuff. The movie tanked at the box office and killed the Blair Witch franchise.
It looks like Six is doing something along the same lines here. In doing so, he's giving himself far too much credit. Though The Human Centipede caused quite a stir upon its release, I can't say I've known anyone who's liked it, or even thought it sick and twisted enough to inspire a cult phenomenon. With its surprising lack of gore and artful treatment of its central creature, The Human Centipede just isn't strong enough to inspire a madman either. Of course, if the cultural and psychological subtext doesn't work, the sequel could simply fall back on the increase in blood, gore, and bodily terror. Will The Human Centipede 2 be disgusting and exploitative enough to redeem itself from his secretly highbrow intentions?
My vote would be no. Though Six appears to take glee in making audiences squirm, it looks to me like he's a closeted reputable filmmaker. He may be loath to admit it, but I think Six is probably going to make an actual good film someday. One where mouths and anuses can remain blissfully separate.
Now that we're on the verge of being subjected to a sequel, The Human Centipede Part 2 (Full Sequence), the British Board of Film Classification has offered what has turned out to be a de facto publicity boost to the film: they've banned it from release in the UK. An interview in last Sunday's New York Times reveals that the film's director, Tom Six, is only passively upset at the board's rejection. "My God, this is brilliant for the marketing," he says.
The Human Centipede 2 would be far from the first film to trumpet its censorship in other countries to boost ticket sales. It was 33 years ago that I Spit On Your Grave, a sadistic and artless rape-revenge dud, played the same card. Movie critics like Roger Ebert trashed it for being the cold, manipulative piece of waste that it was, and played right into its hand. It gained a cult following and even spawned a slick Hollywood remake last year.
The Human Centipede appears to be going for the same sadistic, gut-wrenching reaction, but the problem isn't that it's too sadistic, or too artless, or even too fetishistic. The problem is that it's its own Hollywood remake. Far from being a grainy, bargain-basement snuff film lite, The Human Centipede is beautifully shot, artfully created and designed, and boring. Though Ebert awarded the film zero stars, the same rating he gave to I Spit, he backhandedly praises Six's effort in making a proud midnight movie that avoids being purely an exploitation film.
The trailer for Part 2, though it occupies a different universe and a different style, looks to be just as Hollywood. The gorgeous black-and-white photography recalls an old Universal monster movie. Its new antihero--a stocky introvert played by Laurence R. Harvey--reminds us of Peter Lorre in M. This is far from a mere exploitation film; it looks as if Six is trying to elevate his crude premise into a real film.
And there's the problem. There's no room in the mouth-to-anus business for a real film. Just as the first Human Centipede spent too much time lingering on the existential pain and suffering of the six-legged creature at its center, Part 2 appears to be more a harrowing exploration into the mind of a tortured madman than a celebration of bodily invasion.
But reports do say that the film is much more disgusting than its predecessor. Though I do take issue with the notion of any film being banned by a country's government, the British Film Board is dead right in their description of the first film, which was given the OK for ages 18 and up: though "undoubtedly tasteless and disgusting, it was a relatively traditional and conventional horror film." The second, they say, is much more disgusting and may even put audiences at risk. At risk of what, I am not sure, other than flushing a hard-earned $10 down the toilet.
The idea of a film causing actual harm to a person watching it actually plays right into Six's hand as well. His sequel takes the meta route and sets itself in a world where The Human Centipede is a successful cult film, and inspires a sociopathic copycat to give the experiment a try. I had enough trouble believing that a sick Nazi doctor would be so dumb as to think an experiment like this would be worth anything. I, like the film board, was not too worried about it inspiring any copycats.
By going meta, Six takes a big risk. Audiences have not typically responded well to movies that turn mirrors on themselves and say, "Wow, aren't we great?" An audience is far more likely to take to a sequel that stays within its own universe. Look at how much money people have spent on the Saw series, or on Final Destination, or Friday the 13th.
And then look at how much money they spent on Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. That was an uncommonly intelligent sequel which took an entirely different approach from its wildly successful original. The Blair Witch Project was a monumental hit with a revolutionary marketing strategy, and a sequel was immediately called for. But rather than continue with their found-footage, lost-in-the-woods, documentary-like motif, the filmmakers hired Joe Berlinger, the documentarian behind Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, to make a traditional horror film set outside the realm of the original, in which Blair Witch was a cultural phenomenon and has inspired copycats to venture into the woods themselves.
Berlinger also raised questions about the idea of documentary footage itself. What happens when documented footage disagrees with real life? Does video lie? How can we ever know the truth? Interesting stuff. The movie tanked at the box office and killed the Blair Witch franchise.
It looks like Six is doing something along the same lines here. In doing so, he's giving himself far too much credit. Though The Human Centipede caused quite a stir upon its release, I can't say I've known anyone who's liked it, or even thought it sick and twisted enough to inspire a cult phenomenon. With its surprising lack of gore and artful treatment of its central creature, The Human Centipede just isn't strong enough to inspire a madman either. Of course, if the cultural and psychological subtext doesn't work, the sequel could simply fall back on the increase in blood, gore, and bodily terror. Will The Human Centipede 2 be disgusting and exploitative enough to redeem itself from his secretly highbrow intentions?
My vote would be no. Though Six appears to take glee in making audiences squirm, it looks to me like he's a closeted reputable filmmaker. He may be loath to admit it, but I think Six is probably going to make an actual good film someday. One where mouths and anuses can remain blissfully separate.
Shock and Yawn: THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) (2010)
The Human Centipede suffers from what psychologists call the availability heuristic. The availability heuristic is the assumption that a certain event is likely or possible because of how easy it is to imagine. More and more movies suffer from it nowadays, especially as the increase in CGI makes more things that might be impossible in real life more likely on screen. Events are decided based on how easy the image is to put together, rather than how likely the event would be to happen. It’s easy to imagine Bruce Willis casually stepping out of a car that’s spinning out of control, like he does in RED, but not quite so plausible in real life.
It’s also easy to imagine a German scientist kidnapping tourists and sewing their lips to each other’s anuses to make one big long segmented animal. Disgusting, yes, but easy to imagine. That is the starting-off point for Tom Six’s (his real name) The Human Centipede. The trouble is that’s pretty much his ending point too.
Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser, his real name) is quite a madman indeed. He introduces himself as Germany’s foremost surgeon for separating conjoined twins. Over the course of The Human Centipede (First Sequence), he kidnaps several people, sedates them, and when they wake up, they are joined together, one in front of the other. This explains why he was the conjoined twin guy and not a gastroenterologist.
It’s at this point that even the most sicko horror fan begins to ask what the point is. There really isn’t a whole lot of bodily terror in the film; there’s a lot more wincing and almost-vomiting to be done at the mere description of the premise than at anything that happens in the film. The scenes of the human centipede are filmed gingerly enough so that we’re sure that the actors aren’t being put through the same trials as the characters.
The grotesqueness of the premise has led some critics to compare Six to David Cronenberg. Let it be known that Cronenberg’s superiority is not limited to number of syllables. While Cronenberg dealt with bodily invasion just as gleefully, many of his films were political and social allegories that used their gore to make a point.
Six hints that he’s going to go there at times. Early in the film, one character has a chance to kill herself rather than go through such a horrible experience; this might have posed the question of at which point life becomes not worth saving. The fusing of three people together might have made an interesting allegory about loss of individuality; what happens when you, formerly a human being, are now just a cog in a larger organism and have to do your part to make it work? You don’t have to look too deep to see the parallels to Communism.
For the most part, Six is content to stick with the old Friday the 13th formula. Hapless victims get lost in the woods, are preyed upon by a maniac, try to escape to no avail, are tortured. The end. The problem with the film isn’t that Six has no boundaries and pushes the envelope too far; rather, it’s that he’s too Hollywood to do anything interesting with the film. His Human Centipede is at heart the same as any paint-by-numbers big-studio flick that takes a grabber of a premise and leaves it to die.
The production is slickly made and extremely well-shot for what it is. Six and cinematographer Goof de Koning (his real name) make Dr. Heiter’s house into a living, breathing, antibacterial nightmare with long constrictive corridors and very few windows. Six stages several very effective chase scenes all within those walls: no easy feat.
Mr. Laser, who looks like Christopher Walken with a facelift, plays Dr. Heiter as well as he can under the circumstances, though the role is really impossible to play. How to play a man so dementedly brilliant, yet so stupid that he doesn’t realize why the back end of the centipede is going to die of dysentery eventually? Why wouldn’t he realize that a human centipede is no good if the front segment is the only one that survives? Most mad scientists have a madness that speaks to their purpose.
The three segments of the centipede—Akihiro Kitamura, Ashley C. Williams, and Ashlynn Yennie, in that order—are completely believable. All Kitamura has to do as the centipede’s head is scream epithets in Japanese. Well, what would you do if you were the head of a human centipede and spoke only Japanese?
Six is not an untalented director, and I suspect he may have a future making normal films. His path will probably follow that of John Waters, who started out making trash and graduated to some truly great (if not completely untrashy) films. The Human Centipede is Six’s Pink Flamingos, and now that he’s gotten everyone’s attention he will move on to better things, like... let me check... The Human Centipede 2. So there you go.
* 1/2 out of ****
It’s also easy to imagine a German scientist kidnapping tourists and sewing their lips to each other’s anuses to make one big long segmented animal. Disgusting, yes, but easy to imagine. That is the starting-off point for Tom Six’s (his real name) The Human Centipede. The trouble is that’s pretty much his ending point too.
Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser, his real name) is quite a madman indeed. He introduces himself as Germany’s foremost surgeon for separating conjoined twins. Over the course of The Human Centipede (First Sequence), he kidnaps several people, sedates them, and when they wake up, they are joined together, one in front of the other. This explains why he was the conjoined twin guy and not a gastroenterologist.
It’s at this point that even the most sicko horror fan begins to ask what the point is. There really isn’t a whole lot of bodily terror in the film; there’s a lot more wincing and almost-vomiting to be done at the mere description of the premise than at anything that happens in the film. The scenes of the human centipede are filmed gingerly enough so that we’re sure that the actors aren’t being put through the same trials as the characters.
The grotesqueness of the premise has led some critics to compare Six to David Cronenberg. Let it be known that Cronenberg’s superiority is not limited to number of syllables. While Cronenberg dealt with bodily invasion just as gleefully, many of his films were political and social allegories that used their gore to make a point.
Six hints that he’s going to go there at times. Early in the film, one character has a chance to kill herself rather than go through such a horrible experience; this might have posed the question of at which point life becomes not worth saving. The fusing of three people together might have made an interesting allegory about loss of individuality; what happens when you, formerly a human being, are now just a cog in a larger organism and have to do your part to make it work? You don’t have to look too deep to see the parallels to Communism.
For the most part, Six is content to stick with the old Friday the 13th formula. Hapless victims get lost in the woods, are preyed upon by a maniac, try to escape to no avail, are tortured. The end. The problem with the film isn’t that Six has no boundaries and pushes the envelope too far; rather, it’s that he’s too Hollywood to do anything interesting with the film. His Human Centipede is at heart the same as any paint-by-numbers big-studio flick that takes a grabber of a premise and leaves it to die.
The production is slickly made and extremely well-shot for what it is. Six and cinematographer Goof de Koning (his real name) make Dr. Heiter’s house into a living, breathing, antibacterial nightmare with long constrictive corridors and very few windows. Six stages several very effective chase scenes all within those walls: no easy feat.
Mr. Laser, who looks like Christopher Walken with a facelift, plays Dr. Heiter as well as he can under the circumstances, though the role is really impossible to play. How to play a man so dementedly brilliant, yet so stupid that he doesn’t realize why the back end of the centipede is going to die of dysentery eventually? Why wouldn’t he realize that a human centipede is no good if the front segment is the only one that survives? Most mad scientists have a madness that speaks to their purpose.
The three segments of the centipede—Akihiro Kitamura, Ashley C. Williams, and Ashlynn Yennie, in that order—are completely believable. All Kitamura has to do as the centipede’s head is scream epithets in Japanese. Well, what would you do if you were the head of a human centipede and spoke only Japanese?
Six is not an untalented director, and I suspect he may have a future making normal films. His path will probably follow that of John Waters, who started out making trash and graduated to some truly great (if not completely untrashy) films. The Human Centipede is Six’s Pink Flamingos, and now that he’s gotten everyone’s attention he will move on to better things, like... let me check... The Human Centipede 2. So there you go.
* 1/2 out of ****
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