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The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

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The Human Centipede: First Sequence
Three people on their hands and knees are seen from below, through green-tinted frosted glass. They kneel in a line, with the heads of the second and third individuals obscured by the buttocks of the person directly in front. The first person in the line has an agonised look upon his face. Black, uppercase text at the top of the image reads "Their flesh is his fantasy". At the bottom of the image, white uppercase text displays the names of the leading actors, the film title and production credits.Theatrical release poster
Directed byTom Six
Written byTom Six
Produced byTom Six
Ilona Six
StarringDieter Laser
Ashley C. Williams
Ashlynn Yennie
Akihiro Kitamura
CinematographyGoof de Koning
Edited byTom Six
Music byPatrick Savage
Holeg Spies
Production
company		Six Entertainment
Distributed byBounty Films (Int'l)
IFC Films
Release date
Running time91 minutes
CountryTemplate:Film Netherlands
LanguagesEnglish
Japanese
German
Budget€1.5 million
Box office$252,207

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is a Dutch horror film written and directed by Tom Six. It stars Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie and Akihiro Kitamura. The film tells the story of a German doctor who kidnaps three tourists and joins them surgically, mouth to anus, forming a "human centipede".

According to Tom Six, the concept of the film arose from a joke he made with friends about punishing child molesters by stitching their mouth to the anus of a fat truck driver. Six has said in interviews that a surgeon assisted him with the design of the medical procedure and that the film is "100% medically accurate".

However, the medical accuracy has subsequently been described as laughable and "rubbish" by a physician and movie critics. When approaching investors prior to filming, Six did not mention the mouth-to-anus aspect of the plot, fearing it would put off potential backers. The financiers of The Human Centipede did not discover the full nature of the film until it was complete.

The Human Centipede received mixed reviews but several accolades at various international film festivals. The film was released in the United States on Video on Demand on April 28, 2010, and in limited release theatrically on April 30. Tom Six began working on a sequel, The Human Centipede (Full Sequence) which will be released in 2011.

Plot

The film begins with the antagonist, Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), kidnapping a truck driver by the side of a road. Later, two US tourists, Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie), are driving to a party, but are forced to stop after a puncture. After being harassed by a strange man that wants to have sex with them, they decide to find a house where they can phone for help. The first house they find belongs to Dr. Heiter who tells them he will phone for help for them, and fetch them each a glass of water. In the kitchen, Heiter pretends to phone a breakdown company, and slips a tablet into each of the glasses of water. Jenny drinks her water straightaway but Lindsay drops hers after taking only a few sips. Jenny becomes tired and passes out, and the doctor reveals to Lindsay that he put rohypnol in the drinks. He then injects Lindsay and she too loses consciousness. They awake beside the kidnapped trucker in a makeshift hospital ward in the doctor's basement. Heiter informs the trucker that he is not a match for the women and kills him. Heiter later returns home with an unconscious Japanese tourist. When the women wake up a second time,the new captive, Japanese tourist Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), is in the ward with them.

The doctor tells his captives that he is a world-renowned expert at separating conjoined twins, but dreams of making new creatures that share a single digestive system. He describes in detail how he will surgically connect his three victims mouth-to-anus and tells them that that his previous experiment, a creature made of three Rottweilers, died. Lindsay attempts to escape, then tries to rescue Jenny but is unsuccessful. Heiter tells her that, with the three Rottweilers, one tried to escape and that dog became the middle of the centipede, and now Lindsay will be the middle. Once the surgery is complete, the doctor tries to train the trio to perform tasks such as fetching newspapers. Katsuro, as the front part of the centipede, refuses to do as he is told, and the doctor beats him. When Katsuro defecates, Lindsay is forced to swallow his excrement and the doctor watches with great delight. However, Heiter eventually becomes irritated after being kept awake by the constant screaming of his victims and realizing that Jenny is dying from blood poisoning.

Two police detectives, Kranz (Andreas Leupold) and Voller (Peter Blankenstein), visit Heiter to investigate the disappearance of tourists in the area. During the visit, Heiter gets a glass of water for each of them, again drugging them. Voller drinks his water, but Kranz knocks his on the floor. When Heiter goes to fetch a towel to clean it up, he visits his centipede and informs them that Jenny will soon be replaced by two new, healthy parts. Heiter takes up a syringe, hidden in the towel, up to the detectives but he accidentally drops it and pretends that it is just insulin for his diabetes. The detectives say they will be back in twenty minutes with a warrant to search the premises and they leave. Heiter goes down to the ward and finds his centipede missing. After a brief search, Katsuro appears and stabs him in the foot and calf with a scalpel and fails an attempt to rip out Heiter's jugular vein with his teeth. The three surgically connected captives then attempt to escape as Heiter crawls after them. They go into the bedroom where they try to break the window, but the doctor catches up with them. Katsuro faces the crippled doctor with a piece of broken glass in his hand, confessing that he deserved what Heiter did to him because he had lived a selfish life and treated his family poorly, before fatally cutting his own throat with the glass.

Kranz and Voller return with their warrant and ring the doorbell. Heiter drags himself into the room housing his swimming pool to hide. The detectives break into the house after no one answers the door. As Kranz goes off in one direction, Voller goes in another where the effects of the drug begin to take effect. He steadies himself against a wall and vomits, then stumbles into the pool room. Kranz discovers the makeshift ward and then hears a gunshot. Worried for Voller, he runs back upstairs where he is shocked to discover Heiter's victims. He then walks into the pool room where he finds Voller dead in the swimming pool. Heiter then shoots Kranz twice in the stomach and Kranz responds by shooting Heiter in the head. Kranz then falls in the pool, dead. Back in the bedroom, Jenny and Lindsay hold hands as Jenny dies from her blood poisoning. Lindsay is left alone in the house, trapped between her deceased fellow captives.

Cast

  • Dieter Laser as Dr. Heiter
  • Ashley C. Williams as Lindsay
  • Ashlynn Yennie as Jenny
  • Akihiro Kitamura as Katsuro
  • Andreas Leupold as Det. Kranz
  • Peter Blankenstein as Det. Voller
  • Rene de Wit as Truck Driver
  • Bernd Kostrau as Dirty Man in Car

Production

Writing

The inspiration for the film came from a joke Tom Six frequently made to friends about punishing criminals such as child molesters by stitching their mouths to the anus of an overweight truck driver. He saw this as the concept for a great horror movie, and he began to develop the idea. Tom Six had previously worked as a director on the Dutch series of Big Brother and stated that he was able to observe people who "did crazy things when they were alone and thought they were not (being) watched."

Six has said he was heavily influenced as a film-maker by the early works of David Cronenberg, as well as Japanese horror films. The inclusion of a German villain was a conscious decision, based upon the German invasion of the Netherlands during World War II, and the subsequent Nazi medical experiments. World War II also played an influence on the nationality of the other main characters (American and Japanese). Six placed a Japanese male at the front of the centipede for two reasons: to create a language barrier between the doctor and the centipede (whose other members were unable to speak), and as he wanted a male and the Doctor to fight.

Casting

Stars Ashlynn Yennie, Ashley C. Williams and Akihiro Kitamura at the Big Apple Convention in Manhattan, October 1, 2010.

Casting for the film initially took place in New York City and Berlin, with filming undertaken in the Netherlands. Six said that during the casting process, many actresses walked out of readings with disgust, upon hearing the full nature of the role. Ashlynn Yennie and Ashley C. Williams were selected as the female victims, giving each their first major film role. Having acted and written for a number of films and TV shows previously, Akihiro Kitamura was a relatively experienced cast member, as was Dieter Laser, who had previously starred in the TV series Lexx.

Directing

While seeking funding for the film, Tom Six pitched the idea of a surgeon who sewed people together, but he did not initially reveal that the victims would be joined mouth-to-anus, fearing that it would put off potential investors. His backers did not learn the exact details of the film until it had been completed. Before signing on, the actors were given an outline of the film's storyboard rather than a complete script.

Filming

Dieter Laser remained in character as Dr. Heiter during filming. He stayed away from the other actors and crew between scenes to preserve a level of separation, and only ate food he had brought onto the set himself. Laser contributed dialogue for his character, and selected many of his character's outfits from his own personal clothing. Due to the discomfort of spending long periods on their hands and knees, the actors playing the centipede were given massages at the end of each day of filming.

Effects

A man and two women lie on a sofa in a living room with soft lighting and an abstract painting of conjoined twins on the wall. They lie in a line on their left side, facing the viewer, with the man at the front and the two women behind him. They wear only their underwear and have bloody bandages on their knees. The man's torso is out of shot beyond the right edge of the image. The first woman behind the man has her face obscured behind the man's buttocks and her hands are on his legs. The second woman lies in an identical pose behind the first woman. Behind the sofa is a man in his sixties with short dark hair, wearing a dark suit and red necktie. He leans over the three, looking at the first woman's head
Dr. Heiter surveys his completed human centipede. The heavy use of bandages in The Human Centipede allowed the filmmakers to imply a much more graphic and disturbing idea than what is actually shown on screen throughout the film

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) contains relatively little explicit imagery, and much of the disturbing content is implied rather than shown directly. Very little of the actual surgical procedure is depicted directly, Tom Six stated that he wanted the film to be 100% medically accurate and claims to have consulted a Dutch surgeon during the creation and filming process. While promoting the film, the film's creator has claimed that by supplementing the diet of the middle and back members of the 'centipede chain' with an IV drip that the chain members would be enabled to survive for 'years'.

Six claims that his special effects team designed the final composition of the centipede from sketches provided by his 'consulting surgeon', and designed hardened underwear for the actors to wear with a rubber grip for the actor behind to bite onto, which created the illusion of the mouth-to-anus connection.

Promotion and release

The Human Centipede was included in several film festivals around the world, including the 2009 London FrightFest Film Festival, Leeds International Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, and Screamfest Horror Film Festival. In an interview with JoBlo.com, Tom Six claimed that the buzz surrounding the film led several studios to approach him with regard to distributing the film. IFC Films distributed the film in 2010 in the United States and Canada. The film was released on Video on Demand on April 28, 2010; in a limited theatrical release on April 30, 2010; and a wider U.S. release from May 7, 2010. IFC Films has a history of releasing unconventional horror films, having previously distributed the Norwegian Nazi-zombie feature Dead Snow and the 2009 release Antichrist.

The film received a national release in the UK on August 20, 2010. The film was distributed by Bounty Films, a company who in the past have only distributed homosexually themed films such as The Big Gay Musical. The film was passed uncut by the BBFC and will be released with an 18 rated certificate.

Home media

The Human Centipede received a DVD and Blu-ray release in the United Kingdom on October 4, 2010 and in the United States on October 5, 2010.

Reception

Critical

Among more mainstream publications, Total Film described the film as a disappointment that proved itself to be a slow-moving, repetitive affair that has nowhere left to go by the hour mark. Giving the film three stars out of a potential five, Empire stated that "underneath an extremely repulsive concept, this is a relatively conventional horror movie."

Variety Magazine criticized the film's lack of any form of social commentary, stating that it could not "be bothered to expand upon its unpleasant premise, inviting audiences to revel in its sick humor by favoring Dr. Heiter… and characterizing the victims as shallow expendables."

Entertainment Weekly was broadly positive about Dieter Laser's performance as the Doctor, and praised Tom Six's direction, saying Six "has put together his nightmare yarn with Cronenbergian care and precision." However, EW posited "this is the most disgusting horror film of all time."

The New York Times questioned whether the film was "a commentary on Nazi atrocities or a literal expression of filmmaking politics, the grotesque fusion at least silences the female leads, both of whose voices could strip paint."

Writing in the Chicago Sun Times, Roger Ebert did not assign the film a star rating (as opposed to awarding it zero stars), explaining that " I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine."

Los Angeles blog LA Snark said they liked the film "more than Avatar, Inception, and Catfish."

Among horror blogs the film also received attention. FEARnet gave the film a positive review, stating that it was a horror import that had the confidence and audacity to deliver something disturbingly different. Conversely, Cinematical was critical, stating that, while a potential cult hit, all in all it wasn't really a very good film.

A physician and critics in Eastern Cynic and Film Threat have dismissed Tom Six's claim that the film is "100% medically accurate" as "rubbish", "patently ridiculous", and "ludicrous".

Accolades

Despite mixed reviews, the film won several awards at various international horror film festivals, including the following:

2009
  • Best picture at Fantastic Fest, Austin TX and Best Actor (Dieter Laser) in the horror category.
  • Best Movie at Screamfest LA.
  • Best Movie at Sainte Maxime International Horror Film Festival.
  • Best Movie at Ravenna Nightmare Film Festival.
  • Best Ensemble Cast at South African Horror Film Festival
  • Audience award at Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival, Estonia.

A pornographic parody of the film, directed by Tom Byron and entitled The Human Sexipede, was released in September 2010.

Sequel

A sequel, titled The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), has been planned for theaters in 2011, with filming starting in London in June 2010. The plot of Full Sequence involves a centipede made from twelve people, and will feature a largely British cast, and will have the tag-line '100% medically inaccurate'.

Tom Six has stated that the first film will get audiences desensitized to the idea of a human centipede, preparing them for the idea of a much more graphic and disturbing sequel, First Sequence being "My Little Pony compared with part two." Tom Six has claimed that he is developing ideas for a third part, but wants to see what will happen with the second part first.

A teaser trailer was released on September 24, 2010. In the trailer, Six introduces Martin, a man wearing a cardboard box over his head, as the new doctor.

References

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