Forgive us if this sounds insensitive, but was anyone really shocked by the actions of Mary Bale? Last week, Bale, a 45-year-old British banker, was unknowingly caught on a CCTV camera nonchalantly depositing a cat into a dumpster. After becoming one of YouTube’s most-viewed videos, she’s now being held under police protection in her native Coventry; meanwhile, an 18,000-plus Facebook group has retaliated, demanding justice. Indeed, this was appalling stuff. But shocking? Hardly.
Because, at first view, Bale’s deliberate act of cruelty felt like a farce — even if it wasn’t. And that’s because we’ve been conditioned — desensitized, even — to depravity, whether real or fictional. In 2001, we witnessed masochists inflicting unspeakable violence upon their genitals in BME’s Pain Olympics. In 2007, Death by Horse Cock — which is exactly what it sounds like — reputedly had its anally-penetrated subject succumb to internal bleeding. Later that year, Two Girls One Cup exposed everyone from your grandmother to The Black Eyed Peas to the, ahem, pleasures of soft-serve poo. Blame it on 4Chan if you will, but the Internet’s progeny ain’t rattled easily.
And largely, that’s because the web fosters a culture of one-upmanship, and in 2010, belief has been nearly perma-suspended. Two Girls One Cup lost its lustre after the second viewing; now, we demand depravity harder. Better. Faster. Stronger. And that’s where The Human Centipede enters.
Centred on the twisted fantasy of a retired German surgeon, Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), The Human Centipede is his quest to reverse-engineer conjoined triplets. By linking each person’s digestive tract — from mouth to anus, mouth to anus and so on — he would, theoretically, be able to create a human centipede. As far as human-monster hybrids go, Frankenstein ain’t got shit on this.
Initially a concept driven by director Tom Six’s black sense of humour — he’d joke that child molesters, as punishment, should have their mouths sewn to the derriere of a fat truck driver — it also derived inspiration from much darker places, namely the Nazi medical experimentation of Dr. Josef Mengele. Too soon? Yeah, we thought so, too.
Worse still, the film labels itself as “100 per cent medically accurate,” and Six says he confirmed the film’s viability with a Dutch surgeon. Y’know, just in case you were held up on the concept of histocompatibility.
But its story begins innocently enough. On their way to a club in Germany, two American tourists, Lindsay (Ashley Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie), have their car break down on a deserted stretch of road — standard horror stuff. Seeking help, they find the closest house, which, naturally, is Heiter’s digs. And after being fed Rohypnol — German doctors have supplies of the date-rape drug readily on hand, in case you weren’t aware — they wake up in his laboratory-basement alongside a Japanese tourist (Akihiro Kitamura, best known for his appearance on Heroes), held at Heiter’s mercy.
By now, you should know that Heiter succeeds. But surprisingly, The Human Centipede largely achieves its point without being overly graphic — it lets its grotesque concept do all the talking. Its most squeamish moments come with the stone-faced Heiter calmly explaining his plans, down to every minute detail, to his three gagged, restrained and horrified captives. His implied actions — not to mention his final product — are enough to quell appetites. Indeed, much like the Internet’s most vicious memes, this is terror for terror’s sake.
Once the deed is done, Laser further cements the doctor’s lunacy; beaming with pride, the doctor, at one point, screams “Feed her!” to his creation. On the scale of torture, it fits somewhere in between Irreversible’s savage fire extinguisher bludgeoning and its eight minute, real-time rape scene. In other words, it’s just awful.
But that’s where the Irreversible comparisons end. Outside of Laser’s performance, there’s little else that redeems The Human Centipede’s depravity. Along with being unwilling medical experiments, Williams and Yennie are victims of a piss-poor script; working with stilted dialogue and predictable plot twists, the actresses fail to even sell their roles as ditzy, American tourists. And there isn’t even standard-issue horror conservatism at play here; neither is reprimanded for their promiscuity or their youth. Rather, their role is simple: They’re vessels for punishment.
And that’s all The Human Centipede is: punishment. Accordingly, this leaves the audience with the despair of Ruggero Diodato’s 1976 grisly faux-doc, Cannibal Holocaust; it feels like nothing more than an a forced exploitation movie. Encyclopedia Dramatica — the Internet’s defacto guide to all things contemptible — called it the “lulziest film of all time,” and we’re not inclined to disagree. Because while its concept is truly appalling, at the end of the day, for Horse Cock devotees, this is barely shocking. And anyhow, if we wanted to be appalled, we needn’t look to Dutch cinema. We have Mary Bale. And she’s not lulzy in the least.
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