The Human Centipede (First Sequence) Director Tom Six: 92mins

“This is a sick movie”, “we know what you want.” Tom Six spoke to the audience at FrightFest introducing a movie that claims to be 100% medically accurate, but that ultimately suffers for not being anatomically imaginative (as well as accurate) and sicker for it. It has a central idea – linking human beings from mouth to anus grafting one to the other, in doing so making a human chain – a centipede. More of the insufficiencies of this premise later….

The development of the characters is very flawed. The success of this operation, carried out by a mad scientist (played by Dieter Laser), relies on him finding young students stranded (a la Hostel), who no-one is going to love, miss and have looked for (as always).

The victims in this instance are two American girls and a Japanese boy. They could and would have overpowered this stick insect of a man at any proceedings during the film. A lot of the middle section centres, quite uselessly on a failed escape by one of the girls – for her to be told she was to become the mid section as a punishment. There is an underlying reference consistently made to Nazism. This is one man’s vision of the future of mankind. The mad scientist – here is an eminent Siamese Twin surgeon of such world renown he can live in an isolated hospital/house in the middle of no-where with no-one ever calling him to perform disjoining operations. He has surreal portraits of twins co-joined around his house to remind the audience of what it is he does for his day job – but there is no backstory: why this eminent surgeon so humanitarian but so twisted is given no airing at all. We are left to believe that he and he alone can conduct these operations and that this is the future.

But now to the all important body stuff. Anatomical horror is wonderfully represented by Cronenberg and Crichton in modern culture. Cronenberg and Crichton used to do the research and would use plausibility in the story so as to make the possibilities it portrayed feasible. Yes, it is possible to join the digestive tract in human beings and it is also true that peristalsis (the wave of motion that carries food through the various absorption processes) would act from one body to the other if co-linked. But waste is not just carried and exited through the intestines but also the bladder. The body also vomits, belches, farts – the biggest anatomical truth that is overlooked is that the second and third bodies in the chain would be digesting waste and would die.

The possibilities of overcoming these other truths would have presented a far better challenge and would have made a far better horror story.

Thankfully the film is redeemed by a few factors: the police intervene, which would in essence happen in this atmosphere of well contained isolation. The setting is truly convincing in portraying menace: the beauty and comfort of the house belying the clinical horror in progress. The performance of the first in the chain (Akihiro Kitamura) is very good indeed and it is he – more so than the plucky heroine that shines as the best performer of the lot.

The emotional elements are there as the girls consistently love and support each other, holding hands throughout the ordeal.

This is the first sequence. During the Q & A after the premiere, the director, who should really have been booed, told the audience that the second sequence was to involve 15 co-joined. Considering the indelible flaws in the first sequence, its fifteen too many.