US | 2011 | Directed by Tom Six
Logline: Inspired by a fictional character, a very disturbed and lonely man fantasizes of creating a 12-person centipede.
To say that The Human Centipede II is an acquired taste is like mentioning the anchovy and corned beef pizza is a little on the salty side. Dutch writer/director Tom Six warned audiences who had savoured The Human Centipede that the sequel would make the first movie look like My Little Pony. He was not too far from the truth. The “100% medically inaccurate” sequel reaches up from the drain as you stroll past, grabs you by the ankle, and pulls you down into the filthy, pitiful depths of hell where it writhes and squeals in its own bodily fluids with the kind of glee reserved only for the execrable evil.
Beginning in meta-fashion the movie shows the last few minutes of The Human Centipede, but in black and white. The credits for the movie begin rolling and the camera pulls back to reveal that it’s being watched on a computer screen. The person watching is London loner Martin (Laurence R. Harvey); our gross and grotesque antagonist who will lead us into the depths of his (nightmare) fantasy. He is a short, obese man with bulging eyes and a small mouth who works as an underground parking attendant, and lives in squalor with his abusive, desperate mother (Vivien Bridson). It’s a pathetic and ugly existence, soon to its nadir.
Martin is obsessed (and that’s putting it mildly) with The Human Centipede. He has a scrapbook on the cult horror movie, and he watches it over and over, poring over the detail, fingering his wet lips as he ogles the poor victims. He becomes aroused, but due to years of sexual abuse by his father he can only find gratification through pain, and so he jerks off with sandpaper wrapped around his penis. He’s distracted by a commotion on the surveillance cameras; it’s time to put his burgeoning and hideous plan into action.
Martin is compelled to take the concept and work of Heiter, the deranged surgeon from the first movie, and push the boundary. Martin will make a full sequence. Not three people, not four, not five, but twelve people stitched together arse-to-mouth; a complete human centipede, a mutant pet to keep his ferocious real pet centipede company, perhaps. Martin abducts twelve men and women, including a pregnant one, Rachel (Katherine Templar), and, as fate would have it, his dream centipede head: Miss Ashlynn Yennie herself, one of the stars from the first movie. He rents a dilapidated warehouse space and begins his lengthy opus of fleshy degradation.
Tom Six is a brave man. I admire his tenacity. There are few horror directors bold enough to throw all caution to the wind and make a movie that takes no moral prisoners, makes no ethical concessions, and embraces all the sexual perversity and appalling repulsion required for such a movie as The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence).
The first movie was concerned with Dr. Heiter’s narcissistic fascination with his own conceptual handiwork. It was all “100% medically accurate”. The sequel states clearly that the first movie was pure fiction, and the real nightmare is what you’re now witnessing in grimy high contrast black and white. But more disturbing than the sheer body horror - and there is much of that! - is the sexual aberration that exudes from the movie. Martin is a confounded carnal monster. He craves to get off over his creation, and he does. Using barbed wire, and poor unfortunate Kim (Emma Lock), human centipede #10. It’s an irreparably disturbing and sickening scene. The board of censors banned the movie in the UK and it was cut in Australia and America. The UK decision was appealed (Six defending his movie by stating, “Aren’t horror movies meant to be horrific?”), and the movie was re-submitted. It was slapped with an 18 restriction, but only after around thirty cuts were made, and more than two minutes were excised.
Six has made a potent and powerful nightmare movie, as expressionistic and uncompromising as A Serbian Film, as wickedly vile and well made. Imagine Eraserhead fused with Tetsuo fused with Man Bites Dog and maybe you’ll appreciate the movie’s singular vision. Not a lot of dialogue, and a sustained tone of unbridled ghastliness that embraces the movie like the savage clutches of Martin’s pet centipede. The realist approach seemingly heightens the surrealism of it all. James Edward Barker’s soundscape is brilliant, and the central performance of Laurence R. Harvey is disquietingly inspired. I take my hat off to Ashlynn Yennie for biting the bullet, so to speak, and returning to the nightmare for more degradation.
There is also a very, very dark element of comedy that rears its head occasionally. Six made a decision during the editing process to release the movie in monochrome, and included the original colour version for the boxset release. Call me disgusting, but Six’s deliberate inclusion of very subtle colour in the black and white version made me chortle (then gag). The monochrome palette certainly intensifies the movie’s grim tone, but those spurts of brown are the scatological icing on the cake.
The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) will definitely offend some viewers, there’s no doubt about that. Consider yourself warned! But for the hardened horrorphile, it’s revolting and rewarding in darkly perfect measure.