First off: I was bored. Second…I have Netflix, so it’s not like pay specifically for the movie. Third: aw, who am I kidding? I was dumb enough to drop this into my queue and watch it, even having an inkling of what it was about…
Human Centipede is a movie only a German could make. (Actually, I think the director’s Dutch, but I can’t be bothered to learn anything more after the experience) Two idiotic American girls are wandering the German countryside on a road trip and are off to find a swanky nightclub. They wind up in the middle of a German forest (which I thought were pretty much destroyed, so let’s assume that these characters walked in circles in a copse of trees in a suburban neighborhood…) in the rain, after their Volkswagen’s tire pops.
Do they change the tire? Nope. Do they even attempt it? Nope. Mostly they spit vapid “I’m scared but we can’t just sit in our car” lines. They have another driver stop to “help” them, which is mostly some old, fat guy leering and making suggestions as to what they can do together. So, yeah, I guess they “have” to go look for help. Do they stay on the road? Nope.
So they find the massive house of retired surgeon Dr. Haiter — who for years was the preeminent surgeon for detaching Siamese twins. Now he wants to rectify that by sewing people together into a Siamese triplet. The girls come looking for a phone and despite the immediate “hey, this guy is halfway to the moon crazy” vibes they get, they go into his house, accept water (roofied) then wind up strapped to gurneys in his torture chamber cum laboratory under the house.
There is a botched escape attempt by one of the characters, a girl of such mind-deading stupidity I actually was shouting insults at the screen. She gets out of the lab and winds up locked in a bedroom the madman can’t get into. What does she do? Hide behind the bed and cry. Does she knock out the window and run screaming her head off into the neighborhood? Nope. does she grab the nearest blunt object and whack said rampaging retiree? Nope. She waits until he’s gone away to open the window blinds. Surprise! Dr. Nutbag’s here!
This leads to her running away, falling into his pool, only to be rescued when the power goes out from the coming rainstorm. Does he just wait in the dark for her? Nope. He actually goes to turn the power on. So does she run through the window he broke open and get help? Nope. She goes back for her friend, drags her through the house (LOUDLY! ’cause stealth when being hunted..? Not needed.) and out into the yard, where she gets shot with a tranq dart.
At this point, I’m starting to get into the very misogynistic vibe of the movie, if only because this broad is so implausible stupid that women everywhere, when meeting director Tom Six, should haul off and kick him in the jimmies on general principle.
Long and short of it: they get their knee ligamants cut soe they have to be on all fours, and sewn — as only the Teutonic crazy would think to do — ass to mouth making a human centipede. The crazed doctor tried to train them, there’s some contest of wills between the Japanese guy that is the head of this gruesome creation and Haiter; the girls mostly whimper and look sad over the buttocks of the person in front of them. This leads to the inevitable scene where the Japanese guy has to defecate. You get the picture.
Finally the police arrive, responding at least a week or so after the girls have gone missing and a report of an American girl screaming on the property have been reported. They send to longhaired, not-overly-bright detectives to the property. After a bit of “what have you got in the basement, you crazy bastard” “I don’t have to tell you without a warrant” nonsense, Haiter tried to roofie the cops. Do they pick up on this? Nope. Do they buy his line about the syringe of sedative he was planning on using on the cops? Mostly. Does one drink the water for the obviously deranged surgeon living in the woods and on whom a report of a screaming girl was filed. Yup!
They leave for a warrant, in which time the centipede makes its move to escape and in the ensuing fight with Haiter the Japanese “head” stabs Haiter in the leg, bites him, yaddayadda. The centipede stages its escape attempt with the idiot girl from the last escape attempt miming direction to get out. This can’t possibly go wrong. There’s a showdown between Haiter, who can’t stand, and Japanese dude — who until now has showed spunk and incredible presence of mind. So what does he do? After a moving soliloquy in Japanese, he slits his own throat to regain his humanity. (Hey…how ’bout killing the doctor and finding a phone? Then surgeons could cut you lose from the other two and you would only have a horrible scar on your ass and mental trauma for a lifetime. That would work, too.)
The cops show up with a warrant a Walther P5s held like the actors haven’t seen an action movie since the 1970s. (Hey, Rambo, that slide’s going to cut your off-hand thumb to shreds.) Roofied cop goes down just as he finds the doctor. Now he has a machinegun, ho ho ho…wrong movie. Final firefight sequence — dumbass longhair cop one finds dead dumbass cop two. Does he attentively look for the threat? Nope. Does he get gut shot? Yup. But not before he blows a tunnel in the doctor’s head.
Annoying can’t escape for toffee chick is thus left stuck sewn in the middle ofthe bodies of the Japanese dude and her dead friend. The end. (Possibly the only redeeming feature of this cow-pat of a movie — no happy ending.)
Style: none. Substance: none. Don’t bother. Even for free.
The Black Campbell 