Let's Get Leggy

The universe did not want me to watch this film.

Or at least, ‘the universe’ as defined by Netflix technology or my overly protective Blu Ray player. I was excited to see The Human Centipede 2 magically appear in my instant queue on the same day that Pet Sematary 2 (‘sup, Eddie Furlong!) did. But for whatever reason, my Blu Ray refused to acknowledge this pair of sequels’ slide into instant territory until several hours after the discovery. Sorry LG Player, a gal just can't resist.

Quick Plot: Meet Martin, an overweight slug of a mama's boy who oversees a dank parking lot, the perfect profession for a man who prefers to spend the majority of his time masturbating to Tom Six's 2009 film The Human Centipede and subsequently kidnapping annoying customers for a future project. See, in the universe of this movie, The Human Centipede is a work of fiction, one that just so happened to capture the fancy of our lead character. 

You know how girls that dug The Hunger Games now braid their hair and kids that really liked Fight Club started their own fight clubs? Well, man-children that loved The Human Centipede don't show their admiration by collecting insects (well, Martin does, but that's just a side hobby). The more devout fans take it one--or twelve--steps further and, you know, create their very OWN human centipede culled from prostitutes, drunk party girls, surly neighbors, pregnant women (yup, that happens), and, if you REALLY want to prove your worth, one of the stars from the original film.

Yes folks, that's Ashlynn Yenni, aka "C" or The Rear of Dr. Heiter's original experiment. Yenni plays herself en route to a bogus audition for a Quentin Tarantino production only to instead find herself starring in Martin's own private fantasy. Sure, Marilyn Burns had to deal with 120º heat and Gunnar Hanson's body odor, but poor Ashlynn has now had her face stuck in another person's rump, her tongue yanked out, and a funnel diet of dog food and laxatives. Give the girl a Saturn Award or SOMETHING.

I found the original Human Centipede to be an interesting avant garde comedy that never quite rose up to its ambitious aims. Whether it was meant to be humorous or just found the right tone within its audience reaction I don't really know, but Tom Six certainly got the joke the second time around. As icky and brutal as The Human Centipede 2 is, it never once asks or expects you to take it seriously as a horror film. That is not to say horrific things involving butts, digestion, and birth don't happen, but the idea that we're supposed to feel anything by them seems fairly ridiculous. Tom Six is trying to shock us, trying to amuse us, and, I think, hoping to make the ones that 'get it' laugh and the ones that don't lobby their senator for tighter bans on filmmaking. I don't think this a good film, but much like the equally weird Rubber, I respect that it was made.

There are three aspects of The Human Centipede 2 that I admire immensely:

1. The casting of its lead character

According to IMDB, Laurence R. Harvey has been in two films: The Human Centipede 2 and The Human Centipede 3 (eventually filming, I assume). That’s hard to believe, both because a) he’s actually great in the role and b) I wouldn’t put it past Six to force Mr. Harvey into a sort of Blair Witch-like alternate actor identity. Then again, the reason I’m so keen on Harvey’s casting is the very fact that he doesn’t look like he should ever be viewed on the big screen. 

I’m sure that in his Sunday church clothes, Laurence R. Harvey is a more than presentable man. But give the guy credit for putting in the kind of physically unreserved performance that would have desperate bachelorettes on a singles cruise hurling themselves overboard in the hopes that even the seaweediest merman  might provide refuge.

2. Monochrome madness

To call The Human Centipede 2 one of the grossest films in recent memory isn't any grand or controversial statement. I don't care how many episodes of Jackass you watched while eating Doritos: seeing ten people have their teeth and kneecaps knocked out, only to then suffer through a hand-me-down Number 2 special dog food dinner is, to be coy, not appetizing. Even before that, we get the joys of watching the intentionally off-putting Martin cough up phlegm, urinate blood, and wipe away snot the way some habitual tickers bite their nails. The one thing we did not need from a film like this was any real sense of realism, and thankfully--well, almost--Tom Six is kind enough to comply.

See, the black and white filming isn't just stylish: it's necessary. To pile on that amount of body gore in color would result in either the results being disgustingly unwatchable or just plain laughable. Films like Hobo With a Shotgun or its inspiration Street Trash succeeded with a candy color wheel approach, while the more realistic-minded Salo and A Serbian Film work with a muted palette that makes the few blatant images extremely powerful. Tom Six is not a director of restraint, nor has he proven a visual genius. Hence, keeping the bodily fluids--from just about every organ no less--covered in gray is vital.

Of course, then Six goes and tosses in splatters of brown at a key moment and I'm left thinking I should negate the previous two paragraphs...

3. Its structure as a sequel

Much like Paranormal Activity 2, I found myself enjoying the concept of The Human Centipede 2 far more than the actual film. Sequels are never easy goings, and while cinema of the 1980s generally followed a 'rinse & repeat' approach, there's been a refreshing trend here in the aughts (and now teens) to follow up a horror hit with a different sort of style. It would have been fairly easy for Tom Six to simply pick up where he left off, with one lone centipede middle trapped in a house alone until the arrival of say, Dr. Heiter's hinted about twin brother. Instead, The Human Centipede 2 tries something new, a meta take on what effect watching Tom Six's first film might have on an unstable mind. It's messy, pretentious, and incredibly self-serving sure, but at the same time, it's hard not to appreciate a filmmaker taking a chance when there were plenty of options not to.

Lessons Learned

You know what’s not that hard to do? Pulling out a human tongue in one piece. And here I struggle to get all that lobster meat out of the claw without major injury

One needn’t be cautious about kidnapping patterns in England. Apparently, one can swipe up to ten people in one location over the course of a week and still have time to pick up another would-be victim from a nearby airport before policemen even think to notice

A little duct tape and a single cro-bar go an awful long way in getting you what you want

Centipede (non-human kinds) bites really hurt

Rent/Bury/Buy

Well, there’s plenty of people who will rightfully hate The Human Centipede 2. Like its predecessor, it’s a messy, undisciplined film that’s about as pleasant a watch as Lucker the Necrophagous or your great aunt clipping her toenails. But then you have people out there like me--and hey! maybe you--who just can’t not seek out a film that tries so desperately to make you look away. If you found the first film to be an oddly enjoyable comedy (as I did) then I imagine you’ll get something similar out of the sequel. It’s frustrating and unpleasant and gross and not quite as smart as it wants to think it is, but...you know...it has more duct tape than dialogue, and that in itself is something that makes you think. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Cold Fish

A family drama, Shion Sono style.

That means you’re going to have a lot of severed limbs.

Quick Plot: Meet the Shamotos, a drearily unhappy family composed of a wimpy tropical fish store owner, his much younger second wife, and resentful teenage daughter. Mrs. Shamoto tosses store bought groceries in the microwave with the enthusiasm of an anorexic. Daughter Mitsuko shoplifts without care, and patriarch Nobuyuki longs for escape in the local planetarium.

After getting busted for stealing, Mitsuko befriends a garrulous businessman named Mr. Murata, who owns a cheerier tropical fish store across town and recruits the girl to join his staff of other attractive teens from troubled backgrounds. The Shamotos can’t seem to get a word in with the lively Murata and his bombshell bride, so by the end of the week, Mrs. Shamoto is having rough sex with her new friend, Mitsuko is cleaning fish tanks with a new kind of Japanese Stepfordism, and Mr. Shamoto is helping his new benefactor cover up his 58th murder by burning bones in a bonfire and covering up to the yazuka.

Indeed, making friends is an odd aspect of adult life.

Shion Sono is easily one of the most fascinating filmmakers working today. Everything from his premises--killer hair extensions! suicide cults inspired by bubblegum pop music!--to execution feels incredibly unique but generally, not forcefully so. Sure, Sono is adamantly avante garde, but rarely does his weird feel weird for the sake of weird.

Cold Fish seems most related to 2005’s Noriko’s Diner Table, the prequel to his better known Suicide Club. Both films are not easily categorized as horror, even if they feature extreme bouts of physical violence. Thematically, Cold Fish and Noriko’s Dinner Table are even more familiar. Both explore family dynamics with an emphasis on alienated teenage girls and their inefficient, inconsequential and clueless fathers. In both cases, a far more charismatic third party steps in to lead the daughters away like a modern Pied Piper.

Truth be told, I’ve only watched Noriko’s Dinner Table once (at the now defunct Two Boots Theater, sad face) and while I remember it being densely layered, I also remember it being a tad boring. Granted, its predecessor involved quite a few treats to keep you watching, from child cults to Goblin King impersonators breaking out into musical numbers. It’s a tough act to follow.

Cold Fish, on the flip side, finds an excellent pace. Though there’s a chilly distance between the audience and characters--primarily because Mr. Shamoto is intentionally barely a man--we care enough to jump on board almost immediately. And considering where the story takes us, that matters.

High Points

From Mitsuru Fukikoshi’s restraint as the near-dead Shamoto to Denden’s all-out crazy train Mr. Murata, the performances of Cold Fish are pretty pitch perfect

Low Point

Until a good hour into the film, everything we see is filtered through the Shamotos. Hence, once Mr. Murata’s driver comes to watch Murata’s wife and business colleague get it on, it’s a tad strange from a perspective point of view

Lessons Learned

Business is just entertainment (or a ploy)

The style of Japanese passion involves a lot of cupping of the boob

Getting stabbed in the neck with a pen kind of hurts

Stray Observatoin

This film may very well feature the most incompetent police officers since The Human Centipede. I say ‘since’ because even a bottle of seltzer makes a better cop than the Germans in Tom Six’s film

Rent/Bury/Buy

Part gangster film, part serial killer tale, and quite American Beauty, Cold Fish is typical Sono in being unlike anything else. It doesn’t ever go down the route you’re expecting it, making it something truly special for modern cinema. Eventually, it also gets incredibly brutal and quite disgusting, but for all the severed torso canoodles and bone sawings, Cold Fish doesn’t lose sight of the story it tells. Sure, it splatters a lot of blood over it, but at its heart, this is a film about a detached modern family letting itself be disbanded...and getting really bloody while doing so.

Test Tube Bozos

Watching today's Vertically Challenged feature, Attack of the Puppet People, I kept being reminded of a very different film.

No, it wasn’t another gloriously scale-playing flick from the master of big and little things, Bert I. Gordon.

It wasn’t Puppet Master.

Despite its efforts, it wasn’t even The Incredible Shrinking Man.

It was this. 

Sadly separated by 50 years and color, The Human Centipede’s Dr. Heiter and Attack of the Puppet People’s Mr. Franz would have had the cutest (grossest) bromance in all moviekind.

But anyway...

Quick Plot: A young woman takes a secretarial job at Dolls Incorporated, a one-man operation headed by John Hoyt’s Mr. Franz that’s as creepy and ominous (bom bom bommmmmmm musical cues keep us informed) as it sounds. Thankfully, there’s a dull traveling salesman who stops by for a whirlwind courtship, proposing an elopement at a drive-in showing of The Amazing Colossal Man.

Wait, maybe this guy isn’t so dull after all. Nope, he is.

When the ho-hum Bob stands her up for their Las Vegas wedding, the not-too-surprisingly named Sally’s suspicions of her employer (who also seems responsible for the disappearance of a previous assistant and unlucky mailman) finally grow to tell-an-unbelievable-story-about-a-man-turning-folks-into-dolls-to-the-dubious-authorities level. Not surprisingly, the police prove ineffective and Sally pays with her height.

Shrunk to the size of a Barbie (or, to be timely, the commercially successful Incredible Shrinking Man) Sally and now Bob meet Mr. Franz’s other mini-friends, two couples who have more or less accepted their itty bitty fates. Between dance parties and matchbox baths, there’s not too much too much to complain about. The kindly Franz even offers to shrink a priest in order to marry the sad lovebirds, but the ungrateful little people want nothing more than their big selves back.

Attack of the Puppet People is a weird little film, one clearly aiming for the Colossal/Shrinking Man’s 1950s audiences. There’s no real underlying metaphor or social significance worth gleaming, but this being a Bert I. Gordon film, there sure are plenty of rats shot to look giant. We get a lovely Phantom Menace-esque near-rat attack saved by a bigger cat attack, plus other cute sound and sight gags involving the Puppet People’s smallness. There’s never really any moment of fear or poetry, and the fact that our leads come across like that mildly successful couple you dread breaking ice with at a poorly seat-planned dinner party certainly doesn’t do the film any favors.

Still, oversized (real-sized shot big) rats, cats, and dogs!

High Points

A loopy little song-and-dance number called “My Living Doll” is a nice touch of surreal

Low Points

Though I like the self-pitying fate of Dr. Heiter--I mean, Mr. Franz--why are we left with the unanswered question of what became of four other main characters?

Lessons Learned

Be careful what kind of clothing you admire in front of your dollmaker boss. You never know when he’ll choose the wardrobe that you’ll be confined in as a tiny person, and while Scarlet O’Hara hoop skirts are flattering, they’re also quite difficult to flee a madman in

Before you can confess your sins to your employer, you must first be friends

Always spank your doll when it misbehaves

Rent/Bury/Buy

I have a soft spot for ‘50s sci-fi, one made quite cushy from my father’s taste and annual MST3K Turkey Day marathons. For someone like me, Attack of the Puppet People is an enjoyable enough Instant Watch, less than 80 minutes of misogynist ‘50s fun, adorably dated and charming special effects, and other grand nonsense. Not really a film worth tracking down, but if Netflix is your homepage, it’s a fun--and fast--enough time.

Still Not as Scary As a Caterpillar...

I hesitated in reviewing The Human Centipede, since just about every blogger and his or her sock has had a go at the year’s most talked about underground film. Even though I actually forked over a full $6.95 for the On Demand viewing, I almost felt like there was no need to say anything about a movie in which everything has already been said about it. 

Then I found this:

the most incredible cat toy of all time, courtesy of OhBoyCatToy via Etsy (direct link here ) and realized if I can't afford to give Mookie Wilson and Joplin Zelda Rubinstein Intravia a proper kitty toy, I at least had to acknowledge where I stood on the film that inspired it.


That's right. Consider this the first and in all probability last post every directly written in honor of a creatively sealed catnip.

Rather than crawl through a plot synopsis of a movie that everyone already knows the plot to, I figured I’d just address a few of the complaints lodged against Tom Six’s film.

1. The Gore Issue

Apparently, that 2-Girls-1-Cup video awakened a hunger the mass public never knew they had for coprophagia. Personally, I’m somewhat grateful Six left so much to our sick little imaginations. The dinnertime digestive sequence managed to make me laugh and cringe; had I actually been watching the process, I’d probably be too distracted constantly reminding myself that all I was seeing was Hershey’s syrup and marmalade (aka, How I Survived Salo).

2. The Girls Are Awful

I know! I hate them too! They represent every dumb chick you’ve climbed over in a bar bathroom as she slouches over her giggling friend and nonsensically slurs on about how some ugly bitch looked at her boyfriend the wrong way but oh my god! Her shoes are so cute! (In case you can’t tell, these types of women are not my friends.) Every word out of their mouths makes you want to punch them in the face or, more fittingly, tie said mouths to the anus of someone else. They can’t even escape or kill themselves the right way. It’s almost adorable.

3. Nothing Happens

...except for the fact that people are sewn together. I agree the plot is the gimmick, but had everyone and their former conjoined twin not been reading the Internet, wouldn’t we still be surprised by that alone? 

I don’t have much more to say about The Human Centipede, save for the fact that it was amusing, disgusting, and more than a little ridiculous. I loved Dieter Laser’s kooky performance as Dr. Heiter and loved even more how his hardened face resembled a creepy cross between Lance Henrikson, Udo Kier, and maybe just a teaspoon of Jeremy Irons. 

I found myself surprisingly affected by one character’s (let’s call him “A”) rather shocking decision and pretty darn grossed out by another (we’ll call her “C”)’s fate. I recommend this in the same way I’d recommend trying the chocolate mashed potato cupcake I tasted at a food festival on my recent vacation. It’s not really good and I’ll probably never return to it again, but wouldn’t my life be a smidgen empty had I not just went through with it?

Damnit. Why oh why did I bring up the combination of chocolate and mashed potatoes while still thinking about people’s mouths being tied to other people’s anuses? Consider that the most important Lesson Learned ever.