the human centipede 3 (final sequence)

at a certain point in the human centipede 3, dieter laser’s character, prison warden bill boss, looks directly into the camera and says ‘hey, cockroaches! do you like these movies?’ 

in the context of the film it’s a question to the 500 inmates who have just sat through back-to-back screenings of the first two human centipede film. it’s also a direct question to the audience and a clear reminder that we’re once again in the realm of the theatre of cruelty.

bill boss is the warden of george h w bush state prison and he and his accountant, dwight butler (laurence r. harvey sporting a toothbrush moustache that is more oliver hardy than adolf hitler), are struggling to find new ways to keep the inmate population under control. when governor hughes (eric roberts) gives the two of them an ultimatum they devise increasingly extreme ways to force the prison population into submission. while boss favours genital mutilation and boiling waterboarding, butler has another idea, something he saw in a movie once…

compared to the bleak, arthouse aesthetic of the second film, this is a sun-drenched, slapstick, over-the-top comedy. much of the action takes place in boss and butlers’ office in scenes that are written and staged like almost like a traditional british farce. from the moment laser and harvey speak it’s clear that between laser’s occasionally incoherent ranting and harvey’s southern drawl with a hint of wigan there will be no attempt at naturalism here. if the second film had elements of looney tunes cartoons, this film plays like an extended episode of south park, only much more determined to offend.

laser’s performance made the first film work just as harvey’s carried the second one, and the two combined make a truly demented double team. harvey’s butler is actually the most likable character in the film, which is saying something as he’s the one advocating the human centipede. he manages to take the misunderstood loner elements from his character in the second film and use those characteristics to make butler almost endearing. meanwhile, laser’s performance is a hundred times more insane than that of the first film. he makes use of every inch of the frame every second he’s on camera, which is pretty much every scene, and sometimes his enthusiasm seems so genuine it almost disguises the content of the dialogue, so lines like ‘thank god for female circumcision’ almost slip under the radar before you think, 'did he really just say that?'. it’s an incredibly physical performance, with every rant and offensive tirade coupled with appropriate (or inappropriate) gurning and thrusting and occasionally even dancing. he plays boss as someone who delights in the suffering of others, to the point where he is even quite explicit about being sexually aroused by it. whatever laser is doing, it works. boss is one of the most disgusting, despicable characters ever portrayed on film and laser makes sure that he’s completely unforgettable.

like the second film, there’s no real narrative tension in the human centipede 3. yes, boss and butler face losing their jobs if they can’t control the inmates, but we’re never really tasked with caring about them all that much. the conflict of the first half of the film is butler needing to convince boss that the human centipede idea will work, and once he does convince him (by bringing in director tom six, playing himself) the drama becomes more about whether butler and the prison surgeon will be allowed to finish the centipede before boss kills everyone. but that’s not the real story here; there’s something much more interesting going on.

when boss is explaining what he intends to do to the inmates after screening the first two human centipede films, i couldn’t help thinking of a scene from the da vinci code. there’s a moment in the book where robert langdon is lecturing a prison population about art. dan brown’s intention in that scene is clear – you, dear reader, are uneducated scum and i’m here to save you from your own ignorance. six has a similar approach here, and it’s quite clear that the 500 inmates represent us, the audience. however, in the case of the human centipede six isn’t trying to educate his audience but offend them. it’s easy to transpose boss’s frustration at his failed attempts at forcing the inmates into submission to six’s frustration at being unable to truly offend those watching his films, until he finds a new way to do so. the idea of the prisoners as the audience is never more explicit than in the screening scene, when one of the prisoners stands up and declares the human centipede films are harmful and should be banned, echoing the bbfc’s ruling on the second film. this theory holds up until six himself appears in the film and shows that even his character is disgusted by what is happening. this suggests that perhaps the film isn’t necessarily about a filmmaker's struggle to reach new levels of depravity but is perhaps a comment on cinema in general.

there’s an element of the human centipede 3 that feels very much like a satirical statement about american culture as a whole. as characters, boss and butler are parodies of over-used hollywood stereotypes and there are frequent shots of the american flag and shades of the national anthem in the score. as the second film referenced the gritty realist films of mike leigh and ken loach, the third film is a clear parody of the hollywood machine. six has stated that his trilogy was supposed to be a centipede itself, and this idea works in the way that each of the previous films are incorporated into the next like waste passing through the human digestive system. from there, it’s easy to make a comparison between the shit that passes through the human centipede and the perceived state of the hollywood product, with the same ideas being swallowed and excreted over and over again by a captive audience. at times, it feels like this whole project was both a comment on hollywood movies and a challenge to the studio system, because whatever you think of six’s work it can’t be denied that there is originality here. on this basis, it becomes apparent why six distances himself from boss by appearing in the film. it’s not about his frustration at being unable to truly offend, it’s about his disgust with the state of mainstream cinema.

taking all this into account, lets look at the one female character in the film. bree olson plays boss and butlers’ secretary. daisy. in her very first scene she is subjected to a casual sexual assault from boss and things only get worse for her from there. daisy only exists in the film to be abused, with no opportunity for revenge. even when beaten into a coma her suffering continues. to make matters worse, she serves no purpose in the story, with even the hint of narrative purpose in her relationship with butler coming to nothing in the end. she is an extreme and utterly abhorrent example of female objectification at it’s most vile, and on the surface seems like a crass and ill-advised attempt to offend anyone with even the vaguest belief in gender equality. except by being so deliberately offensive, it becomes completely inoffensive.

in my review of the human centipede 2 i went off on a bit of a tangent about the representation of women in game of thrones, a show that remains revered and critically acclaimed despite the rampant and unnecessary objectification of women in every episode. my point about the second film was that it’s hard to be offended at something that is at least honest about what it is. in this film I think six is actually making a real point about the representation of women in mainstream cinema. 

daisy is a perfect example of the token female character. in the majority of hollywood movies, the token female character exists to be objectified i.e. to look pretty for the male audience members, usually not wearing very much. occasionally she will be put into peril (or ‘damselled’) to drive the story forward, if she's really lucky she will be raped or killed or both in order to give the male protagonist a reason to take revenge. the treatment of daisy in the human centipede 3 is no different to the treatment of the token female character in most movies, it’s just that six is honest about it. if your female character exists only to be an object for the male gaze with no narrative purpose, then why not have her casually raped and brutalised? what does it matter? the poor representation of women in films is offensive when it’s casual, and though i’m loath to mention the overused bechdel test, the point of that test was to point out how widespread this casual misogyny really is. by making the objectification so obvious it’s abhorrent, six not only makes his token female character less offensive than the norm but also makes a bold statement about the representation of women in films. while i perhaps wouldn’t go so far as to call the human centipede 3 a feminist film, i do believe it has a strong and effective feminist message about the way hollywood presents women.

that last thought ultimately sums up what i took from the experience. bill boss has no respect for his audience, he wants to line them up, force feed them junk food, and then watch as the shit passes from one audience member to the next. why does he want to do this? because he wants his audience to be submissive. he wants them to take whatever he is feeding them without complaint and in doing so further his own career. bill boss isn’t a caricature of a prison warden, he’s a caricature of a hollywood producer. it’s hollywood movies that are depraved and disgusting. it’s hollywood movies that are casually and discreetly racist, misogynist and worse. whatever you think of this film, it puts all its ugliness upfront where it can be seen. that’s more than you can say about most films, hollywood or otherwise. it’s this hypocrisy that six is directly attacking with his work, and i think he should be applauded for having the audacity to do so.

i can’t say i thoroughly enjoyed this film, much like the other two entries in the trilogy, but i did appreciate it. there is genius at work here, not the kind of visionary, high-definition christopher nolan-type genius that most filmmakers aspire to, but a vulgar, antagonistic and ultimately realist genius that we need more of in cinema. tom six may not be the best filmmaker of the twenty-first century, but he is certainly one of the most important.

the human centipede 3 will be released by eureka and monster pictures in selected cinemas from 10th july 2015, and on blu-ray, dvd and vod on 13th july 2015.

the human centipede 2 (full sequence)

i don’t even know where to start with this film.

so the first human centipede movie exists in the world of the movie and car park attendant martin is obsessed with it. as his obsession grows he decides to take matters into his own hands and kidnaps people from the car park to build his own human centipede, only his will be four times as long as the one in the original movie.

i’m going to be reviewing human centipede 3 this week and i’ve seen the first one so i felt obliged to watch this one too. i liked the first movie. despite the insanity of the premise it actually holds together as a pretty solid horror film, with a standout performance from dieter laser as what has to be the best portrayal of a mad scientist in film history. but the sequel is one of the strangest films i have ever seen.

on one hand, it’s clear that director tom six has set out to make the most grim, filthy, disgusting viewing experience possible. the rain-drenched locations are decrepit and ugly, none of the actors are presented in a particularly flattering light, and there is this drone on the soundtrack that just makes every scene feel uncomfortable and unsettling. it would be easy to argue that this is an earnest attempt at making the most unsettling film experience of all time, and yet six also clearly has a sense of humour. there are moments of the film that play like a cartoon, with lead actor laurence r. harvey practically winking at the camera on a couple of occasions. the violence and gore and depravity are so over the top at times it becomes hilarious and six knows it. except whenever you think you’ve got the joke and start to settle into it, he does something truly horrible and disgusting that throws it all out again.

it’s worth talking about harvey’s performance as martin in a little more detail. where did six find this guy? like laser in the first film, the casting is perfect and ultimately it's this that makes the film work. harvey oozes depravity and perversion every moment he’s on screen. he plays a character that is too over-the-top to play with any kind of naturalism, but he makes it feel real. if they truly gave out oscars for the best performance rather than it being a popularity contest, harvey should’ve walked away with one in 2011. and yet, despite admiring the performance it’s impossible to like the character.

that’s what makes this a tough watch, much more than the violence and gore. martin is the protagonist in every sense of the word, but that means as an audience we are put in the unenviable position of being on his side. this is his story, the human centipede is his goal and to truly engage with the film is to want him to achieve that goal. in putting his audience in this position, six makes the film a completely alienating experience. it becomes pure art, because we have nothing to hang our perceptions onto, nothing to relate to except for the truly unspeakable. so what happens is we just have to watch it and see how it makes us feel, like a rothko painting. except i've never felt physically sick at a rothko exhibition.

let’s be clear, i didn’t enjoy the experience of watching this film, i’m not sure that’s even possible. at times i wondered whether i should have been more offended than i was, but martin is an equal opportunities murderer and the men get as much abuse as the women, to a degree. maybe i'm trying too hard to defend something indefensible, but at least the human centipede makes no attempt to hide what it is, unlike the misogyny and sexual violence in something like game of thrones, which pretends to be high art while quite obviously adhering to a nudity quota every fucking episode. six is quite clear with his intention to offend, and in a way that makes his work less offensive.

there is an element of sexual violence, which is problematic, especially if we're being asked to laugh at it. but i'm not sure that is the intention. there is a noticeable shift in tone between the moments that are so extreme they're funny to the moments that are genuinely disgusting that makes me think six is deliberately trying to catch us out, albeit in a very juvenile way. we laugh at martin injecting his victims with an over sized bottle of laxative and making fart noises as he dances around them, but six is hoping we're still laughing when martin rapes the end of the centipede so we feel bad. and maybe i should be offended at that because turning rape into a game isn't cool, but six clearly wants me to be offended so i'm naturally refusing to do so, and in refusing to be offended by something that's offensive purely to stop the filmmaker getting what he wants, doesn't that mean he wins anyway? this is why i find this film fascinating. six has a deliberately antagonistic relationship with his audience and is so dedicated to antagonising them that he has made three films, films that took time and money and the efforts of a whole team of people, simply to offend and antagonise his audience. because it's a film and so much time and effort and money goes into making films this seems absurd, but is it any different to the theatre of cruelty developed for the stage by antonin artaud? deliberately torturing the audience is not a new idea.

there are other elements of the film i found interesting. a theme that a lot of horror films share, sometimes unintentionally, is the dehumanisation of the human body. if you watch a lucio fulci movie for example, after the third or fourth grisly, over-the-top murder the characters stop seeming like human beings and are reduced to blood and meat held together by a thin covering of flesh that happens to talk. in the human centipede, people become parts. the obvious comparison is frankenstein, with body parts forming a whole, except here the bodies themselves are the parts. the human body is very much on display in this film; there is an excess of flesh in the room where martin conducts his experiment, and yet he manipulates that flesh into something that no longer resembles a human being. the struggle of the characters in the centipede becomes one of holding onto their humanity, and that’s difficult to do when you’re part of a chain of defecation. by making his audience feel nauseous, six rams that point home – that ultimately we’re nothing more than a machine built for passing fluids. as we watch the human centipede form, we ourselves are dehumanised.

i also wonder if is a movie about making movies. martin is inspired by his favourite movie to create something of his own. he steals the components he needs, but when he starts to build his centipede he’s frustrated that it’s so much harder than it appears in the source material. in the end, when he’s finished and he has knocked together something that in many ways is a poor, cobbled together mess of a creature compared to that of the original, he is unsatisfied. sure, he makes it work, he has his fun with it, he has made the thing he wanted to make, but when it’s over there’s a sense that it was all rather pointless. what has he really achieved? is that how six feels about filmmaking, i wonder?

i can’t really recommend this film, but i am glad i saw it. i think tom six is doing something interesting and i’m glad he is able to do it. roll on number 3!