Halloween Horrors: HUMAN CENTIPEDE

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE)  (2009)
Directed by Tom Six
Starring Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura, Andreas Leupold
R for disturbing sadistic horror violence, nudity and language
SCAREmeter: 5/10
GOREmeter: 10/10
OVERALL: 2 out of 4 stars

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE is more of an idea than a movie, and maybe I was just a more demented 10-year old than most, but it's an idea that seems like the offspring of a 10-year old boy's mind, with the stipulation that the idea itself and the depiction of such an idea enacted are very different things.  In purely conceptual form, the titular concept, of a singular digestive tract composed of multiple persons joined, is a slightly humorous, if vulgar and tasteless, and juvenile one.  It doesn't become quite so horrible until it is considered in its physical possibilities, in how such a ridiculous, and ridiculously disgusting, fantasy would be arranged in real-world physicality.  However, it is the idea itself, of multiple human beings attached from butt to mouth (laugh and/or gag as you will), to create one single digestive tract from the front person's mouth to the rear person's rear, which can be singularly blamed for making THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE noteworthy.
The severely unoriginal setup involves a pair of none-too-bright American tourists (Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie) on a road trip through Europe, who blow out a tire on a German back-road.  The two ditzy American women naively make their way to a nearby mansion to ask if they can use the telephone call a roadside service.  The mansion, as it turns out, is the abode of a socially-withdrawn surgical genius, Dr. Josef Heiter (Dieter Laser), world-renowned for his expertise in the separation of conjoined twins, but now obsessed with secret experiments in morphing together separate beings.  He's already made a "canine centipede" of three dogs sewn together, but now he's planning to apply the same method to humans.  After imprisoning the two women and a third tourist, Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), he removes their patellas to prevent unsuitable knee extension and sews the three tourists together "mouth-to-anus," and perform further dehumanizing experiments on this new "pet."

The influence of controversy-meister Pier Paolo Pasolini's SALO, OR 120 DAYS OF SODOM is blatantly apparent throughout the film, from the nauseating dehumanization on display (the most obvious being the surgical manipulation, but also people forced to eat from a dog bowl and perform "fetching tricks") to, while surprisingly momentary, the forced ingestion of excrement, as well as the theatrically exaggerated acting.  Those who are not students of cinema likely have not even heard of Pasolini's SALO, but it has often been the subject of debate between what is artistic and meaningful, and what is pornographic and sadistic, and has been heavily influential on horror filmmakers of today, especially those who specialize in so-called "torture porn."  Whatever you may think of SALO, if you think of it at all, while that has been suggested to have significant meanings (admittedly far more apparent to those already familiar with Pasolini), I think it is harder to lift HUMAN CENTIPEDE out of exploitative schlock.  While writer/director Tom Six's motives are almost entirely based in creating disgust, he does try to apply a commentary on dehumanization through choices and through societal views.  However, he negates any such excuses by dehumanizing his characters in ways beyond even purposes of genre and plot, notably the exaggerated and cartoonish stereotypes of Dr. Heiter as the evil German mad scientist, and Katsuro as a wide-eyed Japanese man who shouts nearly all of his dialogue with a growling tone and is called the "kamikaze" by Heiter.
There's plenty to grimace and squirm at, and not all of it is by the purposes of the movie, but it is the utter ludicrousness of the concept, plus the abundant horror tropes, that keeps the film from becoming unbearably disgusting.  It's not really a movie that needs to be watched; you get the basic idea just from hearing about it.  The best thing to come from it is the South Park episode "HUMANCENTiPAD," which has a lot of the same sort of stuff, but far funnier, not to mention more intelligent.
On something of a side note, the middle placement of the Human Centipede has become a pop cultural punchline, but it seemed to me that being the rear of the centipede would be the worst for having to eat twice-digested poop, which, besides being disgusting, would render the third part much less healthy (something addressed in the film).  However, the movie does identify the middle section as the least favorable, to which Dr. Heiter assigns the most difficult captive, but because of the more difficult healing process taking place at both ends.  Once-digested poop is probably more nasty than twice-digested anyway, but I'd still take that over the dead rear part.