Movies
Tom Six’s ‘Human Centipede’ Interview Blows My Mind: Chair Rape and Torture Porn
I’ve never met Tom Six, and haven’t really conversed with him at all. To be frank, I don’t even know what to make of him. Is he arrogant? Is he a sociopath? Is he one of those directors who only cares about shocking his audience? I’ve been in the dark ever since his The Human Centipede (First Sequence) blew my mind back in 2009. Being that I’m the kind of guy who likes to stare you right in the eye and see what makes you tick, the shroud of mystery around Six has literally drove me insane. Up until today, I’ve had no actual opinion on the Euro director.
But now, with The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) premiering at the Fantastic Fest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, the director has opened up with an absolutely mind blowing interview with the NY Times where he talks about making his new villain rape a chair, and how he’s comfortable having his films tagged as “torture porn.”
Read on for some choice segments.
My personal favorite part of the interview is where Six talks about his approach to the first film, and then upping the ante for Full Sequence. This is the answer of a true film fan who understands what he’s doing. It reminds me of what James Cameron said about both T2 and Aliens.
“I made ‘Part I’ very much psychological. A lot of things happen in your head and you don’t actually see it on the screen,” he explains. “In ‘Part II,’ I really wanted to make it more graphic, show everything that I didn’t show in ‘Part I.’ Because I see so many horror films that have a sequel, then the sequel fails because it’s like a copy of the first one. Most of the time it’s not better, or it’s not original, and then it fails. When I was doing promotion for ‘Part I’ and starting to write ‘Part II,’ so many people at festivals all over the world, they said, “What if some maniac out there tries to copy your idea?” And then I knew that’s exactly the idea I must pursue.”
The most random portion of the feature is where Six explains that he forced Laurence R. Harvey to rape a chair in order to land the role of the new villain, Martin.
“The villain was more difficult [to cast], because people who’ve seen ‘Part I’ really admire Dr. Heiter, and that’s what I really didn’t want. I want the complete opposite of Dr. Heiter. I had this very specific character in my mind for the Martin character, and I saw a lot of people but none of them made it. And when Laurence came in, I thought, my God, that’s him, that’s him. He looks amazing. And then I asked him to rape a chair.”
He continues explaining “why” he made him perform that bizarre act: “I wanted to see, is he capable of giving it all as an actor? That’s very important for me. And he did it, and he did it so convincingly and he had no shame whatsoever. And I thought, that’s it, that’s the guy.”
This brief interview tells me a lot about Six as a person and a director. Most of all it has made me respect him more as a person and a director. You can read the entire interview by clicking below. What do you think of Mr. Six after reading?
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
You must be logged in to post a comment.