Editorials
The Skin-Crawling Madness of ‘Centipede Horror’ Must Be Experienced [VOD Pick]
The American Genre Film Archive, or AGFA, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of genre films and their legacy. Essentially, they collect and distribute films that might’ve otherwise disappeared forever. Centipede Horror, for example, never received a home release in the U.S. and could only be found through rare bootlegs. AGFA found the only 35mm print in existence and restored it, now available to rent on VOD. This 1982 Hong Kong horror film is the precise type of gruesome, skin-crawling insanity worth watching right about now.
Centipede Horror follows Wai Lun, a man that allows his sister to travel to Southeast Asia for a trip despite strict orders from their mother and grandfather that the siblings never, ever, visit the area. When Wai Lun’s sister mysteriously dies from an affliction that stumps all medical professionals, he’s determined to get answers. It leads him on a horrific path that includes sorcerers, a family curse, and, I can’t overstate this, an endless number of centipedes.
This nasty little horror movie earned a certificate from the Hong Kong censors office as a Category III film, a distinction given to films that contained extreme graphic violence, gore, and explicit sexual content. The strictly enforced category ensured no one under the age of 18 could rent, buy, or watch Category III films, which also includes titles like The Seventh Curse and Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. Of note, Centipede Horror is the only Category III film penned by a woman: writer and actress, Suet Ming Chan.
Similar to films like The Seventh Curse, the further into the plot Centipede Horror ventures, the crazier it gets. There’s nudity, bizarre sorcerer rituals, death, and a surprising amount of characters vomiting up creepy-crawly things. One victim winds up vomiting blood and scorpions, but the central evil sorcerer prefers to inflict centipede curses upon people. Sometimes that means they’re just stung to death by a horde of them, and other times it means getting a stomach full of them to give the sorcerer puppeteer-like control.
The pinnacle, gross-out moment of the film sees actress Tien-Lang Li barf up centipedes. It’s a moment best served to go in on an empty stomach, but it’s made all the more impressive in that Tien-Lang Li stuffed live centipedes in her mouth for this scene. That’s either an unyielding commitment to the craft or a level of fearlessness most will never achieve. Or both.
If there’s a downside to this pick, it’s that the faded age of the film doesn’t mesh well with the white subtitles, especially in the early parts of the film, where things are still bright and cheerful. It’s a small nitpick that will likely bug some. Still, the reality is that this movie is too bonkers for that to be a major sticking point- the plot quickly becomes too convoluted and nonsensical for any subtitles to make sense of things anyway. That’s part of the charm.
We’re talking dancing chicken skeletons, uncomfortable rituals, gore aplenty, sorcerers battling it out to the finish, over the top deaths, laugh-out-loud moments, and so many freaking centipedes that you can’t help but wonder how many escaped the bug wrangler’s grasp to skitter off into the night. There’s something extremely unnerving about a centipede, and this movie showcases them to an uncomfortable degree. Director Keith Li’s horror movie is as over the top as it is gnarly, making it easy to see why the film earned its Cat III status.
Aside from the rarity of this title making it a worthy VOD pick, it also offers up a virtual Alamo Drafthouse experience. The rental page comes with two free videos- a preshow complete with previews and an intro by AGFA’s Joe Ziemba that gives more insight to the film. It’s a rare VOD title that gives you a little more bang for your buck. Though, the skin-crawling madness of Centipede Horror is more than enough to warrant a rental from the adventurous horror fan.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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