Movies
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (V)
“The film is a strange beast (literally), despite the concept’s gross out potential, director Tom Six plays the film more for sadistic laughs than vomit-inducing gore and what could have been a truly stomach churning experience seems somewhat underwhelming when all’s said and done.”
American tourists Lindsey (Ashley Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie), find themselves stranded in a remote part of Germany after getting a flat tyre on the way to a party. Heading off into the woods they come across the luxury home-cum-hospital of Dr Heiter (Dieter Laser). An internationally respected leader in the field of siamese/conjoined twin surgery, Dr Heiter’s vision is to reverse the process, creating the world’s first human centipede. Realising fate has handed him his latest ‘segments,’ Heiter drugs the girls and keeps them prisoner in his basement hospital. Finding and kidnapping a Japanese male tourist, Dr Heiter completes his trifecta of terror and begins work on his human centipede. Heiter’s plan is simple (!) – a tissue match, followed by the severing of the tendons in the kneecap forcing his victims to exist on all fours, then surgically attach them mouth to anus via the removal of teeth and the addition of buttock to face skin grafts, finally forming his human centipede chain.
The Human Centipede is a film whose title conjures up all kinds of imagery – mostly of the weird and disgusting variety – and unlike many OTT-monikered films, it’s a sick and twisted, yet compellingly original, idea that tries hard to deliver on it’s promise. The film is a strange beast (literally), despite the concept’s gross out potential, director Tom Six plays the film more for sadistic laughs than vomit-inducing gore and what could have been a truly stomach churning experience seems somewhat underwhelming when all’s said and done. That’s not to say the film doesn’t push the envelope, director Tom Six delights in dwelling on the degradation and humiliation of Dr Dieter’s victims and the consequences of sewing people mouth-to-anus is disgustingly realised in one particular scene.
Director Tom Six has brought together an international cast for The Human Centipede and it’s the acting rather than the concept which held my attention. Akihiro Kitamura, as Dr Heiter’s third victim and the ëhead’ of the centipede is a true highlight of the film and his performance is a delight to watch, his interaction with Dieter Laser is compelling and his performance runs the full gamut – from anger to hatred to determination, and the scene where Kitamura finally realises the situation is futile really tugs at the heart strings. Here’s hoping he’s able to bring the same range to Heroes when he appears in that series’ fourth season.
Takashi Miike and David Cronenberg are said to be two of the pioneers of body-horror, and after watching The Human Centipede [First Sequence] you can now add Dutch avant-garde artist Tom Six to that list. Here’s looking forward to his proposed 12-person sequel, The Human Centipede [Full Sequence].
Check out Blogomatic3000.com and Screenjabber.com for full coverage of FrightFest 2009.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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