Plot: Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) are best friends from America on a road trip across Europe. En route to a party, they wind up lost in a wooded area and suffer a flat tire. Unable to communicate their situation to locals and with no other options, the two girls walk to find help. They happen upon a villa that seems nice and are greeted by the owner, Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser). The girls assume their troubles are over, but Heiter drugs them and when they wake up, the girls discover they’ve been shackled to medical beds. Soon Heiter brings in a third person, a Japanese man, and reveals the trio of tourists are part of his latest medical experiment. He plans to sew the three people together, mouth to anus, so that he can be the first to connect human beings via their digestive systems. This means some painful and unpleasant things for the victims, but they’re unable to fight off their captor. Will Heiter succeed in his hellish experiment and what will become of those within the human centipede?

Entertainment Value: A part of the torture porn boom of in the mid to late 2000s, The Human Centipede earned itself quite the reputation. The concept is wild, connecting three people to form one twisted creation, but the movie overall isn’t as repulsive or graphic as you might think. The picture has a slick, polished presence that somewhat undermines the effects and makes the entire experience a little too glamorous. If this had been made with grit and grime, it could have been more impactful, I think. The clean, surgical feel is intentional of course and makes perfect sense with the film focusing on the precise whims of Dr. Heiter, but it does dampen the impact. Dieter Laser plays the fair doctor and is quite good, with a cold, but driven performance. He anchors the film with his barely contained madness and is the highlight of The Human Centipede. The actual centipede victims are good as well, but Laser is the real star here.

Two of the centipede victims are shown topless, but that’s the extent of the nudity in this one. But if you’re here for the gore, The Human Centipede doesn’t disappoint. There is fun surgical butt abuse, shootings, stabbings, and you know, the whole mouth to butthole stuff that the film’s based on. Despite the film’s reputation, there seems to be a lot of restraint here and not as much graphic gore as you’d think. The film seems well funded and produced, so I’m not sure why some punches were pulled with the violence. That criticism was common and addressed in the first sequel, but we will cover that base when we get there. There’s a lot of blood and some cool effects work, so for the gore hounds, there’s a lot to soak in. Heiter has some humorous lines but there’s really not much dialogue of any kind. The concept is totally insane, but I have to knock a few ranks off for not going full boar with the madness. Even so, The Human Centipede is a fun medical horror watch and one of torture porn’s favorite sons.

Nudity: 1/10

Blood: 6/10

Dialogue: 1/10

Overall Insanity: 7/10

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