Who's In It: Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura
The Basics: A surgeon revered for his ability to separate Siamese twins has lost his mind and begins a new hobby in which he sews creatures back together instead. At first it's his three pet canines ("My sweet little three-dog," he coos as he caresses a picture of the failed, deceased experiment) and then it's two American party girl tourists and a Japanese man. How to describe this without making you stop reading or running off to go barf? Okay here goes... he surgeries them all together, removing teeth and kneecaps and... then he makes one long digestive tract. Sorry. That's what happens. In the first 30 minutes. After that it gets even nastier.
What's The Deal: If you think you don't want to go see this movie then you shouldn't. You can trust your instincts. But if you're the kind of horror fan who likes it when boundaries are crossed and a film leaves you puzzled as to whether you're supposed to laugh or feel sick inside or both, then get yourself to whatever weirdo theater you can find that's showing it. Filmmaker Tom Six takes the old-school David Cronenbergian idea of the body as a horror all its own and pumps it full of depraved new life. It's as if every moment of screen time he asked, "What's the worst possible thing that could happen to these people right now?" And then he did it to them. It'll take the "Hell yeah!" you shouted when you read my little synopsis just now and hand you back a cold, bleak plate of hopelessness and punishment. It's at times heart-racingly tense, less gory than you'd expect, hilarious, horrible, and not like anything else you've ever seen.
Why I Just Used The Word "Hilarious" To Describe What Is Possibly the Grossest Movie You'll Ever See: Because I've already witnessed the part where the bad doctor tries to teach his inhuman creation to fetch the newspaper. You'll laugh in spite of yourself. And you're meant to.
Biggest Shock: Good acting all around. That's weird when you stop to consider that the two women in the film communicate for the last 2/3 of the film via shrieks, hysterical sobbing muffled by butt cheeks and whatever emotion they can register with their eyes. Meanwhile, whatever ideas about Mad Scientists you had in your head will be smashed to pieces by Dieter Laser's go-for-broke-and-then-straight-to-Hell performance.
And Here Comes The Sequel: Six, according to his director's commentary in the press notes says, "I am now writing the sequel The Human Centipede (Full Sequence) with a 12-person human centipede and that movie will go full force in graphic details, making part 1 look like My Little Pony." So... um... hell yeah?