The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

Netherlands/UK/USA, NR, 88 m, 2011
Directed by Tom Six. Stars Laurence R. Harvey, Ashlynn Yennie, Maddi Black, et al.

The main idea behind The Human Centipede (First Sequence)—having one’s kisser sewn to the chocolate starfish of another—was disgusting enough to make even the most voracious gorehound blow chunks, but writer/director Tom Six presented it with an almost laudable amount of restraint. (Of course, “restraint” is a relative word in this genre, especially when you have to take into account the socially heedless torture porn of Eli Roth and Rob Zombie.) Though he never came even close to tapping into our deepest fears (sexual or otherwise), Six had a ball playing around with horror film conventions—not exactly upending them, but using them to lower our expectations so we’d be unprepared for the bad guy’s mind-bogglingly sick treatment of his victims. Unfortunately, The Human Centipede was a one-gag affair; Six couldn’t figure out what to do with the titular thingy after he unleashed it. The point of impact came several reels too early, leaving the ensuing action to flounder. Worse, the defeatist ending (which, regrettably, has become a standard in contemporary scream fests) destroyed all for which our protagonists fought and suffered. And yet Six demonstrated so much visual flair that I found myself looking forward to his next project. Of course, that was with the assumption that he would take on something worthy of his talent. I don’t think The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is that something, but it’s pretty audacious as far as sequels go. 

During one press junket or another for The Human Centipede, Six confirmed that he was already at work on a follow-up that would be so vile and offensive that it would make the original look like “My Little Pony.” While such an ambition may cause us to question his seriousness (or maturity) as an artist, we can at least credit Six for not hyperbolizing: The Human Centipede II raises the gross quotient to the nth degree. The violence is frank, tasteless, and unremitting, but it’s also at times riotously over-the-top, like when the camera’s lens gets spattered with soupy human waste. What’s most deserving of discussion, though, is how Six has gone out of his way to make this chapter as stylistically dissimilar from the preceding one as possible. He’s moved from a subdued, Michael Mann-ish color palette to a brutal black and white. (The decision to go with the latter may have been made in post-production.) And whereas the first picture was seen more or less from the perspective of the victims, this one is seen through the eyes of the victimizer, Martin (Laurence R. Harvey), a porky, asthmatic, mentally-challenged midget. Martin (who put me in the mind of a Weeble with feet) couldn’t be more unlike his fictional hero: Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser, the reanimated corpse of a long-dead Christopher Walken look-alike) was a cool, fastidious egghead; Martin is a sweaty, bungling halfwit—an almost criminal waste of flesh. (Like an infant, he suckles on his chubby digits and makes poopy in his britches.) The only thing these fellows have in common is that they’re both crackers as all get-out. 

The look and feel of The Human Centipede owed a lot to David Cronenberg, but The Human Centipede II draws its inspiration from the early films of David Lynch, especially Eraserhead. The deceptively serene country setting of part one has been abandoned for a reeking urban cesspit where it’s always storming (à la Se7en) and the lights inside the dank, ugly buildings are always flickering. Martin works as a security guard in a parking garage, though he spends most of his time on the clock watching a DVD of The Human Centipede over and over again. (The scenes depicting female degradation often inspire him to twist one off—with, I shit you not, sandpaper!) He’s takes a particular shine to actress Ashlynn Yennie (who had the enviable task of performing with her face stuck in Ashley C. Williams’ rear), and she’s featured prominently in a scrapbook that he’s been compiling about the flick. The scrapbook also contains Martin’s blueprint for the ultimate human centipede, the proposed length of which will dwarf Heiter’s. Oh, yes, creeps, instead of just three bodies, our protagonist wants to connect twelve. (I must say, this series is becoming a bit too reminiscent of those all-girl porno films that keep trying to outdo each other with the number of participants in their “daisy chains.”) 

Martin lives in a small apartment with his mum, Misses Lomax (Vivien Bridson), and pet centipede, Crazy Legs. (Hey, just ‘cause Six couldn’t come up with a name for the blasted creature doesn’t mean that I can’t.) From time to time, ol’ Doc Sebring (Bill Hutchens) will drop by to replenish Martin’s supply of inhalers and check on his mental state. (He throws around a lot of Freudian twaddle that both impresses and befuddles the apparently uneducated Misses Lomax.) But it’s all just an excuse for Sebring (who sports a beard so big and bushy that he makes Mr. Natural look clean-cut by comparison) to ogle Martin’s dumpy derriere and rub on his outsized thighs. This would be enough to make anybody’s skin crawl, but it’s particularly distressing to Martin because his childhood memories consist of little more than his daddy taking liberties with him. And not only did his sorry excuse for a mother fail to ever come to his defense, she faults him to this day for ratting out her husband to the authorities. When the old bag discovers Martin’s scrapbook buried beneath his mattress, she goes bonkers and rips it to pieces. Martin responds with a crowbar to her head, smashing away until there’s barely any head left. Later, when he spies Sebring getting sucked off by a whore in the backseat of a car, he withdraws his sidearm and blasts the randy quack’s junk into the middle of next week. Sometimes Martin’s chronic coughing will get the better of him during these attacks, so he has to put down his weapon for a moment or two so he can take a hit off his inhaler. (Not since General Grievous has there been a villain with such an acute airflow problem.) But those barks and puffs are the only sounds we hear from Martin; he doesn’t utter a single word throughout HC2, which is essentially a silent movie. 

Six tries to implicate us in Martin’s bloody bender by showing it from his point of view, but Martin’s peculiarities (and they are legion) make him virtually inaccessible. The Human Centipede II is alienating from the jump, and in time that alienation becomes indifference. The gore here is some of the most explicit ever filmed, but it isn’t imaginatively staged and its repetitiveness numbs you out. When Martin spots a body to his liking (any old body will do, really—even one that’s pregnant), he takes it down with his trusty crowbar and then stashes it in a grimy, leaking warehouse somewhere in the bowels of the city. (Say what you want about Heiter, at least he was humane enough to anesthetize his subjects and lodge them in a halfway sterile environment.) But Martin has somebody very special in mind for the centipede’s lead: Miss Yennie. That smacks of cloud-cuckoo-land, but, incredibly, he pulls it off. And soon Yennie, whose career has gone nowhere since she became Six’s preferred object of debasement, is right back to where she was a couple of years ago: on her knees, nekkid, and covered in melted Milk Duds. (But at least this time she doesn’t have to act with her beak stuck in another actor’s crack.) Heiter may have been crazier than a sprayed roach, but he was a first-rate, award-winning surgeon. Martin, on the other hand, doesn’t know spit about medical matters. He removes his prey’s pearlies with a hammer, attaches their mouths and anuses with a staple gun, and bandages their slapdash incisions with duct tape. The diseased maniac (he’s like a grosser version of the child killer Peter Lorre played in M) can’t wait to see them eat each other’s feces, so he injects them all with an extra-strength laxative, causing a chain reaction of exploding asses that climaxes with a geyser of diarrhea spraying the warehouse walls. Look, if you have a taste for this kind of scatological horror, bon fucking appétit. The rest of you good, God-fearing souls should take comfort in knowing that everybody who participated in making The Human Centipede II will most likely burn in Hell. 

December 15, 2011 

© Copyright 2011 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.