Iwatch aghast as Martin crowbars his way through victims, keeping them in a warehouse, bound and naked. He proceeds to sever knee tendons (you see all of this), hammer out teeth (you see all of this), and staple unwilling mouths to asses (hi there) until, literally crying with joy, he has orchestrated the most depressing conga line you've ever seen in your life.
Injecting his ten victims with laxative, he watches as each of them unleashes the contents of their bowels into the mouth of the person behind, who then does the same to the person behind, etc. etc. This is the film for which the phrase ad nauseam was invented.
The first time I watched The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence was in the fateful summer of 2012. I was staying with my best friend, who was to get married that week. The pair of us had spent a while watching episodes of An Idiot Abroad but, as everyone is always saying, what you really want to experience in the days before your wedding is a film about stapling lips to bums. Something old, something new, something borrowed, The Human Centipede 2.
Watching the film came about as a kind of dare. Initially it's just a laugh, talking about movies that are infamously disgusting or frightening; you hear them described and their horrors live in the abstract, not vivid enough to leave an imprint. My best friend and I had no real idea how nauseating the film would be; we were young and, hey, bloody heck, we were foolish. If we could have seen into the future, we would not have wanted to grimace and gurn our way through the poo-stained gore-fest. But grimace and gurn we did.
It is not a good film. It is a woeful film. It is 86 minutes of shit, screams, and blood. But The Human Centipede 2 made me glad to be alive. Before I had seen it my world was carefree and virgin-white by comparison. You know the expression "You don't know what you've got till it's gone?" Well, I can tell you, you don't know what you've got till you've seen a bald man rip his stapled, excrement-stained face from the anus of an incontinent stranger.
TOM: You know, this one's actually about an obese, bulbous-eyed reject who attaches ten people together by stapling them face to ass. Then he injects them with laxatives and watches as they're forced to eat the explosive shit of the person in front. One of them shoves a live centipede up the man's rectum.
A word so often associated with film is escapism: We go to the cinema to forget ourselves. In Brad Pitt we see the man we wish we were; we imagine in startling detail Scarlett Johansson giving us a sponge bath. A trip to the pictures is an evening lived vicariously: We wish we could rob banks, we wish we could deck enemies with one punch, we wish we could stroll into a bar and say, "Hey Jack, just my usual." Horror films are a sick visitor in this fantasy; why do we wish to force such distress upon ourselves?
The Human Centipede 2 is escapism of a different kind. What its grim, almost unbearable torture does is enable you to actually appreciate everything in your gorgeous life: colors are brighter; your other half is more angelic; the fact that you're not having your tongue ripped out with pliers is cause for celebration. Whereas George Clooney's latest film leaves you blinking into the real world feeling angry that you're not George Clooney, The Human Centipede 2 leaves you ecstatic that you have all your limbs and aren't being fucked by a man who looks like Gollum spent the last 30 years in a fudge shop.
If I am in need of cheering up, I have only to think of the film and I will get a boost from the knowledge that my life is nowhere near as shudderingly depressing. Further to this, it has the ability to empower: once you have endured The Human Centipede 2, you can face anything. I think I could become a surgeon after watching it. Bring on the gore. Bring on the bones. Nothing you can do will hurt me. I have walked into Hell and it's the color of shit.
The Human Centipede 2 is haunting; over the last two years I have found it truly difficult to shake off. This is why it is so repulsive and why having watched it is important. If a film leaves its fingerprints on your brain, it is telling you something. This may not have been its intention, but The Human Centipede 2 tells you that your life is good. Don't worry. Things are OK. They cannot possibly be as bad as they are for any of the people in the film, nor can your mind be as fucked as the one that made it.
My dd went for sleepover at 13 year olds friends house and as a film to watch was shown the human centipede. Apparently downloaded.
What would you do?
Would you let your own dd for go for sleepover at their house again?
I am very annoyed about this.
That's awful. I haven't seen the film but I have read what it's about and it's vile. Do you think the parents knew? I wouldn't want to send her again-and you are right to be annoyed-I would be fuming.
Jeez. I've never watched it but have heard accounts from others. Even some fairly hard core horror fans who said it was appalling.
I'd be majorly hacked off if my 13yo had been shown it. Did the parents know? Was it more a case of lack of supervision? I would be seriously considering whether to let DD go back there. Do you know the parents at all, could you have a word? Maybe they'd be just as horrified and feel awful about it and ensure nothing similar could happen again.
Isn't that the film which was banned until recently? If it is, the description of it in the paper made me feel physically sick.
I would be very angry. That's the kind of film I wouldn't want to watch myself, let alone my 14 yo.
Hmm. Well obviously she shouldn't watch it - there's no way I would having read a synopsis.
But it's a sleepover and these things happen - do you think the parents knew?
At 12 I was having horror movie sleepovers watching 18s, didn't do me any harm. Mind you they weren't as graphic, they were just gory/making-you-jump type films.
Oh my goodness, I would be furious!! I couldn't watch this film all the way through as I found it too disgusting and upsetting and I am 31! I wouldn't allow my dd to go again and would also be having words with the host parents.
I'd never heard of this film before reading the thread. Human Centipede- it sounds like one of those cheap shockumentaries about rare disibilities or something, low brow but not damaging... OMG looks like I was totally wrong there then.
Having said that, having had some thoughts recently about the way my parents brought me up - not really ever treating me as a child - I shouldn't have been allowed to watch all that.
My viewing was never censored as a child - even in primary school I had no bedtime and was just sat in front of anything they were watching... I don't think it did me any major harm, but... it shouldn't have been like that.
Soooo YANBU to be fuming
YANBU! I'd be horrified!
If it makes you feel any better the film is meant to be laughably poor despite the horrible subject matter. Also when I was around that age or possibly younger we surreptitiously watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre at my friends house on her mum's betamax - OK not the same level of ick but we were all in it together although I was at the time it didn't leave any lasting scars, if anything made me speak up and say "no way I don't want to see that" when similar high jinks were proposed in my teenage years.
Did the parents know? If so - I'd tear them a new one. If not - I'd raise, with icy condescension, the lack of supervision over internet use that has allowed a 14 year old to download a graphic and perverted 18 film, and how the children were able to watch it without a parent being aware.
good god! seriously? YANBU at all.
I would be livid, I have been studiously avoiding that movie and it's sequel (who makes two? and why? but I digress...) having spoken to people about its content. It sounds truly and unnecessarily foul and I'm certainly no prude. I would be incandescent.
Where were the parents in all of this?
I wouldn't want my DD back round there again in a hurry and it might precipitate a conversation along the lines of 'whenever and wherever you are, if something is going on that makes you uncomfortable, regardless of how others may feel about it, there is no shame in walking away-trust your instincts'. I was once given that advice and think it kept me safe(r) during my misspent youth than I otherwise might've been, never too young for good advice.
Even as a thirteen year old I would have refused to have watched it. I have never liked horror films. If she didn't know what the film was before hand then that's one thing but I don't imagine it would take long to work it out, otherwise she did know what it was and went along with it. Is she upset by it?
TBH and i will probably be flamed here but can you all honestly say that when your dd's have sleepovers that you know what they are watching? all it takes is one of the girls to smuggle in a dvd and put it on when they are meant to be sleeping,i really cant see any parent letting them watch that or being aware that they had watched it.
YANBU.
When I was that age we watched films that scared the crap out of us like Scream, etc ..... we loved them and in all honesty weren't emotionally scarred.
However there's just something so...foul.. and unnecessarily sick about The Human Centipede that I don't blame you for watching it. I have seen a couple of films that I REALLY wish I hadn't - and you can never "un-see" something can you?
DS is now in his 20s but when he was about 11 and still at junior school he went to a sleepover. The boy's mother took them to the video store and was about to get The Exorcist for them, DS told her he would have to go home as he knew I would not like him to see that so she got one of the Halloween horror films instead!
DS was quite bothered by it at the time so I just spoke quietly to the other mum and told her I did not like him to watch those films and would gladly pick him up if he rang me before the movie started next time. It gave him the "let out" if he felt he wanted one in the future
I would certainly have a word with the other mother
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