THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) Post Release - Page 3

Finally caught this this past weekend. What a fucking flaming piece of dogshit.

I'm no prude, but this was just crass and juvenile gross-out horror for it's own sake. And what's worse, a truly fucking stupid "deep" message attempted to be shoehorned in about God.

I'll give it points for heaps of unintentional hilarity though.

Ugh. Fucking awful.

I don't think the humor is all that unintentional. And the "message about God" is pretty skin deep and is the same as any Frankenstein story. I don't think it takes itself too seriously, is what I'm saying.

I actually thought it was far less horrific then people seem to find it. I didn't think it was "great" but the performances were perfect and the tone seemed just right. I don't want to say I "enjoyed it" but I kinda did.

This is way too well put-together and superbly acted to call this a flaming piece of dogshit. Such a visceral reaciton suggests a problem with the material rather than the finished product.

 

I thought this was astonishingly well done. Creepy, tense, and genuinely unpleasant. Laser is a revelation. I bet Cronenberg loved this.

It's the handling of the material. Someone like Cronenberg could take something like this and make something worthwhile with it.

 

This is nothing more than a geek-show. It doesn't genuinely go beyond the "huh huh huh, look, ass to mouth, huh huh huh" level. And any attempts at going further (again the embarrassingly clunky God "metaphors/allusions") are horribly mishandled.

The "God" stuff makes up about 90 second of Japanese dialogue, if that. It's one of the character's reactions to their predicament, not the thrust of the film. If anything I'd say the movie's dual goals are to a)make you feel incredibly uncomfortable, and b)put together a truly unpleasant character study of Dr. Heiter. For me, it succeeds at both. Six directs it like FUNNY GAMES, very sterile and impersonal, lots of measured camera movements and minimalist set choices. It's unnerving. And as everyone seems to agree upon, Dieter Laser knocked the Heiter roles out of the park.

 

The film is blackly comic, but I never found it puerile or lowbrow like you're claiming it to be. It's remarkably restrained given some of the bad-taste jokes the premise opens up.

I'll admit that seeing that awful and egotistical trailer for the sequel prior to seeing the original didn't do it any favors either. Although I can honestly say I'd still feel the same, perhaps just not as vehemently against the filmmaker.

Just saw it and it's one of those films I will probably never ever need to see again.   The direction, cinematography, and acting were definitely a notch above your average horror movie with the stand out being Laser's performance.    When he said "Because I hate human beings!", I was simultaneously scared and laughing my ass off.   In a weird way, it reminds me of what Johnny Depp did with the Captain Jack Sparrow character.   Stock character on the page but classic character in the performance.

 

Tarantino needs to get him and Hans Landa together for some kind of old German buddy film.   Or something....

I agree. Now that you brought it up I would have been very interested to see what Cronenberg did with that subject matter. I wasn't that grossed out or uncomfortable, I simply felt like the film was wasting my time.