With The Human Centipede (First Sequence), writer-director Tom Six has proven himself to be less of a filmmaker and more of a carnival barker yelling out to the audience to come check out his freak show. It's like he just sat down and tried to think of the most depraved thing he could, that would offend a majority of regular folk, and ran with it. And it worked since the result garnered way more attention than it's worth. To call this the kind of flick you have to see once to sate your curiosity would be an accurate description - but to also call it a fairly sloppy effort with a lot more unintentional laughs than expected would also be correct.

Six couldn't have started things off on a more bizarre bent, either. Our opening scene has Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) sitting in a car looking at pictures of common canines connected together before he proceeds to shoot a trucker defecating at the side of the road with a rifle. It really doesn't have much more to do with the movie, but it is a silly attempt to get your attention right away.

It settles down into a standard, somewhat plodding, script involving two American girls (Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie) who are vacationing in Germany heading to a distant night club for a night of partying. Seeing as this is a horror movie, they soon fall victim to a flat tire and end up at the remote dwelling of our good doctor. Not only are the girls super annoying, Six's story really doesn't go anywhere for a while as the girls bicker, the doctor acts nutty (and they don't seem to care), and we feel like yawning.

Then the things we came here to see start happening. Looks like the doc has plans to connect three people together ass-to-mouth in order to create a perverted sort of "human centipede" and he explains this to the girls using dumb medical terminology and some hilariously childish drawings. This traps our girls in his house and before an insanely amusing first reveal of his creation we're treated to various scenes of the girls trying to get away while Laser takes his character into such over-the-top territory any attempts at disturbing us become almost comedic. In fact, Six's flick just has a vibe of crudity running throughout it in production value, story, and everything else. I can't say I've ever seen anything like this, but I also can't say I really wanted to.

Being a seasoned horror fan, I didn't find The Human Centipede to be at all stomach turning. I mostly just found it incredibly stupid. If I want to be put on edge I'll gladly watch such fare as Wolf Creek, The Descent, or the much more unnerving French effort Inside than this. If it wasn't for the anticipation of seeing what moronic path Six would steer this, I'd of given up on it early on. However, I suppose I can thank it for creating a new catch phrase where you can randomly yell at fellow genre fans, "Feeeeedddd herrrr!!"

There's no denying the potential for this to become a cult film. In fact, it's already well on its way to that status. I just think that Six didn't deserve so much attention for such a mediocre film. His promises to take things in an even more extreme direction have seemingly been accomplished with the Blair Witch 2 cribbing sequel - and that's without even considering where he'll take the planned third entry - or "The Final Sequence" as it's dubbed.

Without the manic, bravura performance of Laser in the lead, there'd be nothing much more to mention on the acting front. The girls, and their Asian co-centipede (Akihiro Kitamura), are standard victims and quite grating at times, but its Laser's constant eye-bulging, yelling, and general "F*ck it, I'm just going for it!" attitude that makes a lot of this worth watching.

Suffice it to say, The Human Centipede isn't for all - or most. It's not in any way a good movie and Six's agenda is obvious (and mostly juvenile) but it still makes for a curiosity. Just tread carefully and know what you're getting into beforehand. (Chris Hartley, 9/17/12)

Directed By: Tom Six.
Written By: Tom Six.

Starring: Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura.