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Shock flicks is a new ongoing editorial segment that exists to examine films from the horror genre, both past and present that are not aimed at pleasing a mass audience.  The films selected for this editorial will include movies that attempt to be extremely shocking to the viewer and often times creating discomfort at the highest level by including extreme violence/sex/gore and taboo subjects in order to shock the viewer for either relevant artistic purposes or on the other end of the spectrum, just for the hell of it.  For the inaugural installment of Shock Flicks, I present to you a very recent film that has been garnering a lot of press as of recent: The Human Centipede (Dir: Tom Six – 2009).

Synopsis: Two useless American tourists are lost in the back roads of Germany when their rental car gets a flat tire.  In the insuring perfectly inconveniently timed downpour they seek refuge at the home of a mad scientist who experiments with human test subjects go well beyond any kind of medical necessity and into the realm of absolute madness.

Shock Hook: The film is being marketed at “100% medically accurate” when the mad scientist creates a human centipede by taking three human beings, severing the tendons in the knee caps, removing some teeth, and connecting them via anus to mouth.  This is all seen the trailer.  

Shock Value: 9 – The shock is obvious in this case when you think of the concept of connecting three people through medical surgery via backs to fronts.  To answer your question, yes even after getting a glimpse and seeing the photos of it, it’s still shocking to see the level of depravity that this film stoops to when it comes to human degradation, but that shouldn’t be any type of negative reflection on its quality, it’s just simply shocking to watch.

Cinematic Relevance:  in the horror genre, every few years or so, there is a film that comes out that completely crosses any and all sorts of line when it comes to decency and common societal acceptance.  This is something that horror fans embrace and love, but at times can cause betrayal.  Movies are constantly marketing as “The Scariest film since…” or “leaves you terrified…” to the point where every movie released is apparently the scariest film that has ever touched celluloid.  It’s a genre that’s built on shock and awe and more often than not it doesn’t deliver.  However in this case it delivers the goods in spades, but the shock value isn’t the only thing that the film has going for it.  The Human Centipede is a very deep and philosophical film about animalistic behavior, god complexes, and the value of human life.

Overall Quality:  The main character in the film, Dr. Laser (credited as Doctor Heiter), without a doubt has many deep seeded psychological issues.  The most glaringly obvious issue is the distain that he has for the individual human being.  He sees people as essentially void of all value as individuals and strives to create something that unites people into a “whole” (albeit, very horrifyingly).  After he stitches these three young people together, he works with them to create some kind of usefulness out of them, but not without any sort of degradation to their character.  One of their first tasks is learning how to walk and move like a unit, which is handled by putting a newspaper in the mouth of the lead centipede and forcing him to lead the group across the lawn for delivery.  This would be a good time to question Dr. Laser’s intentions in this whole endeavor, but I believe this acts as more of a training method than having him actually take pleasure is seeing these people suffer.  Yes he feeds the lead centipede out of a bowl just like a dog, and locks them all in a cage at night, but it appears that these are all used as deterrents to making them work as a group. 

Setting the film in Germany, the unspoken land of extreme fetishism gives the director Tom Six an interesting back drop to these experiments.  The mad scientist, the experiment, and the German setting all act as a front to try and sway the viewer in the direction of misdirection.  Six wants you to initially look at the film and see conventions, a messed up idea, and people eating crap (literally) but if you delve deeper into the psyche of Dr. Laser and the actions which he performs and executes his plan, it becomes clear that there is a much deeper philosophical meaning to the work rather than just shocking the viewer. 

Dr. Laser believes in “the whole” by stripping away individuality and creating dependence.  The centipede doesn’t move without coordination, they don’t eat without.. ahem… “supplying” food for themselves, and they don’t succeed in their tasks until they are all on the same page.  In many ways, there is a psychological similarity to the way young men and women are trained in the military.  They receive the same haircut, the same uniform, and the same living quarters creating quality and essentially the goal of creating a unit out of individuals by stripping away individual identity.  I’m not in any way supporting the idea that being in the military is like being stitched to someone’s anus and being forced to eat their defecation, I’m just saying that the psychological aspect of establishing unity is used in a similar way.    

Staying power: As of right now, it’s hard to pin down what may extensively become a cult classic along the lines of Cannibal Holocaust or Salo but I’m very confident that this one won’t go away any time soon.  Whether it’s the film-know it-alls who want to asses a lot of inherent psychological metaphors and philosophical themes and ideas (me) or the gore hounds to relish in grossing out their friends, this one will stick around for at least the foreseeable future.

NOTE: I’m always going to be looking for new editions to this column so if you have any films that you think fit into this category along with August Underground’s Mordum, Salo, or Cannibal Holocaust then PM me or drop it in the comments!