The Human Centipede

A modern version of the Frankenstein story that's more repulsive than frightening, the sole saving grace of filmmaker Tom Six's The Human Centipede is an amusingly over-the-top performance by Dieter Laser as the wacko Dr. Heiter, who lives in an isolated modernist house—equipped, of course, with a full-service laboratory—in the German countryside. Once renowned as the world's master in the surgical separation of Siamese twins, the retired Heiter has quite a different project now—stitching together first animals and then humans, rear to face, into something resembling a centipede. To that end, Heiter abducts strangers passing through to serve as his guinea pigs—a truck driver (Rene de Wit), two airhead American tourists (Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie), and finally a foul-mouthed Japanese man (Akihiro Kitamura). Fully half of the film is devoted to the set-up, but once the experiment is completed, the remaining 45 minutes simply follow Heiter's ghastly creation as the tethered victims squirm and scuttle about under his training—bug-eyed and moaning, with each person's lips glued to the diaper in front of them—leading to a gory finale involving a suspicious cop investigating the rash of disappearances. The Human Centipede is certainly disgusting, but neither horrifying nor funny. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)