The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2011)

**This review contains spoilers**

After developing an obsession for Tom Six’s The Human Centipede (First Sequence), Martin Lomax (Laurence R. Harvey) decides to build his own human centipede. Still living at home with his mother in London, overweight, suffering from asthma, and working as a security guard in a parking garage, Martin is a disturbed man, who suppresses a past of sexual abuse by his jailed father.

With a centipede as his pet, Martin decides to make his dream a reality by acquiring a warehouse (after he kills the seller), and kidnapping victims in the parking garage and his apartment complex to construct his own human centipede with twelve people. Martin shows no mercy, as he kidnaps a pregnant woman, a couple with a baby, and a rowdy neighbor. Feeding his never ending obsession for the First Sequence, Martin plots to kidnap Ashlynn Yennie, and use her as the lead piece for his centipede. Through careful planning and timing, Martin convinces Yennie’s talent agency to lure her into his clutches with the promise of an audition for a Quentin Tarantino movie.

With no medical training, Martin pieces together his crude twelve person human centipede, but Martin runs into unexpected problems after he puts the finishing touches on his gruesome final product……

You’ll probably hate or love The Human Centipede 2, but one thing’s for sure, you won’t forget Martin. Harvey’s physical appearance is enough to make your skin crawl, and the character is one sick freak. He lives alone with a mother, who hates him, and she blames her husband’s imprisonment on him. Martin literally defecates in his own bed, he never speaks one word throughout the movie (just a lot of squealing, grunting, and yelling). Well, he sort of speaks, when he whispers something into someone else’s ear, but you don’t actually hear the dialogue. Martin abuses his genitals with random objects (using sandpaper, barbed wire, etc.), and he constantly tortures the victims in his centipede. Just to give you an example of how bad it is, Martin actually injects each victim in his centipede with a laxative, so he can watch them……well you know what happens next.

I mean, you would think Martin is someone you can feel sympathy for, because of his past, the verbal abuse from his mother, and his psychiatrist, Dr. Sebring (Bill Hutchens) constantly touches him inappropriately to try and lure Martin into a sexual relationship. But Martin is a cold-blooded murder, and he enjoys torturing the victims in his centipede, so any feelings of sympathy fly out of the window pretty quickly.

The rest of the cast is decent enough, but Six puts a lot of focus on Martin, and everyone around Martin is either killed off, put into the centipede, or they don’t receive a significant amount of dialogue.

The Human Centipede 2 is in all black and white 100% of the time, and Tom Six takes a darker approach to the sequel. Dr. Heiter was an evil mad doctor, but Martin is a sick and perverted freak, who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal, while following in the footsteps of his idol (Dr. Heiter the character). Martin is more disgusting, and he acts like a playful child, who walked into a toy store with a ticket for a shopping spree. The gore is more graphic, repulsive, and really, REALLY gruesome. You’ll see a lot of blood, and plenty of gross-out moments in Part 2, so if you have plans to watch this, don’t eat anything during the movie. Yeah, it’s that bad.

Tom Six goes out of his way to be more graphic and vulgar the second time around. The violence, the centipede, the dialogue, and the story. Everything is cranked up to maximum levels here. Six also “breaks the fourth wall” so to speak. Martin is inspired by The Human Centipede (First Sequence), and Ashlynn Yennie isn’t Jenny in the Full Sequence, she’s portrays herself, Ashlynn Yennie the actress. Tom Six’s wink to the fans of the first film provide some good “I remember that” moments, and Ashlynn recalling her experiences on the set of The Human Centipede to Martin during the drive to the “studio” was a cool behind the scenes moment. All in all, it’s a big contrast with The Human Centipede (First Sequence) using the tagline “100% medically accurate,” while the Full Sequence uses “100% medically inaccurate” as its tagline.

But you know what, the nasty and revolting gore overshadows and overwhelms everything in this film. The attempted social commentary, Martin’s backstory, character development, EVERYTHING. Yeah, I understand, Tom Six wanted to go out of his way to be more disgusting, and try his hardest to actually make you puke, but he sacrifices storytelling and a coherent sense of direction for the chances of you possibly picking up a barf bag, or running to the toilet.

The First Sequence had a suspenseful finale, but I can’t say the same thing about the Full Sequence. Towards the end, the victims find a way to tear themselves off of each other, because Martin actually uses duct tape, and regular staples to complete the mouth to anus attachments. Anyway, Martin flips out and starts shooting the victims, killing them. And when he runs out of bullets, he uses a knife to slit the remaining survivor’s throats. The pregnant woman is going into labor, as she runs away, and she actually gives birth while trying to drive a car. And on top of all that, Ashlynn uses a funnel to guide Martin’s pet centipede into his rectum.

Eh, okay. That’s all very gross, but it’s not suspenseful, or interesting to look at it. Problem is, Tom Six tries too hard to gross-out the audience throughout the movie, so by the time you reach the end, everything just feels kind of “meh.” A bad case of overkill, and the sloppy finale was a chore to sit through.  

I usually toss out this warning every now and then, but it holds more weight for the Full Sequence. If you’re the squeamish type, do not, I repeat DO NOT watch this movie. The Full Sequence is loaded with bloody and graphic gore, sickening torture, and a violent rape scene at the end. Need a visual for how bad everything is? Take a good look at the movie poster above. Now magnify the pic of The Human Centipede times ten. Then, imagine twelve fully nude human beings duct taped and stapled to each other mouth to anus, bleeding, sweating, and defecating at the same the time (the repugnant laxative scene).

As far as the rating goes, it’s kind of tricky for me. I’ve seen a lot of nasty stuff, but The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) is probably the most disgusting, disturbing, obscene, nasty, and depraved horror film I’ve ever seen. It’s funny, because Tom Six is already bragging about going to the next level with the gross stuff for The Human Centipede Part 3. I guess that’s my big problem with Full Sequence. Six sacrificed sensible direction and competent storytelling for the sake of topping all the weird and disgusting stuff in the first film, with the hopes of SHOCKING the audience, and grossing everybody out as much as possible. I can’t count the number of times I said “no, he‘s not going to….oh you gotta be kidding me, he actually did” out loud during the movie.

So yeah, in the end, the Full Sequence is torture porn personified. If you wants lots of blood, violent deaths, and nasty gore, the Full Sequence won’t disappoint you at all. But you’ll have a lot of trouble finding the plot, or a meaning behind the film after you dig through the chunks of flesh, splatters of blood, and dismembered carcasses. I’m sure I’ll never forget The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) for as long as I live, but for me, that‘s not enough to give Tom Six the proverbial pat on the back or thumbs up.

Rating: 1/10

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2010)

**This review contains spoilers**

In Germany, the sadistic and obsessive Dr. Josef Heiter (Dieter Laser) plans to make a human centipede using three kidnapped victims. Dr. Heiter is a retired and famous surgeon known for specializing in the separation of Siamese twins, but Dr. Heiter wants to take another shot at putting a centipede together.

After a failed experiment using three dogs, Dr. Heiter turns to humans. Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) are two American tourists, looking for a nightclub named Bunker, but a flat tire strands them in a desolate forest near Dr. Heiter’s secluded house. Noticing the lights in Dr. Heiter’s house, Lindsay and Jenny decide to come in with hopes of making a phone call. But Dr. Heiter poisons their water, and in a matter of moments, Jenny is out cold, and Dr. Heiter uses more sedatives in a syringe to knock out Lindsay, who refused to drink all of her water.

Dr. Heiter murders a kidnapped truck driver the next morning, because he wasn’t a good match for the centipede. Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), a Japanese tourist, is the truck driver’s replacement. After a gruesome surgery, Dr. Heiter completes his centipede with Jenny’s mouth sewed into Lindsay’s anus, and Katsuro in the lead position, with Lindsay‘s mouth sewed into his anus. Dr. Heiter basks in the glory of fulfilling his dream, but a  surprise visit from Detective Kranz (Andreas Leupold) and Detective Voller (Peter Blankenstein) will force the doctor to change his upcoming plans for replacing a sick Jenny.

Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie are believable as the airheaded American tourists, who are looking for a wild party. Well, character wise, Lindsay is a little bit smarter than Jenny, because Lindsay was smart enough to not drink the full glass of water from the creepy recluse in the woods. Anyway, once they’re sewn together, Williams and Yennie’s performances are limited to muffled screams and crying. Kitamura is the angry and vocal mouthpiece in the centipede, because…..well he’s the only one, who can actually speak. Kitamura hurls insults, and he bites Dr. Heiter in defiance, but Katsuro has a moment of clarity (more on that later) at the end.

But Dieter Laser easily delivers the best performance here. Laser is genuinely evil with a cold and vicious demeanor. He plays the mad doctor role to perfection, and he really nailed the “hateful recluse with a disdain for mankind” side of Dr. Heiter’s personality. During the beginning, Dr. Heiter is asked why he lives alone, and isn’t married. His response? “I hate human beings.” Laser was so serious, and the emotionless look on his face was spot on. That’s a convincing performance, because  I SERIOUSLY believed him, when he said this.

Tom Six (the writer and director for this film) spares no expense for disgusting gore and bloody violence. The surgery for the centipede is graphic, bloody, and the aftermath for the fully functioning centipede is more repulsive and disgusting. I say this a lot, but if you’re not into nasty horror, you should stay away from this film.

But with all his nastiness and vile attempts to make you puke, Tom Six delivers a surprisingly suspenseful finale. Once the detectives come into the picture at the end, and threaten to return with a search warrant, The Human Centipede kicks into high gear. Everything comes at you so fast. Katsuro grabbing the surgical knife to use as a weapon against Dr. Heiter, Katsuro pushing Jenny and Lindsay to crawl to an escape, and the bloody shootout between Dr. Heiter and the detectives. And out of nowhere, Katsuro has this revelation about his current predicament. Katsuro remembers how poorly he treated his mother and father, and he abandoned his only child. After his recollection, and truly believing he deserves his punishment, Katsuro uses a piece of glass to slit his own throat.

Six throws so many surprises at you towards the end, and I was on the edge of my seat, because I had no idea who would die and who would survive. Well, I guess Jenny is an exception for surprises, because after the infection, she was the first and only obvious choice for a countdown to death.      

The Human Centipede is a gruesome and grotesque surgical horror film with plenty of gross-out and hard-to-watch moments, and a suspenseful third act. But yeah, if you’re not into gross horror flicks, don’t waste your time with this one, because chances are you’ll hate The Human Centipede (First Sequence).

Rating: 8/10