It’s back! Alright, maybe 99.99% of you had no idea this column ever existed once before, so if that includes you: welcome! Back in and around 2005 I briefly ran a handful of posts under the column title “Killer Blog From Cyberspace” at Cinematical (now Moviefone), attempting to cleverly play off such cheesy horror titles like Killer Klowns From Outer Space and the like. Hey, at least I thought it was clever. And, what the heck, I like it! They weren’t works of masterful writing, but it was fun watching what I wrote about.
In this column — which may or may not become a regular thing — I’ll briefly review horror movies that are more along the lines of gory, cheesy or downright disturbing as hell. Some of them might surprised you, some of them may be completely obvious, and some of them may seem like they don’t belong at all. So, let’s start with an obvious choice that clearly belongs here: The Human Centipede.
I first heard about this movie from my brother-in-law (Deb’s brother) at a family gathering.
“Have you heard of this movie called Human Centipede?”
“The Human what?! No!”
“It sounds COMPLETELY fucked up. I guess it’s about some guy who decides to kidnap three people and stitch their assholes and mouths together.”
“Fuck you NO!”
“No, I’m serious. Go look it up.”
“Look it up?! I’m going to find it and watch it!”
And I did. What the hell is wrong with me?
In case you’re not familiar with the movie, it’s basically just as my bro-in-law described it, though I admit — after seeing it — I wasn’t as repulsed as I thought I’d be. For some reason I had it in my head that this foreign film (it’s Dutch) was some bootleg piece of horror so vile that my only chance at finding a copy to watch would be a clandestine visit to a seedy butcher shop in East Boston fronting for a dark S&M video and prop store. I found it on Netflix, which clearly needs a section that makes me feel like I stumbled into some secret circle of video viewership; one that requires red flashing warning letters on a black background to give one that feeling that maybe this is shit you really don’t want to be watching at 1 AM, alone on a cold, autumn night. At least to, y’know, make you feel like you tried to be adventurous about it.
While the premise of the movie is no doubt disturbing as fuck, what you actually see is what I’d say is garden variety cuts and gashes violence. One thing I remember thinking when I first heard of this movie was: what the hell happens when someone has to take a shit? As you can see from the screengrab above, that does in fact come up, but it leaves everything to your imagination, I guess you could say. I mean, just go ahead and think of someone with their mouth sewed to someone’s ass, and they take a dump … there, that’s how revolting the scene was in the movie. Nothing to see here.
I wound up rating this movie two stars out of five on Netflix, which is all it deserves, if that many. It certainly has a unique way of torturing these three people, but the idea of putting three strangers together to basically band together (no pun intended) to find a way out of their horrific predicament is nothing new. Then there’s the matter of it not entirely delivering on the shock horror that the initial premise promised. It also ended on an odd note, which I guess now makes a little more sense, depending on how its sequel goes. Yes — this movie with a horrendously disgusting premise has a sequel! Opening today! In theaters! Check out the poster — I doubt you’ll see that stubbly thing on your theater’s wall.
If you’re the curious type who’s looking to see something to shock you into losing all hope for decency in humanity, this probably doesn’t quite cut the mustard. let’s just say there’s worse out there, believe it or not, and it doesn’t involve the ingestion of fecal matter. Thank God.
Clacked by Keith McDuffee 
on Oct 07, 2011 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
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