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Isn’t it always the way? Your car breaks down on a dark and stormy night, you and your friend find an isolated house nearby, the guy who lives there is really messed up and uses you to satisfy his debased psychosis by surgically connecting your face to your friend’s rear-end.

That’s how it goes for Lindsay and Jenny, characters from the new torture-porn film The Human Centipede (First Sequence), which is now showing in a limited number of Australian cinemas.

Torture-porn is a term coined by US film critic David Edelstein. He first used it to describe the 2005 film Hostel, a real family favourite about rich sadists who pay huge sums of money to be able to live out their torture fantasies (drilling through people’s nipples, taking a chainsaw to various limbs, everyday stuff like that) on kidnapped backpackers.

In traditional pornography, any non-sexual content is simply a means to get to the sex. The handyman knocking on the door and the horny housewife insisting that her plumbing needs a thorough inspection is really an unnecessary formality before they get to the reason you’re watching the porno, which is of course, the rooting.

The same thing goes for the torture-porn genre, which includes the Saw movie franchise. Any intro, story or acting is largely superfluous when compared to the core of the film, the gratuitous torture scenes.

Like sexually-focussed pornography, torture-porn is often judged by how creatively the filmmakers approach the subject matter. The Human Centipede (First Sequence) certainly takes a creative approach to human suffering. Whether that’s a good thing or not is a matter of opinion.

According to the publicity, the idea for a film about a diabolical surgeon who connects three people mouth-to-anus to create what he inaccurately dubs a human centipede came from an in-joke between the film’s director Tom Six (he’s Dutch) and his mates. The joke was all about punishing paedophiles by sewing their lips to the arses of fat truck drivers. No mention of what the poor truck drivers had done to deserve having a paedophile sewn to their bottom.

I have to confess that I haven’t seen the film and I don’t want to. It’s not that I’m against it, far from it. I don’t believe in most censorship and as long as there is an ‘R’ rating attached and enforced, Human Centipede (First Sequence), with all its sickening, twisted, mouth-to-anus surgical action should be available for anyone of age who wants to see it.

I just don’t see the point of me watching it. I have an extremely sensitive gag reflex. I can’t even watch Bondi Vet without being grossed out, so there is certainly no point in me watching a torture porn film. I partially watched the first Saw movie, fast-forwarding through most of it, but I got the idea.

I did watch the trailer for The Human Centipede (First Sequence) many times. I also showed it to several other people because the voyeur in me loved to watch their reaction. Amazement, disgust and confusion were the most common.

One of the world’s most famous movie critics, Roger Ebert, declined from giving the film a rating. He wrote in his review, “I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is.”

And what it is, is a movie about connecting people mouth-to-anus. If you want to see a film about that, go and see it. If you don’t, then don’t.

Grant Hardie is from Monster Films, the Australian distributors of The Human Centipede (First Sequence) and says he loves the movie.

“It pushes all the buttons that you want pushed when you go to see a horror film,” he said.

“When I watched it I realised that a lot of the criticism that was levelled at the film was because of the subject matter and because critics didn’t get it.”

When it comes to horror, give me Michael Myers wearing a William Shatner mask doing his best to hack into Jamie Lee Curtis with a butcher knife any day, but there are plenty of people who disagree. I’m certain they’re all sickos, but it takes all sorts, which is proven by the fact that Human Centipede (First Sequence) even exists.

You might be wondering what’s with (First Sequence) in the title of the film. Yes, the sequel is already in pre-production. Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) will see our dashing doctor return to the big screen, this time having the more ambitious goal of connection twelve people mouth-to-anus.

This is one movie franchise that truly takes arse kissing to a new level.

(If you haven’t experienced the Human Centipede (First Sequence) trailer and you want to, click here to view the trailer on YouTube. You have been warned.)

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.