The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is a 2009 Dutch body horror film written, directed and co-produced by Tom Six. The independent film concerns a deranged German surgeon who kidnaps three tourists and conjoins them surgically, mouth to anus, forming the eponymous "human centipede". It stars Dieter Laser as Josef Heiter, the creator of the centipede, and Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, and Akihiro Kitamura as Heiter's victims. According to Six, the concept arose from a joke he had made with friends about punishing a child molester by stitching his mouth to the anus of a "fat truck driver". Other sources of inspiration were Nazi medical experiments performed during World War II, such as those performed by Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz concentration camp. When approaching investors to fund the project, Six did not mention the premise of the film for fear of putting off potential backers; financiers did not discover the full nature of the film until completion. The film held its premiere at the London FrightFest Film Festival on 30 August 2009. It received a limited theatrical release in the United States on 30 April 2010. Despite a mixed critical reception, the film won several accolades at international film festivals. Two sequels that were also written and directed by Six—Full Sequence and Final Sequence—were released in 2011 and 2015, respectively. The entire trilogy was combined into a single film in 2016, titled Complete Sequence, which Six described as a "movie centipede" due to each Sequence leading into its successor while simultaneously working as a separate standalone cinematic film.

Plot Lindsay and Jenny, tourists from New York City visiting Germany, get a flat tire on their way to a nightclub and seek help at the house of Dr. Josef Heiter. He drugs the women with Rohypnol in their water and locks them up in a makeshift medical ward. The misanthropic, psychopathic surgeon Heiter is a retired world-renowned expert at separating conjoined twins, but dreams of "making new creatures." He plans to surgically connect his three victims' mouths to their anus, so that they share a single digestive system. His prior experiment, the 3Dog, conjoined three Rottweilers into a "Cojoined triplet"; all three dogs died following the operation. Lindsay and Jenny find themselves trapped on their gurneys next to a Dutch truck driver, whom Heiter kidnapped at the beginning of the film. Heiter declared the trucker incompatible with the ladies and ends his life. He later kidnaps Japanese tourist Katsuro. After Lindsay tries to escape and fails, Heiter decides to make her the middle segment of the centipede. Heiter performs the surgery, placing Katsuro at the lead, Lindsay in the middle, and Jenny at the rear; mutilating Lindsay and Jenny's mouths and stitching each to the anus of the person in front. He severs the ligaments of his victims' knees, forcing them to crawl. Once the operation is complete, Heiter takes the centipede to his living room, takes photos of each segment to humiliate them, and passes a mirror around so the segments can view their new form. Heiter treats his human centipede as a pet by caging the centipede in a dog kennel, training them into obeying his orders, forcing Katsuro to eat dog food at dinner, and belittling Katsuro with racist insults and beating him with a crop when he becomes rebellious. Eventually, Katsuro needs to defecate. He does so after apologizing to the girls, after which Lindsay is forced to swallow his excrement. Heiter becomes irritated after being kept awake at night by the caged centipede and threatens Katsuro (who, as the front part of the centipede, has his mouth free and is still able to speak) with the removal of his vocal cords. When the centipede attempts to escape while Heiter is swimming, all three segments are punished by being beaten with the crop. During a checkup, Heiter is displeased to learn that Lindsay is constipated. He proposes to use laxatives on Lindsay, but discovers that Jenny is dying from sepsis. Two detectives, Kranz and Voller, visit the house to investigate the disappearance of the three tourists as well as the trucker. Heiter is inspired to add them as replacements for Jenny in a new four-segment centipede. He offers the detectives more spiked water, causing them to become suspicious and obtain a search warrant for his home. After the detectives leave, the victims attempt to escape, and Katsuro attacks Heiter. He injures him, but their attempt to escape fails. Katsuro confesses to Heiter that he deserves his fate because he treated his family poorly, then takes his own life by slitting his throat with a glass shard. Upon returning to Heiter's home, the detectives conduct separate searches as Heiter, injured, hides near his swimming pool. Kranz finds the ward containing Heiter's victims. Voller begins to feel ill from the earlier drugging, and Heiter stabs him with a scalpel that he pulled from his foot during Katsuro's attack, killing him. Heiter takes Voller's sidearm and shoots Kranz when he enters. Kranz fatally shoots Heiter in the head before succumbing to his wounds. Back in the house, Jenny and Lindsay hold hands as Jenny dies from her infection. Lindsay sobs as she is left alone in the house, trapped between her deceased fellow captives.

Cast

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