Bounding Into Halloween Night 14: Have A Craptacular Evening With ‘The Human Centipede’ & ‘Salo, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom’
You may have survived Inside and Martyrs. You may have escaped the green inferno, and its Cannibal Holocaust, but now get ready for the ultimate test of your gag reflexes. Because these two movies will take you to the bowels of horror, and knock you flat on your ass. Prepare thyself for a very sh–ty time…
The Human Centipede (First Sequence, 2009)
This first dump comes from near a land that has a reputation for already being into this kind of freaky stuff, and in 2009 director Tom Six felt the need to share this kink with the rest of the world in the form of a horror film. The Human Centipede is what he named it, and none of us have been the same ever since.
Two slightly less than intelligent New Yorkers, Lindsay and Jenny (Ashley Williams and Ashlynn Yennie), are visiting Germany on vacation. They get a flat tire on their way to a night club, and seek help at the nearest house they can find. It ends up being the home of a surgeon named Dr. Josef Heiter (Dieter Laser).
His specialty is separating conjoined twins, but he’s also a misanthropic psychopath with a pet project in mind. Heiter drugs the women with water spiked with Rohypnol, and drags them down to his makeshift medical ward in the basement.
The good doctor gets his victims down there, and then kidnaps a Japanese tourist named Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura) to join them. Tightly secured, he then lays out his dream to create new creatures that share a single digestive system. He describes in detail how he will surgically connect the three of them, and they don’t take this well at all.
Lindsay tries to escape, but doesn’t make it far, and this transgression doesn’t go unpunished. Dr. Heiter informs Lindsay that she just volunteered herself to be the middle section of the centipede before her lights go out.
The surgery is a success! All three subjects survived the procedure, and the human centipede is fully operational. The two muffled moans, and loud Japanese profanity are like music to his ears. He attempts to train them like a pet, but his new centipede is still experiences lots of growing pains, and isn’t the most cooperative.
That’s okay, because he gets enough delight watching the middle and end parts swallowing each other’s excrement, one sobbing mouthful at a time. Things begin to unravel when the loud cries of pain coming from the basement disturb his beauty sleep, and one of the subjects gets blood poisoning. That’s when Dr. Heiter realizes that he has some serious choices to make.
Calling this movie sick would be an understatement, but that was obviously the point of it. It’s farfetched, and over-the-top, but still a pure horror story. The Human Centipede spawned two terrible sequels which certainly has a double meaning in this case. I would say that this is the only one that’s watchable, but that might be too strong of a word. See for yourself over on AMC+, and try to keep your s—t together. Or test the waters first with the trailer.
Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
How’s everyone holdin’ up over there? That last movie didn’t gross you out too much, did it? Good! Because the s—t is about to really hit the fan with our final feature of the evening. This disturbing brown nugget of cinematic art makes The Human Centipede look like a Tootsie Roll commercial that’s seen during Saturday morning cartoons.
Pier Paolo Pasolini directed this 1975 political horror that’s a loose adaptation of the 1785 novel The 120 Days of Sodom by history’s most famous perv, Marquis de Sade. Hold on to your butts, and get ready for Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom.
This takes place during the time of Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy of 1944. In the northern Italian Republic of Salò, which was a Nazi-controlled puppet state. The town’s four wealthiest, most powerful, and for damned sure most decadent members herd the finest specimens of young men, and women into a palatial villa.
This would be The Duke (Paolo Bonacelli), The Bishop (Giorgio Cataldi), The Magistrate (Umberto Paolo Quintavalle), and The President (Aldo Valletti). These depraved devils kidnap eighteen teenagers (nine boys, and nine girls), and subject them to four months of hell.
The kids endure constant sexual assaults, extreme violence, sadism, genital torture, psychological torture, and last, but certainly not least, coprophagia.
After establishing a set of authoritarian rules for their captives, the perverted libertines plunge them into a hideous, three-part abyss of degradation and torture that’s inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Inferno (the first part of The Divine Comedy).
These monsters indulge in their most despicable fantasies, and depraved desires while their victims await the sweet release that death brings, something which doesn’t come soon enough.
There’s a reason this film has the reputation that it does. It’s pretty hard to watch, and not for every horror fan, but it still stands in high esteem among filmmakers. Even the celebrated “Pope of Trash” John Waters wishes he made that film, and that’s a version that nobody wants to see. They just think they do.
In the meantime, the Pier Paolo Pasolini cut can be found here, but maybe start with the trailer first.
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