ALERT:
THIS REVIEW COMMENTS UPON A VIOLENT HORROR MOVIE
IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED, OR OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION, THEN PLEASE DO NOT READ ON
***
Written and directed by Tom Six
THIS REVIEW COMMENTS UPON A VIOLENT HORROR MOVIE
IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED, OR OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION, THEN PLEASE DO NOT READ ON
Certificate 18
Written and directed by Tom Six
 |
| Dieter Laser |
The Human Centipede 3 - Final Sequence (HC3) marks the last chapter of Tom Six's trilogy of everyday folk who find themselves joined, stitched mouth-to-anus, to their fellow citizens. Throughout his series, Six has tended to play fast and loose with the word "centipede". His first movie's creature featured only 6 legs (formed of three unfortunates) whilst the beast in Final Sequence, formed of 500 souls, sports 2,000 limbs- but this is Hollywood so what's a leg-count here or there anyway?
The movies' notoriety has snowballed with each emerging sequel. HC1 took a "traditionally" horrific take on Six's vision, with German actor Dieter Laser portraying the deranged Doctor Heiter, who was to hand-craft the first creature, in an unflinchingly dark movie.
HC2's raison d'etre could not have been more corny, even if its metier was still born of a heart of darkness. Laurence R Harvey played Martin, a ghastly misfit, who is introduced to us watching a DVD of HC1, before going on to replicate Heiter's experiment himself.
With the third film, Six adopts an end of term/semester approach to the concept. Where HCs 1 and 2 were dark, Final Sequence lobs in some ironic comedy and in so doing offers us what is possibly (and literally) the most tongue in cheek film ever made.
Set in a prison in the southern USA, Six indulges himself with an outrageous grindhouse satire. Think of 2011's Hobo With A Shotgun that starred Rutger Hauer and you start to get an idea of Six's skewed reality.
As a further nod to the franchise's heritage, both Laser and Lawrence return. This time the German plays Bill Boss, the stetson toting prison governor (deranged, natch) who also sports a phallus-replacing six-shooter, with Harvey as Dwight, his trusted sidekick accountant. When Dwight suggests that a human centipede would make for an ideal punishment in addition to incarceration, the movie takes off .
Along the way, Six makes no bones about offending and exploiting everybody. Men and women alike are horrifically violated (there is no one-side sexploitational misogyny here), religion is mocked, with Hollywood B-listers Bree Olson and Eric Roberts adding to the carnage.
A satirical sub-theme hints at the story offering a version of violent and medieval punishment that much of the USA's right of centre population would happily see meted out to criminals. Six has to tread this particular mockery carefully especially as he is on record (and confirmed in a movie cameo) as saying that the idea of the centipede came to him initially, as an appropriate form of punishment for paedophiles.
There's minimal CGI on display here and what you see is the action that Six has photographed. Those with an insatiable appetite for taboo-busting cinema that includes, amongst other moments, scenes of castration, boiling-waterboarding and the eating (literally eating, this ain't porn) of both genders' genitalia will be more than entertained by what Six, his designer Rodrigo Cabral and their uber-talented special effects team have come up with. Oh, and just like in real life, the bad guy comes out on top too.
If you like your horror bloody yet still ridiculously overdone, you won't be disappointed.
