profoundly moving

Oh boy.. I’ve heard some pretty outstanding film premises in my time (Martin Lawrence? Undercover as a morbidly obese woman? Again?! Shiiiiiiiiiiiitttttt!) This one, however, takes the gold.. Human Centipede, a new film from Duch avant-garde director Tom Six, is showing this weekend as part of Film Four’s very cool looking Frightfest festival. This is from the program:

Internationally respected Siamese twin surgeon Dr. Josef Heiter has a demented vision for mankind’s future existence. He wants to remove human beings’ kneecaps so they have to exist on all fours and then surgically graft them mouth-to-anus to form a centipede chain. When two stranded female Americans arrive at his luxury home-cum-hospital looking for help, his long-gestating plan swiftly moves into chilling action with a shocking force. Kidnapping a third Japanese male tourist he begins the tissue matches, teeth removal and buttock moulding to create his triplet creature…

I see. Well ok, as dastardly schemes go, it’s certainly ambitious. I’d quite like to see him pitching it as an idea on Dragon’s Den. Probably not one for Paphitis, to be honest, but Deborah Meaden might invest. Meaden loves sick shit like that.

So, reading that description again, my first thought is mainly… A Siamese Twin Surgeon? What?! Is he on the NHS? That’d be bloody typical. This is precisely the kind of thing Obama and his fellow liberal-nazi-socialists will be bringing to America if their plan to give medicine to poor people works out. Do you even get Siamese Twin Sugeons? That’s got to be a fairly easygoing job, you only get one or two cases a year. He must spend a lot of time on Twitter.

My other thought is, well, if you had to do it – if you had to be part of a human centipede, what position would you want to be in? It’s all about who’s in front of you I suppose. Worse case scenario would be Pavarotti, but luckily he’s dead now so probably ineligible. But anyone fat would be pretty rubbish. Imagine getting some massive rugby player who’d been out the night before for 15 pints of lager and lamb madras: nightmare.

A girl would be OK. Girls, as everyone knows, don’t poo. They just discreetly produce little dried lavender petals that then get used to make potpourri. (Yes, that is a definite science fact, by the way. I have an A-level in Biology so know what I’m talking about yeah?)

Obviously, being at the front of the chain would be the best place to be, but everyone’s going to want that. It’s the equivalent of holding out for the emergency exit seats on a long haul flight; pipedream. Also, there’s quite a lot of responsibility involved in being the centipede head. Sure it has its perks (not having your teeth removed and mouth surgically conjoined to an arsehole is the big one..) but on the other hand think of the admin involved.. For one thing, I imagine you’d spend much of your time answering other people’s phones to explain that “no, Erica can’t come to the phone right now, her head is stuck in a rectum.”

Also, you’ll be eating for quite a few now; tortellini and a jar of Lloyd Grossman isn’t going to cut it anymore. At a minimum, you’ll have to start shopping at Waitrose, but they’ll probably expect you to be splashing out in some Michelin starred swank-palace every night. I’ve actually been having quite a lot of fun imagining a human centipede comprised solely of restaurant critics trying to reach a consensus on the new Tasting Menu at Nobu…

Opinions are fairly positive to begin with but, by the time the Wagyu Beef had made its way to the back, AA Gill is not impressed.. (yeah that’s right Gill, you’d be at the back. I see your game, trying to creep up the alphabet with those initials at front of your name. Not going to work Gill! Not going to work! Back of the queue!!) “The Head Chef promised me simple ingredients and a return to elementary cooking.. alimentary cooking more like!” Gill opines witheringly into the gaping anus of Michael Winner.

Human Centipede is showing at Frighfest this Sunday and hopefully will be released in cinemas very soon as it looks really really fun. Almost as fun as writing the phrase ‘the gaping anus of Michael Winner’.