THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 1 & 2 DOUBLE PACK

The original HUMAN CENTIPEDE is now better known as FIRST SEQUENCE.

When their car breaks down on an unknown German road, travelling Americans Lindsey (Ashley C Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) initially ask a passing motorist for help. They subsequently learn from reading their translation book that he’s a pervert hoping that they, like all the young American women that he’s familiar with through his DVD collection, are porn stars looking for a quick fuck.

So they’re extremely grateful when they wander out into the countryside on a wet night and are eventually welcomed into Dr Heiter’s (Dieter Laser) nearby villa. He’s a surgeon and appears to be a perfect gentleman too, albeit a tad creepy with it. Of course, it’s not long until he reveals his true motivation to the unfortunate lovelies.

Six’s film goes on to detail how a career spent separating conjoined twins has left Heiter with a coveting for creating a multi-human anomaly of his own: the human centipede. The task involves taking both wayward ladies and suturing them together, mouth-to-anus, along with a third victim – the bewildered tourist Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura).

Purporting in the advertisements to be "100% medically accurate", FIRST SEQUENCE sounds like the type of insane goofiness the Japanese would churn out in the late 1990s. In actual fact, it’s a Netherlands production whose concept stems from a conversation director Tom Six once enjoyed in a pub with mates concerning suitable punishments for paedophiles.

It’s fascinating to see such an odd idea played out in this straight manner and, to its credit, the film becomes pretty engaging as Laser’s dementia grows and the plight of his victims seems less promising.

Inevitably we are treated to the moment where Kitamura can no longer hold in the bilge that Laser has been feeding him, and he defecates into the mouth sewn to his rear. Naturally it’s this scene that became an early talking point but it overshadows what is fundamentally a decent throwback to classic ‘mad scientist’ films. And, truth be told, the film sounds more graphic than it is. It’s commendably discreet considering the potentially schlocktastic material.

Being a product of its time though, FIRST SEQUENCE arrived in 2009 bolstered by reports of an online campaign serving death threats to Six unless he withdrew it from circulation. The film got its release without hiccup, the director survived the fallout and a sequel soon predictably followed.

In the second instalment of a proposed trilogy, FULL SEQUENCE, we meet Martin (Laurence R Harvey), a British night-watchman obsessed with watching the original film on his laptop.

It turns out he’s been damaged by an abusive childhood at the hands of his now-absent father (a memorable line from the heavily tattooed Daddy, used twice in the film, is "stop those tears, you’re just making Daddy’s willy hard"). Now, as an adult who resembles some grotesquely oversized baby, Martin lives with his concerned elderly mother: "he keeps on talking about a centipede with 12 people, what can that mean?".

Unbeknown even to Mommie dearest, Martin has taken steps towards realising his ambition of stepping into Dr Heiter’s shoes and performing his own human centipede experiments for real. Of course, this time round the film’s advertising campaign can cannily get away with the tagline "100 % medically inaccurate" …

Moments of surrealism and a monochrome shooting palette do distinguish FULL SEQUENCE, not only from its admittedly nicely shot and intriguing predecessor, but also from the bulk of ‘extreme’ genre films we tend to see these days.

It does get silly (and gory – much more than the first instalment), and a lot of the dialogue is unwittingly compromised for British audiences by the knowledge that these home-grown actors aren’t the best. But this remains audacious stuff – especially when Yennie turns up as herself …

Harvey, a sometime bit-actor on children’s TV, is convincingly menacing (despite never uttering a word) and the film is far more professionally shot than I imagine any of its detractors have ever realised.

Of course, FINAL SEQUENCE – the trilogy’s conclusion – is still to come. But in the meantime, Monster Pictures are celebrating the success of the first two episodes with this new double-pack release.

I understand from the press releases attached to the screener discs I received that this set is being released in two variants: a 2-disc DVD double pack, and a limited edition 4-disc dual format blu-ray and DVD Steelbook set.

Well, we were sent a DVD of FIRST SEQUENCE, and blu-ray of FULL SEQUENCE … so I’ll comment on what we saw!

The good news is FIRST SEQUENCE is uncut and looks great in a 16x9 presentation of its original aspect ratio. It’s a good-looking film anyway – well-lit, shot and edited – and Monster’s transfer does a fine job of making the images and colours pop out, even on DVD.

English 2.0 audio is solid throughout, as are the optional subtitles which help translate the occasional bursts of German dialogue.

The DVD opens to a static main menu page, contains a static scene-selection menu offering 12 chapters, and has only a 2-minute theatrical trailer as an extra.

Over on the blu-ray for FULL SEQUENCE, we get a stunning 1080p HD rendition of this black-and-white shocker, again in its original aspect ratio and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. The film is presented as an MPEG4-AVC file.

The bad news is that the film remains cut, by more than 2 minutes.

English audio comes in a great Master Audio 5.1 DTS-HD mix, which really serves to highlight the inventive sound design employed throughout this weird little film.

The disc opens with a static menu. Pop-up menus include a scene-selection menu allowing access to the main feature via 12 chapters.

Extras on this disc include a 9-minute Behind The Scenes featurette; a 22-second deleted scene (Martin barking at a dog); 3 minutes of foley session footage that will work for fans of BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO; a 12-minute interview with an incredibly enthusiastic and self-gratifying Six; 8 minutes of cast interviews conducted by Alan Jones for "Frightfest TV"; "Martin Speaks" – the highlight of the bonus features – a 9-minute chat with Harvey, alongside Six (again, Jones is the interviewer here); a 2-minute trailer for the new Special Edition release; a 1-minute US teaser trailer which, if you haven’t seen it, is well worth watching. It’s very funny.

Extras features which are apparently available for FIRST SEQUENCE in these sets (but not on the screener disc provided) are said to include an audio commentary track, a Q&A session with Six and Laser, interviews, behind the scenes footage and casting session footage.

Ignore the controversy: the HUMAN CENTIPEDE films are deceptively well-made. Lord knows what director Tom Six will do when his trilogy has been realised, but I’ve no doubt he has the talent to produce something worthwhile.

FIRST SEQUENCE is good fun, FULL SEQUENCE is more flawed but still well-made in many respects (imagine BAD BOY BUBBY directed by Lucio Fulci) and this set from Monster Pictures is a good proposition.

Fuck the BBFC though, what on Earth are they thinking …?

Review by Stuart Willis