The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)
Let’s do the slime walk again…
dutch director tom six completes his notorious schlock trilogy with the most outrageous yet, and sewing 500 people mouth to anus has little to do with it. Far more distressing than the last 20 minutes – when the “100% medically accurate” surgery kicks in – is the first 80, an unremitting deluge of racial epithets, misogyny, rape (male and female), castration and thunderous overacting.
after Germany and england-set entries, The Human Centipede III is located in the good ol’ us of a, in a scummy penitentiary run by warden Bill Boss (dieter laser, who played the mad doctor in the original) and his accountant dwight Butler (laurence r. harvey, the sick security guard at the centre of II). Given two weeks by the governor (eric roberts) to clean up the prison, the damaged duo turns to The Human Centipede and its sequel for inspiration, enlisting the help of director tom six (himself) as they set about conjoining 500 inmates to act as the ultimate crime deterrent.
there’s satire in here somewhere, albeit applied with a bludgeon and buried under a mountain of blood, shit and vomit. six should at least be awarded points for making a film that’s so gleefully self-aware: Human Centipede III is best seen as an overblown black-comedy, for its tongue is firmly in its cheek. so to speak. it’s a splatter movie that’s willing to do anything and everything to burrow under viewers’ skin, not least have a bellowing, vein-popping laser deliver what is surely the loudest, biggest, please-make-it-stop-est performance in cinema history.
But after the genuinely nightmarish and really rather moving second instalment, III is a regression. it has to be seen to be believed, certainly, but one viewing will prove quite enough.