By Nia Edwards-Behi
The Human Centipede franchise seems to roughly split people into three camps: love it, hate it, or, oh god, get it away from me, my eyes! my eyes! For the most part I’m firmly in the first camp. I enjoyed the first film as a relatively conventional ordeal horror film with a sick twist, and really rather loved the second film, having enjoyed its meta-relationship to the first film and, in all honesty, finding it really rather funny. HC3 is not as good as HC2, in my opinon. In less capable hands I would almost definitely have dismissed the film as purposefully hateful trash, shocking for the sake of it and not worth anyone’s time. I’m sure this is the sort of criticism that will be levelled at the film anyway, and while I can’t say I wholly disagree, I enjoyed HC3 a lot, and I think Tom Six is just about clever enough and talented enough to get away with it.
You probably know the premise: maniacal prison manager William ‘Bill’ Boss (Dieter Lasser) and his assistant Dwight Butler (Laurence Harvey) are struggling to run an institution filled with violent and rowdy criminals. The state governor (Eric Roberts) is on the verge of shutting the place down. Dwight eventually convinces Boss to implement his masterplan: using the films as inspiration, make the inmates part of a real-life human centipede.
This is a film of artifice: extremely hammy performances, over-saturated backdrops, dream sequences and, of course, the meta-narrative to end them all. This seems, to me, to be intentional, rather than a smart way of hiding a film’s flaws, but either way, it works. The over-played nature of the whole film detaches us somewhat from the fact that it is, at times, extremely unsavory. There is so much unsavory stuff here that it’s a hard task to take any of it seriously. The main point of contention is likely the incessant use of racial slurs by Bill Boss, but so many racial and ethnic groups are insulted in this way that, for me at least, this was less ‘offensive’ and more ‘social commentary’. By making Bill a prison manager he represents American authority, and all the hatefulness spouted by him becomes something much bigger. For me, this conceit works, but I’ve no doubt others will find Bill to be a lazy cypher. Take, for example, the film’s sole female character, Daisy (Bree Olsen). She is objectified, abused and belittled throughout the film – indeed an assault on her sets the tone for the whole film at the outset. While on the one hand deeply unpleasant, if we are to take Bill and his prison as a microcosm of American or Western society, then, well, it’s a fairly scathing caricature, right down to the casting of Olsen in the role (who, it must be said, gives one of the best performances of the film – take that as you will). Everyone and anyone is fair game in this film, and for me it’s effective as a rather extreme metaphorical device.
Having said that, I’m sure Six is less concerned with narrative metaphor than he is having a whale of a time taking the piss out of everyone – by which I mean, not the targets of Bill’s abuse in the film, but the people who will see a film like this and be offended first, and think, if at all, later. His own appearance in the film should be a hugely smug and indulgent cameo, but instead it works really well in the meta-context of the three films, and in relation to his own huge persona as the, dare I say, auteur behind these films. That he manages to even take the piss out of himself is almost endearing.
There is one main complaint that I have about the film, and that is that the prison centipede is a bit of a disappointment. A lot more time is spent talking about it than actually making it and seeing it, which, following the amount of time we spend with the centipede in HC2, feels like a bit of a let down. Understandably doing the same with a much bigger centipede was ambitious from the outset. The ‘human caterpillar’ goes only someway to make up for this, but there is at least plenty of ridiculous violence and gore to be found elsewhere in the film.
HC3 is hardly going to win over any new fans for Six or the franchise, but that’s hardly the point. If you enjoyed the previous films, then you’re bound to get a kick out of this one. The Human Centipede Trilogy is a nicely packaged series of sick laughs, and I hope it remains that way – any further layers of meta-narrative just won’t work, and it is element that best prevents the films from being boring. While I won’t look forward to a Human Centipede 4, I will very much look forward to seeing what Tom Six comes up with next.