AC
Andrea Costantini
•Martin, a fat and not entirely sane custodian of an underground garage, has a favorite movie: The Human Centipede, the one where that mad doctor connects three poor unlucky people as if they were a human centipede, creating a single digestive system. He is so obsessed with the movie that he gets the unhealthy idea of repeating the doctor's work, this time with many more elements. He thus begins to lure victims at his workplace and lock them up in a rented shed.
Do you remember the light board on which Dr. Heiter, the mad and brilliant surgeon of the first "The Human Centipede," projected his depraved plan to the three victims strapped to the beds? Do you remember that he explained how he would connect the anus of the first with the mouth of the second and so on? That he would sever the knee tendons to prevent the centipede from standing up? That he would remove all the teeth of the central members to facilitate the connection? Well, in the first movie, these actions were projected on the wall to be then put into practice out of our field of vision, but in this exaggerated second chapter, they will all be performed in front of our eyes, leaving nothing to the imagination.
One must acknowledge that Tom Six is really good at creating borderline characters, this time in the opposite sense of the aforementioned doctor, choosing a semi-unknown with an incredible mimicry to play the maniac: Lawrence R. Harvey, perfect for the role of the deviant Martin.
Martin is the custodian of a garage and spends his time watching and rewatching his favorite movie, "The Human Centipede." Martin is fat, always sweaty, has asthma, and only expresses himself with sounds. He is disgusting, dirty, incontinent. Sometimes he gets so angry that he destroys heads with a crowbar, other times he pulls out his gun and sows terror in the garage where he works. He takes care in a maniacal way of his centipede, this time a real arthropod that he keeps in a display case, feeds it, loves it. There is also another fact not to be overlooked, and that is that Martin is not a surgeon. He is a furious madman who has no idea what septicemia, anesthesia, and above all hygiene mean. An anthology villain that of the new chapter of the centipede saga. He is ruthless but he is a bungler. It makes you laugh to see him put his plan into action, even though in reality there is nothing to laugh about. You feel a mix of disgust, amusement, compassion, and nervousness in front of this character who alone supports the entire first hour of the movie.
The last half hour, however, is high butchery.
"Full Sequence" is intelligently connected to the end of the first movie, despite being stylistically completely different. First of all, it is in black and white, a beautiful black and white that further accentuates the dirtiness of the shed operating room and the garage as well as the madness of the locations, raw that you can't. The nightmare setting, the characters beyond the limit of credibility (Martin's mother, the psychologist, the tattooed neighbor) and the soundtrack made almost exclusively of industrial noises cannot but bring to mind the surreal masterpiece "Eraserhead," although it is a completely different movie.
The first part of about fifty minutes is a hunt for the members of the project. Anyone who falls under Martin's crowbar will end up in the shed, naked and tied up like a sausage. It is a part full of madness, entirely centered on Martin and his relationship with the first movie, with his mother as crazy as him who has only one goal: to eliminate herself and her son. An hour of preparation for the announced fireworks in which some inconsistencies are noted: it is not clear how Martin can make all that mess every night in the garage, shooting continuously and splashing blood everywhere without the police intervening. Moreover, in the long run, the movie becomes a bit repetitive, but these are details that are overlooked.
The second part, on the other hand, is the actual surgical operation, a kind of DIY scene made with human bodies and tools recovered from the kitchen cabinets and the toolbox. And here the weak stomachs (and pregnant women) must abandon the viewing because nothing will be spared. Teeth pulled out, tendons severed with kitchen scissors, buttocks torn apart. Half an hour of limitless violence that has as its climax another deviant incorrect scene like few (after "A Serbian Film"), with a woman in labor. As if that were not enough after all the blood shed, Martin attentive, will also take care of the nutrition of his centipede, in a scatological sequence fortunately in black and white, but of strong impact. Difficult to keep dinner in the stomach.
A good follow-up, not for all tastes, for a movie that is now a cult classic. In anticipation of seeing the third chapter, about which there is still a bit of mystery, we can only hope that Tom Six maintains the desire to renew himself and make the definitive centipede.