You probably won’t find too many people willing to argue that the first two Human Centipede movies are any good. The first one felt like an idea that could have made for a chilling short stretched for time, and the second ramped up the gore factor to keep from being so boring, but still didn’t tell any sort of worthwhile story. And yet, despite their obvious badness, everyone still watched them, and everyone talked about them afterward. When a project like this is so clearly desperate for attention it seems that it’s pretty hard to not take a peek for yourself and see what all the noise is about, and consequently there’s still enough gas in the Human Centipede tank for the planned trilogy to be completed. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) is set to begin filming this May and June in the southern United States.
There is some good news about the continuation of this series, however. Despite the myriad flaws of the first two films, it would be hard to argue that they weren’t horror movies with effectively creepy villains. Dieter Laser’s manic, gleeful Dr. Heiter from the first film and Laurence R. Harvey’s slow and slovenly Martin from the second were both skin-crawling, creepifying bad guys; and each in their own unique way. So the news from Entertainment Weekly that both actors will be returning in Final Sequence for featured roles is kind of a breath of fresh air in a days long trip through the sewer.
Most likely Final Sequence will follow in the footsteps of its predecessors by being a movie more concerned with shock tactics and stomach-turning gore than storytelling, tension building, or character developing (and its promised tagline of being “100% politically incorrect†points to the fact that it will likely get even more extreme in those regards), but at least we know that it will include some fun performances from a couple of crazy character actors. That should add some substance to the water cooler talk the day after this one comes out. You know, once we’re done discussing all the new ways the victims were made to eat poop.
