Friday, November 19, 2010

In the quiet of the night is when the snake is in the crawlin'

There's this surgeon in Germany who specializes in separating Siamese twins. His name is Dr. Heiter and I bet during one social function with his fellow surgeons, some fat blowhard made some kind of drunken comment to Dr. Heiter about how it's much harder to put things together rather than separate them, and that overall it's easier to destroy rather than to create. Goddamn. Can you believe that shit? If that was me in that fictional scenario that I just made up, I'd throw my fuckin' drink in that asshole's face. I bet the other surgeons laughed with Fat Blowhard after he said that shit, too. Meanwhile these guys spend their weekdays making overweight people look thinner and old people look like they're in a permanent state of surprise -- who are they to judge and make those kind of comments? Fuck man, separating Siamese twins is incredibly difficult and risky; Dr. Heiter is saving some goddamn lives with his expert techniques, give this motherfucker his due. Like John McClane in the first Die Hard -- Dr. Heiter was pretty fucking unappreciated.

I bet you that shit comes brimming to the surface with the few people he's close to; if he had a wife, she probably heard his bitching about it day in and day out. Poor woman probably tried to set up date nights with the guy, and then he'd come home complaining again about the crack Dr. Braunschweiger made, then walk straight to bed -- leaving the poor lady in her sexy-but-not-slutty outfit standing over a candlelit dinner in the dining room that he all but ignored. Eventually, he'd notice the cracks in the marriage and decide to take an extended leave from work in an attempt to fill those cracks (both figuratively and literally), but by then it was too little, too late. At least their one kid (daughter Savina, 22) was already out on her own, living in the U.S. and working for some kind of liberal organization, so at least they weren't creating a broken home for the little girl by divorcing. They were just gonna make it a little difficult for her to visit them, come the holidays.

So my main man Heiter is living all alone now, in his nice house in the woods. Even with his 3 awesome Rottweilers to keep him company, it can get pretty lonely out there. He needs something to occupy his time and it's not like he could just come back to work, those fuckin' assholes would just give him shit about his stupid job destroying his marriage -- they're Germans, after all, they can get pretty dark in their humor. And he can't do the Mountain Man thing either, he's not built for that kind of shit. A man can only play with his air rifle and shoot darts into the trees for so long. He does have a neighbor, some old retired dude a few minutes away from his pad, but he creeps Heiter out. Every time the doc pays him a visit, the old dude immediately wants to show him some new porn he downloaded on his computer. Fuck, I hate that shit. I dig porn as much as the next masturbator, but I get kinda uncomfortable when a friend (or in my case, a friend of a friend) is all eager to show me an AVI file compilation of nothing but chicks getting jizzed in the face. Hey Bro, Isn't That Awesome? he would ask while putting his arm around me in brotherhood, while spilling his beer. Living around people like that, it's no wonder Dr. Heiter eventually started hating on human beings.

Being lonely and mad and bored is probably what led to Dr. Heiter's idea of attaching his dogs together in a sort-of doggy train -- a Doggy Centipede, if you will. It would take a lot of time to plan and a lot of time to perform, but in the end, it would be worth it. He could invite his asshole colleagues over and show them, finally show those piece-of-shit swinefuckers that he's not just about separating shit, he can put shit together and then some. The dogs, though, I don't think they had the heart to live like that, it was enough for them to have to deal with getting neutered and having their doggie tails clipped -- now they would have to live attached to each other? Sure, they're used to sniffing another dog's ass, but permanently? Fuck that shit, you never go anus-to-muzzle!

I figured they killed themselves and that ended up crushing poor Dr. Heiter; the guy is now sitting in his sleek ultra-clean Mercedes, parked on the side of a road, choking up over a picture of his beloved 3-Dog much like that motherfucker in The Big Blue cried over a photo of some fuckin' dolphin. He spots a dirty trucker pull up behind him and walk over toward some bushes with a roll of toilet paper (I bet you that skeezy fuck isn't even going to wash his hands afterward, he's just gonna keep on truckin' with those shitty hands and personally hand-deliver vegetables to a supermarket), and that's where Heiter gets the idea to take his Three Times The Fun plan to the next level.

Anyway, that's where this movie starts, this movie called The Human Centipede (First Sequence) and after the doc trank-darts the truck driver in mid-shit, we're next introduced to a couple of American chicks who are spending Daddy's money by vacationing through Germany in their Let's Dance And Turn Down Guys After They Buy Us Drinks world tour. Driving down a dark road in the woods, their car ends up getting a flat and because they're party girls, they have no fuckin' clue as to how to change a tire. The car engine might as well disappear, for all the good it'll do now. Heiter's perv neighbor drives up and rather than offer some help, he starts talking mad shit in German to them, some pervy sexual shit, and why not? It's not like they'd understand. You got these young party chicks, and you're an old perv who ain't getting any, so have your fun. He ends up driving away, but I bet you when he goes home, plops down on the recliner, flips on the boob tube and finds Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant playing on Sky Deutschland, he's gonna see that scene where Harvey Keitel pulls over the 2 girls and go "Awww, that's what I should've done with them!"

The girls stumble around the dark German woods, looking for someone to help them call a tow truck or something. I guess there was probably a deleted scene during this sequence where they passed by this really pretty dark-haired girl going the opposite way, soaking wet, and they asked her if she could give them a ride. This chick, turns out her name is Suzy and she's all "I was about to ask you the same thing" and then she starts rambling on about some fuckin' ballet school and witches and You're Going To Meet Death Now...The Living Dead but then the two party girls start giggling and are all like "Whatever, drunky" and they leave her standing there like a dumbass. Whatever, Suzy ended up getting the last laugh because she eventually found a small inn a few miles away. The innkeepers took her in, heard her story, and offered her a warm meal while she waited for the authorities. Upon noticing that the meal consisted of baked white fish and a glass of red wine, Suzy was like "Can't I just have some pasta and a Coke up in this muthafucka?"

So yeah, the two girls. They end up finding my homeslice Dr. Heiter's pad, and he lets them in, because really, who doesn't want to turn down the possibility of writing a Penthouse Forum letter that for once isn't full of shit? Also, he wants to get started on that Human Centipede deal, because that's the title of the movie. I don't see anything wrong with this, because the way I see it, these girls don't scream Making A Difference In The World -- one of them would probably forget to use the pill one drunken night and end up pregnant and the dude who knocked her up will support her, so she's taken care of. As for the other girl, she'll probably end up as one of those cute dental assistants who'll silently judge me because of my bad oral hygiene while the dentist points out cavity #12 and informs me that my insurance will only cover, like, 20 percent of my bridge. Anyway, Dr. Heiter's got two girls, and since it didn't work out with the filthy trucker, he's now just one Japanese dude away from getting the Human Centipede in full effect -- that is, if a couple of cops who look like they should be roadies for Scorpions don't fuck up his shit by sticking their snouts where they don't belong.

I finally caught up with this flick on Netflix Instant Streaming aka The Greatest Invention Of The Past 50 Years. I love Netflix Instant, and if I could marry it, I would. I would go through the proper channels to make the marriage official, and they'd ask "Is Netflix Instant a man or a woman, because if it's a man, we can only recognize your union as a domestic partnership" and I'd tell them that Netflix Instant is not only a woman, but if they made a movie about her life, she would be portrayed by the equally lovely & adorable Amy Adams.

Maybe it's the lowered expectations, but I was surprised by how much I ended up liking it. Sure, it doesn't stand up to much scrutiny; you'll start to see all the flaws and question some of the bullshit things that happen simply because it was written that way in the script. But then again, questioning the logic in a movie about a guy who attaches 3 people through their asses and mouths so that they share the same digestive tract might be considered, at best, a useless action. The guy who wrote and directed it, Tom Six, might be some Panama hat wearing douche, but the motherfucker's talented. He definitely has a future making generic serial killer movies for Hollywood, should he decide to go that way. Visually, the film has a great, clinically sterile feel to it (as a film about a surgeon should, I suppose); lots of super slow dolly shots and low-angle perspectives to always keep you in that disturbed mood, waiting for something to happen -- and it will.

Aside from a couple moments, this wasn't really a gory movie, I've seen much worse. It didn't make me gag or anything, but there were some wince-inducing moments, much like seeing some douchebag skater boy eat shit (not literally) on Spike's Most Amazing Videos would make me wince. It plays more on what you're imagining rather than what you actually see, it's surprisingly restrained for a movie called The Human Centipede, even when someone has to eat shit (literally). One thing that I expected and was not looking forward to was 90 minutes of muffled cries of pain and anguish, and thankfully, that's not the case here. It's more like 20 minutes of un-muffled cries of pain and anguish followed by 45 minutes of the aforementioned muffled cries of pain and anguish. Because of this, only some of my high was killed, not all of it.

The 2 actresses playing the party girls were not very good, at least for the first half of the movie when they're doing the Woo! I'm A Party Girl thing; they got better as the movie went along and their predicament went from bad to worse to I Get It God, You Hate Me. The guy who played the front of the Human Centipede was better than the girls, acting-wise, probably because most of his acting consisted of doing that rapid-fire yelling/growling the Japanese do that sounds very scary/intimidating when the men do it, but super-adorable when the women do it. He has a pretty good moment near the end, where he starts wondering aloud that perhaps he deserves this horrible fate (worse than death, I tells ya!) for all the fucked up shit that he's done in his life.

What really helps this from becoming 90 minutes of pure hopeless misery and despair is the awesome motherfucker who plays Dr. Heiter. Dieter Laser is his name, and that's an apt last name for him, because it's like he used a laser to pinpoint my heart. I know that's some Gene Shalit shit to write, but the guy's retiring soon and I'm trying to get his job in an attempt to follow my own star. Anyway, I hope Mr. Laser (which I pronounce the same way Dr. Evil pronounces the word) wins the Academy Award next year for Most Awesome Guy In A Movie. He manages to be scary and funny while still maintaining 100 percent believability and sincerity. I mean, he's doing some mad scientist shit, and he's certainly wearing some mad scientist clothes, but the dude never gets total Dr. Frankenstein on us. OK fine, he has this one moment where he's like "I DID IT!" but shit man, what else was he supposed to do, quietly nod? It's a Human Centipede!

This guy, Laser? They oughta cast him in a buddy movie with Christopher Walken. There could be a scene where Walken cooks 3 chickens and Laser attaches them together from end-to-end. Then both of them can turn towards the camera and give a wink and then all of us in the audience laugh and then some Ke$ha song begins to blare on the soundtrack and then the end credits swoosh onto the screen in a big fat stupid font -- Written & Directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer -- and then a Browning M2 .50 Caliber machine gun is brought down from the ceiling and BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM proceeds to turn us all into obliterated waves of splattered cherry pie because we deserve it.