Writer: Tom Six
Director: Tom Six
"It ends here" proclaims the poster for Tom Six's third Human Centipede instalment and on the evidence of this movie it probably should. This one focuses upon Laser's Bill Boss, who's a prison, er, boss with a problem. His penitentiary is an embarrassment to the state, teetering on the edge of complete anarchy. Enter Cuban cigar-smoking Governor Hughes (Eric Roberts in a brief role) who tasks Boss with both sorting out his enormous clusterfuck of a slammer and saving taxpayers' money in just two weeks. If Boss fails in his mission, Hughes will make sure that Boss will be boss no more.
So what is boss-man Boss to do? His right-hand man and accountant Dwight Butler (Harvey) thinks he has the solution. You see, Dwight's watched the first two Human Centipede movies - not mentioning that he has more than a look of the main guy in the second one - and is convinced that the way to save money on prison guards and food and damage repair and hospital bills and so on and so on is to surgically attach all of the prisoners together in one enormous centipede. As you do. Of course, there's the option to remove anyone from the centipede who's finished their sentence and then the rest of it can be re-attached. That's for anyone who was wondering about that issue. Which is probably none of you.
Tom Six appears to have pitched this as a gross-out comedy rather than all out, hard-driving horror but the genuinely gross moments are few and far between and the comedy isn't that surefooted. True, the banter between Laser and Harvey is fairly amusing to begin with but this soon palls, especially as the movie wears on and Boss becomes more and more desperate/insane which is manifested in Laser SHOUTING MOST OF HIS LINES. V-E-R-Y S--L--O--W--L--Y. If this works for you, you'll probably get a lot more out of it than I did. As for me, Bill Boss became very tiresome very quickly. I spent most of the second half of the movie hoping that he'd lose his voice and just get on with assembling the damned Centipede. Like we don't know it's coming.
Wobbly accent aside, Harvey turns in a much better performance as Dwight, bringing a lot to the role - arguably a lot more than this deserves - and his character proves to be the most sympathetic and interesting of the bunch here even though his "penal reform through human centipede" idea is somewhat questionable to say the least. Dwight carries a torch for Boss's secretary Daisy (Olson) and his frustration at not being able to defend her against Boss is palpable and surprisingly effective. Also, Clayton Rohner is amusing as a disgraced medic who's practicing at the prison without a licence and who provides the surgical know-how to implement the Final Sequence. He'd be even more amusing if he didn't have to play off Laser, who spends their scenes together SHOUTING MOST OF HIS LINES. V-E-R-Y S--L--O--W--L--Y.
It's fair to say that the uninitiated will almost certainly find something that will offend - probably quite early on, to tell you the truth - but for genre fans it may prove somewhat disappointing and, dare I say this, quite dull. There's the odd truly shocking and repellent moment but for the most part it's trying so hard to be offensive that it just becomes an exercise in pushing as many buttons as possible to cause maximum revulsion. Oddly, it's this approach that renders the proceedings ridiculous rather than revolting.
The one and only thing about this movie that did genuinely offend me was the treatment of Daisy, who spends the movie being verbally and physically abused in increasingly horrific ways without so much as a sniff of ultimate, carthartic payback. Even in a film as OTT as HC3, played as broadly as it could possibly be, this kind of behaviour still comes across as worryingly misogynistic. Dressing it up as black comedy doesn't excuse it in the slightest, as a matter of fact it makes it several times worse. Given the insultingly one-dimensional character she has to breathe life into, adult movie star Olson is actually none-too-bad but why she chose to be in this is anyone's guess.
Suffice to say, Human Centipede 3 walks off with the award for being the third best movie in a trilogy that hasn't exactly set the bar high in terms of cinematic excellence. Admittedly, Six gives the Centipede's third outing a different spin to its predecessors but instead of bringing something fresh and interesting to the table it's a total misfire, tedious when it should be making the audience laugh and tame when it should be making them barf. It's a hundred minutes of my life I'll never get back.
But is it worse than Mortdecai? Now you're asking...
Sounds like one to avoid!
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