A couple of years ago straight out of the Netherlands crawled Tom Six’s bizarre body horror flick ‘The Human Centipede’. It’s marginal success more or less due to the notoriety of its content and concept. And so how do you follow such a story up, yes of course, with an even more pointless and sickening tale. The BBFC (the British Board of Film Classification) has completely rejected its follow-up feature ‘The Human Centipede II’. Empire Online has spilled the beans as to why the BBFC felt the need to reject it and by God they’re probably right to do so. With subject matter such as sexual violence, forced defecation and the main character masturbating whilst sandpaper is wrapped around his todger is pushing things a little too far for no good reason at all. Surely it has got to be in breach of the Obscene Publications Acts? We’re sure our sickest of fans will find a way of watching this full and uncut at some point in the future so if you’d rather not know avoid the spoilers below.
Here’s the report:
“The first film dealt with a mad doctor who sews together three kidnapped people in order to produce the ‘human centipede’of the title. Although the concept of the film was undoubtedly tasteless and disgusting it was a relatively traditional and conventional horror film and the Board concluded that it was not in breach of our Guidelines at ‘18’. This new work, The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), tells the story of a man who becomes sexually obsessed with a DVD recording of the first film and who imagines putting the ‘centipede’ idea into practice. Unlike the first film, the sequel presents graphic images of sexual violence, forced defecation, and mutilation, and the viewer is invited to witness events from the perspective of the protagonist. Whereas in the first film the ‘centipede’ idea is presented as a revolting medical experiment, with the focus on whether the victims will be able to escape, this sequel presents the ‘centipede’ idea as the object of the protagonist’s depraved sexual fantasy.
The principal focus of The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is the sexual arousal of the central character at both the idea and the spectacle of the total degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, and murder of his naked victims. Examples of this include a scene early in the film in which he masturbates whilst he watches a DVD of the original Human Centipede film, with sandpaper wrapped around his penis, and a sequence later in the film in which he becomes aroused at the sight of the members of the ‘centipede’ being forced to defecate into one another’s mouths, culminating in sight of the man wrapping barbed wire around his penis and raping the woman at the rear of the ‘centipede’. There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience. There is a strong focus throughout on the link between sexual arousal and sexual violence and a clear association between pain, perversity and sexual pleasure. It is the Board’s conclusion that the explicit presentation of the central character’s obsessive sexually violent fantasies is in breach of its Classification Guidelines and poses a real, as opposed to a fanciful, risk that harm is likely to be caused to potential viewers.”
‘The Human Centipede’
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