The Human Centipede II
Director: Tom Six
Cast: Laurence R. Harvey, Ashlynn Yennie, Maddi Black
Review by Brian M. Sammons
One of my all-time favorite goofball slashers of the 1980s is called Pieces. It had a poster featuring a cut up woman, a chainsaw, and the tag line, "It's exactly what you think it is." That bit of tag line brilliance could have easily been applied to The Human Centipede Ii (Full Sequence). Even if you never saw the first shocktastic slice of cinema, you probably know exactly what it is and by extension, what the sequel will have to offer.
The original movie was one of those films that quickly entered the public lexicon and it became the butt of many late night TV monologs and the punch line for countless morning radio shows. Once South Park does an episode on something, it's safe to say it's become part of the gestalt of human consciousness. Hell, my 60+ year-old mother knows about the movie, what it's all about, and she has no interest in the weird flicks I watch. And in the case of this movie, I am very glad she will never, ever see this film.
But should you?
Well grab a barf bag, you're sure to need it, and let's see if anyone can top the over-the-top Human Centipede.
This film is set in a world where the first Centipede movie was just that; a movie. That film has become the obsession of a very odd, mentally retarded man living with his bitter mother in England. This sequel is shot in black and white, probably for a number of reasons. The more charitable side of me might say that it was done as an artistic statement. In this world the first movie was "fake" but shot in color. Here in the "real" world things are not only devoid of color, but as the viewers will soon learn, far, far worse than anything that happened in the original Centipede movie. That said, the choice to go with black and white could also be because of all the gore and various bodily fluids flying all over hell and back in this movie. They might have been too much for anyone to handle in living color.
The star of this show is a demented, roly-poly, bald, bug-eyed, sweaty little troll of a man named Martian. While the villain of the first movie, the awesomely insane Dr. Heiter, had a creepy but cool vibe to him, there is nothing cool whatsoever about Martian. He is completely and utterly repulsive and reprehensible. Martian never once utters a single word, so actor Laurence R. Harvey has only his "unique" physical attributes, and acting without aid of dialog through grunts, facial expressions, and body movements, to portray one of the creepiest nut jobs ever captured on film. I'm sure in reality Mr. Harvey is a charming person, but here as Martian, he is frighteningly icky. Love this movie or hate it, and it seems many people really despise this film, credit must be given to Laurence R. Harvey for creating a nightmare inducing madman you'll not soon forget.
And that's where the praise train ends for Human Centipede Ii. All aboard the bad taste express. Remember those barf bags I told you to bring? Well you just might need them now.
Martian works in an underground parking garage where he spends all his time in his little booth, watching his favorite movie, masturbating with sandpaper, and dreaming sick dreams of making his own human centipede. One day Martian rents out a warehouse and then starts clubbing random people over the head with a crowbar. When the poor KO-ed people wake up they are naked, tied up in that warehouse, and about to face a fate worse than death. After Martian collects a dozen people for his much larger centipede, he gets to work putting them together. But whereas the psycho in the first movie was a famous surgeon, Martin is a mentally challenged parking garage attendant. That means he has to resort to using pliers for yanking out teeth and a box cutter to slice through the sinews in legs (so that the centipede properly crawls around) and to create the flaps of butt skin used to attach everyone a** to mouth. He then employs a staple gun to make sure everyone stays in place.
Still with me? Ok, on we go.
Things go both good and bad for Martin in his quest to live his dream. Good: he manages to trick one of the actresses from the original movie to come to London so he can use her in his new and improved centipede. He does this by posing as a casting director for a film (naturally), although that dialog all happens off screen as remember, Martin never talks. Lord only knows how he was able to pull that off. Bad: he accidently kills one of his would be centipede segments, a very pregnant woman, by bashing her brains in with a crowbar one too many times. Good: he makes his human centipede, has it movie around much to his simplistic, sadistic glee, and then injects everyone with concentrated liquid laxatives to recreate the infamous "feed her!" scene from the first movie. Bad: the quite literal sh** storm this causes is so overpowering that it even makes Martian sick. Good: Martian gets some jollies when he wraps his penis in barbwire and then rapes the last woman at the tail end of his centipede. Bad: the pregnant woman he thought he had killed comes to, runs for the door as her water breaks, and gets into a car, desperate to escape. In fact she is so desperate, that even once she has given birth in the car and her newborn baby falls to the floor and gets its infant head stuck under the car's gas pedal, she still stomps on the gas (and thus cruses her newborn's head) to get away.
Do I need to go on? Because I easily could, there are a whole slew of other atrocities I could recount for you, but I'd like to leave some things as surprises should you wish to punish yourself by watching this movie.
As for the extras on the oh-so lovely Blu-ray from IFC Midnight, there are a good selection for such a low budget and infamous little movie. First off there is an audio commentary track with director Tom Six and actor Laurence R. Harvey, that's as informative as it is often off-putting. Then there's a twelve minute interview with the madman who dreamt up all this human centipede stuff, Tom Six. And quite frankly, he didn't appear as pants-on-head crazy as you would think from his movies. There's a nine minute on set tour of warehouse were the centipede comes alive that has some nice behind the scenes bits, not to mention a whole lot of fake butts being tapped to actors. There is a very short special on the foley artists who make up all the disgusting sounds for this fine film. Another short is about making the movie poster. A single deleted scene (that adds nothing at all to the film), a short promo piece featuring Tom Six, trailers and teasers round out the extra goodie bag.
The Human Centipede Ii (Full Sequence) is shock for the sake of shock and nothing more. Its artistic merits are nil, save for seeing just how messed up and wrong a movie can be. Writer/director Tom Six gleefully admits that he wanted to make the most disturbing, sick, controversial, and yes, shocking movie ever made. Did he succeed? Well it would be a good race between this and A Serbian Film for the gold medal of bad taste. But with all that said, if you like to test your limits or to see how strong your stomach is, you might want to give this movie a watch. Or if nothing else, you can play a game of "how much of this crap can you take before you leave the room" with your friends and family should you wish to inflict this upon them. Of course they may not talk to you afterwards, but that's the chance you take. For the vast majority of people out there, I would say that this movie is not for you. If you read this review and were repulsed by any of the things I described here, seeing the events in the movie are far worse. Consider yourselves warned.
With the success of the After Dark Films Horrorfest "8 Films To Die For" brand, and the unanimous success of the first installment of After Dark Originals (ADO), ADF, in conjunction with Lionsgate and IM Global, has announced that they will be bringing another set of 8 terrorizing films to theaters in 2012 - After Dark Originals 2 (ADO2).
“We’re very proud of this new line of horror films and Dark Circles is the perfect film to set the tone for our ‘newest brand of fear’.” - Courtney Solomon, CEO of After Dark Films
After Dark Films kicks off After Dark Originals 2 with its first chilling feature of the new series that will send shivers down your spine. Dark Circles, written and directed by Writer-Director Paul Soter (of Broken Lizard infamy, the team behind Club Dread, Super Troopers and Beerfest) and starring Pell James (The Lincoln Lawyer) and Johnathon Schaech (That Thing You Do), will have its blood-curdling theatrical release in 2012.
“Hopefully this will serve as some kind of cinematic equivalent of birth control.” - Paul Soter, Writer/Director of Dark Circles
Description: When new parents Alex and Penny retreat from the city and move into a place outside town, the stress and massive sleep-deprivation caused by their infant has both of them seeing things in the house that may or may not exist. Persistent sightings of a strange woman has each of them wondering if they are suffering from hallucinations, or if their new home holds a dark, supernatural presence. As their fragile grasp on reality spirals into delirium, Alex and Penny find themselves nearly helpless to deal with the horrific truth of what is really going in this house.
After Dark Films has made yet another unprecedented commitment to the production of eight original horror films this year under the After Dark Originals “A New Brand of Fear” label, continuing the Company’s mantra of supporting first time independent film writers and directors. The creation of the second AD Originals slate is just another example of the Company’s commitment to the Indie film industry.
Continuing the success of After Dark Originals, the second installment will uphold the tradition of giving After Dark fans the scare they crave. The ADO 2 slate will make the genre proud, with supernatural demons, psychological killers, gruesome mysteries, and even a sci-fi sector fully equipped with aliens and a killer leprechaun. Beware horror fans, After Dark Films is giving the fans exactly the type of horror movies they asked for! Come and see for yourselves. We dare you...
Author and filmmaker Gregory Lamberson announced three new theatrical screenings for Slime City Massacre, his gooey celebration of 1980s cult films which stars Debbie Rochon and Brooke Lewis and features cameos by Roy Frumkes and Lloyd Kaufman. After a successful tour on the horror film festival circuit, SCM was released on DVD in 2011 by Media Blasters and enjoyed a limited theatrical release from iFN, Indie Film Net.
“This is what it takes to make the audience aware of a film that defies easy categorization,” says Lamberson. “SCM is horror, it’s sci-fi, its action, and its bizarro comedy. It took the original Slime City about eighteen years to develop its reputation as a cult film; it needed to fade away and be re-released and rediscovered. Our goal with SCM is to keep it out there in public, so that the people it was made for have a chance to see it on a big screen, with an audience. I’m glad that promoters keep contacting me to screen it, and not the other way around.”
First up, the slimy opus mucks up the Tampa Pitcher Theater in Florida on Thursday, February 9th, at 9:30 pm. Lamberson will do a Q&A with Lee Perkins, one of the stars of the film. The screening launches Cult Movie Mayhem’s “Screaming Cinema” series. Future entries in the series include Father’s Day, Theatre Bizarre and Herschell Gordon Lewis’s The Uh-Oh Show.
Romance is in the air one week later, on Friday, February 17th, when Las Vegas bets on slime for “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” at Theatre7, sponsored by the PollyGrind Film Festival, which named SCM “the Biggest Baddest Mother of the PollyGrind” in 2010 and awarded author Kealan Patrick Burke with its Best Actor award.
On May 26th, the slime returns to the scene of the crime at Buffalo’s Central Terminal; SCM was filmed in abandoned buildings surrounding the historic Art Deco tower in 2009. “Beyond Ghosts ParaHorror Weekend” is a three-day event to benefit the restoration of the Terminal, and Lamberson and local cast members will screen the film. Lloyd Kaufman will be on hand to show Poultrygeist, also filmed in Buffalo.
Lamberson has three new horror books being published this year, including the zombie novella Carnage Road from Creeping Hemlock Press in April; his werewolf sequel The Frenzy War from Medallion Press in June; and Tortured Spirits, book four in "The Jake Helman Files," from Medallion in October. Slime City Massacre was co-produced by Medallion Movies, a division of Medallion Media Group.
Breaking Glass Pictures has announced the March 6 DVD release of the carnage-packed horror film Wound (SRP 24.99). Director David Blyth takes audiences down a twisted rabbit hole where unimaginable horrors become reality. Wound hits hard and shows that the only way to survive is to Beware the Beast!
Legendary director Ken Russell (Oscar-winning Women in Love, The Devils, The Who’s Tommy, Altered States) hailed Wound as a “romantically charged Gothic psycho-sexual horror tale.” He championed the film as a “masterpiece,” pointing out the “gorgeous images and repulsive dream-surgery into the recesses of female consciousness.”
Wound breaks all barriers as it explores the dark worlds of mental illness, incest, revenge and death. The film follows Tanya as she searches for Susan, the mother she has never met – a mother who gave her up for dead after Tanya was brutally abused by her own father. Tanya returns from the grave to confront and possess Susan with all her deepest fears and desires, sending her mother into a state of madness and gore filled retribution. A young woman alone attempts to fight the demons that begin to haunt her days and nights - in a series of brutal confrontations with the enemies of the past that want to possess and kill her.
Wound has shown nationally and internationally in festivals such as Fantasia FF and Fright Fest London. It has been awarded best female performance for Kate O’Rourke, best director, and best film at “A Night of Horror International Film Festival. As 2011 came to a close, Wound featured prominently on many horror critics’ “Best Films of the Year” list.
Here's the trailer:
The DVD release will come fully stocked with numerous special features such as director David Blyth’s short film Circadian Rhythms, and music videos for Damn Laser Vampires and Knot Time, the official theme song for the film.
Night Train Murders
Director: Aldo Lado
Cast: Flavio Bucci, Macha Méril, Gianfranco De Grassi
Review by Brian M. Sammons
Hey remember that grueling horror movie that shocked the world when it came out in the '70s? You know; the one where the two young girls run into a group of lowlifes who sexually abuse and then kill them? The scumbags then just so happen to run into one of the girl's parents by accident and go back to their house for some hospitality. Then mommy and daddy find out what the creeps did to their daughter and so take their bloody revenge out on the killers? Yeah, Last House On The Left was a true horror classic. It was as brutally honest in its depiction of violence as it was hard to watch and it can be argued that it changed shock cinema forever.
Too bad that's not the film I'm going to be reviewing today, even though the exact same summary above can be applied to this film, word for freaking word. No, today I'm going to review the Eurotrash rip-off that came out three years after LHotL called Night Train Murders. Now to set the record straight, I love Eurotrash movies when they're nice and sleazy and not afraid to "go there." Sadly, that is not the case for this derivative and downright boring "homage" of the much better original. It doesn't do a damn thing new and worse yet, it plays things oh so safe, as if it's worried it might offend someone. There is only one semi-shocking moment in the whole film, and for something with the gall to have "more reprehensible than Last House On The Left on its cover, that's a mix of funny, sad, and unforgivable. Oh well, let's get this trip over with. So grab your tickets and let's board this Night Train.
The film begins by showing us two bad dudes in Germany. We know they're bad because they mug a man dressed as Santa and cut a rich lady's fur coat. They hop aboard a train bound for Italy to escape some German cops. Also on the train is a mid-thirties woman who we soon learn is into the freaky deaky because she accidently drops her purse and out spills some black and white photos of her in the midst of international group sex. Scandalous! Naturally the two thugs and Frau Sex Fiend are destined to meet up. Unfortunately a pair of nice, young, pretty school girls on their way to one of their parents' house for Christmas is also predestined to cross paths with the thrill seeking trio.
What's really unfortunate is that it takes ssssoooo long for that, or anything else, to happen. 48 minutes slowly tick by, over half this movie's length, before anything horrifying, titillating, or even remotely shocking ever happens. Now if this time was used to flesh out any of the five characters, this lull might be overlooked. But it's not. Instead here you can thrill to hear people discussing European politics of the 1970s, witness "hot" sex between two fully clothed people in the train's toilet, and sit on the edge of your seat as a knife fight is over in six seconds without anyone getting so much as a scratch. Seriously, the highlight of edgy for the first half of this snoozefest is when the two young girls lean against the moving train's wall because the vibrations feel good. Again I say scandalous!
Eventually what you know is coming happens; the two girls get abused and then killed by the creeps on the train, but even this is boring chore to sit through, with the exception for one sick bit I'll discuss in a second. When Last House came out the violence and sadism was like a punch to the gut. It achieved its desired effect of sickening the audience and showing how brutal and dirty violence can be. You can say it was exploitation, and it was, but it was also very real and effective. Conversely Night Train has a tepid, fully clothed rape where the woman looks more sleepy than frightened and some splashed about red paint standing in for the murders. The only effective scene to show how awful the three sadists are involves a knife and one of the young girl's virginal hymen. This was actually pretty cringe-worth and effectively portrayed without being overly gratuitous. But what does it say about your movie when a switchblade deflowering is the highlight of your film?
Anyway, the girls' bodies are tossed off the train and the trio gets off at the same stop where the girls were to meet their parents. The sicko woman has a hurt leg, and the father of one of the dead girls is a doctor, so he invites the three up to his house so he can be a Good Samaritan and help them out. Bing, bang, boom; dad learns of his daughter's murder and that the creeps in his house are the culprits so a quick, and very weak sauce revenge happens and then thankfully this movie is over. Yay.
Now as undeniable bad and boring as this movie is, the good folks over at Blue Underground nevertheless gave it their usual first class treatment in regards to video transfer for this new Blu-ray. This copy looked amazingly great for a bit of mid-seventies European exploitation. Probably better than it had any right to be. In addition to the great picture, there are a few minor extras to be found here. Other than the usual trailers, radio spots, and poster gallery, there is an interview with writer/director Aldo Lado.
Sadly I can't recommend Night Train Murders to rank and file horrorheads. If you are a fan of Eurotrash, or you loved Last House On The Left so much that you must have all the horrible rip-offs that groundbreaking movie spawned, then feel free to take a ride on this train. As for everyone else, just take the bus.
Fright Night 2011
Craig Gillespie, Director
Starring Colin Farrell and Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Review by Wayne C. Rogers
This is going to be a short review because of a lack of time this weekend.
First of all, why remake a classic horror film if you're not going to surpass it? Why waste the money when it could be used for another movie? I've never understood Hollywood's way of thinking with regards to this. Of course, nobody ever sets out to make a bad movie, but it still happens on a regular basis, especially with remakes. Maybe the new version of Fright Night got made because Steven Spielberg was willing to put up the money through his Dreamworks Production Company.
Okay, in 1985 the original version of Fright Night was written and directed by Tom Holland. Even a novelization of it came out that was by the great Craig Spector and John Skipp (authors of Light at the End). The movie starred William Ragsdale as Charley Brewster, Chris Sarandon as Jerry Dandrige (the vampire), Roddy McDowell as Peter Vincent, Amanda Bearse as Amy Peterson, and Stephen Geoffreys as Evil Ed. The film cost 9 million to make and grossed over 24 million. By Hollywood's 3-to-1 ratio, it didn't quite break even, but it got great reviews and became an instant classic in the horror genre. In '89, Fright Night 2 was made, based on the success of the first film, though it wasn't quite as good.
Now, in the fall of 2011, the remake of Fright Night hit the theaters. This time the film was budgeted at 30 million dollars. It grossed only 18 million. I don't think there will be a remake of Fright Night 2.
In the new version, Anton Yelchin (he played the young Bobby Garfield in Stephen King's Hearts of Atlantis) takes on the role of Charley Brewster and Colin Farrell as Jerry Dandrige and David Tennant as Peter Vincent.
I have to tell you that Anton Yelchin as a teenager just doesn't look or feel like a Charley Brewster to me. William Ragsdale did, but not Anton. It just didn't feel right to me throughout the entire movie. Though Colin Farrell does a good job on Jerry Dandrige and tries to have fun with it, the whole thing just doesn't ring true to me. Chris Sarandon as the vampire was utterly handsome, suave,debonair, charming, an excellent dresser, and totally ruthless when provoked. Colin Farrell simply plays a handsome redneck vampire with little of the charm and debonair. It's not his fault, but rather the writer's and how the vampire is described within the screenplay. David Tennant as Peter Vincent, who's supposed to be a big Las Vegas magician/entertainer, reminded me quite a bit of Johnny Depp playing Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. I never took his character seriously and felt it was a let down to the performance Roddy McDowell gave in '85. Forget about Christopher Mintz-Plasse. He can't even come close to Stephen Geoffrey as Evil Ed.
The highlights of the film for me were Toni Colette as Jane Brewster and Chris Sarandon in a cameo as a driver who crashes into the back of Jane's car. Toni brought a sense of freshness to the role she portrayed, especially when she flirts with Jerry Dandrige and then later sticks a Century 21 sign through his back. That was funny. Chris Sarandon was a surprise to see when he appeared in the film. I found myself wanting him to show Colin Farrell how to play a damn vampire, but it didn't happen.
The story supposedly takes place in Las Vegas this time around, but it was actually filmed in New Mexico. I live in Las Vegas, and I've never seen a suburb of new homes twenty miles outside of town in the middle of nowhere with nothing around them, except a two-lane highway. The housing in the suburb also didn't look like the houses in Vegas. They looked more like the homes in the mid-west or back east. Last, a foot or so beneath the top soil of Las Vegas is hard rock ... very hard rock. It cost a fortune to blast it out to make a basement below a home, yet Jerry Dandrige's house had an area about fifteen feet beneath the main floor that was vast in scope and filled with a ton of dirt. How did Jerry manage to do that with the neighbors living only fifteen feet away from him. Let's also not forget the multitude of vampires that crawl out hidden cavities within the dirt walls below the main floor of the house. Except for some aerial shots of Vegas that were mixed into the film, that's about as close as the production company got to sin city for the making of Fright Night.
I thought I was going to see a bit of the city. Wrong!
In the original version of the movie, facial makeup and prosthetics were used to depict the vampires in their natural state. CGI, however, was used in the remake and it clearly shows. Even in the way the blood was displayed looked like pure CGI.
Now, after all of this, I'll say that Fright Night 2011 wasn't a totally bad film. I would give the original version an A+ and the remake a B-. Buy the original for your horror collection, but rent the remake. If you love the remake, then by all means buy it.
Once last thing I enjoy about the movie was the song 99 Problems that was sung while the end credits rolled along. The tune with its banjo playing in the background reminded me of the music from the television series, Justified.
There isn't much in the way of behind-the-scenes stuff on the single disc. Maybe the Blu-Ray edition has more. There are some bloopers that aren't very funny and mostly show actors flubbing their lines. There's also the extended version of a short film called Squid Man, which Evil Ed and Charley and another guy made when they were supposedly kids, yet they appear as teenagers in the short, short. Finally, there's a music video which I stopped watching after the first ten seconds. Needless to say, it wasn't 99 Problems.
Whereas I still remember large parts of Fright Night 1985, I've already forgotten most of the 2011 version.
Editor’s Note: Wayne C. Rogers is the author of the horror novellas – The Encounter, The Tunnels, and The Cat From Hell. These can be purchased as Kindle e-books on Amazon for ninety-nine cents each.
Gary Streiner hopes to restore the Evans City Cemetery Chapel by raising the dead. Well, actually, he’s raising funds with the help of Night of the Living Dead fans.
The structure, which appears in the opening scene of George Romero’s iconic horror movie that was filmed in and around the town and cemetery, has fallen into a state of disrepair and was slated for demolition last fall. Streiner appealed to the Evans City Cemetery Association for a chance to save this piece of cinematic history and was given a one year deadline to raise approximately $50,000 to cover the cost of restoration.
In 1967, Streiner was working at The Latent Image together with George Romero and his brother, Russell Streiner, in Pittsburgh when production began on the landmark film in which he was one of the original ten investors and owners. In 2008 and 2009, Streiner organized Living Dead festivals in Evans City which attracted the largest reunion of cast and crew to date, as well as fans from as far away as France.
Streiner has leveraged the popularity of the film and the festivals and harnessed the power of the internet to bring together Living Dead fans to help with this monumental task. Grassroots fundraising activities include donations and merchandise sales through a dedicated web site and online auctions, as well as raising awareness at horror conventions and via social networks such as Facebook and YouTube. Approximately $12,000 has been raised to date.
There will be a special screening of Night of the Living Dead on February 4, which will coincide with a Facebook-based effort to have 1 million people watching the film at the same time to celebrate George Romero's birthday. The screening event will take place at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont, PA, a community located just outside downtown Pittsburgh.
Doors will open at 2:30 PM, with the film screening at 4 PM. Admission is $6 and all proceeds benefit Fix The Chapel. In addition to the film, there will be a silent auction, appearances by Mr. Streiner and original cast member Ella Mae Smith and others to be announced, plus merchandise for sale such as t-shirts and for the first time actual pieces of the chapel (great for collectors!).
For more information, please visit Fix The Chapel
