The Bechdel Cast - The Human Centipede

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

After years and years of so many requests to cover The Human Centipede, Caitlin and Jame finally covered this feminist masterpiece. (This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow@BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast hey caitlin yeah jamie what was the last meal you ate i'm just asking well it doesn't matter because i threw it up after watching this movie. Oh, well, I was like, well, we're two friends, and we've been on vacation together,

and I was wondering what your last meal was. Here, wait, let me try again. It was definitely not someone else's poo-poo. Oh, what a disappointment. I was really hoping it was going to be someone else's poo poo. Well, well, egg on my face. And poo poo in my mouth. I didn't realize. it was a it was a you know and depending on i think the beauty of and today we are we we thought listen like there's a lot going on it's just like a really stressful heavy time and so we wanted to meet the moment with an episode about i think one of the most politically impactful pieces of, I'll just go ahead and say art.

Well, not only that. Yeah. I would call this, this is not only a feminist text. Oh, yeah. I would say that this is a feminist masterpiece. Oh, yeah. I totally agree. And so we wanted to spotlight great feminist art. Yeah. To just start April and to really just, you know, I think it's like this is a if we're talking about gigantic feminist watershed moments in cinema.

I'm shocked it took us almost five years to get to the human centipede, which is what we're covering. Yeah. And this is our probably most commonly requested episode. I think it's been requested at least 1500 times at this point. If not more, the people are just gagging on poo for us to cover this movie. And finally we're here and we're doing it so um the the time is now we first of all wanted to apologize that it's taken us so long yeah to cover it because the response as you were saying caitlin it has been really overwhelming and i feel like i'm getting

two or three messages a day same yeah to the point where people have figured out what my home address are and they're sending me handwritten letters being like where is it where is it where is it and so here it is you know it's understandably it's going to be you know a really serious episode and yeah but but i think that we're going to have a really a really rich fiberful conversation and it's just gonna be a mouthful of fiber i feel like in terms of what the episode is gonna be like what it's gonna feel like to listen to yeah so so this is the bechdel cast. It's our really serious podcast. Yeah. I apologize for laughing.

It's not funny. Prior to what's going to be such a serious. It's not funny. Yeah. This is a serious episode. Sometimes we do an episode on something you know like national treasure where we can just goof around and sometimes we do something oh flubber teehee this is not one of those episodes no this this is going to generate some very serious discourse and

i apologize for laughing because i was inappropriate we laugh humans laugh in response to fear and human centipedes and human centipedes um probably shouldn't laugh because their mouth is full they can't they can't laugh if they laugh it's muffled um yeah what if one of them one of them gets a cold and their nose gets stuffed up do they just suffocate i feel like we're introduced with kind of a cat dog dilemma with this film but it's also just like what if there was a third animal between i mean i guess with the human centipede what separates a human centipede from a cat dog is the third piece is the centerpiece because apparently if you remove the center of the human centipede all you have is a hilarious children's tv show um but but the

center the the center person really is what elevates it to a feminist text. Right, yes. Because I don't know. I mean, did you ever watch CatDog? I didn't, no. I was a big CatDog fan. And fans of CatDog and people who don't give a shit about CatDog are well-versed in just the discussion the discussion of like where does the peepee come from where does the poopoo come from does it come from the cat's mouth does it come from the dog's mouth

does it come from somewhere in the middle of the tube in the cat dog because cat dog is like a cat head on one end and then a dog head on the other end and they're just sort of like both attached at the abdomen kind of thing yeah they're just it's a long animal tube and there's a cat at one end and a dog on one end and they're just uh you know they're just siblings and they have a sweet relationship and they couldn't be more different but they're on the same tube but um pooping as far as know, never comes up in the show. And I think that that's maybe textually intentional. But there are times where, okay, so in CatDog, just to ease us into the discussion,

where I believe, and CatDog heads, please correct me if I'm wrong, I believe there are instances or perhaps a whole episode where cat gets hair balls and they come out of dog's mouth oh so that's extremely confusing because it's not like cats poop out hair balls they come out of their mouth right and so they're just kind of operating on a separate separate level well i don't CatDog doesn't sound like it's 100% medically accurate, which the human centipede claims to be. And as Jamie, you and I are both doctors. We are, yeah. We can confirm that the human centipede is 100% medically accurate. Yes, this is, if you were to do this, this is everyone would look like the

Joker except their head is attached to someone's butt. That's exactly how it would go. And oh, by the way, I mean, if this is your first episode, welcome. This is a really serious podcast that we started to really start human discussions. And I feel like our podcast is kind of a human centipede of ideas and in fact we've really we really just we started the podcast to be able to talk about this episode this is like the grand what if this is our last episode this is the grand finale this is it I feel like though if you do remember that that when you contacted me I mean I would say probably five years ago now about yeah to start discussing you know doing this show together

this was I think it took up a good hour of our discussion of like well this is obviously where we're building to or where we would want to build to but it would take at least four years right and we would need to build trust and we would need to build a listener base because we want this message to get across to as many mouths ear but mouths really and anuses as we can depending on what side of the centipede you're on and some of us are on both sides and so it it's just, it's an exchange of like, what is a human centipede if not an exchange of ideas? You know, where you know, it's this human centipede is a

metaphor. And if you're in the center, oh, certainly it's the least comfortable place to be. But are you not both giving and receiving ideas from your peers yes uh yes the answer is yes and you may in fact be the last girl as as a result uh this is the back talk um um yeah should we even i mean i you know we should this is a really serious episode i think it's really important to clarify what this show is about yes so on this podcast we analyze movies sure works of art such as human centipede from an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point.

And we've been, you know, the, the test has been evolving along like our rendition of the test has been evolving along with the show these past many years to the point where I would like to propose the newest rendition. Oh, sure. I mean, what better episode?

Do two people of any marginalized gender poop into the mouth of one another? I'm so glad you're saying this. For the end, question mark right i mean it's dialogue i i think really notwithstanding because they're they're you are introduced with a problem when you get to a certain part of this human centipede of how on earth can we pass this test if if our mothers are sewn to our dear friend's anuses but that's why I'm proposing this because we don't want to leave anyone out. Absolutely not. This test is inclusive and it, you know, people who's who cannot communicate verbally because their mouth has been sewn to the anus of some other person.

Very specific. Yeah. But, you know, it's it's representation that we had failed to see on screen before this movie so this movie really sheds a light on those people and they should be included in the in this test so i felt i felt i was i just want to start by saying I felt represented in the human centipede because I have been a clueless American white girl on vacation with a friend stumbling around. You have been that friend at many points. And so it's like, oh, what is the human centipede if not you know the worst case scenario of us on tour of us just stumbling around wherever we happen to be and if we got to the to the woods of question mark comma germany this very well could have been us that's true so it's a cautionary tale in many ways as well what What was your experience with this?

And I'd like to just call it a text. I don't want to, you know, use kind of a dismissive term. It's not simply a movie. No. No. This text, this document, this manifesto, what isn't it? Did you ever say documentary documentary i was going to say document but i was like whoo

but when you think about it could be it maybe it is a documentary what if we just don't it's a documentary we just don't know it yet a documentary, we just don't know it yet. Yeah, could be. So my relationship with this, I remember when the trailers were circulating on, I think, the internet. The trailers weren't on television or in front of any movie I was seeing in theaters. Okay, you're distancing. I feel you're distancing yourself from the human sense and I'm so sorry well I saw the trailers and I was living with I think I was living with JT at the time word caught on about this movie and I remember I remember the marketing the marketing was uh you know, you get a sense of what the movie was about based on the trailer. And I remember the claims that it was 100% medically accurate.

And I was like, well, not only that, but it looks to me like it's the most feminist film ever made. So I have to see this. This is like really, you know know an intersection of all of my interests you know medical accuracy poo-poo feminism for poo-poo feminism was i think a big discussion in the late 2000s i would qualify a lot of movies that came out in the 2000s as poo poo feminism yeah yeah yeah so we we got a hold of it somehow jt and i so i saw it in like i think it was like 2010 or maybe 2011 i don't know like you were early you were early i was an early viewer of this text it is true and i i loved it i i was like this is i feel i feel seen i feel heard i haven't seen a movie this feminist in ever so it became one of my favorite movies of all time. What about you, Jamie?

My history with Human Centipede was I honestly wasn't sure even going into because I hadn't. I feel like I have a habit in my life of depriving myself of joy. And so I hadn't seen this. I had just been kind of like intentionally depriving myself of this text for years out of avoidance and just not wanting to feel really great. I honestly wasn't sure in preparing for this episode if Human Centipede was like an online joke that became a movie or if the movie came first and then it became an online joke. Because I had not seen so i had to like go back and because you know how like i kind of thought that it was it had gone in the direction of slender man where like human centipede was this online thing and then it became ip but it turns out i was quite wrong it came from the mind of one genius and then Mr. Tom

Six feminist icon six yeah I think we should up him to seven while we're at it um Tom Six who is also uh I mean I think fascinating is an applicable word to just who he is um the tom six universe um and how he got his money is fascinating to me we'll get to that oh sure but yeah i i kind of thought this was an internet thing that became a cinematic text and was i don't know if the phrase is pleasantly surprised but i was you know artistically intrigued that it was in fact a single person's idea that i mean most of what i knew about the human centipede was just like internet jokes like because i feel like they i mean they you know ebb they you know wax and wane like the moon but human centipede jokes are always around and in fact i think there should be more of them. Let's get to waxing, folks. We need more

human centipede jokes going. Seriously. Yeah. So this was my first time really taking it all in. I felt really center of the centipede. I was taking it in and I was letting it out, you know. So it was an absolute pleasure to prepare for this really important episode I will say what is okay this is maybe I don't want to like get ahead of ourselves but what is your favorite part of humans undefeated like what's your favorite scene i do have a favorite like moment um this feels like cheating but all of them every scene i love i love that it's a tight i was honestly thrilled to be like oh it's just an hour and a half i was terrified that it would be a second longer my favorite moment in the human centipede parentheses first

sequence by the way i know we did not watch the other two um i did consider it though but i said you know what i've felt enough joy for one week i you need things to look forward to you know exactly especially especially in this pandemic it's not a binger i mean yeah you want to like prolong this as much as you can exactly my favorite moment in first sequence was when the so i you know the cops are a little too good in this movie right i don't know what german cops are like but i can assume not great right but there is a moment where when after the police have arrived, where they're like, so you made the human centipede, right? And he's like, no, no, I did not make the human centipede. But the human centipede cage is out.

And my favorite moment in the whole cinematic text is when the cop is looking at the human centipede cage and going, hmm, what is this? But it's literally the human centipede cage and it's just out there for anyone, for anyone to stumble across. So, you know, I just thought that that was a beautiful moment of, I don't, I mean, I don't even know what I would call it. You have two film degrees. What would you, what is that play there what's

going on there I mean is it irony is it it's a little bit it's you know I would classify it as a number of things it's um you know it's perhaps foreshadowing it's um it's motif it's it's allegory it is definitely oh there's a lot of metaphor going on here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's plant and payoff. It's just a lot of narrative devices all rolled into one because, you know,

this is just a really masterfully written screenplay that is just like making use of a lot of just like very effective narrative devices. I totally agree. I mean, and I had a fun like White Stripes moment trying to figure out if Tom Six and Alana Six were married or siblings. Oh, uh-huh. They are siblings.

Unlike the White, I always assumed the White Stripes were siblings, but they were dating. This is quite the opposite i see but yeah i mean this is this is an you know an o tour piece uh oh yeah from from the six family which which is kind of fun down to the editing you know tom six was one of the credited editors of course so i mean when you have this brilliant as a concept you have to be really protective of it i mean you wouldn't want to get this wrong you don't want to put this in the hands of some yay who who can't edit together the human centipede yeah i understand that he would have wanted to do that himself yeah a movie so good that non-feminine like uh misogynist icon roger ebert refused to give it any rating because it was too quote-unquote gross which i think intentionally misses the point yeah gosh

roger ebert don't get us started i already know know we're not going to refuse to give it a rating on our scale. No, we're not cowards. I already know what rating I'm going to give it, which is obviously five nipples. Oh, yeah. I don't see any reason to hold back on what we're going to be giving this movie. It's going to be five. Well, actually, actually, the human centipede featured in this film has six nipples oh that's true let's be include let's include every nipple so human centipede facts with caitlin human centipedes

at least this i mean they're i mean again i haven't seen the sequels i don't know if more centipedes get attached my understanding is and i honestly didn't fully check but my understanding is that with each passing film the centipede gets the centipede gets longer several times longer okay sure yeah that makes sense so at least for um uh what's this one called first sequence the third one the third one may in fact fact be a sent it like a full hundred. I'm not totally sure. Whoa. They might have really.

That's where it was sent it, right? That's, I mean, heightening. If you want to learn about heightening in storytelling. My God, wait. Caitlin. Yes. Really quick. Just go to the Wikipedia page for The Human centipede 3 and look at the poster

and it might be more than a hundred oh my god that is so i don't want to know anything else this is so fucked up that's a lot of people uh so yeah safe to say it gets longer than three um but but we did not we did not watch it looks like it it just gets longer with every movie and i'm pretty sure based on i consulted horror buff and friend of the cast cory johnson about this because i was like who off the top of my head can I be certain has seen all three human centipede movies? And it is her. Of course.

She said what we know already, which is that there is a message to the first human centipede movie if what you sacrifice in that is a pretty short centipede. And as the centipede gets longer perhaps the powerful message gets smaller you know it's a give and take so if you want a long centipede

it has to be meaningless if you have a short centipede you can have a powerful tight three-act structure sure of course yeah um so all that to say that the the centipede featured in this first film this first work of art has six nipples therefore that is what i will be giving this movie i will honor that i will honor that yes thank you six nipples thank you so much. So do we need to talk about anything else before I recap this brilliant narrative? I don't think so. I mean, I think that, you know, we shouldn't hold back any longer and really just like, you know, release. at least the information yeah i'd love to um feed you so to speak the recap oh yes please please please an iconic how did that not end up on an afi list feed her feed her and if you apply that to feed her knowledge it becomes this really powerful thing it all depends on the direction you're coming at it analytically sure it's a brilliant film yeah of course uh actually

let's take a quick break first you know go to the bathroom or whatever you need to do and we'll be Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

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Okay, the human centipede first sequence opens on a man. He is looking at some photos of three dogs who are seen all kind of standing in a single file line. They're in a row. They seem to be sniffing each other's butts. We don't, we don't, you know, might it be something more? And then we see that same man approach a trucker who has like pulled off the road to take a poo-poo, which is the first, the first indication that poo-poo might be featured as a motif in this film. I really thought that was a tasteful introduction of what a prominent motif was going to be because then you go back and you watch it later and you're like oh my god. I mean again foreshadowing at its finest. Incredible stuff. Yeah really really thoughtful. So the man is seen approaching this truck driver with a gun. Oh, God.

And we're like, uh-oh. Then we cut to two women, Lindsay and Jenny. They are American tourists in Germany. And they are heading to a party, but they get lost. Their car gets a flat tire. They get out and walk through the middle of the woods which i thought was really it should be said the entire beginning of the movie between lindsey and jenny pretty thoroughly passes the bechdel test oh yeah they are talking to each other about like do i want to go out do i

not want to go out what do i want to do oh my gosh do you know where we are no I don't they're having really impactful conversations and so I feel like also early on you learn like oh this is about women this is about women this is a woman's story this is an empowering story about female friendship yeah we see them interact a lot and i honestly am genuinely very invested in their friendship particularly with and we'll get there but like where their story goes you know and where their story ends i sad i was gonna feel at the end i value their friendship they seem to they seem to be like really complimentary late 2000s i like i like when i think it's jenny who's like i'm wearing shorts and high heels i'm not getting out of the car and i was like wow that is what people were saying in 2009 you know it is it is so they're wandering through the woods they're wandering through the

woods and they eventually come upon a house they knock on the door and who greets them who opens the door but the man we saw at the beginning oh but we forgot to mention that when they are stuck there the creepy guy pulls up oh yes and he hits on them he scares them this is like plot relevant so that by the time they go into the woods they are already very anxiety ridden they already feel really nervous and so i feel like you're given and i have some notes about the way that seems presented but um they've already been kind of been made to feel unsafe before they find this house so they're already on like high alert yes and this man opens the door he invites them in they're like, can you call the car company for us so that we can, you know, hitch a ride out of here?

And then he says, are you alone? Which is never a good way to start a conversation with the scariest looking person I've ever seen in my life. Yes. seen in my life yes his also that actor's name is deiter laser which is also a yes very menacing name just everything and then the more i learned about the actor and his conduct on set i'm like he just sounds like a scary scary guy yeah we'll talk about uh mr laser it's probably like laser or something yeah please our german our german listeners forgive us but i just i was like his last name is laser he's scary and then you look up the facts about production and then everyone's like no he was quite scary. Yep. Everyone agrees. So he pretends to call the car company for them.

And then he gives them both a glass of water, which he has drugged. Yeah. So the women lose consciousness. They wake up in his basement tied to hospital beds. The trucker from earlier is there as well also tied to a bed and the man um who dr heider yeah dr heider comes in and he's like he says to the truck driver that he's not a match we don't really know exactly what he means in what context but he kills the truck driver while lindsey and jenny watch on in horror what did he mean when he said you are not a match

was there a reason that he wasn't a match i wasn't sure in text why precisely he wasn't a match what was i don't know if it was like a blood type thing oh like literally a medical reason that a human centipede like all the human centipedes have to have like vibey blood types i don't well again um we should know this since we are doctors women in stem sound off in the if you're making a human centipede do the blood types need to be vibey? Are like there are certain pre-existing conditions that disqualify you from participating? I wonder what it would be. Yeah.

I mean, I know that like if you're getting a an organ transplant, for example, you have to like make sure that there's some kind of and again, I don't know if it's blood type match or some other just sort of like compatibility thing um but yeah my guess was there there was like a medical reason that the truck driver could not participate in he had to go it was nothing personal is the thing it was nothing personal with the human centipede it's never personal that's i and i love that that's a major theme in this movie um it's it's important to remember that sometimes yeah uh the fate that the truck driver suffers is uh far less bad than like the fate he would have suffered if he had yeah i think we would all agree we would rather just just die so he kind of gets off easy yeah he gets let off the hook but we still but we still need um i'm sorry did you say but like yeah i'm sorry i was trying to hit the t hard so that it would be implied that there were two of them. But we need one more but to make a human centipede.

That's when Dr. Heider comes home with a new man, Katsuro, who he has abducted. And then he explains to all of them what he plans to do so the thing with him is he is a retired surgeon yes who used to specialize in separating conjoined twins right he uses a dismissive and very dated term yes that we're not even going to repeat here but yes conjoined twins is the is the correct term to use one of the few mistakes um of this otherwise perfect movie yes yeah um so now that he is retired he has kind of refocused his efforts and takes his surgical expertise and um applies it to he's pivoting yes having a second he's having honestly like my my dad just retired and he's kind of looking for a second act and so i kind of want to show him this movie as a kind of aspirational thing of like oh you already have applicable

skills you just need to find your second act you know and so you know that the doctor's really decided on what his his second act is going to be which is that he now is obsessed with surgically joining people together but a very anus, in a chain forming the iconic human centipede. The feminist icon. And so with the three, I feel like with the three person human centipede, you really do have have um you know everyone's role is quite different and you know the longer the centipede gets the more kind of like central like if you're reaching human centipede three which that i don't know what goes on in that movie but there's like 500 people in that chain yeah that's like 498 parts of the human centipede they could fucking unionize at that point but in this point yeah but it's like if you just have three people there's one person who's

uniquely suffering as a part of the centipede and then you also have an appointed mouthpiece right the only person whose mouth is available that is. The head of the choo-choo. The head of the poo-poo train. The poo-poo. Yeah. He doesn't hate. And the one who eats from the bowl. Yes.

Et cetera. So Dr. Heider starts to prep them for surgery. But Lindsay manages to escape her restraints. But he finds her again and he says he is going to punish her by putting her in the middle of the centipede. I found this sequence to be very compelling. We see Lindsay acting with a lot of she's taking a lot lot of initiative she has a lot of agency she's fighting for her life and her friend's life and she's really like going up against the oppressor i honestly i mean going i had a lot of now i find to be ridiculous negative assumptions going into this but right at the top we see you know like a highly motivated

female character being like you know what something about this human centipede just doesn't sound right to me and i don't want to participate and she you know she she fights and she also fights for her friend and i genuinely thought that sequence was very like exciting is not the right word, but I was on the edge of my seat. Sure. Thrilling. It's thrilling. And like you said, we see a woman having agency. We see a woman like just taking the information that's been provided to her and thinking critically about it and like thinking about what she should do next so you know she's using her brain it's all pretty i mean in all seriousness like everything lindsey and jenny do in like the first act of the movie more or less make sense to me as like tourists who are panicking and who have just been scared by someone who was

aggressively hitting on them it seems like like wanted to assault them there's only one house they are like communicating with each other silently as this creepy guy is making them drinks they are like it's just like it's i don't know't know. Like, I was like, oh, you know, I'm glad that Alana Six was in the room. Because I feel like these women, given the horrific circumstances they're being thrown into, like, it didn't seem completely like, in the way that most horror and like, especially like gore movies will introduce female characters as like, completely irrationally trusting of people they don't really seem that way they just are like this is the option and we're still very freaked out and like

let's see what happens yeah i would i mean not to criticize this perfect film but um careful i know i i say this with a lot of caution but but while I see what you're saying, and I think they're characterized maybe a little bit. I don't want to say I don't want to say better. I don't. Also, I'm just like, when were still like choices that they made that I was like, oh, these are female characters written by a male horror writer. Like, which I had a point to where I got like, oh, this is the line where this has like lost. I mean, and that is like a trope of the genre or whatever. But like, what was the choice for you where you're like, I'm no longer like feeling connected to this this character's logic? I mean, just like them getting out of the car.

My thing was them leaving the road. I could see them getting out of the car if the car wasn't going to move. But them leaving the main road to me made very little sense i was just like wouldn't you just follow the road back to the town you came from ultimately and then like hope someone passed um the other thing is like it's not a great idea but you can drive slowly with one flat tire for some amount of distance. You could turn around. Like, you could turn around.

That's true. I also don't have a driver's license. So, it's like, maybe you can't do that. Like, it's not great. And it's going to, like, mess things up a bit in the car, probably. But, like, the fact that they get out of the car and then, yeah, go immediately into the woods. Going into the woods, I was woods i was just like on like it would make sense to me if they like were like oh i know something is here but clearly they don't

they have no idea where they were so they get lost immediately yeah i can't imagine myself especially in a country i know nothing about and i don't speak the language and all this stuff like wandering into the woods does seem like begging to die um so in that way and then even if you can suspend your disbelief through that because then i like challenge myself like okay what if i what if i could get myself to the doctor's house right i also i find it really i don't know maybe if you're like truly I was kind of of two minds of this I don't think in 2021 as an adult that knows better I don't think that I would have accepted a glass of water from a total stranger without watching them pour it like I feel like there's a world where I could have been like I really need water i've been wandering around the fucking woods for an hour

but let me see you just pour it from the sink you know or something like that because he's just roofying literally everyone who walks in the door truly um but but i also could, and I don't know how hard our King Tom Six is thinking about this. I also feel like when I was younger, which I think that I don't know how old these characters are supposed to be. I'm like anywhere between 19 and 35. I have no idea. I'm assuming college, right? Yeah, early 20s. When I was younger, I can see myself wanting to watch someone prepare my drink and maybe being

a little too anxious to ask and so I but I also am like how hard is Tom Six thinking about this probably um no disrespect to our our king but very possibly zero percent but I've had I don't know have you ever had a moment like that where someone offers you a drink and I immediately always when like a stranger at all but particularly a stranger who is a man offers me a drink I if I want to accept I need to know that I am watching it be prepared just because of the experience of knowing better yeah but I also was an age at one point where I would have been too nervous to advocate for myself in that way for sure I mean yeah I definitely didn't always insist on watching or it just insists on today

I would like I would just be like I'll make it myself thanks yeah or like I would even go so far as to be like let's make them together I'll come to the kitchen with you like so that there's nothing funky going on and but you know as as a as a teenager I can't I you know I don't know that I would have had the because I truly at this point in my life don't give a fuck. I just want to live. But I would probably do if I was even in like my earlier more naive days or like days of just like not being able to advocate for myself or like speak up or like, you know, just be like, fuck you. I'm making my own drink or whatever I would say now. I would I would accept a drink, but just not touch it. I just would not drink it. Yeah, I've done that too. The part of that scene

that I genuinely felt like, oh, that is definitely kind of a thing that I recognize in myself when I was younger and in college of when the guy is being really weird and then he leaves the room and then immediately you turn to your friend you're like what is going on like that i was like oh i've done that 500 times and then the second he walks back in you're like like nothing to see here i feel this is so normal for me um well i also don't think I would have gone in the house. And I understand if it's raining, they probably want to get out of the rain. That's the thing. The fact that they added the rain and the night.

I think I would have knocked on the door and asked to use the phone, but then stayed outside on the stoop and not actually gone inside the house. And I also wonder, is there some sort of and again i don't know i mean we can't we can't put ourselves in the mind of a genius artist like tom we can't really know the mind from which the idea for big brother came is like tom six thought of big brother so he's just he's just did you know that i did not oh my god so that is where tom six's money comes from he was an original director on the dutch reality tv series big brother which apparently was the first incarnation of big brother okay that obviously became an international phenomenon so he was like into some like some stuff you know and some like low-key torture um pre-human wait i'm not seeing that on his imdb oh it's in the first sentence it's he was six was an original direct oh on his uh it's on his uh

wikipedia yes wikipedia oh yeah six was an original director of dutch reality tv series big brother which has since become an international franchise so that's how he um established himself and got you know some credibility it was by the survey the abuse of surveillance tv show of of a generation um so. So there you go. I guess this is all to say that, yeah, some choices were made to have the women in the movie behave in a way that I think was pretty indicative

that those characters were written by someone who does not really understand what it is to be a woman who has to move about the world and the danger we are often in and the amount of on guard we always have to be because a lot of men put us in danger and make us feel unsafe but i would say i would say that like given i mean and in this genre there's so many brilliant women who work in the horror genre that um would have executed this more realistically but in terms of like horror movies that i'm familiar with which are mostly like american

horror movies that are probably not great and were released to wide audiences lindsey and jenny navigate the situation more realistically than a lot of horror movies I've seen. Where they're never just like wandering into a room just to be like, what's in here? Which I feel like is what we get a lot. So it's a little more grounded. And also it's, you know, it's a, and I mean no disrespect, it's a B-horror movie. So it's like certain things a it's a and i mean no disrespect it's a b horror movie so it's like certain things just need to happen but yeah but i mean but yeah so the the bar we're comparing this up against is

so unbelievably low why would you say that caitlin the bit i mean bit well I'm I'm saying that this movie rises far above the bar like women are acting not completely the way a real woman would but they're not acting so unlike you would in that situation that you're like I have no I feel nothing about this you know where it's like there were little moments where I was like oh I get that oh I got that oh I would never do that but maybe like maybe someone I know might in some situation do that you know like it didn't feel so off the wall that it was like completely in any case there they end up participating in a human centipede yeah voluntarily they don't well that's the other thing i'm like okay in in the worst case scenario of this script what if they're like pitch this to me and he's like okay so here's my idea and they're like okay um i guess like

they do not they do not consent to be a part of the human centipede. That would not be realistic. No one consents. So so we we've got some realism represented on screen here. It is. It's realism. OK, so let's see. Where were we in the recap?

So Dr. Heider. OK, so he explains his plan. Lindsay tries to escape. He's like, I'm going to punish you by putting you in the middle. They have a bit of a scuffle. She ends up in his swimming pool. I think he thinks that she has drowned. So he walks away. He clearly does not know what his own swimming pool is like because she literally just like pushes up.

Because I was kind of wondering that when he's like, I'm going to trap you. I'm like, I'm pretty sure those kind of things you just kind of push up a little bit and then you have breathing room, which is true. She's fine. Yeah. Yes. So he goes away and Lindsay takes this opportunity to go back down and try to save Jenny. So she's dragging Jenny, who I think is unconscious, up the stairs, out of the basement, out of the house. But uh-oh, Dr. Heider finds them and

shoots Lindsay with a tranquilizer. There's a lot of uh-oh moments in human centipede truly yes yeah i mean this again this movie accomplishes many things feminism uh-oh moments um it is it's a very it's a an effective horror movie it makes you feel horrified. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So then he performs the surgery, making them into a human centipede with Katsuro in the front. Yep. Lindsay in the middle and Jenny in the back. Lindsay in the middle as punishment for trying to escape. Right.

Yes. And Dr. Heder loves his creation. It's his little pet. He makes them walk around the yard. He takes pics. He takes pictures. They have a kennel. There's a kennel.

He makes Katsuro eat out of a dog food dish. It's all very fucked up. It's extremely fucked up. Yeah. it's extremely fucked up yeah and then eventually katsuro goes poo-poo into lindsey's mouth which then you have to imagine the trickle-down effect does go it's like economics it's like that economics thing that never works but in in the trickle-down system may not work in the american economy but in the human centipede it is extremely effective um and so it does it does all well that's a question i had because again this movie if if

if a woman pooh-poohs into the mouth of another woman it passes the pectal test especially if they're holding hands because they're friends exactly yeah but i don't know if that ever ends up happening in this movie because at one point dr heider is doing a checkup on all of them and he's like katsuro you're you look great you're you're healthy as a human centipede to lindsey he says you're constipated she doesn't want to poop in her friend's mouth she doesn't yeah she's like holding it in katsuro's like this i don't know this woman so i guess she'll understand i don't know i mean like i'm not gonna run it i think from katsuro's perspective he's like i'm not gonna run into her i don't know her

whereas lindsey and jenny if lindsey poop was into jenny's mouth they have to drive home together like, I'm not going to run into her. I don't know her. Whereas Lindsay and Jenny, if Lindsay pooh-poohs into Jenny's mouth, they have to drive home together. Whereas Katsuro is like, I can just go, you know, you have no idea where I'm going. So it's not a big deal. It is kind of like a one night stand thing versus a long term relationship. Sure. Exactly. Yeah. Also worth mentioning that Katsuro does not speak English. He speaks Japanese. So he is unable to communicate with both Dr. Heider or the two women. And also, like it's another way in which Dr. Heider kind of has the upper hand because it seems like when he does not want the women to know what's going on, he speaks in German. And when he does want the women to know what's going on, he speaks in German. And when he does want the women to know what's going on,

he speaks in English in a way that they can understand him. But Katsuro is kind of like uniquely isolated in this way. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, the checkup happens. And then Jenny seems to be very ill. She's not taking well to the human centipede operation. Well, she's starving. No one's giving her poo-poo. She's not taking well to the human centipede operation. Well, she's starving.

No one's giving her poo-poo. She's starving. Her mouth incisions are infected, and it seems like she's dying. Then two detectives show up to Dr. Heider's house and asks if he knows anything about some people who have gone missing. Then my favorite moment in the movie, where they see the human centipede's kennel. And the detective, I think we're supposed to believe, is the smarter detective, in that he is not the detective who immediately becomes roofied.

He is like, so what is this for? It's so funny to me when he looks at the human centipede's cage, and is like, are you sure you don't know anything about these people who have gone missing? it's so funny to me when he looks at the humans that to be the cage and it's like are you sure you don't know anything about these people who have gone missing meanwhile dr heider is acting he's acting out he really is yelling he's he's really banking on them being roofied soon based on his behavior right um dr heider then goes back down to the basement and he's like okay new plan jenny's about to die so she'll get removed from the human centipede but i'm gonna add two more people these detectives who are upstairs but before that happens the detectives leave

because they need to go they said this is another thing that i was like oh this is genuinely like sort of a funny choice where they're like we really want to inspect the house and he's like well you're gonna have to get a search warrant and they're like oh okay we'll be back in 20 minutes and in the 20 minutes things really go off the rails inside the human centipede house truly because katsuro lindsey and jenny use this as a distraction to attack the doctor and kind of incapacitate him katsuro really like he i think gives him like two brutal like debilitating wounds yes and then so they're using this opportunity to try to escape uh but the doctor is like right. He's, you know, dragging himself right behind them. And it seems like they're trapped and they have no way out.

So Katsuro kills himself. Not before making a Shakespearean monologue where we'll talk about this. But like Katsuro, we know we I i mean it's another i feel like we've done a lot of these movies recently where you know nothing really about any of the characters in terms of other than like who knows each other and who doesn't i think you i would argue you you know most about the doctor right at this point because you really don't know anything about the girls other than they're american and friends and you know nothing about katsuro other than he has been plucked you know out of his car and then he like gives this this like soliloquy at the end where he's like i've lived a sinful life i have lived

selfishly i abandoned my child and you're Katsuro, what is going on? And then he's dead. And it's just like, you learn everything you're ever going to learn about this character at like three seconds before he dies. And it's like, what? That was, we'll talk about it. But I was like, oh my God, Katsuro. Right.

And no one can understand what he is. I mean, we can as an audience because we are given the the subtitles we're given the subtitles yeah but it's like the centipede nor the doctor can understand this like very tragic thing he's just told us it made me sad yeah same everyone in the human centipede deserved better. I'll say it. I'd even go so far as to say they didn't deserve to be made into a human centipede. But that's just me. I agree.

I agree. And something that made me really particularly sad about Katsura's speech is that he didn't seem to feel that way he seemed to feel like well because of all this shit that i've done in my life that is bad and i have like done these things that were that i feel a lot of guilt about i guess this is my comeuppance i guess i just had and he's like i'm but i and i love genuinely i was moved when he said but i am still a human being and you're like yeah there's nothing you can do that would be so bad so as to deserve being a human centipede I mean

certainly not what he's describing it sounds like he's certainly made big mistakes in his life that he regrets but not a human centipede great sin it's just it was I was moved by that speech oh my god yeah same oh heavy indeed um so the movie's almost over the the the detectives come back and they discover the human centipede.

They are there. They don't know what to do. This is out of their pay grade. Then there's like a scuffle between them and Dr. Heider where they, the, both the detectives and Dr. Heider are shot and killed or killed in some way.

And then Jenny dies. So Lindsay is in the middle still alive but with two dead people on either side of her and she's like sobbing and there's no one to help and she's her life has been she's in a human centipede and that is how the movie ends i mean it's it's safe to say that she's fucked you know yes she's more or less fucked is is what you could really say about her situation let's i was shocked that that's where it ends i guess let's take a break let's take a break we'll come right back Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered there are crooks everywhere you look now the situation is desperate my name is Manuel Delia I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. Exclusively on Apple Podcasts. 24 hours. BPM 110, 120.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. all right well um we i mean during the recap we talked a fair amount about the relationship between the two female characters in this movie i you know i don't think it's a perfectly written relationship. I think that it is in terms of like, if we're going this genre specifically, it's not the worst. And I felt like, I don't know, most of my feelings about this movie get into like the themes surrounding the doctor. Yeah. So I don't know i guess let's do you have any other kind of observations about how the women in this movie are treated outside of becoming a human centipede of course right right right um as far as like character development goes yeah i just don't think a lot

of time is spent characterizing them in fact i don't even know if i could i could not tell the difference between the two women for a long time i knew curly hair straight hair that's what i knew and i also i i it felt like kind of early you found out like oh lindsay is our final girl because she is the one making an active effort to escape which I genuinely do appreciate in this genre, because sometimes it's just like, nope, like everyone here just doesn't have like any sort of judgment skills and they'll do anything and they're not going to try to escape and they're going to be very passive.

And Lindsay's kind of immediately established as the person who will be active. I feel like it would have been maybe cooler to see them both participating in this effort right but jenny is like unconscious for most of the time like most of act two and three it seems like she was like drugged maybe harder like it seems like like the drugs like affected her maybe more than it did lindsey that's what it seemed like because she's like knocked out a lot i don't know i appreciated their friendship i will say like at the end when jenny died i don't know why i didn't see it coming but when jenny died and because there is kind of this like repeated shot of like when things are the most fucked up with the human centipede jenny and lindsey will

hold each other's hands as if to say wow this is really fucked up that's what but it was like i really i thought that that was like a nice touch to connect these characters because they're the only characters in these scenes that know each other and have any history together and like having god having a female friendship at the center of the human centipede i just i thought it was nice that they they that you kind of got that repeated connection between them just to even remind the audience like oh yeah these women like really know and love each other and like what is happening to them and so so by the time that jenny died at the end i genuinely did feel like really like i don't know given what and we'll talk about kind of the behind the scenes stuff but i i thought that the actors in this movie

given truly impossible material did pretty well of like communicating their arc and i think that like jenny and lindsey had like clearly communicated what their arc was as friends and human centipedes i think that cut suro like given truly nothing until the end like you just i thought that the actors in this movie did that really made a meal of, of the poo poo because, because I was genuinely like, like the, that whole scene at the end where Katsuro is like, gives his like parting monologue and you're like,

what? And then he, and then, and then immediately after Jenny dies and the doctor, which we'll talk about him, but like, he's like the scariest villain of all time and like you did feel like I don't know I guess that my only my not my only note but

like Lindsay and Jenny sort of seemed to be on like they weren't on really separate arcs they were kind of a unit character like you were describing yeah and i kind of wish that you got more from the two because there was space for that for yeah i think their characters could have been like differentiated a bit more i couldn't really get a sense of a distinct personality from either of them or they just sort of seemed to be kind of like two characters with the same personality which was barely developed in the first place it seemed to kind of come down to like and and in a way that i couldn't really distinguish particularly but like lindsey is the strong one for some reason and jenny is the weak one for some reason but if you were asked to decide who was who in the establishing scene

it would be basically impossible you're like they're kind of acting exactly the same why would one behave one way or over the other so yeah i think they do kind of form this unit character right they also are the ones the only ones that have to eat poop um so there is that the way only women eat poop in human centipede one and i mean i mean just thinking about the behind the scenes production like these actors on this set it also means that this this writer wrote a movie where two women actors have to have their faces in someone's ass and they're topless also the entire movie yes uh-huh so let's talk a little bit about because we i know we both read this there was i i i feel like every like camp or like a niche movie we covered there is some sort of extremely useful oral history that's been done yes and i and i love

this trend i hope it keeps up this one is from vulture it was put together by kenny herzog um we're going to be pulling from the first one because i was like i just cannot interact with other movies in this series but but there is a lot like with a movie like this particularly where you're like this is the most fucked up thing you could like this is truly tom six saying what's the most fucked up thing i could think of and then i'll make a movie of it and i feel like when you are doing that it is like a responsibility of the creator to be very careful and be very deliberate with how you're treating your cast and your crew who you are you know like paying to execute vision, but you have to treat people honestly and in good

faith. And yes, so I went into this thing, being like, I hope that Tom six was very upfront about like, this is what this is. If it's really fucked up, and you don't want to do it, that's totally fine. Don't do it. But this is what it is. It does not sound like that is the way that it went but first i wanted to just mention as just kind of a way of discussing like i do think that there is a point to the first human centipede it sounds like there's not to the other ones but like the way that tom six described his conceiving of the worst thing everyone now knows for some reason like from one man's mind everyone's nightmare forever was that it sounds like it came from two places and i have a longer but like i let's talk about the production but he started he started by saying like

you know what is the worst i mean it seems like he was thinking what's the worst crime i could think of and how would i punish it and so what he thought of was child sex abuse and what is the worst way to punish a child sex abuser something akin to a human centipede and so that is kind of where this idea comes from and then it seems like and i have other stuff here too like, it seems like where he goes is building out this like Nazi doctor character and kind of taking it in this different historical direction to create this uniquely cruel punishment. But the difference with the human centipede is that the people who are forced to be a human centipede are not child sex abusers.

They're just people who this doctor perceives to be a human centipede are not child sex abusers they're just people who this doctor perceives to be vulnerable so yes and on top of that i read that writer director tom six saw some television program about like a child sex abuser and was like, ooh, what's the worst possible punishment for them? I know, stitching his mouth to the anus of a, quote, fat truck driver. So it's already like extremely insensitive thing to do. And I didn't even want to like repeat that because I'm like, I don't want to give that air. Like, I understand the idea he's communicating, it I found it interesting that he took that idea but then applied it to innocent people like it sounds like it was conceived as like what's the

worst punishment for the worst crime you can think of and then was like but then the way his script works out it's three not just innocent people but three marginalized and uniquely vulnerable people in this situation um and he's like putting language barriers in front of people and you know through dr what's his name dr scary you know like he is like this wealthy white guy who intentionally victimizes two women and a Japanese man who he holds a lot of power over, whether it's control and how he speaks to them and how he treats them physically. And it just seems like he's intentionally choosing people that he perceives to be as weaker than him. And even if you, you know, apply that logic to the trucker from the beginning, who's another white guy, but a white guy who doesn't have money and comes from a lower class. And it's like he, you know, the doctor is very intentionally choosing people that he views to be whatever, I mean, like him or i felt like that was like an intentional choice

writing wise yeah and then like you mentioned the director was trying to draw a parallel between like the events of this movie and then like medical experiments that were being carried out by nazi doctors in Nazi Germany. And like, that's where part of the inspiration of this movie came from, where he's like drawing this parallel and I guess like attempting to comment on like, Nazism and fascism. Yeah.

I mean, I can speak to that a little bit. That's as close as i could get to feeling like this movie was trying to say something i you know it's like does it make the point very effectively almost definitely not but but in terms of like creating so it's like his two intentions are definitely in conflict because his first thing was what we just talked about, where it was like, you know, if there were no rules, how would you punish the most vile crime you can think of? And he doesn't do that in this. Instead, he goes this other direction of like creating this.

I mean, I think very clearly coded Nazi doctor. He's there literally in Germany. And you're brought into this man's house and like it's not a sensitive portrayal of anything but there is i mean in terms of like reflecting any sort of realism it's like i don't even want to go too deep into it but there of there of course is a very traceable and underreported and not taught mainstream education history of medical experimentation on marginalized peoples and so this particular doctor is commenting it seems to be like on nazi doctors and there were a ton of jewish people who were medically

experimented on without their consent against their will. Some were murdered as a result. And this is an extremely, I mean, at this point, well documented, but not commonly discussed thing. And there's a great book about it that we can link in the description called The Nazi Doctors, Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide that there's many, you know, there's many commonly held medical practices today that were achieved because of these really brutal and murderous doctors from from the 20th century and it also applies to um black americans very often there's this there's the tuskegee um syphilis experiment that we can also link to. I mean, really. And then there's, of course, the genre of victimizing women but also because medical

experimentation also like very often targets women without their consent and I think that it's this is like the furthest thing from the human centipede but I was reminded of the story of Henrietta Lacks there was like a movie about it a couple years ago that Oprah was in but Henrietta Lacks was a someone who eventually died of cancer whose cancer cells were studied without her consent to create you know just strides forward in the field that have saved millions of lives since but this was a black woman whose you know a part of her body was taken from her without her consent. Her family was never compensated. She was never asked. And this is like a serious issue in the medical community. And it's like, you know, we're not the best qualified people to

talk about it, but it is like a very real thing that's going on. Does the human centipede no no but i i did find it at least i guess that i'm like working with a with a yardstick of like more than i expected um like that it even attempts to kind of touch on something like this because I honestly went into this movie thinking like, they just want to do the grossest thing they can think of and make me watch it, which is what they do as well. But there was also like at least some level of cognizance in terms of how the characters were curated. I'm not saying it's good.

I'm just saying it was more intentional than I thought it would be. Yes, I can't argue with that. saying it's good i'm just saying it was more intentional than i thought it would be yes i can't argue with that but it's again it's a matter of like intention versus what actually ends up happening on screen and like well i feel like it's i do think that like i don't know that the human centipede is trying to say anything it It's referencing more than I thought it would. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Because ultimately, I don't know that Tom Six is like,

there is some grand takeaway you should be... Unless he's really just off in this other zone I don't even recognize. I don't know that he's being like, and you're going to take away this huge it's really gonna make you think but he's just like referencing more things than I I thought he was just gonna be like mouth to butt it's gonna be 90 minutes you're gonna watch it or you're not going to which is true to an extent but like he's he is referencing some stuff that I was like oh I mean it's not saying anything but it is referencing things where

I don't know what the intention is here I mean honestly like it doesn't it's it's it's interest interesting is a very generous way to describe it but like in this oral history I feel like it seems like Tom Six is being asked what his intention is over and over and over and he is not really able to answer the question he's able to like list things he was thinking about and he's able to list things that he's referencing but he's not really able to tell you like this is the point i think the point is it's fucking gross like yeah ultimately i think that is the point. I don't know. Yes. I want to talk a little bit about like the production of it. Yes. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go through that a little more because this

there's a lot to to chew on with this oral history. Yeah. So it seems like it was presented very disingenuously to the actors and the production in general yeah i did read i think this is mentioned in the oral history that um because i'm pulling information from both that and um our favorite scholarly journal wikipedia um but like a lot of actors who came in to read for the roles of like lind Jenny or Katsuro were like, this is what this movie is. Fuck no. And then they like stormed out of the audition kind of thing.

So there was some transparency, but like, I do think that it seems like it, it is like kind of bizarre to me that you would, could get all the way into the, like, that's, I guess something that it's like,

I don't know that I've ever maybe this isn't totally true but I don't know that I've ever gone into an audition room for something that is like that much with having no idea until I'm already in the room with the director you know like yeah that even seems kind of like sketchy um right that you could get all the way into an audition before realizing what a human centipede is you know they should be more upfront about that yeah i did read that um before the actors signed on to the project they were given an outline of the script or an outline of the storyboard rather than a full script so they didn't fully know exactly what like specific scenes they were going to have to be acting out they were given sketches of how

the centipede would look so they at least knew well that's not not that part my favorite cursed quote from from this was ashlyn yenny who played jenny uh the way that her manager framed it to her when she was asked to audition was hey would you like to audition for this controversial european film i'm like oh my god could you like frame the human centipede in a less honest way than i mean it is technically a controversial european film but that's not what i think of no when i think of yeah and then i was also curious because i was like how safe were these actors how much discomfort were they in on like like physically emotionally mentally you know i just i had a feel i was just like i was so worried that i would learn that the conditions on set were like really unpleasant and

toxic and to some degree they were and regarding dieter or dieter laser mr laser um i mean he sounds like when he was in method zone he was like full tom hardy as mad mac full like like any man doing method it sounds like he was behaving in a scary and kind of like in that same way where it's like oh well he's an artist so he's allowed to treat you like shit while you're at work like that shit that we've talked about a million times that we i fucking hate yeah yeah he was screaming at the other actors he was like refusing to talk to them like between takes to like preserve the level you know the whatever who even knows but um yeah so he was being a real piece of shit on set it seems like the the human centipede itself the three were were um there was some

solidarity within the centipede yeah and i learned that they were given like massages at the end of the of each shooting day because of like the uncomfortable positions they had to yeah maintain and there were robes there was like some because that was honestly like i was just like oh is there are they being given for such an obviously uncomfortable position for an actor to have to be in were they given the correct amount of like you know layers between each other and like was there there was some of that it seems like yeah ultimately it's so low budget that i'm like i just find it hard to believe that it was totally above board. Right.

And there's also a few creepy quotes in there where the actor who played Katsuro said something kind of creepy in the oral history where he's like, I did a Skype audition and Tom was like, just to let you know, these two beautiful girls' faces are going to be attached to your ass. I was like, you're a genius. And it's like, well, that's not the best vibe to be like. That doesn't make me feel particularly good about the conditions that these women were brought into. We weren't there. Here's something we're bravely going to admit. We weren't on the set of the human centipede um i don't know i guess it's like falls into this gray area where it's like it doesn't

seem like it was completely her i most most of where i felt like uncomfortable was the pre-production stuff where i'm like you have to be super fucking straightforward about what you're signing people up for, Tom Six. You can't be like coy about the human centipede. Which he was very coy about it to at least to some degree the cast as well as financiers. Did you read this story? I don't care about that. That's kind of funny. That's just funny where he's just like yeah it's about a surgeon who conjoins people but he left out the part where it was like a mouth to anus

he just didn't say where i feel like that in the on the financier part that's hilarious but on the actor part it's really on though like if you want to build trust with people and you want them to not like sue the shit out of you lately like later on then you know you've you've got to be it bothered me that it sounds like he would be he was being a little coy about that because it's like well what do you stand to gain other than this like weird power upper hand over these relatively I mean like actors that had experience but were not famous and you would imagine not famous enough to have more power than him essentially like it just made me uncomfortable yeah I don't think that Tom Six is a very i mean he is quoted as saying that he gets quote a rash from too much political correctness so he's not a woke guy i mean he's really the human fucking centipede

like he is not he's not a woke guy i mean i'm just like okay even if you're not politically aligned with me like you have to treat your actors ethically you know like that is there is a very low bar you need to clear and it just didn't seem like at least it seems like at least once the movie was in production that there was some care taken um yeah but in pre-production and also it's just i don't know i never i never know what to think because it's like so often when actors say like oh i'm fine it's just because they want to just they just want it to be over um and not because they're actually fine but they're like well i don't want to prolong the prop like i don't want to prolong this by saying i'm uncomfortable i mean especially you know women or actors of color like who don't want to prolong this by saying I'm uncomfortable. I mean, especially, you know, women or actors of color, like who don't want to, which the whole human centipede is.

Right. And they don't want to appear difficult because, you know, if they get a reputation, they won't get cast in things. So they have to just like, kind of tolerate whatever abuse is dealt to them on set so yeah and meanwhile the the you know the main white guy is going method and screaming at everybody and so it's like there is a clear differentiation of power yes on the set i also just want to be clear i mean in terms of like the medical experimentation and Nazi doctor stuff there's just like our show is not equipped to fully unpack all of that I just wanted to acknowledge that I think that that's what's being referenced here which is not it just wasn't my understanding of what this movie was that I didn't even think it was going to attempt to reference

anything and the way that it does i i mean it's like ultimately this movie doesn't accomplish anything but i don't think that anyone was like shocked by that i don't know i found there was a fun friend of the cast karina longworth quote in that that i wanted to share just because like she she was i i think this was like pre-podcast and she was a full-time um film reviewer at this time but what she said was the reaction i had of wanting to throw up is a visceral thing and the movie showed a certain kind of skill in getting that reaction out of me for what it was the human centipede was perfect and it's like i feel like that's like the true theme of the human centipede is that it's fucking the grossest thing that anyone has ever thought of in their entire life yes but but

they're but but within that they are like putting some historical context and they are putting two women women and an asian man in the human centipede exclusively and there is like i don't i mean it's like it doesn't really matter if tom six doesn't want to talk about the politics of what he's doing what he's doing his his choices are intentional here you know yeah um just a little bit about the inclusion of the character of katsuro who is played by akihiro kitamura who's been in a bunch of like a bunch of i was going through his filmography and like this actor has been in a lot of wild movies um what i was reading about that character is basically katsuro was included simply to create a language barrier between him and like the two women and also the doctor so basically you get an inclusion of an asian character but it's only for that reason

which uh again is not the inclusion that we're hoping for in film well absolutely no absolutely not like like no question mark there it absolutely isn't and i mean longer, I guess, than I expected in The Human Centipede for someone to die. But the first person who dies is the only non-white person in the cast. Katsuro is the first person to die. Everyone, you know, it's kind of a row of dominoes. But I feel like that keeps with that classic horror trope

of a white person is never the first person to die in a horror movie or in a thriller gore movie like this and the human centipede kind of upholds that i mean unless you're you're including the truck driver who's killed first oh i guess i i guess i meant like of the cast that we know sure sure um i don't i don't even know what the truck driver's name was. But yeah, I mean, I think that it's, I would be curious, I guess. I'm like, I don't know if I really want to know what anyone who was in the human centipede,

what's on their mind right now. Maybe not. But I think that it's, I think it just shows like, that seems like a Tom six problem of like yeah just so like oh well i need to introduce an obstacle and what is the way i can do this and it's just so do you know what i mean yes yeah it's just so like white guy brain to be like oh this would be oh this is perfect because it's it's not like intentional inclusion

in any way shape or form yeah and it seems like he's choosing people that the doctor would feel comfortable victimizing too which introduces this whole other layer of fucked up in this right and then and again i'm i'm pulling from wikipedia here here, but it says Katsuro's position in the centipede being like the first one, sets up the opportunity for the doctor and the male victim of the centipede to fight toward the climax of the film end quote which reads to me like tom six couldn't envision a scenario in which a woman would fight a man okay i thought that was an interesting choice too that katsuro is at the front of the like i guess i saw that going two directions and I always I'm kind of assuming that Tom Six is going in the less well thought out direction which is that yeah like he's just like oh well I don't want a woman at the front she'll just be yelling and screaming all day like and which is it's it's

frustrating because it's like Lindsay you know we've been introduced to Lindsay as like oh this is the you know this is our female character that we're kind of like rooting for and seems like she kind of has the smarts and the ability and you know like know how to get out of this situation but then she is punished and then after she's punished she kind of disappears like there's not really anything she does after that that is like oh there's that scrappy lindsey we knew from the beginning who got out of the situation and it seemed i mean i guess it's like if this were a real life situation maybe but it's like in terms of plot it doesn't even really make a ton of sense to me that you would establish this kind of like this female character with agency have her be punished and then have kind

of nothing happen after that right it seems like a there was so much setup that like a lot of the setup i didn't even dislike that i was like oh okay but then she doesn't do anything for the rest of the movie she's stuck in the middle of which is like realistically i guess probably what would happen but in terms of like a three-act structure it's like i was assuming someone was gonna unsew themselves or like something was gonna happen or like they would find a way to like communicate with katsuro or like there was just the i guess it's like foolish of me to be like the human centipede was so disempowered but like but i just thought because you are like the doctor is so intentionally creating this so that they can't possibly

communicate with each other because it does seem like that's the other that was the thing that i was like oh maybe he's trying to do that by introducing uh the the only person who can speak no one can understand what they're saying because like Katsuro is the only person in the room who speaks Japanese. Right. And I'm like, maybe that was his. But like, I don't even really want to give Tom Six that much credit. I just like I just wish that the human centipede had been able to communicate or like there had been some sort of moment other than because i mean and it was exciting to see katsuro stab the doctor and shit like that like that was cool and he is our only non-white character in the entire fucking movie so i'm like i'm glad that he

had those moments of agency and like taking charge of the situation but i would have rather have seen that with them like working together you know or like connecting because it's so it makes it even more upsetting when katsuro makes this like tragic speech at the end that no one can understand and just no one ever gets to know him and then he dies like it's so that what are you trying to say with that tom six that's so fucking depressing it's like yeah like i i mean and i just don't believe that tom six is actually trying to say anything with that i think he's just like well he's at the front of the human centipede what do you want like but yeah i mean he's written a script and made a movie where the protagonist who is a woman loses all of her agency half at the

midpoint of the movie and then doesn't she's not even the protagonist by the end right who is the protect like is there one like is it the doctor right the doctor i mean the the movie starts to focus so much on the doctor, especially post surgery, because that's what happens when you sew people's mouths to other people's anuses, they can't talk anymore. There's not going to be much dialogue. They can't do much.

Then the movie focuses on the doctor and kind of like what he's up to. And not that we're rooting for him, but like, it's such a weird writing choice. It is. Yeah. Like, I feel like it does get into the

like factor of and i don't want to like let tom six off the hook in any way here because he's making a lot of racist and misogynist choices in kind of like like he's referencing this clear racism and misogyny that this doctor has but he's not really like it's not going anywhere so it's kind of right he's just racism and misogyny that's happening on screen that isn't going anywhere yeah but like i just kept waiting for like well lindsey's got like lindsey's gonna find a pen you know like someone's gonna find a way of communicating with somebody they're gonna be able to like i it's just i don't know i feel like i'm trying to think of like another movie example where this happens but it's like characters with language barriers find ways to communicate with each other in other movies and in life you know and it's like

i just thought that that was going to happen at some point like i thought that it was like okay so we have this like pretty sizable language barrier between these characters that's why it's going to be all the more like wow when they manage a bigger obstacle to yeah right and then they're going to manage to overcome it and the doctor's going to be shocked and like it's going to be really exciting but then they just they just don't and they just stay a human centipede and jenny i mean it's like if you think Lindsay disappears, where does Jenny go? Like she just is dying the entire movie.

She's just dying. Now that we've fully dropped the bit. It's such a, it is a bummer because it's like a bum. A bummer? Wow. A bummer. Because it's the we're given you know three characters that it could possibly it would still be disgusting but like it would be interesting if they found a way to communicate with each other and like make a plan instead of

just like a lot of movie passing and then katsuro being like um so we should get out of here right like because that's kind of all that happened yeah and it makes sense that he would you know want to get out of there but it just like the entire caboose is just really disempowered in that uh good grief so glad we're talking about this yeah so i guess now that now that we have dropped the bit um a little peek behind the curtain this was um i thought it would be a very very funny april fool's joke if we covered i thought we should do the snyder cut but that's four hours long. So this is actually the lesser of many evils that we pitched. So yeah, happy April Fool's Day, everybody.

Yeah, let's wrap this up. I need to go die. I need to go absolutely die. Was there other stuff that kind of stuck out to you? I don't think so yeah i think that this movie references one or two interesting points but it doesn't make a point about any of them it just kind of like if you did have a pre-existing knowledge of deeply cruel medical experiments maybe your brain would be pinged at a few points in this movie of like

oh i think that that's what they're referencing there but it's not going anywhere and so you are just kind of seeing the the cruelest possible punishment inflicted onto three innocent people i just to me the saddest part of the movie is when we learn i mean we end up kind of by the end of the movie learning more about katsuro than we know about the i mean at least lindsey and jenny because he just kind of like tells his life story in his dying breath and but his whole like i've done all this fucked up stuff but human centipede really it just seems like a bit much and then he dies and you're just like oh my god i feel the same way yeah yeah there's no i mean he was like implying that he might deserve it i'm like katsuro there's just like no way that you deserve you were just on vacation yeah the

best horror movies at least for me are ones that are like clearly allegorical or have some kind of social commentary or something and this movie is just devoid of that it's i think it's like starts in an interesting place and then and then takes a hard left into just simply being the human centipede um which is a shame because it would i mean like theoretically it would be pretty fucking incredible if a like really skilled writer was able to turn this disgusting thing into an interesting conversation um but it's kind of a non-starter to talk about here because that's just like kind of not what happened right so um i give it six nipples and it does pass the bechdel test not even lying absolutely yeah um i give it six centipede legs which is the equivalent of zero nipples wait you're i thought we were no we're gonna give us okay six sorry six nipples i can't believe you bailed i can't believe you bailed on

me like that you know what that's gonna look like on the wikipedia chaos yeah but i can't have i cannot in good conscience have one of our highest rated movies be the human centipede that's so fun that's so funny yeah yeah i want i want history to look back on this show and then and then because all that means is they have to go back and listen to this episode and look at the date of release and be like oh my gosh oh sure what goof i'm giving it okay i guess like i give it six nipples parentheses as a little joke okay and i don't want to give a real rating because i don't want to think about this movie for another second yeah okay um ditto i'll do the same thing uh yeah whoever's editing the wikipedia page make sure to say parentheses as a little joke and then we're good to go well i guess that's it

for the human centipede episode yeah oh yeah i mean i guess in terms of behind the scenes it was literally all tom six and occasionally his sister so you know there was a woman at the top of production but she was from a cursed bloodline she was from tom she's tom six's sister yes um so we hope you enjoyed this yeah you're welcome everyone you know i know that this is a really that there was a high demand for this and people and and hey if you want an episode on the snyder cut um you know i was i thought that was funny until i found out it was four hours long is it really four hours long it's literally four hours like no joke it's four hours long and it's supposed to be like just as bad but in a totally different way okay so um you know this is what you get okay

april fools gotcha teehee joke joke we're still inside so everything's great and we hope you're well we hope you're safe and we hope you're making good choices and um and we and we love you we love you so much and um April Fool's fell on a Thursday you left us with no choice we had to we had to yeah and you, the usual stuff, social media, our matrion, give us, you know, give us six nipples on iTunes or Apple podcasts or whatever. Honestly, if you made it to the end of this episode, it would mean so much to simply give us five stars on iTunes. It always helps because occasionally we get a wave of MRAs and it's stressful. Yeah. Please. So please dilute their low ratings by giving us five nipples.

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