I am happy to say that one of my favorite movies from last year, The Human Centipede (First Sequence), has entered the pop lexicon, albeit in a small way.

I realize that there may be a few of you who are unfamiliar with  The Human Centipede.  For all of you unfortunates, allow me to get you caught up.  In 2009, director Tom Six unleashed a film upon the world that may be the most twisted “legitimate” film I have ever seen.  And I’ve seen some twisted stuff.  It’s a classic horror movie:  Two young female tourists are driving through Germany and their car breaks down.  They seek help at house just down the road.  The owner of the house is a mad scientist, who captures them and uses them in his bizarre experiments.  You’ve seen it a thousand times.  Except…

This mad scientist is actually a world famous surgeon, specializing in the separation of conjoined twins.  He has decided he’s doing it backwards.  Now he wants to sew people together.

The squeamish among you may want to stop reading this right about now.

Dr. Heiter’s dream is to join three people into one continuous digestive system.  That’s right; he wants to sew them together… ass-to-mouth.  It’s not a spoiler to tell you – he succeeds.  And while I’ll acknowledge that this sounds like a film that’s looking to get by on that thing they call “shock value”, it is, in my opinion, an amazing film that won’t get the respect it deserves because of the shock value factor.  There is a real movie behind the distasteful premise.

And let’s be honest.  He is a “mad scientist”, after all.

This isn’t a movie review, but I would be remiss not to mention that the villain in question should be immediately inducted into the mad scientist hall of fame.  In the role of Dr Heiter, Dieter Laser (yes, that is a bad-ass name, thank you very much) creates a truly iconic madman.

The film received a limited theatrical release in the US, and is available on pay-per-view in many markets.  It generated a few articles and reviews, and while many of them were negative, several seemed to pick up on the quality horror beneath the shock veneer.

And just as I was starting to fear it would fade into obscurity, I see this picture at Cracked.com. It’s from the article 27 Rejected Versions of Famous Album Covers.  Someone had sent me the link because of a different album, but when I clicked on the link, this picture is in the headline and I’m trying not to commit a classic spit-take.

Go ahead, click on the pic for a full sized view.  It’s quite lovely.

I realize that this is a bit like Navin Johnson’s delight at being listed in the phone book, but when your championing a movie that involves the types of things The Human Centipede involves, you take your “wins” where you find them.  And maybe, just maybe, it will encourage some high school kid to check out a movie that, one way or another, will stay with him the rest of his life.

Lest anyone think this was just a happy coincidence, I include this still frame from the film.  You be the judge.