The Human Centipede

We have a huge number of dvds, blurays and 4k discs. Nearly all have been watched, some many times. But there is a small number we just have not got to, and we are trying to catch up. One of those was The Human Centipede, from 2009.

If you are interested in movies, you will know this film and its controversies. If you don’t, here is a plot summary (no spoilers);

We meet two American girls on the grand European trip. They are going to an obscure place in Germany for some all-night party. They get lost, the hire car gets a flat tyre and it pours.

Finally, they find a house where a strange man lets them in. He drugs them, and they wake, tied to beds in the basement in some kind of hospital or laboratory. There is a third bed with a man who is killed and replaced with a Japanese man who speaks no English.

The house owner explains that he is going to perform an experiment. He will start with the man, attach permanently one of the girls with her mouth to his anus, attach the second girl to the middle girl similarly to create a new twelve limbed creature. Food will go in one end of the first, pass through them all and out the opposite end of the last..

Realising he is a mad scientist, the girls try to escape, but fail. The scientist does the operation, and the centipede is created. Then the police arrive, and the threesome try to escape.

TRON: Ares

So, the latest TRON film has hit the world.

So many people have expressed their opinions, so our comments will be brief (no spoilers).

We saw it yesterday, IMAX and 3D. Monday is a cheap day so there was £8 off, otherwise it would have been expensive. Us and five others.

The good things: it looks great, all that red and black. The sound is good and the 3D worked well without any gimmicks, possibly the best we have seen. There are a couple of nostalgic nods, especially to the first film. And it’s less than two hours, just.

The bad things, well, some of them: lack of plot, terrible tuneless music, poor acting, no chemistry between the leads, unrelenting destruction, just bikes driving through Vancouver blowing up buildings, boring, a sequel hinted already. The female baddie, well, no, baddie’s hench person, provides the not quite sexy enough glamour. But it’s Disney.

We went because we have great affection for the first film, and enjoyed the second. The only link between this and the earlier films is a brief and token appearance by Jeff Bridges, who is there for no obvious reason other than to get the fans to go.

Is it the worst film of the year so far? No, even from the few we have seen, it isn’t, but it’s not good.

If you are a TRON fan, see it in IMAX and 3D and just let it wash over you. If not, forget it.