How to Survive A Human Centipede Film

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How to Survive A Human Centipede Film

The Human Centipede crawled into our conciseness in 2009 and shows no signs of going away. Staring life as joke about punishing paedophiles the Human Centipede franchise has mushroomed in a rather sick global phenomenon. There are now Human Centipede cat toys, dolls, necklaces, foot tattoos and even a musical. The film has been parodied by South Park and used as a cultural reference on Radio 4. There have even been Human Centipede live events. So should you find you in one of Tom Six’s happy little films how will you survive?

The simple answer is that you probably won’t.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) has seven characters of any note. Of these only Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) is still breathing at the end. However, as Lindsay has been rendered unable to do anything but crawl and is surgically attached to two corpses in a house full of dead people her fate is pretty much sealed.

Earlier in the film Lindsay did have the chance to escape. Having broken free from her bonds and convinced Dr Heiter (Dieter Laser) that she preferred to drown rather than be part of his experiment Lindsay could have run into the night to summon help. As she was in a theatre gown with no shoes and a cannula in her arm there is a good chance that she would have been believed and the cavalry would have descended. There remains a chance that she would have either been taken for a mental patient or raped by red necks but these are the risks that you have to take when fleeing from a horror movie.

Instead Lindsay makes the classic mistake of going back to rescue her friend Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie). Compassion for ones fellow man is an admirable ideal but in this case makes no logical sense. Dr Heiter already stated that his vision was for a Siamese triplet. Lindsay’s escape would have bought Jenny and Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura) enough time for her to bring back help. The grim irony is that by returning for Jenny, Lindsay ensured that her friend would eventually die from blood poisoning.  

The moral of First Sequence is that relying on anyone is a bad idea. If the girls had not gone to Dr Heiter for assistance he would not have caught them in the first place. By being force to rely on Katsuro Lindsay is completely trapped when he has an attack of conscience and kills himself.

Then when aid eventually does arrive, it does so in the shape of two of the most inept policemen ever to grace the silver screen. These are so ineffectual that it can be argued that the centipede would have had a greater chance of survival if they hadn’t bothered. That the policemen manage to dispatch Dr Heiter as well as themselves can actually be viewed as the final nail in Lindsay’s coffin. Had Heiter lived he may have saved Lindsay to be reconnected to another pet. Instead it is not even certain whether anyone knew that they were at Heiter’s house and Lindsay is left to a slow uncomfortable death.

The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)

Ironically as the sadism increases so do the chances of survival. In the first film it can be argued that no one survives. In the second there are at least two survivors. Those who have seen the Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), and God bless you for abusing your eyeballs the way that you did, will know that the end is slightly ambiguous. It is possible that the events of the film were simply a twisted fantasy. Only Tom Six knows if this is the case but if it is Martin (Lawrence R. Harvey) must have a psyche not even Arnold Rimmer could have nightmares about. Consequently the rest of this post will be written as if the events of the movie actually took place.

That being the case there are two ways of surviving. The first is to be very nice to the antagonist. In Full Sequence the majority of the ten who made up the centipede had in some way abused Martin and his treatment of them can be seen as a form of revenge. This is not fool proof as some of the kidnapped where just in the wrong place at the wrong time but given that you cannot control fate this is as good a way as any to try to redress the balance.

The second way to survive is to feign death.  The pregnant lady who survives does so by being assumed dead and then unlike Lindsay, in the first film, seizing the opportunity to escape. Her survival is the complete antithesis to Lindsay’s argued death. Lindsay went back to save her friend and presumably dies as a result. The pregnant lady does not even save her own newborn child and gets to live with what she has done.

Fighting however back is not a means of survival. Ashlynn Yennie (playing herself) tries this and gets stabbed in the neck for her trouble. Whether she remains alive at the end of the film is open to debate but even if she is, her chances of survival are only marginally better than that of Lindsay in the first film. Indeed given her injuries they may actually be worse.

The Bad Guys

As for the antagonists the key for their survival appears to be forward planning. Dr Heiter takes his victims as fate delivers them. Martin carefully hunts for his. Although the good doctor is the more balanced of the two it is Martin who survives to the final credits.

The key to surviving if you are going to create a Human Centipede is therefore to ensure that you carefully plan ahead and kill anyone who might catch on to your evil plan. Dr Heiter’s biggest mistake is that he creates his pet in his own home. While his house is safely remote and contains all his equipment it does render deniability impossible. Martin on the other hand uses a warehouse rented by a man he kills. This means that when he gets tired of his creation, as the antagonists in these films seem to do, he can shut the doors and let the authorities chase a ghost.

Perhaps the best way to survive as a villain in a Human Centipede film is to be sympathetic. Dr Heiter never engages with the audience. He is a cold and authoritarian figure. The audience feels nothing for Dr Heiter except revulsion.

Martin is damaged goods. Having been abused by just about everybody it is possible to feel compassion for Martin despite the fact that his crimes are greater than Heiter’s. Given the sickness of the mind that would think that recreating a Human Centipede film was a good idea perhaps being allowed to live is the greatest punishment that Martin can suffer.

How to Survive?

As was stated in the introduction surviving a Human Centipede film is difficult but it is not entirely impossible.  The mortality rate goes from roughly 100% in the first film to approximately 87% in the second. This means that the odds of surviving a Human Centipede film increase with the number of sequels. This is good news for those in Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence). However if you accept the deaths of Lindsay and Ashlynn Yennie not a single person has survived the centipede.

If you do happen to find yourself in a Human Centipede film do anything you can to escape before surgery. This might mean leaving your friends behind or accidently killing your own child but that is the price you pay for survival. The alternative is a painful and unpleasant life followed at best by being shot it in the head.

In the case of Ashlynn Yennie there is no way to survive a Human Centipede film. Her best chance is to lock the doors and windows and hope that Tom Six doesn’t call.