The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)

The Plot.

Bully prison warden Bill Boss, leading a big state prison in the US of A, has a lot of problems; his prison statistically has the highest amount of prison riots, medical costs and staff turnover in the country.

But foremost he is unable to get the respect he thinks he deserves from his inmates and the state Governor.

He constantly fails in experimenting with different ideas for the ideal punishment to get the inmates in line, which drives him, together with the sizzling heat, completely insane.

Under threats of termination by the Governor, his loyal right hand man Dwight comes up with a brilliant idea.

A revolutionary idea which could change the American prison system for good and save billions of dollars.

An idea based on the notorious Human Centipede movies, that will literally and figuratively get the inmates on their knees, creating the ultimate punishment and deterrent for anyone considering a life of crime.

I LOVED the first two....especially the second which was really surreal.

Trust me...this movie is horrible. It's made for three dollars and all it really can be distilled down to is a screaming pseudo Nazi.

There is no real plot like the first two.

The production values are way inferior as well.

I was SO hoping this would be good.

It's not.

In the slightest.

The standard for torture porn isn't exactly high but it isn't so low that you can substitute being a passable well made film with torturing the viewer with boredom, which this final installment does.

The first two at least had some kind of passable narrative and were decently shot and edited. This on the other hand can't get the basics right. The acting is god awful. Its worse than just being flat because the main character, governor Hughes, yells out every damn line he has. Even after this it still somehow has the problem of NOT BEING ABLE TO HEAR/UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE SAYING. The audio is pretty poor. The dialogue at times is muffled by the soundtrack, which is pretty pathetic. How long is the film? 2hrs and 20 minutes! If you are going to make a piece of crap then at least make it 1hr and 30 max.

So what about the "plot"? Governor Hughes is shown the first two films first thing in the film. You would think that the main character, Hughes, a over the top Texan loudmouth psychopath who abuses his prisoners, would get the idea that he has been shown the film because his accountant wants to do it for real. Nope. Instead we have a long drawn out tour of the prison. There is though a decent message to the film about the state of prison abuse and the contempt of the Americans to actually care. Sadly it beats you over the head with it in the final 20 minutes of the film.

As for the gore there are two decent scenes. There is a waterboarding with boiling water and a mutilation. I would not watch the film just to see those scenes simply because it is surrounded by 2 hrs of yelling and boredom.

Human Centipede is a sad, and surprisingly tame and boring, end to the series.

I was genuinely expecting more of the same. A horrific and disturbing body modification style horror but I actually found myself becoming bored with the incessant and insipid screaming of Dieter Laser and the profoundly bad acting of Laurence Harvey.

The First two movies were polemical and somewhat uncomfortable to watch. They were disturbing and, in many ways, were unique.

This final installment was just annoying to watch. It did not shock and the actual, 'centipede' part didn't even happen until very late in the movie.

This movie was a massive let down and the radical departure from the stylistic form of the first two movies ruined it in my eyes.

Let us hope this really is the last sequence.

The first Human Centipede movie had a certain novelty factor about it. It was meant to shock and it succeeded, thus making it somewhat watchable.

The second was a disgusting mess with no redeeming features and would likely be in my bottom 100 movies ever made.

This, is an odd creature.

So the antagonists from both previous movies return, but they both play different characters! In the second movie the first movie was made out to be exactly that, just a movie. In this one both the first and second are supposed to have been movies.

Still with me?

Adding an element of humor this third part is undeniably memorable but not for the right reasons. It aims to shock once again and pulls out all the stops in doing so.

Credit where credit is due, the lead takes the character and makes it his own and saves the film (To an extent). The Human Centipede III is disgusting, and there is barely a story but it has moments that are very hard to get off your mind so it at least succeeds there.

Not for the faint.

The Good:

Dieter Laser certainly makes for an interesting character with Billy Boss

The Bad:

Shock for the sake of shock

No real storyline

I've been a big supporter of writer/director Tom Six and his taboo-busting Human Centipede films since the beginning: I rated the first film 8/10, and gave the jaw-droppingly twisted sequel 9/10. The only reason I didn't give Part Two full marks was because I believed that Six still had a few tricks up his sleeve and would probably surpass himself with his third film.

As it happens, I was wrong.

As far as the controversial content is concerned, the film delivers numerous scenes that live up to Six's notorious reputation, kicking off with some sexual abuse, before proceeding to serve up such sordid treats as the torture of a prisoner with pans of boiling water, a nauseating castration scene, the insertion of a gun barrel into a man's stoma, the consumption of human testicles and dried clitorises, some wound-rape and coma-rape, and, of course, the creation of not just the biggest human centipede yet, but also a human caterpillar, the surgical process for both depicted in graphic detail.

But while the film doesn't wimp out on the deviancy, it does suffer from two major problems that make it a very unsatisfying experience overall. The first is the prison setting, which is so implausible that it renders the whole movie utterly ridiculous. The first two films, while unlikely, were at least vaguely plausible: it was possible to believe that a raving lunatic might try to stitch a few folks ass-to-mouth out of curiosity, but the notion that the head of a large correctional facility could do the same, with the co-operation of his staff, is absurd in the extreme and seriously detracts from the film's overall effectiveness as a shocker. Even when viewed as a black comedy, it's still a dumb premise.

The second issue I have is with Dieter Laser (the actor who played Dr. Heiter in the first film): his performance as sadistic warden Bill Boss is hugely irritating, the guy drawing out every single syllable at the top of his voice to the point where I would have liked to have seen HIS mouth sewn to someone's ass just to shut him up. Laurence Harvey (bug-eyed star of the second film) is also crap, but at least he's not quite as annoying. Both guys are out-acted by porn-star Bree Olson, who is also a whole lot easier on the eyes.

If the subtitle 'Final Sequence' is to be believed, this film sees an end to the Human Centipede series; it's a hugely disappointing way to wrap things up. Let's hope that Six's next film sees the director back on form: we need something to flush away any memories of this rather obnoxious mess.