Not a Review Necessarily: Did Tom Six and Rob Zombie Take Horror Too Far?

Sheri Moon Zombie, Sid Haig, and Bill Moseley.

The Human Centipede and The Devil's Rejects are both movies that found me needing to pause in order to regain myself while watching them. 

These two are the most jarring movies I've ever seen. 

I didn't know what sort of movie I was getting into when I rented the 2009 Dutch horror film The Human Centipede, directed by Tom Six, some time ago. 

I finished it convinced there can be a fate worse than dropping dead.

Before I saw Rob Zombie's 2005 sequel The Devil's Rejects, I watched James Rolfe's Cinemassacre review on it so I knew what I was getting into. It didn't make it any less disturbing, though.

It's the second movie in a trilogy. The preceding film House of 1,000 Corpses and the most recent and final film of this series, 3 From Hell, though disturbing and scary in their own way, don't quite cross the line as much as Rejects. At least not in the same way.

All three movies follow the twisted, sadistic, backwoods Firefly family.  

The first is its own, demented, dark ride. It's a revolting Halloween house-of-horror style movie. Blood, guts, gore, and grotesqueries are what pass for scary these days. But it does go a little above and beyond that. 

3 From Hell is more focused on its story line since audiences were already introduced to the family, especially in the second movie. It's really a follow-up movie to show them in prison, escaping prison, and fleeing to Mexico, and all the "misdeeds" they're up to along the way.

I can tell there's some influence taken from the classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as far as the Firefly family goes. And all that is in House of 1,000 Corpses. It's shocking in that Rob Zombie pure hell style of horror. 

I definitely would not recommend this movie because of its realistic violent nature that begins even before the credits are done, and gains intensity until the end.

I have to admire the way it does what it sets out to do - shock and scare. It's certainly not a fun scare, though. 

While the characters are all terrifying and played well - Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding, Sherri Moon Zombie as Baby, and Bill Moseley as Otis Driftwood - it's Moseley who terrifies me the most. 

He has a presence on screen that's more terrifying and intimidating than Linda Blair possessed by the devil himself.

Watching interviews with Moseley, and even following him on Twitter, he seems like a person who loves his fans, is down-to-earth, and just an all-around nice guy. In an interview - I think on Adam Green's Scary Sleepover on YouTube - Moseley mentioned he's generally not into horror movies. That's kind of funny because he's appeared in quite a few such as Army of Darkness, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, and the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead.   

But his portrayal of Otis is absolutely beyond chilling and, again, intimidating. His character's coldness and hardness is evident in just the way he talks. He is soullessness personified.

No doubt there are people in the world as cruel and soulless as Otis is in the movie, and heaven help us if we ever stumble upon those individuals. But in the end, they are just people...only the kind you don't want to run into anywhere. And that's how Moseley portrays him. Just a cold man who's callous, unsympathetic, and vengeful towards all of society for no clear reason. 

With Moseley, the acting is not only in his voice and appearance, it's in his eyes and demeanor. It seems natural on screen. To make a character as cruel as Otis Driftwood - a character who easily makes audiences feel fear just by watching him - shows a truly talented actor. 

In the first act of the movie, Baby pretends to be passed out in the middle of a road as a good Samaritan lady in a waitress uniform pulls over to help her. As the driver gets out to see if Baby is alright, Otis sneaks up behind her, kills her, and steals her car. Right away, we want to see him pay for his crime. We want him to pay for making us fear him.

They drive to a run-down motel to hide out for while, and call Baby's dad, Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), who poses as a clown, to meet them there. 

Meanwhile Otis and Baby hold a travelling family hostage at gunpoint in their motel room. They humiliate them in the worst possible ways.  

Otis takes one of the family's companions and one of the family members out to a secluded area. He ultimately kills them after he tells the companion, "I am the devil. And I've come to do the devil's work." 

When Otis returns to the motel, he brings back the severed face of the family member and continues to torment the family. They carry on in such a sadistic and evil way. It's one of the most horrific scenes I've ever watched. I felt guilty that I even allowed myself to sit through it. 

There's two ways to look at a movie like this. It's either a horror movie in the most truest sense of the word, challenging you to get through it (I had to pause it a couple times because I felt yucky watching it. That's the best word I can use. "Yucky"). Or, you can watch this for the sake its meant to be watched. It's not a good time, despite some humor in the story. But the way Rob Zombie and the actors, especially Moseley, mold the horror genre into something that's so honest and maybe even masterful to the genre's namesake is impressive. It's horror! The Devil's Rejects is brutal and honest. It's portrayals are awful because such violent acts in reality are awful. 

The movie has been criticized by some who believe it wants the audience to cheer for the Firefly family. I don't see it that way, but I can understand that point of view. It's like audiences taking a liking to Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter in Silence of the Lambs and the sequel, Hannibal. I chalk up that affinity to Anthony Hopkins' talent as an actor to make a sadistic cannibal murderer into an otherwise likable person regardless of his sick nature. 
A movie can make a catastrophic auto collision look fantastic. In reality, the same auto collision would be cringe worthy, terrible and absolutely devastating to someone only hearing about it. That's The Devil's Rejects. 

The Human Centipede has become well known in pop culture regardless of who has or hasn't seen it. Even South Park had an entire satirical episode based on the movie. The reputation of The Human Centipede definitely precedes it. 

I'll get the gory details out of the way. 

It centers around Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), a true mad scientist, who kidnaps three tourists and...*this detail is really disgusting* sews them together mouth to anus. The digestive track is surgically connected so food is passed from the first victim until it passes through the last victim. I know. It's a storyline that's more than disgusting.

I reluctantly have to give this film credit in that it went beyond the standard norms of SciFi horror films which take grisly scenarios and water them down as far as content goes. Teens are generally the target audience so there has to be a line drawn somewhere, even among slasher flicks. Movie makers can depict a head being severed, or a naked woman being sawed in half, but some lines still can't be crossed. I don't know what those lines are exactly. And quite possibly, neither do movie makers.

The entire purpose behind The Human Centipede seems only to cross lines - to elevate the horror genre to something even more unspeakable than before.  

There are some film enthusiasts who might appreciate that. Most other people, even fans of slasher flicks may find a movie like The Human Centipede challenging to watch. With the most unfortunate trend of internet shock videos, and the challenge people set on others to watch them (I won't bother naming a single one), a movie like Human Centipede certainly follows that dark, sick fad.       

It certainly takes horror to somewhere grotesque that horror formerly went only in underground films and comic books, and now viral shock videos. Somehow, it still maintains that fictional element. It's hard to watch, and leaves you wondering "could that really happen?" But horror can only continue to shock audiences more and more. 

In a 2019 interview with bloody-disgusting.com, which called the movie a "game changer in the world of body horror" Tom Six said, "I am all about creating original work and pushing boundaries of art/film. I hate mediocre shit. It's great to have raised the bar but not just to shock for the shock. I'm the guy that travels the seven seas while others stay safely on shore." 

Six directed the following two sequels to The Human Centipede as well. And he connected each film. Where the first movie ends, the second movie begins. And where the second movie ends, the third movie begins. It's kind of like a movie-centipede. Clever! 

But (no pun intended) I see this movie as an experiment. It's not meant to entertain and frighten like a slasher or alien movie. 

It uses realism, simplicity, and of course shock to pull this off. Audiences still squirm at the sight of, say, Art the Clown sawing through someone's neck and then pulling off their head. They'll rub their own neck and try to look away as all the stage blood gushes out of that hole where a head used to be. But surgically attaching someone to another person, anus to mouth - nope! This movie pushed the envelope for sure, and helped bring the genre (what a movie can or can't do) to someplace new. 

As critic Roger Ebert asks, is The Human Centipede true to the genre?

"[It] scores high on the scale," he said in his review. 

Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding in The Devil's Rejects.

Meanwhile, The Devil's Rejects is sadly like a conglomeration of news articles we read in papers more often then should be reported. Where news platforms leave out a lot of gory details, Rob Zombie keeps them in.  

His wife, Sheri, once said Rob doesn't cater to teens when it comes to horror. His movie is very confident in itself. And what separates it from House of 1,000 Corpses is that the audience gets an in-depth look at the characters in the second film, and how lost they are. Still, it's not a pleasant ride along, nor is it meant to be, thanks for the talented actors. 

The point isn't to tell a good story or make a good movie. If it's a bad movie, it doesn't matter. Horror always tries to outdo itself. Once, the shower became a terrifying place to go thanks to Alfred Hitchock's Pyscho. Now, there's just about no place safe to go. Horror producers still manege to find places audiences haven't been to and been scared at the same time. Otherwise, we have to go to familiar scenarios, like abduction, and see what horrific possibilities may come about. Horror, afterall, is a "how-to" guide in facing our fears.