INVASION! (AKA TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN) (1999)

“You’re Dr. Karel Lamont, the Atomic Scientist from the Atomic Academy?”

“Uh, I, uh…”

“I’m Sandy Fawkes, I run the Fawkeston Inn. Where you’re staying. But of course, you know that. Perhaps we could head back there now?”

“Fine, I’ll follow you in my car.”

“I’m on foot.”

“I’ll drive slow.”

There are few movie genres as ripe for parody than the ‘50s alien invasion film. Extremely serious and pompous scientist, disbelieving townies, shoot-first authorities, mysterious outsiders who could be aliens in disguise, odd goings-on and gruesome off-screen deaths. All ingredients for a campy party and enduring parts of our of our collective unconsciousness to this day. One or more of these elements pop up on every other episode of The Simpsons, so what more evidence do you need that even the tiniest tot recognizes these chestnuts upon sight? When played straight in parody, you get comedy gold (The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra). When you wink at the camera and point at your gags, you get the opposite of gold (Scary Movie 4). And when you play your cards extremely close to the vest, you get the magic of Invasion.

Aliens have come to the sleepy fishing village of Exceptional Vista, its down but still-plucky citizens still plugging along ever since the Nut Factory closed down. The first indication of the extraterrestrials among them: all the T.V.s are out. The second hint: people are being eaten. But Dr. Karel Lamont from the Atomic Academy has arrived to save the day. Aided by Sandy Fawkes, her inappropriately-close brother, Guy, Deputy Dana, Officer Gale and a whole host of folks with sexually-ambiguous names. Possible opposition: Lilith Stern-lookalike Chris Monroe (“I sell ban-joes.”) and the sinister Michel O’Shea, “Michelle O’Shea – my territory includes Bladdertown, Left Hemisphere, Dunk, Right Hemisphere, Walkadogathon, New Imbroglio and Fetus. I specialize in vacuums.”

Unleashing the driest of humor, Invasion keeps the gags and jokes flowing from start to finish, but delivered completely straight. These characters completely inhabit this bizarre world without a hint of self-awareness, which is what makes the humor work. As Dr. Karel Lamont, when Campbell Scott announced that a body was found in the “lumpy, bumpy part of town outside of town” or that a man is suffering from a “post cranial-bump”, it sounds exactly like the dry diagnosis it’s supposed to be. Fiona Loewi, as Sandy, is so taken with the Atomic Scientist, every line of dialogue is a swoon. “I love to read. I read everything. I’ve read that it’s possible to read too much.”

“Ah, yes. But if you didn’t read, you wouldn’t know that.”

And as for the aliens, well, imagine what kind of aliens would pick Exceptional Vista to invade.

So low-key is the humor in Invasion that it will occasionally throw in a kinky curve-ball just to see if you’re paying attention. It’s implied that Lamont has a few sexual quirks, but can anyone be prepared for what he’s caught in the bathtub with? Or that the central love-affair plays out with Lamont, Sandy and a third party? (Trust me, I want to prepare you—it’s eating me up inside!—but I can’t bring myself to kill the joke.)

Shot in a easy-going and low-budget manner, Invasion is substance over style, so the special effects are less than dazzling (though the mountain scenery is nice) and the kills not-so gory. But with lines like, “He was the alpha and the omega, and he also played the trumpet.”, who needs ‘em? Funnier and shorter than Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Invasion is a home-run for the wacky. The truth may or may not be out there, but the DVD definitely is. Go watch it. 

GOING BERSERK (1983)

Arguably, SCTV was one of the most innovative and influential television comedies of its time. Not only did it launch the careers of talented stars such as John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Martin Short and Eugene Levy, but it playfully messed the idea of what sketch comedy could be. Set in the mythical town of Melonville, the SCTV station was home to a variety of bizarre and low-budget programming, spoofing network and cable access television. Each week the viewer would be transported not only to the shows shown on SCTV but to the inner workings of SCTV itself. It was fast-paced, innovative and very funny. Inevitably, the idea of an SCTV movie was pitched to the studios. That movie became Strange Brew, starring Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis as the very Canadian MacKenzie Brothers. It was not Going Berserk starring Candy, Levy and Flaherty. But it was supposed to be.

Directed by the authentically-funny David Steinberg who wrote the script with the genuinely “okay” Dana Olsen, Going Berserk is a typical mishegoss of un- or vaguely-related scenes strung together by two-dimensional characters and a works-or-doesn’t premise. Like Police Academy, Animal House, Zapped, etc., there’s a lot going on in Going Berserk, little of it makes much sense and, amazingly, even less of it is funny.

Candy stars as John Bourgignon, a wanna-be drummer who co-owns a limo company with Chick Leff (Flaherty), but they owe money to sleazy movie producer Sal DiPasquale (Levy—his sole film credit was as creator of Kung Fu U…yes, we get a clip of it). John is getting married to Nancy, daughter of Senator Ed Reese, and Sal wants to shoot the wedding. In the meantime, Reese (who hates John because he’s a loser) has made an enemy of the Reverend Sun Yi Day (Richard Libertini), a spiritual leader who teaches that greed is just your god-granted desire for things that should be yours. Reese is trying to shut the Reverend down, so Sun Yi Day and his partners decide to brainwash John into shooting the Senator. Instead of unleashing his inner killer, the awake the uninhibited asshole within, so John mortifies everyone with inappropriate humor and dick jokes.

That’s the plot.

Around this are built elliptical gags where Candy does his patented over-reactions to extreme situations and does his self-conscious laugh (parodied by Flaherty in one scene). He accidentally gets into the middle of a brewing brawl between bikers and punks and both groups turn on him for being the least hip in the room. He winds up as a drummer-cum-bouncer at an all male strip review and is forced to battle the shrieking female audience members who attempt to molest the dancers. He gets arrested and handcuffed to Ernie Hudson and the two of them enact the movie’s sole funny sequence in a parody of The Defiant Ones. When the head to Hudson’s girlfriend’s apartment for a bout of going-away love-making, Candy is forced to stand outside the door—may I remind you once again that they’re handcuffed so their passion sends him slamming face-first into the doorjamb. As slapstick, that’s as good as the movie gets.

Now, there is no dispute that Candy, Levy and Flaherty are funny guys. SCTV is proof of that alone. But their film careers left a lot to be desired—and, in Levy’s case, continues to disappoint. Outside of an amusing parody of Father Knows Best, Flaherty has zero to do in Going Berserk, not as a comedian, not as a straight man. Levy does his best sleazy producer schtick and he’s well within his wheelhouse throughout, but there isn’t enough of him, and the material gives his straight men nothing to work with. His scenes are basically obscene monologues with Candy and Flaherty merely flesh props. Candy is amiable and perfectly aw-shucks as the well-meaning John. When responding to the berating of his future father-in-law, John explains his prospects as “Oh, I would say anywhere from thirty to eleven thousand a year, sir.” His facial reactions in scenes where the world is out of control are priceless. But when he’s under hypnosis, quite frankly, anyone could play those scenes of inappropriate humor and do the same job. Dick jokes were beneath Candy and that comes through. The same can be said for all the performances—none of the characters belong to the actors (with the possible exception of Levy) and were almost interchangeable in and of themselves.

It’s actually more entertaining to let your mind wander playing “Connections” during Going Berserk. For instance, Kurtwood Smith played the villainous Clarence Boddicker in Robocop and in Going Berserk his character is also named Clarence. Alley Mills went from the mom on The Wonder Years to that of a daffy executive on The Bold and the Beautiful. Ernie Hudson was in Ghostbusters and Candy was originally supposed to star in that as well, playing Rick Moranis’s role. Didn’t Richard Libertini play a role like this in All of Me? Hey, there’s Dixie Carter. Pat Hingle went on to play Commissioner Gordon in Burton’s Batman and who thought that was a good idea? Flaherty, as Count Floyd on SCTV, introduced a movie called “The Bloodsucking Monkeys from West Mifflin, PA”, which isn’t too far from my house. I used to go to the mall there…

Save for the sequence involving Hudson, Going Berserk has little going for it. The movie has almost no energy and has a disinterested sense of pace, as if everyone involved were disappointed before the first scene had been shot. It’s not surprising that the movie has basically faded from memory. Released to DVD in 2007 to no one’s insistence, it went quickly out of print. The trio went on to be sporadically funny in other movies (The Man, Hot to Trot, Nothing But Trouble and Who’s Harry Crumb notwithstanding). The best thing I can say about Going Berserk is that SCTV is available on DVD and should be watched at all costs. 

THE MUPPETS CELEBRATE JIM HENSON (1990)

Jim Henson passed away on May 16, 1990, following complications from from bacterial pneumonia. The visionary artist, performer, writer and director left behind a legacy of inspiring and inspired work including, but not limited to, his best-known creations, The Muppets. The beloved characters from The Muppet Show, The Muppet movies, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, countless specials and performances, comprised the foundation of more than fifty years of childhood (and adulthood) imaginations, proving to Americans resistant to the centuries’-old artform that puppetry could entertain and fascinate “children of all ages”.

Following Henson’s New Orleans Jazz-inspired funeral, where Muppet butterflies were distributed among the mourners for a full singalong to “Just One Person”, a television special went into production. Meant to be a definitive tribute to the man who brought joy and wonder to so many, The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson aired only once in September, 1990. At the backstage of the Muppet Theater—a revamped design combining the classic and familiar vaudeville set with the high and low-tech television littered walls of the short-lived Jim Henson Hour—and absent Kermit tasks Fozzie Bear and the gang with putting together a big production number to honor Jim Henson. At first, the Muppets can’t recall that name but thanks to home movies of the artist as a young child, Kinescopes of his first Washington D.C.-based television series Sam and Friends, and clips of his Academy Award-winning short Timepiece, the gang quickly catches on. They’re aided by televised testimonials by Henson collaborators and close friends Carol Burnett, Harry Belefonte, John Denver, Ray Charles and Muppet Performers Frank Oz. Much of this leads to classic Muppet misunderstanding comedy—Gonzo brings in the tap-dancing oddity “Whoopie Cushions”; Rizzo and Scooter, finding Henson’s name on an uncashed paycheck of Gonzo’s, assume that Jim must have been an accountant, so they bring in the singing troupe of Merril, Lunch, Hungerdunger and McCormick financial wizards (including a Muppet Alexander Hamilton in their lineup).

Amidst the clips and testimonials, there are wonderful meta-moments when the Muppets themselves acknowledge the puppeteers who “always move when we do”. This, of course, weirds them out, so they immediately stop looking down. Many of the gang also interact with the testimonial guests on the monitors, one of such fourth-wall-breaking gags leads to a frustrated outburst from Carol Burnett, when observing that the Muppets and the performers were “like a family” gives an opening for the Muppets to bicker, loudly, while she is trying to talk. And when Fozzie discovers a folder filled with fan mail to Kermit from children across the world expressing their sympathy that “your best friend Jim Henson died”, the shock and heartbreak felt by the gang perfectly reflects the sorrow of the outside world.

This one-hour special perfectly encapsulates everything that made the Henson-era Muppets unique and wonderful: the mixture of slapstick and sincerity, character-driven hysteria and poignancy without schmaltz, and a perfect blend of traditional cornball with contemporary humor minus pandering to corporate need. When Kermit arrives at the end, it announces the passing of the torch from Henson to Steve Whitmire, who would assume all of Henson’s characters from then on. Whitmire’s first performance as Kermit seems a little hesitant, a tad timid, but game to keep the character’s spirit alive. Kermit delivers just six lines at the end of the special, but he leaves the audience with hope and encouragement that Jim still lives within everyone who loved him and his creations.

In the intervening twenty years, Henson’s Muppets went through a series of ups and downs, with ownership changing hands between the family, a now-defunct German corporation and, finally, to the Walt Disney Company, completing a deal that Henson had attempted to close just before his passing. For a while, it seemed that Disney’s acquisition was driven simply by the need to own something they didn’t possess already. The House of Mouse wasted more than a decade trying to shoehorn the characters into uncomfortable positions supporting studio-owned actor/singers for television specials like The Muppet Wizard of Oz (in which the characters take a complete back seat to Ashanti in a near humorless-retelling of the Baum story) and numerous Christmas specials, including the uncomfortably dark A Very Merry Muppet Christmas and the nauseatingly saccharine Muppets Letters to Santa. The scripts for these latter projects seemed alternately unfamiliar and disdainful of the characters. There was no attempt to include the trademark surreal silliness or out-and-out insanity that kept even the hoariest stories unpredictable.

So little was done with the characters that outside of the core cast of Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat, audience familiarity began to dwindle. A remote-controlled animatronic Bunsen and Beaker, for instance, unveiled at Disneyland in Anaheim, was met with more confusion than delight.

Kept alive by internet sites like MuppetCentral, the Muppets gradually made their way back into the hearts of new generations of fans via classic clips from the shows and original specials, paving the way for Disney to (almost grudgingly) releasing the first three seasons of The Muppet Show to DVD. And thanks to the star power and genuine love of Judd Apatow apprentice Jason Siegel, a new theatrical movie, The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made has been announced, with much trepidation and speculation as to how Siegel would manage to fit full-frontal male nudity into the mix.

With all of these tentative steps into the Muppet pool, hardcore fans still worried that Disney would spend more time trying to relaunch the characters’ merchandise than preserving their personalities. Then came the YouTube sensation of the Muppets’ performing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Utilizing both classic and new characters, the viral video recaptured the Muppets’ magical zaniness and gave fans their first sigh of relief in some time. “Bohemian Rhapsody” had Henson’s spirit on display throughout, blowing away the corporate cobwebs.

While never released officially, and seldom repeated on television, The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson is available in full on YouTube, Dailymotion and a host of other video sites. For Muppet fans who grew up after “the Boss’s” passing, the special is a terrific introduction to his life and legacy.

TRIANGLE (2009)

If you haven’t yet seen Christopher Smith’s mind-bending Triangle, go away and come back later. I want to discuss this movie and I won’t have you whining that I gave anything away.

...

Good, nice to see you again. Were you wearing that hat before?

Jess, single mom to the autistic Tommy, decides to have a day to herself. Taking up an offer to go sailing with Greg, who she barely knows, and his old friends from school (Lisa, Downey and their friend Heather, and his first mate Victor), Jess boards his yacht, the “Triangle”, and off they go a-sailin’. Coming upon an angry storm, the Triangle capsizes, Heather is sweapt away by the ocean, and the rest are trapped on the bow of the overturned yacht. Miraculously, they are rescued by a seemingly deserted oceanliner, the Aeolus. Jess experiences killer déjà vu and insists she’s been there before. While exploring the ship, searching for signs of other passengers, they discover her keys in the hallway and come upon the message “Go to the Theater” written in blood on a mirror.

Victor, bleeding from a deep headwound, suddenly appears and attacks Jess. She escapes just in time to see a mysterious hooded figure kill the others with a shotgun. The figure pursues her, they fight and she gets the upper hand. The figure’s muffled voice tells her to “kill them all” before falling back into the ocean. In shock, Jess wanders the boat, hearing music coming from an upper deck. Finding a phonograph, she turns it off just in time to hear more voices, begging for help. Through a window she sees the capsized Triangle, along with doppelgangers of Greg, Downey, Lisa, Victor and herself.

Following the group at a distance, feeling threatened by this “other her”, Jess acquires a shotgun of her own and manages to intervene, preventing the figure from shooting the new Downey and the new Lisa. But the hooded figure reveals itself to be the “other Jess”, stabbing an unsuspecting Downey and wounding Lisa. The first Jess finds Lisa lying bleeded on an upper deck, amidst a pile of other dead Lisas. As Lisa dies, Jess sees herself battling the hooded figure on the lower deck, sees the figure go into the water, watches herself retreat in search of the music, and then hears the crew of the Triangle calling again for help.

Trapped in a time loop, Jess comes to understand that the situation sets back to zero only after all of her new friends are dead—including “the other her”. And the only way for her to get back to her son is to somehow rework the events in her favor. Things get even stranger when she manages to escape the ship.

Carelessly promoted as a straight-forward slasher-at-sea, Triangle is one of the most intricately worked-out horror/science-fiction movies to come along in a very long time. It is not the “horror version of Groundhog Day” as its dismissive critics would have you believe. Every element in the story works on at least three different levels (including the title). Even the imagery fragments into visual puns telling you that what you see this time isn’t necessarily what you’ll see later. When Jess first comes aboard, she sees her image reflected in three mirrors. As she progresses, her reflection, her shadow, and of course Jess herself, is divided into multiples. The piles of dead Lisas, the swarm of seagulls over multiple bodies floating in the ocean, piles of lost necklaces—all indicate that Jess has been working on this problem for a very long time. If ever a movie required multiple viewings, it’s Triangle.

But where it has been accused of having plot holes—Victor’s attack occurring only once on screen where other incidents are depicted numerous times, for instance—Triangle provides one single clue that viewers have to take into account. It’s recounted three times, so there’s no excuse for missing it. “Aeolus” was the father of “Sisyphus”, the mythological Greek trickster doomed to roll a boulder uphill for all eternity. Each time he reaches the summit, the rock rolls over him and then back down again. This is his curse, we’re told, for not keeping a promise.

As with all Twilight Zone-esque kinds of stories like this, the time loop is brought on by Jess’s actions. This is her hell and we don’t learn until much later what she did to deserve it. She talks about being a good mother and we hear her tell her son that “everything will be all right now.” Then there is a time jump, then we’re at the dock with a confused-looking Jess, apologizing to Greg. He—and we—think she’s apologizing for being late. We know better later. The entire series of events is her boulder, her punishment for (possibly) one act of angry selfishness that horrifies even her upon reflection. And she’s doomed to try and make things right. Until that upper deck of dead Lisas sinks the Aeolus, one could presume.

Released theatrically only in the U.K., Triangle was dumped directly to DVD over here in the U.S. and a frustrating stroll through online “reviews” reveals why: “It’s stupid,” the kids say; “It makes no sense.” “Why does this happen?” Etcetera. Pitched as a horror movie, Triangle wound up, more often than not, getting caught in the wrong mitts.

As Jess, Melissa George is incredible. As she’s our anchor for the entire movie, she has our sympathies immediately due to the character-shorthand of “single mom to autistic kid”, but for a discerning viewer, she makes for good company even when we don’t agree with her actions because we can see her trying to work out the terrible situation. George allows us to witness Jess’s thought-processes. She’s spiraling into madness, gradually aware that she’s caused this Sophoclean situation, and succumbs to the obsession that this time it’ll be different. Even when she changes the outcome of one situation, she still ends up fighting herself until only one remains on that deck. 

As engrossing as it is welcome, Triangle has been doomed to its own pseudo-Sisyphian task: finding an audience in the modern morass of entertainment. Unlike Sisyphus, however, Smith’s movie has found and will continue to find appreciative viewers. In those case, the boulder will reach the top of the mountain. When in Tartarus or the film industry, rarely is better than never.

DREAMCHILD (1985)

Lewis Carroll’s novels Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are enduring classics read and enjoyed by millions since their publication in 1865 and 1871 respectively. Some of the best examples of “literary nonsense”, the novels have delighted generations of children and adults with its skewering of Victorian Manners, uninhibited children, class struggle, logic, mathematics, card games, croquet and chess. Adapted for stage, radio and screen dozens of times, the fanciful story and characters have become part of our collective unconscious. While more recently, thanks to Tim Burton, the mental image of “The Mad Hatter” has been assurped by a wild-haired Johnny Depp, prior to 2010 the character (as well as most of the others) had been defined by John Tenniel’s delicately grotesque illustrations and refined by countless artistic interpretations. But who among us is baffled by the mention of “The White Rabbit”, “The March Hare”, “The Queen of Hearts”. Okay, maybe “Jabberwock” isn’t in everyone’s lexicon (and more’s the pity), but have you ever met anyone who doesn’t know about “The Cheshire Cat”? And if you have, were you compelled to rectify this hole in said person’s education, or did you merely back away fearing he’d suck out your brain and take the knowledge back to his overlords?

But as beloved as the novels are, their inception has always been surrounded by a bit of controversy. Invented by Charles Dodgson for the purpose of entertaining a ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters, of whom he was quite fond, speculation existed even at the time that the stuttering professor, more comfortable around children than he was adults, felt more than just affection for the girls, Alice in particular. While nothing of a salacious nature has ever been proven, the suspicion has shadowed Dodgson’s reputation for over a hundred years. Was he merely the Michael Jackson of his day, preferring the company of children and nothing more, or was he inappropriately attracted to the prepubescent young lady? Not even the “real Alice” could attest to the basis of the relationship, one way or another.

It is this relationship, however, that is at the heart of Gavin Millar’s Dreamchild. Written by Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective), the movie fictionalizes the adult Alice Liddell Hargreaves’ visit to the United States in order to receive an honorary degree from Columbia University in celebration of Dodgson’s centenary anniversary. Traveling with her ward, an orphaned teenager named Lucy, upon which she is completely dependent, the elderly Alice is at once overwhelmed by the Depression-era New York as well as all the attention she attracts from journalists. One in particular, a disgraced newspaper man named Jack Dolan, connives his way into Alice’s confidence via Lucy’s affections, hoping to land an exclusive on the story. Amidst the fuss and bother, Alice insists that she can scarcely remember Dodgson at all, but finds herself reliving her past via both memory and stress-enduced hallucination. Dodgson and many of his Wonderland characters appear to her in her stately hotel room, many of them cruel and abusive now, haranguing her for being old and stupid. “You half-witted old hag,” says the Mad Hatter, “you should be dead!”

Tortured by her delusions, as well as a guilt she doesn’t quite yet understand, Alice Hargreaves acts even more cruelly towards Lucy, who is growing frustrated and miserable at sacrificing her life and happiness in order to serve the older woman.

Dreamchild is an exceptional “quiet” movie about the need for fantasy when reality is too great to bear. It is also, like Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, a study in the contrast between the adult and adolescent mind. While very English in pace, even during the hustle of the New York scenes, the movie never drags and is frequently spiced up by the appearances of full-sized Wonderland characters, including the Mock Turtle, the Griffin, the Mad Tea Party and the Caterpiller, re-enacting their scenes with Alice from the book before turning sharply more sinister as the adult woman works out her demons and fears of dying. These fantastic characters are based directly on Tenniel’s illustrations and are famously brought to life by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, masterfully manipulated by some famous Muppet Performers like Steve Whitmire, Mike Quinn, Karen Prell and an unbilled Cheryl “Gates” McFadden (Dr. Beverly Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation). Far from the whimsical Disney-esque interpretations, these are figments from Alice’s psyche, taunting her with riddles she can’t understand, “Why is a raven like a writing desk,” and, most importantly, “Who are you?”

As Alice, the usually cold Coral Browne is our central focus and guide through the Wonderland of both Dodgson’s and F.D.R.’s creations, but it’s Ian Holm as Dodgson where our sympathies truly lie. His restrained and introverted performance is the film’s heart. There’s nothing sinister or untoward about his affection towards Alice or the other Liddell sisters, even if others may see there to be. We only see loneliness and a desire to please, to be loved in any way, and there is a very quiet moment near the end, which actually serves as the film’s climax, that is nearly heartbreaking in its tenderness. While it might be easy to say that an American script would culminate with shouting and tears and, perhaps, a young Alice running in the rain to escape the oppression of her mannered world, in Dreamchild and Potter’s script, there is only sunshine, misplaced cruelty and a silent apology. Most British, but the best possible solution to the interior story.

That more research has brought to light that the fictional Alice has almost nothing in common with the real Alice, and that Tenniel based his interpretation of the character on a completely different girl, is really neither here nor there, as a certain Caterpiller might say. These arguments are for the real world, not the one explored in Alice or Dreamchild. The novel tells the story of a little girl who fell down a rabbit hole and found herself caught up in a world she didn’t understand. Dreamchild tells the story of a woman in her golden years, a celebrity by accident, who is only now understanding what kind of an impact a family friend had on her life fifty years ago. What reality has anything to do with the truth in this case is certainly beyond me.

Thanks to the success of Burton’s less-than-whimsical and nonsense-bereft adaptation of Alice in Wonderland in 3D, MGM has seen fit to quietly re-release Dreamchild d as a movie-only DVD, available through its site and through Amazon. It’s a lovely little film, mature in the best sense of the word, and well worth your full attention. In this I both mean what I say and say what I mean.

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) (2009)

In a recent article on CNN.com, journalist Breeanna Hare posits that The Human Centipede is the most disturbing movie ever made. And I’m here to answer to the affirmative: The Human Centipede is the most disturbing movie ever made. Provided you’ve never borne witness to Pier Paolo Passolini’s Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, or In a Glass Cage, or Cannibal Holocaust, or Fred Vogel’s August Underground, or Men Behind the Sun, or Takashi Miike’s Imprint, or…

There’s a lot of chest-beating and rending of garments in the comment section following the article, including a lot of trumpeting that freedom of speech should have its limits, that no one should be allowed to make such a movie. Once you take sheer stupidity with a grain of salt (and anyone who calls for any limitations to be placed on the Bill of Rights is an abject, short-sighted moron), you start to wonder if all the hype wasn’t actually generated by the movie’s distributors. This sort of sturm and drang over movies and fiction has lost its attraction over the centuries to the point where it’s little more than hollow noise—Mrs. Lovejoy shrieking, “Think of the children!”

“Freedom of speech should be near-absolute--I respect and love the US Constitution--but the framers of the Bill of Rights had no idea, NONE, that American culture would someday descend to this level” reads one such post. Oh, the humanity! Oh, the depravity! Hide your heads and run for your lives, folks—this movie’s gonna give people ideas! Lord knows there’s nothing worse than that.

When you get right down to it, The Human Centipede exists because of the sheer audacity of its concept, and that’s the meat of the matter. The movie is more concept than story, and critics with more tolerance than I for this type of entertainment have pointed out that it would have made a killer short subject. As a feature running over ninety minutes, once the shock wears off, there’s little left for the movie to do but fall apart. Like the characters comprising the titular creation, The Human Centipede is a series of images stitched together to no real purpose.

“Controversial” Dutch filmmaker Tom Six presents us with this premise: mad German surgeon (as if there is any other kind in horror movies), Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), longs to create a human hybrid consisting of three bodies sharing a single digestive tract. Since the days of his successfully separating conjoined twins, he has dreamed of this experiment. He achieved it once with a trio of rotweilers but they weren’t hearty and died of a blood disease borne from the communication of feces from one dog to the next. Naturally, he expects different results from human subjects.

Enter a pair of shrill American party girls who had no idea that upon leaving their hotel they would wind up victims of all of the horror movie sins: their car breaks down, the cell phones get no service, they’re lost, they can’t read a map, they’re in high heels, in the rain, in the woods (not following the road back to civilization, naturally), and seeking help from the worst possible source, namely, Dr. Heiter. But you can forgive all of this preamble because that’s what gets a horror movie plot started. People have to do incredibly dumb things in order for the “fun” to start. When a fat truck driver fails to be a “match” for the girls, Heiter kills him and replaces him with a tourist who speaks only Japanese. The girls, naturally, speak only English. Dr. Heiter speaks only B-Movie Nazi. 

Again, this is all forgiven because, as we’ve been promised, soon we’re going to see three people attached mouth-to-anus and walk around like that and it’s gonna be awesomely gross.

But then something odd happens about midway through the film: we start to sympathize with the victims. Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie) are criminally stupid and obnoxious. It’s impossible to like them. Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura) is a cipher who we get to know only through subtitles. The three of them are one dimensional and the dimensions do not increase with the surgery. We know going in that everything is designed as shock value first and foremost and if anything else slithers out from beneath the sleaze it must surely be unintentional. Then without warning The Human Centipede achieves a goal where even the best modern horror movies generally fall short: it horrifies. Not “oh, the humanity”, not “think of the children”, but “Dear God, please don’t let anything like this ever happen to me!”

Because there is no narrative thread, the viewer can only experience the obvious pain and humiliation of the characters. Their heads, backsides, elbows and knees are swaddled with bandages to hide the obvious prosthetics, and, of course, what is unseen makes for greater disgust in the mind’s eye. We don’t actually want to see the “100% medically accurate” (as the poster boasts) procedure that sews the anus of one person into the mouth and throat of another, and after the operation we’re actually thankful for the presence of bandages. They’re there for practicality—rest assured, had Tom Six figured out a way to graphically display this procedure, he would have. Instead, we have facial scars on the girls to indicate where the incisions were made. And so they crawl around on their elbows and knees, faces buried in posteriors, for the remainder of the film’s running time, all three whimpering in agony. Even if they had the use of their mouths, the women could never communicate with Katsuro because of the language barrier. They are joined to him, forced to eat his waste, all for the amusement of one demented man.

All of this, of course, can be seen as a blatant and obvious metaphor for…insert injustice here. Misogyny? Definitely. For the women are the middle and back segments as punishment for trying to escape early on. They are subverted to Heiter’s will, eating male shit for the rest of their lives. Helpless. Misanthropy? Also definitely. Contempt for other humans is the sin both Heiter and Tom Six. That as writer he makes no attempt to humanize our “human centipede” indicates his derision towards his fellow man.

Is it also a metaphor for the film industry? Sure. All artists are tethered to others against their will, forced to swallow someone else’s shit, to achieve the vision of someone with the power.

Class struggle? Human nature? Politics? Yes, yes, and yes, The Human Centipede can represent all of these struggles, or, at least, can be rationalized in that direction. And that justification is necessary because, and be honest, you only watched it to see three people joined mouth to ass, for the thrill of the shock. So you can either dismiss the movie as trash or admit there might be something wrong with you for wanting to see this. This is an endurance test movie—just like so many others beyond those mentioned above. It’s not “torture porn” because that’s too simplistic and dismissive. The Human Centipede is both more than that and less. As Roger Ebert mentioned in his review, the movie exists in a place where the stars do not shine, so it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad.

What it is, inarguably, is effective.

As empty and hollow and mean-spirited and meaningless as the plot, the imagery and implication is haunting. “Regular” horror movies offer at least a chance of good winning over evil, even if the franchise mandates the villian’s ultimate triumph. But in the end, how could the three segments of the “centipede” possibly win? We get to witness one horrific escape attempt, their efforts tearing their sutures and spilling their now-toxic blood all over the pristine floor and we cannot help but grimace in our own phantom agony. What would “rescue” actually mean? How do you go back to “normal” life should the operation be reversed successfully? And who but someone similarly mad could possibly reverse such a procedure? How long could you last in any of the positions? The “story”, such as it is, becomes meaningless after the movie’s first act. But the atrocity—with the very weight of that word—lingers on post credits.

Personally, I have met people who have found the movie grotesque garbage and I’ve met people who thought it “awesome”. The latter aren’t particularly people I want to house sit for me, but I can almost see their point of view. The Human Centipede manages to reach a viewer on a visceral level that is almost dormant. (Some would argue “desensitized” but that might be a different argument entirely.) As a horror movie, it achieves, pure and simple.

Just as The Exorcist thrilled and horrified audiences in the ‘70s, setting a standard for gruesome excess, movies came along later that raised the tolerance level higher, “pushing the envelope” for what was deemed acceptable or gratuitous. Horror fans specifically and moviegoers in general have hardened in the intervening years. The idea that a movie could cause nightmares again is actually exhilarating. Someone will always aspire to go further, push harder, to be “horrific”. And these movies will always be sensational (and not in a “go team!” sense) and may possibly wind up just as empty.

Which may be the real reason why The Human Centipede is the most disturbing movie ever made, at least to date. Let’s forget about the upcoming sequel, “The Full Segment”, in which ten or so people are joined MTA. Let’s stare into the abyss and wonder what worse is coming from the gorge, spurned by the challenge. Rest assured, some day soon, some other journalist will be asking, is this the most disturbing movie ever? And the answer will again be, “Yes…so far.”

WITHNAIL & I (1987)

By obvious definition, “cult movies” are not for everyone. Usually “little” movies, they’re polarizing slices of entertainment that appeal to a select audience who sees something wonderful revealed to them within the context of the movie. The “cult” that grows around a particular film will defend it to the death and decry anyone who “doesn’t get it” to be woefully unhip or, at the very least, pitiable because their lives are so very lacking without embracing the truths contained within this particular movie. I’m not discussing bit “cultural phenomenon” movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or even something larger like the Star Wars series—each has its easily-recognizable fanbase that has, in the case of the former, elevated it to a rite of passage and a way of life and, in the case of the latter, transformed it into a veritable religion. Small, under-the-radar movies like El Topo, Eraserhead even Monty Python and the Holy Grail, movies whose midnight screenings were attended by devotees before the ubiquity of home video—movies filled with in-jokes and obscure imagery that only a select few will “get”. Often, the cults themselves are aided by a particular film’s initial box office failure because it allows the viewer to “discover” the movie, either by word-of-mouth or accidentally. Finding others who love the film as dearly is part of the sense of belonging this movie brings with it. It also provides the much-needed elitism to allow the viewer to feel part of an exclusive club, removed from the masses.

Bruce Robinson’s debut film Withnail and I is one such movie. Heralded as “one of Britain's biggest cult films” by many reviewers (particularly Jamie Russell in his 2003 BBC article), Withnail and I, ostensibly a comedy, came and went from theaters without much fanfare in the mid-80s and was rediscovered a few years later by what has become a rabid fanbase, whose affection for the film leaves many scratching their heads (just visit the Amazon and Netflix reviews which provide the best cross-section of human culture ever, where cineastes rub elbows with those who only recently discovered tools).

Based on Robinson’s own experiences as a down-and-out actor living in a communal dwelling, Withnail and I is a series of episodic adventures of the title characters, a pair of disheveled and aimless actors who while their time waiting for audition callback by drinking heavily and railing at the injustices of the world. The gaunt, half-mad Withnail (Richard E. Grant playing “proto-manic”) comes from money and cannot comprehend that the world will not bend to his entitlement, forcing him to live in squalor and refusing to acknowledge him as a great artist. Paul McGann’s “and I” (never given a name but referred to as “Marwood” in the script), is in the same boat but is only slightly more rational about it, in between his own panic attacks and over-reactions. With shot nerves and empty pockets, they pool their unemployment checks and head to a country cottage owned by Withnail’s flamboyant “Uncle Monty” (Harry Potter's Richard Griffith). 

[Here's an example of cult fun to be had: watching Mr. Dursley try to mount Dr. Who.]

The cottage proves to be little better than their filthy flat, bereft of fuel or food. Its nearest neighbor is owned by a belligerent farmer and the nearest town is difficult to get to in their disaster of a car. They spend a good deal of their time foraging for food, screaming at the world, and, in Marwood’s case, dodging the advances of Uncle Monty—who believes that Marwood is also gay, thanks to Withnail’s cruel sense of humor. In the end, one receives notice that a job has come to him and he must leave the other behind, to wallow in his own misery and injustice.

Nearly plotless and filled with insufferable characters—the worst of which are the title characters—Withnail and I can be viewed as an interesting study of wasted youth and British class warfare during the “greatest decade in history” (i.e. the ‘60s, as it is dubbed by Danny, their melancholy drug dealer friend, who mourns as the decade comes to an end). As unpleasant as Withnail and Marwood can get—they’re both cowardly, self-centered bastards, and are the masters of their own demise—they both come off as real people. Everyone knows someone like these two—with some introspection, many of us will even cop to having been one of these two (although I doubt any of us would admit to still being like them—some truths are just too difficult to face). The movie is fascinatingly prescient for later slacker movies like Reality Bites, not to mention the recent deluge of plotless “mumblecore” movies that spill out of film festivals every year. Character studies of aimless, despicable people are nothing new under the sun, of course, but Withnail and I has it’s own energy to set it apart.

Which brings us to the “cult” part of the movie. While amusing at times, for those who don’t “get it”, Withnail and I can be an excruciating experience. While one can identify with the main characters at times, it’s nigh-impossible to sympathize with them. The more farcial aspects of the film often come off as clumsy or offensive —Uncle Monty forcing himself on Marwood, for instance, meant to be hysterical seems mean and more than a bit sad after twenty-plus years of forced politically-correct sensitivity training. Marwood’s desperation in diverting the man’s unwanted attention just borders on gentle but it’s so fear-based—insulting Uncle Monty may mean being evicted from the house—that it rings realistically true and thematically hollow at the same time. There are, indeed, some terrific lines—“We’ve gone on holiday by accident!” and “We want the finest wines humanly available and we want them now!”—and they’re delivered not as “lines” but as dialogue, which is also nice, but the pace is deadly, particularly after you realize that the movie is as bereft of hope as its main characters. The whole movie is one long dark tea-time of the soul, from the dour set dressing to the endless English rainfall,

And the movie has legions of followers for just these reasons. There’s even an ill-advised drinking game built around it where a viewer attempts to keep up with Withnail’s alcoholic appetite—which, of course, could be fatal to the inexperienced drinker (particularly the scene in which a crazed Withnail downs a can of lighter fluid). Those outside the cult, however, find the movie baffling and appalling. Many viewers have wondered if it appeals only to the British but there are plenty of Brits who abhor the movie. As far as I go, it took me several tries over the course of years to actually get through the movie and even my final successful attempt was a struggle. One could make the argument that the movie’s autobiographical nature—Uncle Monty, for instance, is reportedly based on director Franco Zeffirelli who made advances on Robinson during his work as “Benvolio” on Romeo and Juliet; Withnail is based on a friend and actor Vivian MacKerrell who did die from throat cancer likely brought on from drinking lighter fluid—keeps the casual viewer at arm’s length but, really, it’s simply a matter of either liking it or not. If it makes you feel any better, producer Denis O’Brien, who had a renowned instinct for comedy, felt the movie had “no discernable jokes” and tried to shut the movie down several times. In interviews, Robinson reveals himself to be a bit of a “Withnail” himself (i.e. a “terrible cunt”) and is notoriously a difficult person to work or even deal with. But if he were more like Marwood, who is supposedly a fictional Robinson, how much better would that really be?

[In a bit of “Six Degrees”, Robinson and Grant would reteam for the much wackier How To Get Ahead in Advertising; Withnail and I has been compared to Terry Gilliam’s film version of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Robinson has been signed to direct the upcoming film adaptation of Thompson’s The Rum Diaries. Ain’t the universe neat?]

Well-photographed and edited, very well-acted, appreciated enough to receive a DVD release from The Criterion Collection, Withnail and I deserves all of its accolades and all of its detractions. The nice thing about movies like this, if you don’t like them, you never have to watch them again.