HUMAN
CENTIPEDE 2: THE LAWRENCE HARVEY Q&A
Hosted by Andrew
Leavold 23/11/11
From
the Trash Video Emailout November 2011: “Join Tribal Theatre on
November 23rd for an evening of UNCUT Centipede Madness on Wednesday,
November 23 from 6:30pm - 9:30pm. Screening is the briefly banned (in
the UK) and very much uncut Human Centipede 2 with a Q&A session
with the Centipede himself, actor Laurence R. Harvey. Join us for a
discussion on film censorship, new horror, and well what ever else
you like! Tickets $16 for Adults and $13.50 for Concession are
available from Tribal.”
Weeks
before the BIFF premiere of Human Centipede 2, I was quoted in the
Brisbane Times and Sydney Morning Herald about the film:
“Brisbane
genre film director and cult movie expert Andrew Leavold said the
inclusion of Tom Six's movie was a worrying sign that ultra-violence
had penetrated the mainstream.
“Leavold,
whose 2003 short film Lesbo-A-Go-Go chronicled the ‘degradation,
drug addiction, delirium and ultimately damnation’ of a
sexploitation filmmaker Doris Wishman [it doess???], said the Human Centipede films
were part of a disturbing new genre trend.
“‘There's
a new movement in horror where it's so far over the top it becomes
abstract,’ he said. “Human Centipede is just an exercise in the
grim, new nihilism that began with Saw and careered off into Hostel
territory and other really out-there stuff like Irreversible.’”
Then
I actually SAW the film, and this is what I wrote for the Monster
Pictures newsletter:
Scanning
around Tribal's seedy opulence the BIFF crowd are a vocal lot,
similar to The Room groupies but without the bags of plastic spoons.
Opening comments by BIFF's Richard Moore and Lars Nilsen from
Fantastic Film Fest are greeted with whoops from the shock jocks who
had clearly shot their loads over the manipulative, mean-spirited
nature of HC1 and are ready to party.
Ten
minutes in: guffaws and cheering. Laurence R. Harvey as Martin, the
balding, paunched and crowbar-weilding amateur surgeon, is
irredeemably compelling to watch.
Half
hour mark: nervous titters. Martin is already down to his Reg
Grundies and racking up a sizable menagerie. One walkout midway
through the film during a fecal-related moment.
After
an hour: silence, punctuated with the odd "eeeewww!!!"
There is no escape from the film's downward sucking motion into its
grey and godless, rain-streaked, shit-caked universe.
End
credits: the crowd shuffles out without a word. In the men's, six
guys pee avoiding eye contact or comment. Far from the party film the
shock jocks were hoping for, you can just tell, for better or worse,
the film's a genuinely affecting experience. For me at least, in this
cynical post-modern dog's breakfast we call film culture these days,
this is the greatest shock of all.
After
HC1 I called Tom Six an artless Dutch c***. I now stand corrected:
you, sir, are a madman and a poet, and while still a c***, your film
is a work of bloated, misguided genius. For the rest of you, you have
been warned.
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