"The Human Centipede 3 (The Final Sequence)" (2015) d/ Tom Six

Just when you thought it was safe to go ass to mouth again, depraved Dutch director Tom Six returns with the final installment of his twisted trilogy, boasting of a five hundred person long centipede while uniting the two leading men from the prior episodes, Dieter Laser and Laurence Harvey, and enlisting the talents of former butterscotch porn sweetie/Sheen-slave, Bree Olson, and Julia Roberts' bass mouthed brother, Eric, for good/bad measure, depending on your feelings about the first two films. The way I see it, the first effort was clever cult material, with most of the gruesome gore implied. The second offered up overly sloppy splatter at barf bag levels to quell the hunger of the vocal hardcore horror hounds who were unsatisfied by the pioneer film. So what would Six serve up for the most foul finale? I had to see for myself. As I recall, it went like this...


"Heyyyyy, this ain't 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' like they promised us!!!"
Warden Bill Boss (Dieter Laser) runs one fucked up state prison, in conjunction with his portly accountant Dwight (Laurence Harvey), who suggests his chief executive screen both Human Centipede movies while his assistant, Daisy (Bree Olsen) rubs his feet. Boss shits on the shitty films as pure shit, while Daisy enjoys them, earning herself a wet finger in the coochie for her opinion, which Boss suggests she keep to herself in future. Meanwhile,  one of the correctional officers has been stabbed by a disgruntled black inmate who, in turn, gets his arm compound fractured and crushed under Boss' foot. At this point, the warden receives a special package in his office, which contains dried African clitorises which Boss eats for strength(!) when he's not disfiguring inmates with boiling water torture. The governor (Eric Roberts) arrives on the scene and immediately demands that Boss and company cease and desist from all the brutal violence, or the pair will be seeking employment elsewhere. Boss then castrates another inmate with a heated knife blade, spreading blood from the open wound all over his own face, and demanding the testicles be prepared for his lunch. You know, as energy food. Right? Meanwhile, Daisy gives an under-the-desk skulljob to her boss, after which, she inadvertently chows down on one of the clitorises, mistaking it for candy to mask the bad taste in her mouth.


"Some mood music, baby? Perhaps Lady Guh-guh-guh-guh-guh..."
Finally, Dwight pitches his idea to his employer: turning all inmates into a massive human prison centipede, sewing them together, ass to mouth to ass to mouth to...you know the routine by now. Boss balks at the idea until he's haunted by a nightmare where one inmate shanks a large hole in his lower back and death rapes one of his kidneys as the rest of the cell block looks on. Tom Six (himself) shows up and sells the medical accuracy of the process, and agrees to allow the staff to recreate it so long as he can watch. The inmates are shown both previous movies, while those individuals physically or mentally incompatible with becoming a centipede are whacked by the warden, and an unsuccessful prison break leaves Daisy in a brutally beaten comatose state, or in other words, the optimal condition for Boss to rape her in front of his dismayed accountant. As the operations get under way, Tom Six tosses his cookies as he witnesses certain prisoners being dismembered as well as being sewn together. The governor returns just in time to see Boss's five hundred segment prison centipede in person (which Daisy has unwittingly gotten herself sewn into), and also a "human caterpillar", comprised of legless and armless inmates. It gets worse from here, believe me.


Cheese it, fellas, it's Prosciutto Face. 
If you look carefully (Why would you, though) you'll notice Akihiro Kitamura among the prison centipede segments, interestingly enough, as he was also a segment in the original movie. Bill Hutchens, who provided Dr. Sebring in the original, also shows up as a centipede segment here. Never forget your roots, I guess. Tommy "Tiny" Lister is also on board as the reluctant front piece. Laser's performance might be the most annoying ever witnessed in a film, unenthusiastically shouting every line of ridiculously offensive slur-filled dialog, long before the gross out payoff kicks in, including gems like "I'll stuff your baggy homosexual shithole with Cuban cigars up to your throat!" and countless others throughout. Not nearly as clever as the original, nor as vulgarly bloody as the sequel, 3 falls somewhere between the two, and feels unnecessary in comparison, garnering itself a single Wop on the scale. You've seen one human centipede, you've seen 'em all, really...


A twine stitch in thine saves hein-ey.

"Welcome to Arrow Beach" (1974) d/ Laurence Harvey

This lost seventies slasher/ "Psycho" clone would be the last movie appearance for former top shelf British actor Laurence Harvey, who also directed and allegedly edited  the picture from a phone on his death bed, as he lie dying of stomach cancer that would claim his life at forty-five, six months before the film saw an official release. It would be re-released two years later, under the title Tender Flesh, and the Magnetic Video VHS of the film interestingly stands as the second horror movie ever released on the then-virgin media format. Instead of Walter Pidgeon and Donna Reed co-starring as advertised (under the working title Yellow-Headed Summer, a year earlier),  the likes of Meg Foster, Stuart Whitman, John Ireland, and Joanna Pettet appear instead, to help Harvey complete his final, somewhat bloody cinematic vision.


"This your bag of shnoz rockets, pinko hippie?", ask the tolerant cops.
Robbin Stanley (Meg Foster) is a happenin' hippie hitchhiker making her way across California, who's latest ride is a coked-out charmer in a banana yellow Model A ("Nice mams!" is his opening line) who leads the police on a high-speed chase that ends in a construction zone crash. Despite their conservative drape leanings, the cops let her go, even after finding an eight ball of coke tucked away under the eight track player. She nonchalantly wanders from the crash site onto Arrow Beach, where she skinny dips under the watchful camera lens of one Jason Henry (Laurence Harvey), who lives in a nearby mansion with his sister, Grace (Joanna Pettet). Jason takes the stray in, amid jealous protest from his sister, feeds her a juicy steak*, and gives her hippie ass a much needed bubble bath. Though Robbin is grooving on Jason's wealth and seems receptive to the idea of giving him some poonany, he louses it up when his incessant late night whacking at slabs of human meat in the basement with an oversized cleaver sends the teenager, bloody and hysterical, screaming from the premises.


Spray that brush burn with some mercurochrome or it'll scar up on you...
With Robbin laid up in the hospital with an arm she injured while climbing out a basement window, Jason reports the incident to the police, destroying her credibility with some planted leftover anti-psychotics in her handbag from a flashback stint in Korean War that he survived through cannibalism. Grace, not only his loyal sibling but also his incestuous lover (like, bleeech, dudes), helps validate his story to Deputy Rakes (Stuart Whitman, who'd seemingly scored as many police roles as Claude Akins by this point), who naturally believes her, sending Robbin out of town on the first available bus, on the promise that she never return. Meanwhile, Jason takes in a weatherbeaten old hooker (burlesque star Gloria LeRoy) who'd been raped and jacked by a biker on the beach outside his mansion, and while snapping some profile shots of her, he introduces his sizable cleaver to the shoot, and makes a real mess of things. Robbin hitches a ride back to Arrow Beach, to the apartment of a young med tech named Alex (David Macklin), and they descend upon the very basement for proof of Jason's misdeeds that night...


Cleaver-hacked old hooker for dinner tonight, again?
When the movie was picked up from Warner Brothers by Brut (Thanks, Faberge'. I enjoy slasher movies and your shaving cream...), they excised nearly fifteen minutes from the print, and most of the cannibalism elements, though it's interesting to note that Tobe Hooper released his legendary cannibal epic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the same year. Even more surprisingly, perhaps, the loungey-sounding title track was crooned by none other than Lou Rawls (!), putting to rest the idea I used to have that he'd only had one song, "You're Gonna Miss My Lovin' ", that he sang repeatedly, for years and years. You live and learn, I guess. Beautiful Pa. native Meg Foster and her icy blue eyes would later turn up in things like John Carpenter's They Live(1988) and Niko Mastorakis' The Wind (1986). As it stands, there's no official dvd or Blu-ray release of this one yet, and there really ought to be, as it's a tense little blood-splashed thriller that merits a respectable deuce on the scale. Hunt a print down for yourselves.


"...What a horrible picture, man, he shoulda had his f-stop much lower...and just look at that light fall off..."
*probably not steak at all.