The director of The Human Centipede, described by one viewer as ‘a picture to watch when one just wants to vomit continuously’, has been trying to get an even more extreme movie to fans for the past five years, but claims no one has 'the balls' to release it.
The Human Centipede infamously sees a mad scientist imprison three tourists, saw off their knee ligaments, pull their teeth out and stitch their mouth to their anus, with the two poor souls at the back eating the poo of the ones in front.
Understandably, the 2009 film has had viewers reaching for the sick bucket for the past 15 years, but its legacy also haunts director Tom Six and star Winter Williams.
"Fans are screaming for this movie"
Six has been trying to release his follow-up to The Human Centipede trilogy for the past five years, but due to his reputation very much preceding him, a film distributor is yet to bite.
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The Onania Club follows a group of LA women who get turned on by terrorist acts and atrocities, with some calling it even more controversial than The Human Centipede.
"It’s the ultimate satire on our time," Six says, speaking exclusively to LADbible. "The elites, religion, Covid, Black Swan events, conspiracy theories, the Illuminati."
He adds that those who have seen private screenings of the film were 'blown away' by it, but as it stands it may never see the light of day.
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“Distributors have become the new censors,” Six says. “They ignore me, they ridicule me and they patronize me out of fear and total ignorance.
"Millions of fans are screaming for this movie for five years now and they just don’t give a f**k."
The current situation is even making him consider turning his back on movies altogether.
“Who is going to finance my films if there is no serious distributor that wants to release them? I live for making movies.
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"Instead of fighting for The Onania Club for the past years, I could have made at least two more films."
Six now says a 'shocking tell-all documentary' - which he refused to go into any detail about - is his 'final hope' of getting The Onania Club to audiences.
"You know what they say," he warns, "There is nothing more dangerous than a man who has nothing to lose."
The story of The Human Centipede
It's surprising that a director who's had such a profound influence on pop culture should be effectively blacklisted from Hollywood.
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After all, The Human Centipede has been referenced and parodied on everything, from South Park to The Boys.
“It is referenced in almost every TV show, talk show, movie, series and so many fans have tattoos," Six says. "Think about it: not many indie films achieve that.”
Looking back at the moment he had the idea for the disturbing saga, Six says it was in part inspired by a very dark joke.
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“I was watching a child molester on TV and I blurted out that the perfect punishment would be to attach his mouth to the anus of a fat truck driver,” he says. “That idea got such horrific reactions that I began to think it would make a great idea for a satirical horror movie.”
But his inspiration actually runs deeper than this, and he sees the film as a ‘satire’ of the Second World War.
"The Human Centipede has many layers, some of which are very personal," he says.
The film was partly inspired by stories of his grandfather J. J. Six ‘who escaped Nazi forced labor camps twice during the second World War’.
The evil Dr Heiter is modeled on both Hitler and Dr Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor dubbed the Angel of Death who conducted twisted medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz.
In an account from concentration camp survivor Eva Mores-Kor, she describes a set of twins who Mengele had ‘sewn back to back’.
She wrote: “Mengele had attempted to create a Siamese twin by connecting blood vessels and organs. The twins screamed day and night until gangrene set in, and after three days they died.”
“Those doctors often had God complexes,” Six says.
"I thought someone called the police on me"
You might be wondering how a film with such a repulsive premise came to be made, and the answer is with great difficulty.
“In my whole career as a film producer, I have never heard ’no' so many times,” says Ilona Six, Tom’s sister, who produced the movie. “I decided to leave out the words 'attached mouth to anus' in my sales talks to investors.”
A special effects company tasked with constructing the human centipede refused to work with them while one actor lined up to play one of the women stitched into the centipede got cold feet and walked away from the movie just before they started shooting.
Williams was one of the few actors brave enough to sign up, and it was her first ever film. She plays Lindsay, who - if you're curious - ends up in the middle of the centipede.
Initially pitched to her as simply ‘a European horror film’, she only learnt the full premise at a callback audition in New York.
While she was waiting her turn, she saw the actors ahead of her storming out in disgust.
“There were girls that were coming out being like, ‘F**k this, this is porn, this is grotesque. Don't even go in there,’” she says.
When it was her turn, Six handed her a piece of paper with a medical diagram of the human centipede.
“He said, ‘Are you easily shocked? What do you think of this image?’ I didn't know what it was. I was just like, ‘OK, this seems kind of weird and medical'.”
She said it was Six’s ‘passion’ and ‘unique concept’ that led her to take the role.
Meanwhile, Six himself was terrified the outraged auditionees were about to alert the cops.
“Every time I heard sirens, I thought someone called the police on me,” he says.
"The crew were just bawling their eyes out"
The cast were given a booklet of scenes, but the film was largely improvised.
“It was a gruelling set,” Williams says. “We were on our hands and knees in the mud, rain machines coming down on us. It was cold, it was long hours. It was physically and emotionally draining, but I also felt very safe. I felt protected.”
Six never pushed her to do anything she didn’t want to, and the film was ‘very much a collaborative process’.
When the human centipede was finally revealed on set, Williams says the film crew ‘were just bawling their eyes out because it looked so real’.
“There was this excitement around it, but also this fear. You know, what are we doing? Is this gonna appeal to audiences?”
As we now know, The Human Centipede is firmly a part of pop culture, with schoolchildren the world over daring each other to watch it.
“From a gut feeling I always knew that it would have an impact,” Six says.
"It's challenging having that on my resume"
While many horror fans love The Human Centipede, Six still receives death threats every week, 15 years on from the film’s release.
“Nobody is forcing them to watch it,” he says.
But he adds: “I must have done something right to make people this upset.”
Meanwhile, Williams says: “I feel like there was definitely some pushback from the Hollywood elite being like, ‘Oh, we don't want her. She's from The Human Centipede'.
“It certainly has been challenging navigating the industry, having that on my resume."
Hollywood needed a push to separate Williams from the role that still largely defines her career. She previously went by Ashley C Williams, but now goes by Winter professionally.
“It’s not the reason I did it, but it does help distance me a bit from it. When you Google me, it's not the first thing that comes up, which I'm grateful for.”
Even if this is a movie you feel you could never watch - and it certainly takes a strong stomach - it's now hard to imagine a world without The Human Centipede.
"After so many years, it is still very much part of pop culture," Six says. "I noticed that a whole new generation discovers The Human Centipede again, which is amazing. So, I don’t think it will stop soon."
Maybe The Onania Club could have a similar impact... if we ever get to see it, that is.
Topics: Film, TV and Film
Simon Fearn