I miss out out with a lot of horror movies. 1) I'm not a straight man. Could we have less titties in these things? Please? Now full frontal male nudity for days would be just fine. Am I a hypocrite? Fuckin' A…maybe I just like the company. 2) I am one of those sick souls who actually thrives, nay, insists on good writing, on a substantial story. (Unless, of course, we are talking creature features and then I am willing to negotiate my standards or perhaps throw them under the bus altogether.) Why does horror so often have to wallow in the lowest common denominator? I love Phil Hartman's usual line in "Newsradio" whenever he is trying to argue the profundity of something when really he just wants something for himself: "It speaks to the human condition!" Well horror does speak to the human condition. It speaks to base instincts, to the boundaries of our culture, our norms. It takes us to the very edge of the safety of the camp's fire light and dares to step into the darkness beyond. It can strip away all of our comforting notions of what is real, what is safe, what we are. This is what draws me to horror and fantasy and science fiction as genres-let us redraw the entire map of reality. This activity can expand our notions of what is, what could be. Stepping outside can broaden our perspective even if afterwards we step back to where we were originally. And every once in awhile someone comes along who actually takes my hand and draws me out to the edge, who shows me the shadows- not merely pointing to them from the safety of the fire's glow.

What brought all of this on, you ask? These thoughts are not brand new for me but most recently reignited by the movie The Human Centipede (First Sequence). I have been fascinated about the plot for weeks since I first heard about it and I saw the movie a couple days ago. [note: spoiler alert-and I am not speaking of your appetite here] It involves a surgeon who was known for separating siamese twins. He wanted to take separate entities and join them to reverse the process and make a conjoined creature. So he kidnaps three people and surgically joins them mouth to anus to form a human chain, a centipede as it were. He creates triplets conjoined by their digestive tract. This disturbs me. It also makes me want to stand up and applaud and let us address that. I could not get the imagery, the concept out of my head. That is horror. I want you to make my skin crawl, make me doubt my kinship with humanity, take me further and show me a brand new frontier. I have felt some shame in the past for enjoying a disturbing movie (e.g. "In a Glass Cage") but I think the pushing of boundaries is the salient point here. So the concept for this movie was magical for me but the execution… I am reminded of something my friend told me about showing your ass in public. If you are going to do it then go all the way. You don't just let it peek out a little. Some wonderfully imaginative and dark soul (talking of you here, Mr. Six) came up with this concept and created this movie. And I thought it was well done and a good horror movie and so much better than much of what I see in the genre. But I found myself thinking of things that could easily be done to fully explore this dark corner. For example, I want to see the full "expression" of the digestive tract connection for this centipede. Isn't that merely exploring the underlying premise for the actual horror of this scenario? Granted, a few minutes after I was thinking: is Anyone going to administer a laxative so we can get a money shot here?(I am classy) The idea was raised in the movie-but it was never acted on. I want to see you go all the way. Jorg Buttgereit's movies have disturbed me in the past. And don't get me wrong- the implied, the unshown can take us further and linger longer within us than the graphic. That was the sublime beauty of H.P. Lovecraft's creations. But we are not exactly inundated with subtlety here with The Human Centipede, are we? You are on my radar and in my mind now, Mr. Six. Thank you. Take me further next time.