The Human Centipede II rejected by BBFC

[Noodle Lizard]

Noodle Lizard, do you believe that the distribution of films whose creation was illegal should be curtailed? If so, is it because we hold that (reasoning economically and psychologically) we will encourage their production?

Yes.  Well, when it involves non-consensual harm to people or animals etc.  Not so much when it's something like a low-budget film crew trespassing a condemned building to film a scene.

Actually, while I'm at it, why do you think the BBFC providing age certificates is useful whilst arguing that the 'harmful' claim is balls - is it that children are so radically different from (all? most? many?) adults that they are infinitely more impressible?

I think the age certification is useful because a lot of parents wouldn't want their children to be exposed to certain things, and give adults an idea of what the film's contents are.  If someone doesn't like gore, the certification will warn them.  It's like Allergy Advice on food packaging.

They're not all to do with how "harmful" the film is - if a child saw an 18-rated film like Clerks, aside from being bored stiff, the only possible negative effect would be that the child might say "fuck".  I always see them as guidelines rather than actual restrictions on who can see it - especially nowadays.  I still don't believe that a film can create a psychopath - if that were the case, you'd think violent crime rates would have shot up exponentially since the inception of the medium, yet the opposite has happened.

Of course there will be the occasional case of someone doing something in the style of something they had seen, but it's unlikely they wouldn't have done something equally horrible had they not seen it.

I mentioned the Chapman and Catcher In The Rye incident before - he said he killed Lennon precisely because of reading that book.  Why, then, did nobody call for it to be banned?  Because they couldn't see how he had come to that conclusion from reading the book.  With films, it's much simpler to see the connection, so they're an easier target - but theoretically, anything could act as a catalyst for something like that.  There are dangerous people out there, and while they may be drawn to certain art forms, I don't think the art forms create them and they can't be held directly accountable for it.

By the way, off the top off my head, here are some things (films, music, books) which have been blamed for harmful activity:  Marilyn Manson, South Park, Nirvana, A Clockwork Orange, Kill Bill, American Psycho, Marquis de Sade, Natural Born Killers, Avatar, Harold & Kumar, heavy metal music as a genre, Nietzsche and religious texts like The Bible.  And many more I'm sure.  Since all of these things have been directly implicated in these incidents, is it right to say that they should all be somehow more restricted than they are?

My answer is "Of course not", but I'd be interested to hear what you think.

[SavageHedgehog]

By the way, off the top off my head, here are some things (films, music, books) which have been blamed for harmful activity...Harold & Kumar.

? Detalis plz

In broad agreement with your general point BTW. The potential effects of The Human Centipede II are up for debat (especially as I believe none of us have actually seen it yet!), but I don't find Tom Six's basic intentions anymore egregious than those behind Pink Flamingos or the Jackass films

[Noodle Lizard]

? Detalis plz

Aside from it being among the movies blamed for glorifying drug culture to teens:  when I was in San Francisco in 2005, after the film had come out, there was a news story about (I kid you not) a Middle Eastern and Vietnamese guy who crashed into a fast food restaurant under the influence of cannabis, injuring three (I think) people.  The report said they had been driving home from watching the Harold and Kumar movie.  That was still possibly one of the funniest news reports I ever saw, and I wish I'd somehow recorded it!

I don't find Tom Six's basic intentions anymore egregious than those behind ... the Jackass films

Interesting you should mention those, as I think they're far more likely to be imitated than anything in The Human Centipede II ever will be, and because it's all (apparently) real.  But at the end of the day, if someone's stupid enough to shove a toy car up their arse and end up in hospital just because they saw someone do it in Jackass, then ... who cares?  People should take some personal responsibility instead of looking to blame the nearest connection.

It's like that mother whose child drank some laundry detergent, and she sued the manufacturer for having a brightly-coloured/labelled  bottle, claiming "What else was he supposed to do?"  No, sue yourself for failing to look after your child, you utter cretin.

[kaprisky]

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at. Because exploitation filmmakers don't want another category, we shouldn't have one? That if we had such a category, it would, alas, force exploitation filmmakers to conform to the 18-level conditions when releasing films?

If filmmakers want to make films that are uncompromising and stubborn, then fine. If they fall outside the guidelines that are deemed acceptable by the BBFC, then they either get cut, or in some cases banned. Simple as that. As a poster mentioned earlier, loads of R18s suffer cuts, so even porn producers can't get everything they intended into their films. And that's at the highest category.

The 18 certificate allows more explicit material nowadays than ever before, including 'real sex'. If producers or more specifically distributors can't find a way to get their films through within the parameters set by the BBFC, then they are not being creative enough.

Here is an extract, nicked from the Melon Farmers site, on the recent release of 3-D Sex and Zen:

3D Sex and Zen is a 2011 Hong Kong erotic drama by Christopher Sun Lap Key. See IMDb

In the UK it was passed 18 after 2:48s of BBFC cuts for cinema release.

HeyUGuys interviewed the director, Christopher Sun and asked about censorship cuts:

    HeyUGuys: In the UK there have been some scenes removed to get it past the classification board. How do you feel about that?

    Christopher Sun: It was sad, but it's an honour for us to have the film released in the UK, and we have to respect the censorship. Even when we release a film in Hong Kong, a scene or two actually gets shortened because of comments from the local censorship board, so we get used to this censorship stuff. We know that we're pushing things to the limits, so that's life...

What a refreshing attitude, especially compared to the fuss surrounding A Serbian Film which was pulled by FrightFest because they didn't want to show a cut version.

I can't ever think of a situation where there would be a category for total depravity. The guidelines would have to be drastically rewritten and I don't think there would ever be a public appetite for it.

[Noodle Lizard]

I can't ever think of a situation where there would be a category for total depravity. The guidelines would have to be drastically rewritten and I don't think there would ever be a public appetite for it.

Most of the "bigger" films (like A Serbian Film as opposed to something like August Underground) are passed uncensored in a lot of other European countries, and in America they're often distributed in their uncut, "unrated" form on DVD.  I'd say there is a public appetite for it, just not a particularly big one.

As far as 3D Sex And Zen goes, I'm not sure what had to be cut, but if films like Shortbus and 9 Songs can be passed uncut, I don't see why that couldn't, assuming it was cut for explicit sex as opposed to violence.  I think there'll always be a public appetite for some rumpy-pumpy!

[Zetetic]

They're not all to do with how "harmful" the film is

As I've previously said I don't actually think that 'harmful' is as big a concern for the BBFC as public acceptability is. Still I think that a discussion of 'harmful' is important, not least because of the terribleness of dialogue about it in the public arena and how that affects acceptability...

I think that Chapman, and other individuals of his ilk, are a distraction from the real arguments about the 'harmful' possibilities of media. I don't blame you for picking up on them - they are often rolled out by th hysterical members of the censorship brigade, and they aren't really relevant to arguing about whether media can be construed as harmful or not in a meaningful sense.

Why, then, did nobody call for it to be banned?  Because they couldn't see how he had come to that conclusion from reading the book.

I think this nods towards the reason why this is the case. Why did we struggle to understand how Sallinger had affected Chapman so? Because the manner in which Chapman reasoned about the world, learnt about the world and decided to act had significantly diverged from the way that you and I did. Even if we aren't prepared to call him 'psychotic' (not forgetting that many diagnosticians were), he was clearly delusional and in need of medical help.

So, who is the argument about? It's about the sane and the normal. The basic claim - that what we read, watch and listen to can affect our behaviour - is entirely non-controversial. That's at least half the reason why anyone bothers to write a book, a song, or a screenplay, isn't it? Any individual, I certainly hope, can point to some book or film that changed the way they think and act.

Where's the controversy then? It can't believe that it's that books and films can change people for the worse as well as the better. I suppose it's that many people don't think that a book or a film can change the way they think without them knowing about it, indeed realising it by having reasoned through the revelation or somesuch. That somehow books and films may affect us conciously by communication, but never subliminally.

The obvious counterpoint is advertising. An industry, which we can assume has some efficacy by virtue of its continued survival, indeed its massive flourishing in markets where there is little point of a discussion of the merits of a product. Here we have minute-long sequences of moving images and silly sounds that can alter high-level behaviours - not just causing people to buy more coke, but to buy the coke with the red-label rather than the blue-label. Based on this, if we can sell specifically red-label coke to people who didn't really want coke beforehand, is it really so unbelievable that we could sell aggression-as-a-solution to people who were already slightly dickish? Or sexual aggression to people who already thought women in short skirts were asking for it?

This is where the 'harmful' argument lies. It's that if you show to a large group Death Wish and Harry Brown, that you'll find more than a few who are a bit more in favour of vigilantism than they were before. That if you show them sequences of rape scenes where the woman ends up enjoing herself, you'll confirm a rape myth in at least couple of them. (You'll also most likely find a few who held opposing views prior to the screening who now hold them more vehemently.)

To which the response is that "Don't be silly, anyone can tell apart fiction and fact!" Well, aside from bring advertising back to the fore, I'd like to invoke the dissemination of news, both on paper and TV. Furthermore, don't we expect most films to speak to us of the real world, even if they aren't wholly realistic? Very few films aim to be devoid of any message, and even those they do rarely are!

I'd also suggest that this reply misunderstands the level at which behavioural change may be wrought - we learn about the world, about what events cause what other events, by what we see and hear; the idea that we can utterly switch those systems off, or lock them entirely to the context of the particular film that we're watching (even if we wanted to) is optimistic at best and ignorant at worst.

I still don't believe that a film can create a psychopath

And nor do I, even we're taking 'psychopath' in the lay sense. What I do believe is that a film, or 10 over as many years, can create a man more prone to violence than he was before.

By the way, off the top off my head, here are some things (films, music, books) which have been blamed for harmful activity:

As regards the examples you listed - there are few there that I believe are powerful bits of media, and not always in the way that those who made it really wanted. Natural Born Killers is an interesting example - it doesn't really aim to part of the process of glorification that it decries, but it can't dodge it either. (And quite frankly, any attempt to do so would have made a much worse film and much less effective attack piece.) Stone, of course, somewhat denies this, but that seems to be because he doesn't want it to be true.

Did it play a role in the Columbine kids' decisions? Credibly. It'd be silly to state it as a causal factor, mostly because we couldn't claim any sort of counterfactual - their actions were not dependent on having watched NBK. But if we were to consider their wider media consumption - not least the very things that NBK was decrying but also including NBK - do we not have a better argument? I think so - although of course if anything conclusion might be reached, it was precisely thrust of NBK in Stone's (and most viewers') eyes.

Since all of these things have been directly implicated in these incidents, is it right to say that they should all be somehow more restricted than they are?

I really don't think there's an easy answer to that. I don't want to restrict freedom of expression, and yet I recognise that one reason why freedom of expression is so important is because films and books can be effective at changing people's behaviour, and that sometimes people are going to make films that change people's behaviour in a way that I really don't like.

Ultimately, I think that any film that anyone cares to make should be available to buy, and legal to own but I'm always prepared to consider the weak barriers to purchase (such as age, or simply having to make a greater effort) for films that we can reasonably suspect might have "harmful" effects on behaviour. Although this of course must be tempered with knowledge of, in a largely free society, how these weak such barriers really are - see the Columbine kids and NBK, and your assertion that the age certificates are guidelines these days. Off the top of my head, I'd agree that none of the things you mentioned deserve greater restriction.


I've typed enough already, and haven't touched upon why I believe that video and games are different in their effects to the written and spoken word  - and the evidence to support this - (I suggest to do with a greater ability to demonstrate as falsely or genuinely as they wish, and hence more directly involve themselves in learning), and how I find this problematic when considering that in many cases I find it so much easy to tolerate freedom of expression because I believe in the power of reason and debate to defeat intolerance and hatred.

kaprisky, I empathise enourmously with your position, but alas am too committed to freedom of speech. Interestingly some of the cuts to 3D Sex and Zen are precisely to do with the promotion of rape.

[dr_christian_troy]

Based on the description of the film on the wiki page, and specifically the ending, (black barred on the off chance the plot matters to anyone)

Spoiler alert

I wonder if it wasn't left ambiguous that the BBFC would have been okay with it? 'He either did or didn't do it, don't let the audience be left uncertain as to their fragile little minds' etc.

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[BritishHobo]

Empire Magazine gave the film three stars in the newest issue, calling it better and more interesting a film than its predecessor. Maybe the cut version is just a far easier watch than the uncut, given the godawful reviews it's gotten over in the US.

[Noodle Lizard]

Empire Magazine gave the film three stars in the newest issue, calling it better and more interesting a film than its predecessor. Maybe the cut version is just a far easier watch than the uncut, given the godawful reviews it's gotten over in the US.

The US version is cut as well - maybe slightly less so.  But I can't imagine an extra two minutes of gory shots pushing it from a good film to a godawful one.

I still can't find it online, even though it's been on-demand in the states for a couple of weeks.   I swear pirates used to be faster than this.

[AsparagusTrevor]

This is floating around in torrentland now, I watched it this afternoon. Seemed slightly cut, there was no barbed-wire rape scene, but the rest seemed uncut from what I could tell. The teeth-removal scene is just horrific.

[Rev]

It's the American pay-per-view version.  I think the barbed wire bit is the only thing that's completely missing, but a lot of close-ups are gone too, in order to tone the thing down a notch.

Even with all that stuff back in, I can't see this being anything but inept and dull.  Martin aside - mainly because he has no lines - the acting is atrocious, to the extent that it's difficult to immerse yourself in the film enough to be truly horrified.  It's all a bit too tedious to get worked up about.

[Noodle Lizard]

I just saw the uncut version last night.  A friend of mine had apparently bought it from Tom Six himself at the London Comic Con earlier this year and just neglected to tell me.  It includes the barbed wire rape, so I'm assuming it's fully uncut since no other version seems to contain that.

It really isn't all that bad, in terms of content.  I think a lot of films, like the uncut version of A Serbian Film or the August Underground trilogy, beat it for graphic content.

As a film obviously it's quite rubbish, but not much worse than the first one. 

[Johnny Townmouse]

I found it to be very well photographed. Some of the shot choices and use of shallow focus really gives the film plenty of lovingly textures greys. The acting is fucking dreadful, even with a good script I doubt these 'actor' could have done much good with it. The mother and the bloke at the beginning with his girlfriend would be rejected from most local theatre groups.

It was a great deal more interesting than the first film, in my opinion. Mainly because I think the choice of actor for the main character was really good - he had such a genuinely odd feel to him. Great eyes. I think that was something that detracted from Tony - the main actor needed to feel more odd.

[SavageHedgehog]

I found it to be very well photographed. Some of the shot choices and use of shallow focus really gives the film plenty of lovingly textures greys. The acting is fucking dreadful, even with a good script I doubt these 'actor' could have done much good with it. The mother and the bloke at the beginning with his girlfriend would be rejected from most local theatre groups.

It was a great deal more interesting than the first film, in my opinion. Mainly because I think the choice of actor for the main character was really good - he had such a genuinely odd feel to him. Great eyes. I think that was something that detracted from Tony - the main actor needed to feel more odd.

I'd agree with this. I didn't dislike it, I'd say it was above average for the genre, though far from exceptional. It has some nice touches of black humour, including some truly unbelievable dialogue, which must have been a joke (which I'll get to in a spoiler-y bit later). It's more Female Trouble than A Serbian Film. The acting is atrocious in the first half of the movie (the mother can't even scream convincingly), but that becomes less relevant in the second half of the film, which is almost dialogue-free. But I did wonder at the end of the film quite what I'd got out of watching it.

I saw the BBFC version, and with all due or undue respect to them given that these cuts must have always been an option on some level, I'm not exactly sure why they thought this was any more ban-worthy than a number of films they've passed over the last few years. OK, unlike the first film, it's the killer's story rather than the victim's, but that's hardly unprecedented. What they've left is only slightly more explicit than, for example, Saw IV (which was passed uncut and released and advertised everywhere), and certainly doesn't glamorise its villain-cum-hero in the same way. The teeth/hammer scene is pretty nasty even in this version though, so I don't know how bad it would be uncut.

The meta aspect doesn't really come into it much. Aside from a few scenes and the use of one of the stars of the first film, Martin might as well be a standard copycat killer, if an inept one. Judging from the interview on the DVD Six believes it to be a totally original idea in horror, which it really, really isn't (New Nightmare being the most obvious example).

The "twist" is pretty redundant in that

Spoiler alert

it's blatantly obvious the whole thing is going on in Martin's head anyway. A baby is left in a car for days, seemingly uneffected. Martin's mom says "I miss your dad and it's your fault he's in prison" seconds after a discussion about how Martin's dad abused him as a baby right in front of Martin's doctor. Martin's doctor later says "I'd rather be fucking that retarded boy"(!) to a pimp who has absolutley no reason to know who Martin is, and certainly doesn't recognise him when he sees him a few seconds later. Even in the absurd world of the Centipede films, or in bad moviemaking, there's only one place lines like that could be coming from, and to "kind of" spell that out at the end is a bit of a cop-out.

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