South Park...
..."HUMANCENTiPAD". Bet that fanbois loved that one!
Brit censor stamps on The Human Centipede
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has stamped firmly on the DVD sequel to low-budget movie The Human Centipede, refusing to certify the second installment of director Tom Six's horror series. The BBFC explains that 2010's The Human Centipede saw "a mad scientist stitch together three victims face-to-bottom" to …
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:00 GMT Dave Murray
Not just the idea
Not just the idea but also the pictures behind Steve Jobs showing how the operation will be performed are lifted straight from the movie.
Dissapointed in the BBFC. HC is one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time (remember the tag line is "100% medically accurate" while you watch it) and I've been really looking forward to the sequel. Oh well I giess I'll have to watch it illegally like I did Clockwork Orange, the various Cannibal movies, etc when I was younger.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 16:34 GMT Martin 42
Doesn't sound great.
I really enjoyed the human centipede - it was what it was - a poorly acted (except for the doctor), very unorigional (except for the premise), silly horrorfest, and it delivered. But by what I have read of the sequel, it is doing a 'saw', making zero attempt at a plot or characters, and just throwing as much gore as it can at the viewer. With the first one, the horror was in the idea, it actually contained very little in the way of real gore.
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Tuesday 21st June 2011 11:49 GMT Shakje
I would say that for once
the first one actually did it right. It was mostly mediocre, but the ending was pretty special, well built-up, and reasonably nasty. Left a taste in my mouth. Seems like they just gave up on the 2nd one.
For anyone who didn't already know it's been doing the rounds on Syfy recently.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
@ac
If it's not actual kiddie porn then where's the problem? Said porn is censored (or, at least, the original reasoning was) because it necessarily made viewers an accessory to sexual abuse, battery, greivous bodily harm and whole other slew of things offences.
People like ypu seem incapable of ditinguishing reality from unreality. If itMs all just acting, then it is not,lby definition, reality. No harm is done. So, what gives ypu the right to censor something that isn't real?
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 15:29 GMT Dan Likes Spoons
@ac-14:32
Are you honestly saying you're against censorship to such an extent that you don't see a problem with, for example, films of computer generated CP being available for people to buy?
Thanks for reinforcing my views on the sort of person who'd enjoy watching HC2 :D (not implying you'd be into that kind of thing, just that you're border-line retarded).
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 15:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Dan Likes Spoons
So you're one of those idiots who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality and, would prefer children be abused than mitigate offenders with alternative images.
Not that there's ever been a legitimate case study to link drawn and computer generated images right through to acts of abuse, the only one was abandoned by its authors and received no peer review becouse it was just so badly executed (ask child abusers to blame their crimes on something other than themselves.)
It's a lot like believing drinking coffee makes you a heroin addict, as most heroin addicts smoke dope, most dope smokers smoke fags and most fag smokers drink coffee.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 17:16 GMT Dan Likes Spoons
@ac-15:52
So you think my belief that people can be changed/corrupted by their environment is a logical fallacy equal in stupidity to your little coffee/heroin story?
Maybe it's just that I don't understand the attraction in torture-porn. What part of HC2 are you looking forward to the most and why? Watching people shit in each others mouths, or watching a woman getting raped with a cock wrapped in barbed wire?
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 16:02 GMT Old Handle
@Dan Likes Spoons
Personally, I don't see how you can be "a little bit" against censorship. If you're only against censorship of things you approve of, you're really just saying "don't tell me what to watch", which is fine, but unless you extend that thinking to content you personally disagree with, then you're not really against censorship as such.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 19:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
@skelband
That's it, precisely.
When it comes down to it, the crime is in the harm it does to children. If there are no children abused, there is no crime, regardless of what the law says. If children are not involved, it doesn't matter what people think, there is no crime being committed. It's the inability to distinguish eality from fiction that prompts the criminalisation of fiction and fantasy, and thought. The idea that we should be able to legislate what someone is allowed to think is ludicrous.
So what if someone gets off on the thought of children inside their own head? As long as they don't act on it, as long as no children are abused, *there is no crime*. And no, arguing that they should be pre-emptively dealt with "just in case", as I'm sure some are already going to argue, misses the point entirely once again: convicting people for something they *might* do is no different to convicting people for something they *haven't done*. It is unjust to convict people for things they haven't done, yet so many are so quick to do precisely that when fake, unreal "child pornography" (which features no children) is mentioned.
So yes, I would be okay with seeing fake, computer generated child porn available to purchase, precisely because it isn't real. I wouldn't buy it. I'd avoid it, in fact, and I'd even try to discourage people from watching it because I find pornography to be immoral, but I wouldn't demand it be banned for this single reason: it isn't real.
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Wednesday 8th June 2011 08:39 GMT Marvin the Martian
"If there are no children abused, there is no crime, regardless of what the law says."
That's clearly nonsense too. Put a good bomb making recipe online --- hey, no real explosives were used, nothing smuggled or destroyed, so no crime committed?
Fake-CP is outlawed for the obvious reason that it normalizes what is seen.
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Monday 13th June 2011 10:54 GMT Goat Jam
Idiocy Abounds
"Put a good bomb making recipe online so no crime committed?"
Yes. that's right (morally) no crime has been committed.
Why should it be a crime? If somebody builds that bomb and blows shit up then yes, they have clearly commited a crime.
Should it be a crime to provide schematics for a gun and instructions for making ammunition?
What about instructions for taking a mild steel rod and fashioning it into a bayonet?
How about instructions for taking some piano wire, tying the ends around some sawn off dowel rods to make a garrote?
All these things can be deadly. Where do you draw the line?
Merely providing technical information should never be a crime. Suggesting that it should be is simply another form of security by obscurity.
It's a falsehood and a slippery slope I don't want to be on.
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Thursday 9th June 2011 10:24 GMT Lamont Cranston
Can't you be sectioned under the Mental Health Act
in order to prevent harm to yourself or others? That's pretty much dealing with someone for something they might do, although it doesn't involve criminal proceedings.
As for fake child pornography, I'd like that to remain banned. I'm not in a position to quote sources for this, but I've heard a number of reports suggesting that the prevelance of regular pornography, and it's availability to young boys, is changing their attitudes towards sex, and not in a good way. You might be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy, but that doesn't mean that everyone else can.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 13:48 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: Who the hell...
Er, no-one. If you RTFA you'll see that this hasn't been granted an 18 certificate. That was rather the point.
And as for who decided it was OK for one adult to say what another can't watch, the answer is pretty obviously Parliament. However, its remit only extends to the UK and they haven't banned foreign travel, so if you *really* want to see this film then I suggest you go take a running jump across the pond and watch it there.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:32 GMT DrXym
Who the hell?
"...decided that 18 films should be censored or banned?"
Successive elected governments of course and hand the job of classification over to the BBFC. If the BBFC refuses to classify a film it is effectively banned from sale though I assume you could obtain it in other ways. As far as censors go, the BBFC is relatively benign and liberal these days.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:21 GMT BristolBachelor
@downvoter for Blofeld's Cat
I'm at a loss as to why you downvoted here (are you David Cooke?)
For example, it was quite famous here (Spain) that Last Tango in Paris was banned for the same reasons as this film here. No, I don't want to watch that film either, but that doesn't make it right to stop everyone.
What about all the news reporting videos and pictures. When they say that no-one is allowed to see them either, then that's OK too?
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 16:02 GMT PT
Last Tango
Actually, Last Tango was banned for a different reason - it showed people having meaningless casual sex and, um, really enjoying themselves. Except that it wasn't really meaningless and they didn't really enjoy it, but you'd have to watch the movie with an open mind - probably more than once - to understand the subtle messages. There's a world of difference between Tango and torture porn.
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Wednesday 8th June 2011 11:32 GMT Patrick R
Last Tango's subtle message...
Is also that the (very young) actress really felt abused and suffered depression her whole life as a result of this ( you might simply call it a lack of professionalism). Until she died recently. There is somehow a reason to discourage the production of sick movies. Not that Tango was extreme in any way. We might get used to everything, not everybody does.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 13:43 GMT Absent
title is too long
"sexual arousal of the central character at both the idea and the spectacle of the total degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, and murder of his naked victims."
"There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience."
Sounds very similar to 'Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom' and 'Salon Kitty' both passed fully uncut by the BBFC.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 21:50 GMT ph0b0s
Again, Extreme Pr0n?
If the BBFC have not certified it, I don't know whether being in possession of this movie would be classed as extreme pr0n. I know I am sounding paranoid, but it would not surprise me if someone found with this in their possession has some problems.
The same way that anyone who pirated that movie, that got pulled from blockbuster shelves by the police, a while ago. If you did not download the right BBFC certified cut you would would also be in trouble....
Sometimes downloading movies can have more risks than just angering the movie industry...
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Wednesday 8th June 2011 11:32 GMT MonkeyBot
Re: Extreme Pr0n
Isn't there something in the law that requires you to be posessing the video for the purpose of sexual arrousal or something to that effect? I think the guy in the Tony the Tiger case defended himself by saying the video was comedic and not pornographic.
That's why I'd present a defense of "spite" i.e. the only reason I have the material is because you told me I couldn't, m'lud. Nothing sexual about it.
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Thursday 9th June 2011 17:37 GMT nyelvmark
Your logic defeats itself
If the law only forbids possession for purposes of arousal, then you are not forbidden from possessing it, so you have no grounds for spite. You would only have such grounds if you found the material arousing, since you would then be effectively forbidden from possessing it, innit?
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:00 GMT myhandle
Bizzare
It's bizzare the the first one was allowed on sky. I wouldn't want to watch it either, but with the new suites there does seem to be a huge double standard with respect to what hollywood is allowed to show on tv and what you are allowed in your own private collection, which would inevitably result in the jackboots kicking down your doors. Same applies to the "Last house on the right" which contained a rape scene that I swear would put you in jail if it were on your private dvd collection but cause hollywood put it out it was fine to show on tv.
Personally, I think it would be funny to apply the same vigor to tv as is implyed by the new draconian laws and watch hollywood shriek as they loose money and watch the politicians loose out on their favourite violence movies.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:05 GMT Imsimil Berati-Lahn
It is simply a metaphor which extends...
...to practically the entire output of every television station anywhere in the world.
Cut to Australian oligarch laughing maniacally as the larger part of the "developed" world becomes culturally mutilated and spiritually poisoned as it guzzles down the ordure produced from his multi-tentacled-media-monster.
BTW... what happened to the previous five Toms?
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:32 GMT Citizen Kaned
normally i would say not ban films, but...
"The principal focus of The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is the sexual arousal of the central character at both the idea and the spectacle of the total degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, and murder of his naked victims. Examples of this include a scene early in the film in which he masturbates whilst he watches a DVD of the original Human Centipede film, with sandpaper wrapped around his penis, and a sequence later in the film in which he becomes aroused at the sight of the members of the ‘centipede’ being forced to defecate into one another’s mouths, culminating in sight of the man wrapping barbed wire around his penis and raping the woman at the rear of the ‘centipede’. There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience. There is a strong focus throughout on the link between sexual arousal and sexual violence and a clear association between pain, perversity and sexual pleasure. It is the Board’s conclusion that the explicit presentation of the central character’s obsessive sexually violent fantasies is in breach of its Classification Guidelines and poses a real, as opposed to a fanciful, risk that harm is likely to be caused to potential viewers."
that is from the board. seems like a totally different kettle of fish from the first. i have to wonder what people who want to watch this kind of thing get from it? its not horror it is simply simulated snuff movie. at least 'a serbian movie' seems to have a story, albeit a sick as fuck one.
if we dont ban anything whats to stop simulated child port? where does it stop?
hell, i watched hostel and was shocked at it. i guess some movie directors just want to see real snuff? 8mm was about as close to that subject as i want to get thanks very much.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:57 GMT John G Imrie
I take it then you havent watched
Battle Royal then.
However this does seam to be the BBFC's perennial hangup with sex in all it's gory detail. If the central character was not sexually aroused, but instead felt guilty for the degradation of his victims and in the end killed himself, would the movie have been passed?
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 15:23 GMT Citizen Kaned
yes. 1 & 2
and they are a 15 at best IMO.
read what i posted above. BR hasnt got half of that bad stuff and actually is a clever, well thought out movie. pity the yanks are gonna ruin it by doing a remake! <facepalm>
sex is one thing. rape and mutilation purely for some deviant gratification isnt entertainment. unless you are Jeffrey Dahmer.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:32 GMT Ben Bawden
Censorship is bad, mmkay
I'm all for the BBFC classifying films as age appropriate, but they should not be banning films.
Give it an 18, then adults can decide for themselves whether they want to watch it.
I personally think it sounds revolting, and I have no interest in watching it.
But I would like to be able to watch it, should I wish to.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 14:57 GMT envmod
good
i loathe all these kinds of movies - hostel, last house on the right, SAWs etc. i cannot for lthe life of me understand what people find enjoyable about watching other people in pain and suffering. it's fucking sick man...serious - who's into this kind of stuff? who buys it?? surely it's just idiots with extremely low IQs and violent tendencies? anyway, were it all to be banned tomorrow, i would be happy.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 15:37 GMT Chris Harrison
Who made you god?
If you don't like them, then don't watch them, or is that too difficult?
As to IQs and horror, I like a good bit of gore and a few scares and could join Mensa tomorrow. (BTW its Last house on the LEFT).
I'm far more worried about people with narrow minds than people with low IQs.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 19:59 GMT mark 63
couldnt have put it better
wot he said (envmod)
I'm against the idea of censorship but if it takes sick shit like this to invoke it , then its a mute point for me.
People who enjoy Hostel , Saw etc , must have zero empathy for other human beings, and hence dont think twice about stamping on peoples faces in brawls outside nightclubs.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 23:00 GMT Destroy All Monsters
That's a "moot" point...
"People who enjoy Hostel , Saw etc , must have zero empathy for other human beings"
Central Bankers and Politicians queueing at the box office, then?
It's pretty bizarre crap. Imagine A Clockwork Orange with Alex going "HELL YEAH, MOAR!" during his indoctrination procedure.
Human nature etc.
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Wednesday 8th June 2011 08:57 GMT Citizen Kaned
SAW not same category
in SAW bad things tend to happen to 'bad' people. like cops to are bent, or the heroin dealer who ends up swimming in a pool of syringes. its not the same as watching innocent people being tortured. saw kind of tries to teach bad people a lesson using a similar method to how they were being bad. some of it is actually quite clever. i will admit i havent seen past #4 (which was a bit poo IIRC) as horror films arent really my thing. give me a good action sci-fi any day of the week. or a comedy
by your logic when baddies die in action films that also makes the watcher a sick fuck... ?!?!? im a sick puppy for watching Die Hard now? SAW isnt in the same category as Hostel for instance. zero story and just for people who get a kick out torture and snuff. very different.
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Wednesday 8th June 2011 11:42 GMT Toastan Buttar
@mark 63
"People who enjoy Hostel , Saw etc , must have zero empathy for other human beings, and hence dont think twice about stamping on peoples faces in brawls outside nightclubs."
Having empathy for the victims in a torture movie is precisely what makes it MEANINGFUL. You can flinch but still say "I'm glad that's not happening to me right now". If you were so desensitised that you had no empathy, the film would just be a random, boring moving image.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 17:18 GMT Jellied Eel
Watch the BBFC staff closely..
"a real, as opposed to a fanciful, risk that harm is likely to be caused to potential viewers".
So, presumably the BBFC has noticed the harm it's caused to it's people who were forced to watch this movie? Inquiring minds want to know how this has manifested itself in their behaviour other than perhaps by generating free publicity for dodgy movies.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 22:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
We do...
It's called r18, restricted 18 and can only be sold in a licensed sex shop. Basically it's for hardcore porn with actual penetration shots, pretty much anything goes except for torture, rape, bestiallity, etc. So this film would have failed for an r18 as well, if the descriptions are accurate.
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Wednesday 8th June 2011 12:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
FFS...
r18 isn't because sex is sick or wrong in some way, it's becuase the vast majority of people don't want to watch porn when they get an 18 cert out of the video shop (or download). It's there for differentiation of the sort of things you will see. There is nothing wrong with people having sex, it's just generally considered that it's not the sort of thing that should be generally available to anyone without warning. Kids (ie: under 18) watch 18cert films, you have to be 18 to go into a licensed sex shop, it just makes sense.
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Tuesday 7th June 2011 18:35 GMT BinaryFu
Honestly the problem actually is...
the fact that they don't have a rating higher than 18 (and I don't mean NR crap either).
Back in the day, when they had some rather limited restrictions on bestiality films, for example, there were some that you had to be over the age of 25 to rent, if I recall correctly (I was a teen at the time but I recall seeing a second that was restricted to 25 or older) and that might resolve the issue we have today - Parents going, "Well, my kid's mature for 13, he can watch an 18 rated movie..." and then they see things like this - guess who gets assaulted by the outraged parents? The censors.
So, you crank up a higher restriction rating for films, allows for more "artistic" content to be allowed (even if you're going to vomit blood after watching them, most likely) while still protecting our youth from stupid parents who don't realize an 18 rating means 18, not 17, 16, 15 14 and a half...or less.
Then you can protect the stupid people from themselves without censoring the population - you just say, "Sorry, you need to be THIS HIGH to ride this ride kiddo - no exceptions."
Cheers,
BinaryFu
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Wednesday 8th June 2011 08:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
definitions
People are talking like there is a difference in law between real kiddy porn and simulated kiddy porn. There isn't.
The Brasseye paedophile special is worth a watch as it's one of the funniest things ever to show on British TV:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9031532194656768989#
But the scene around 16.55 also illustrates that even obvious fake images (childs face added to naked adult body, etc.) would be categorized as child porn.
I'm not suggesting that this interpretation would apply to horror films, which are of course simulated. But I really do wonder about the kind of people who watch this horror stuff for enjoyment. Why would anybody enjoy watching someone being tortured and murdered? I really don't get that at all.
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Wednesday 8th June 2011 12:03 GMT Just Thinking
Why would anybody enjoy watching someone being tortured and murdered?
Doesn't murder feature in quite a lot of fiction, from ancient Greece via Shakespeare to Coronation Street? Violence, torture and accidents seem quite popular too.
This film probably leaves less to the imagination than most, but it isn't fundamentally any different to a typical serial killer/horror flick.
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Wednesday 8th June 2011 12:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
OPA
“The Board also seeks to avoid classifying material that may be in breach of the Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964 (OPA) or any other relevant legislation. The OPA prohibits the publication of works that have a tendency to deprave or corrupt a significant proportion of those likely to see them. In order to avoid classifying potentially obscene material, the Board engages in regular discussions with the relevant enforcement agencies, including the CPS, the police, and the Ministry of Justice. It is the Board’s view that there is a genuine risk that this video work, The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), may be considered obscene within the terms of the OPA, for the reasons given above."
It is my view that there is a genuine risk that any video work may be considered obscene within the terms of the OPA, for the reasons given above.
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Saturday 11th June 2011 16:25 GMT Max_Normal
There is no link to kiddie porn, so stop drivelling on about it!
Come on people, stop going on about kiddie porn, there is an obvious difference.
Paedophiles are real and (unfortunately) RELATIVELY speaking, common. Any child porn whatsoever, be it real or computer generated sanctions their behaviour, and this will very likely put children in more risk of abuse.
I don't see lots of evil surgeons turning people into human centipedes (or anything else) being reported on the news, there is clearly no proven link with any risk of abuse. Anyone phychopathically disturbed enough to be inspired by this movie to commit atrocities will be planning to commit atrocities anyway.
For this reason, quite obviously kiddie porn should be banned for eternity and anyone using or making it should be heavily punished, while all other forms of media, when there is no proven or abvious link to abuse, should be immune from this kind of opinion-based censorship. This has always been an obvious opinion to hold for me, and no I would not bother watching the movie because it is probably tasteless and boring, although I don't think it would shock me much having worked in A&E and operating theatres.
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Saturday 11th June 2011 23:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Horrible films yay!
"Any child porn whatsoever, be it real or computer generated sanctions their [paedophiles] behaviour, and this will very likely put children in more risk of abuse."
...
"Anyone phychopathically disturbed enough to be inspired by this movie to commit atrocities will be planning to commit atrocities anyway."
I don't know how to reconcile these two statements.
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Tuesday 14th June 2011 11:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
everyone's a retard, 'cause it's now illegal to grow up
JUST to re-iterate a beautiful comment made on page one by a Cunning Linguist, "Supposedly an 18 rating means that it's for adults only, so who gave the right to one adult to say what another adult can or can't watch?"
<3 well said sir/madam/madman* delete as appropriate.
NB1: If an adult likes to watch that kind of thing then, fine... go watch that kind of thing. I personally don't like that kind of thing BUT I WILL continue to support YOUR right to make and watch fiction such as this. I see no crime where there be no victim. Well done to the Censors for inducing a shed load of free advertising for what was, until this stupid little debarkle commenced, a sequel that was guaranteed to tank at the box office.
NB2: The horror genre was not ever, so far as can be reasonably deduced, titilating or arousing (although of course, HammerHouse did have a wonderful way of slipping in some rather fetching cleavage at regular intervals). Horror, surely, is concerned more with the 'fight or flight' response, and with overloading the body with adrenaline, not endorphines. The desire to vomit or to shit oneself is rarely viewed (in my polite circles at least) as a prelude to a meaningful or rewarding bout of sexual congress so I wonder why it might be that 'kiddipr0n' found it's way into the replies so quickly. I would expect it only of child abuse addicts and the severely metally challenged; this apparant inability to interact with the world except with reference to their chosen obsession. Live and let live eh? Just a horde of mouth foaming lunatics, the lot of you.
Equally, however... WRT other "victimless crime scenarios", I would ask that society respects my desire to light up a spliff at will. It may help if I promise not to film myself doing it.
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Saturday 18th June 2011 20:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
I can see this ending badly
1) Censors class film as "extreme pr0n" and ban it.
2) ISPs hand over list of anyone who downloaded it in the last year to Govt
3) About 40,000 people get "the knock on the door"
Resulting in yet ANOTHER reason for ISPs to filter out BitTorrent traffic, "just in case our users are inadvertently downloading nasty films and evading censorship, think of the children, yadayada"...
Just wait until the Govt realise that the latest method of evading censorship is someone loading up a large pendrive with smut and sending it by post, and watch pendrives and other types of flash memory get added to the list of items banned by Royal Mail
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Detecting them is trivial I might add, use a non linear junction detector tuned to the clock frequencies used, typically 12.000 or 16.000 MHz for USB devices.
This topic is closed for new posts.
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