"The Muppets Movie" Meets "The Human Centipede": Now That Ain't Right

So the title for this post should be “The Muppets Movie cleanses the horror of The Human Centipede,” but oh well. These two happened to be the films I saw this weekend: The Muppets Movie at a local cineplex, where the real fun of the (silly, sweet) movie experience was watching how totally engrossed my daughter was in it, and later seeing The Human Centipede on Netflix. One of my students recommended it, which should have been a warning. And I actually really knew nothing about it, except that it’s a “cult” film, which often means a good thing: Dead Man and The Big Lebowski are both considered cult films, and both are great. The Human Centipede? Seriously disgusting, odd, disturbing, awful, and so over-the-top it makes one shake one’s head and say, as Hank Hill often says in King of the Hill, “That ain’t right.” My students have since informed me there’s a sequel, and plans for another. If it’s any indication of my “rating,” I won’t watch the sequel. I don’t want to give it all away by describing it in detail, but suffice to say it’s a British-Dutch horror film, with one memorable mad-scientist dude named Dieter. It was banned in Britain. I can see why. By the end I wanted to rush back and rewatch Amy Adams in The Muppets Smalltown one more time, just to remind myself there’s some goodness left in the world.