Introducing… The Human Centipede 2, the most controversial film of 2012, finally granted a certificate

A HORROR movie with “no equal in depravity” will be shown for the first time at City Screen, York, tomorrow night.

Banned by the British Board of Film Classification this summer because of its “disgusting” content, Tom Six’s The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) has eventually been granted an 18 certificate.

In the Dutch auteur’s graphic movie, disturbed loner Martin is inspired by the fictional Dr Heiter to dream of creating a 12-person centipede and sets out to realise his sick fantasy.

Dave Taylor, City Screen’s marketing manager, forewarns: “I think we need to issue a health warning for this film as it depicts the most gruesome body-horror imaginable. Please don’t try this at home.”

Writer-director Six has bragged that his sequel to 2010’s The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is “the sickest movie of all time” but the film’s distributor has agreed to administer 32 compulsory cuts – amounting to two minutes 37 seconds – in order to facilitate its release on DVD.

In June, Six’s tale of a horror movie fan’s obsession with the original film was rejected for straight-to-video release by the BBFC. Classification was refused on the grounds that “there is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalized, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience”.

The BBFC deemed the film’s content to be “sexually violent and potentially obscene” and board members decided the centipede existed “purely as the object of the protagonist’s depraved sexual fantasy”.

The board had given First Sequence an 18 certicate, judging it to be “undoubtedly tasteless and disgustuing” but acceptable for release because the centipede was the product of a “revolting medical experiment”.

Banning Full Sequence this summer, however, they said they would not reclassify it, stating that “no amount of cuts would allow them to give it a certificate”.

Six’s response was to issue a statement through the film magaizine Empire the next day, saying “the film is fictional. Not real. It is all make-belief. It is art…”, while arguing that viewers should have the right to choose whether or not to see it.

The director duly capitalised on the BBFC’s decision by marketing the film in Australia with a promotional video that carried the tagline “Banned in Britain, cut in the US, unleashed in Australia”.

The film makers subsequently mounted an appeal against the UK ban, leading to the cuts to eight sequences being made by distributors IFC Films, including the graphic sight of man’s teeth being removed with a hammer.

The 18 certificate was duly granted, accompanied by the words of BBFC president Sir Quentin Thomas: “These cuts produce a work which many will find difficult but which I believe can properly be classified at the adult level.

“The company has now accepted these cuts, withdrawn its appeal and the work has been classified at 18.”

In the United States, Full Sequence was premiered at the Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, on September 22, when IFC Films presented audience members with complimentary barf bags and positioned an ambulance outside the theatre as a gimmick. One viewer was so physically ill, however, that real paramedics had to assist her.

The film received a limited theatrical release across America on October 7, approved unrated for midnight showings only.

City Screen’s one-off screening tomorrow will start an hour earlier at 11pm. Barf bags will not be provided.