The Human Centipede 2 - Laurence R. Harvey
We interview the main man from Tom Six's sick follow-up about censorship and his performance.
Dutch director Tom Six gained infamy in 2009 with The Human Centipede, and two years later found his sequel banned by the BBFC. After the ban was lifted subject to cuts, we got a look at the film, and found it to be better than most gave it credit for - see our review here. When we got the chance to catch up with Laurence R. Harvey, who plays lead psycho Martin, we were excited to hear what the actor made of the censorship issues around the film, as well as the cult implications of the gruesome sequel.
What’s your take on the censorship debate surrounding the film? It’s turned into quite a hot topic.
Well I’ve always been interested in censorship from a sort of academic view, I grew up during the video nasties era, I read Martin Barker’s books on the horror comics campaign. I’m interested in 19th century freaks shows and that sort of thing, so academically I’ve always been interested, but it’s quite different to be involved in a censorship debate yourself. When The BBFC rejected it, I thought that the press release was just going to be a simple one paragraph thing, a fairly objective rejection. But they went way beyond their remit, started calling Tom’s ability as a director into question, and reading it from a skewed point of view. It seemed like they missed the point a bit, our film wasn't about sexual violence – there were a couple of moments in the uncut version where he is violent towards himself, and Martin’s relationship with his own body and sexuality is more the theme. I think the uncut version would have been unreleasable in terms of what BBFC consider releasable, but the uncut version was submitted more to get a dialogue going as to what can be done, not to have insults flung at you in a public arena.
What was Tom Six like to work with? A lot of reviews seem to pain him as some sort of deranged madman, but he always just seems like a nice enough guy, trying to have fun.
I think there’s a part of his persona, the showman element, which people really take exception to. It was sort of similar to Gunther Von Hagen. A lot of people take exception to him and want to take him down a peg or two, and don’t credit him with the sort of intelligence that, when you meet him, you know that he has.
What do you make of the cuts? Do they ruin the film or is it workable? They certainly take a lot of shock factor out.
It does dull the impact, but it still retains that sense of extremeness, which it needs for the satirical point of view – it takes that tabloid concept of the person who copies a film because it can’t tell the difference between fiction or reality, and takes it to the extreme, in order to re-present the tabloids’ nightmare. It is also about the reaction to the first film. A sector of the horror fandom were complaining that the first film wasn’t gory enough, so this is Tom Six's reaction to this, saying “be careful what you wish for” and taking it a step too far. I prefer the uncut version, but I think the cut version does still manage to get the point across.
This seems to have cult written all over it, do you think that is something which was the aim all along?
Well when I first went to the casting, we were talking about what kind of a film it was going to be, and Tom was speaking about Japanese splatter films from the early 90’s. Also the classic midnight movie, or Eraserhead. This feels to me like the cinema of transgression stuff that Nick Zedd did, or Thundercrack, the George Kuchar film. It has that feel to it, and because the UK doesn’t really have that tradition, the mainstream UK audience won’t get that, but hopefully they will discover that sort of sensibility for themselves. I think whatever happens it will be ripe for rediscovery somewhere down the line.
Your character is pretty frightening, do you plan to do more work in horror?
Yes, more than anything I want to work with interesting, idiosyncratic directors. If I get lots of horror scripts which I’ve seen before, then I may turn them down, it all depends what comes my way once this has percolated through into the wider culture. Because it’s a violent part, and Martin doesn’t speak, I’d really like someone to give Guy Maddin, the Canadian auteur, a copy, because he basically makes modern day silent films. He doesn’t necessarily work in horror but does have horror elements. In The Saddest Music in the World, Isabella Rosselini’s character is an amputee, who has these glass legs filled with beer, because she’s a brewing heiress!
Have you been recognised in the street yet?
I was talking with Paul from Frightfest about this, saying no one had recognised me, and we went for a drink, stood outside and this girl comes up to me “Oh, I just saw The Human Centipede 2 in the screening room, that was you!” So I’ve only had the one spotting in the street, but at festivals it can happen as soon as I’m through the door... I do certainly get recognised at festivals.
Tom has said that the third instalment will make this one look like a Disney film – can you give us any hints about the sequel? Are you in it?
Well in the sense that how this one started with the end of the first, the third film starts with the end of the third film. Because Martin’s in the last shot, Martin will make it through in that way. He’s shooting it in America, and wants to have an American cast. He want to have a kind of desert feel to it, but that’s just from doing interviews alongside him. I don’t think he’s going to try and outdo himself on the gore element, he just wants to do it in an extremely different way. You could say that the first one was a psychological film, the second one much more visceral, and the third one will be different kind of extremeness.
What was the shoot like? With all that nudity, blood and faecal matter everywhere it must have been a strange one.
(laughs) It wasn’t, actually, it was very well ordered, and just dead fun on set. Tom’s full of bullish enthusiasm, when you’re on set he asks you to do something and you just think “yeah I’ll do it, sounds like a laugh...” the end of the shoot, the warehouse did look like the aftermath of a Hermann Nitsch performance, it looked like someone had been slaughtering animals in there! Apart from the way it looks, it was a pretty easy going shoot, the whole crew were very professional.
It must have been fun to play – so many silly moments and caricature type characters.
It was – they were all archetypes of the kind of people who picked on Martin or looked down on him. Most of my friends split into two camps – they either don’t want to see it because they don’t like gory films, or they want to see the uncut version.
Having that uncut version out there adds a mystique doesn’t it? This isn’t a film that’s just going to go away.
Well, they are thinking of resubmitting once some time has gone by and the furore has died down a bit, to see if it might be possible to get the uncut version out at some stage, maybe years down the line.
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