In what was announced as the last part of the “Ass-To-Mouth” saga, director Tom Six tries to close a cycle with “The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence” where in a meta-fictional experiment times 3, we are presented with another human centipede but this time, at a bigger scale…
…And I think that is the most we can expect.

In this film we meet Bill Boss, the schizophrenic warden of a prison in Texas (Named, no less, after George W. Bush) that on the verge of loosing his job, and fed up with not receiving the respect he believes he deserves from the governor (or the prisoners, for that matter) decides to employ some extreme methods to put the inmates in line, not caring about consequences nor stopping for human rights mumbo-jumbo.

When methods like boiling-waterboarding or castration seems to not give the expected results, the prison accountant brings a new idea to the increasingly desperate Boss: To get the worst 500 inmates and binding them, creating a Human Centipede, taking the idea from some weird films of his personal collection. The pitch? You just need to feed the first person on the centipede and the rest can have the left overs…  Not to mention that after spending sometime on their knees, the chances of the inmates returning to a life of crime when their sentences are served seems unlikely.

As you can imagine, at first there is some resistance from the employees to follow thru with the plan, but since Boss finds himself on the edge of both sanity and career, the prison staff ends up complying, under the threat of loosing the job (or another part of the body), having also the supervision (and blessing) of the original film’s director Tom Six, who ensures, incidentally, that the film is 100% medically accurate.

Ok, the truth of the matter is that the plot is as simple as that. The problem is that the pacing is too slow.  We already know what will happen, and it takes too much time to get there. In the middle of the trip there will be scenes that will makes us uncomfortable, others that will try to shock us, but in the end, the film just feels heavy and boring, even thought the special effects and make up job are better than good. What the hell happened?

I know we shouldn’t look for Academy level acting on this kind of films, but even for this story Dieter Laser’s rendition of Bill Boss was waaaay over the top, if I had seen his gradual decent on the madness I’d probably enjoyed more, but Laser  shouted most of his lines thru the movie, and took pauses overreacting to pretty much anything, instead of feeling threatened by him (as I felt with his character on the first film) I was annoyed very quickly.

I was surprised with the performance of Laurence R Harvey as Butler the accountant. Even though he also had some over the top moments, was more balanced, and I liked his character up to a point (he still is sick bastard, but a nice one). As Boss’s Secretary/sexual slave we had Bree Olson, doing a role more than decent, even when the abuse she suffers was a little too much (C’mon, surely you have quit better jobs than this!) Eric Roberts as the governor has only about 10-15 minutes on the screen, and although is functional, don’t expect much from him here. The actors Robert LaSardo y Tommy «Tiny» Lister as  inmates however, were better than good, just as Clayton Rohner in the role of the doctor that reluctantly preforms the surgery. No complaints there.

Rape, castrations, torture, amputations, the ingesting of sexual organs and of course, a lot of shit , were not enough to bring a memorable film, or even a decent one to close this trilogy. I find it hard to say, but the film was tedious for the most part, with some cool scenes here and there, but hardly worth a second viewing or even more than a rental.

With all that being said, I have respect for the director Tom Six, he has made the films he wanted and in the way  he envisioned, but I would like to see another film from him without trying to shock the audiences in order to compensate the lack of a good script. We know he is not afraid to push the envelope, and that he might have some cool ideas under the hat, let’s hope the next film is one of those.

Score 2.5/5