Sporting black leather jackets, riding boots and crop, a former-ally Japanese joined to two -enemy American victims, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) tempts viewers to see insinuations of Nazism. One member of the screening audience liked what he accepted as a pure-and-simple surface of gross-out “twisted biological horror.” “Horror-porn,” amended another, bored and disgusted that, blared in title parentheses, the first of two sequels is already in production, as HC II (Full Sequence).

Claiming suffering more than fear at its core, Dutch director-writer Tom Six graduates from television and his country’s first gay feature to this “realistic, 100% medically accurate [piece] that could actually happen in real life to the audience watching.” Even discounting fascism-domination in the Fantastic Fest and Screamfest prize-winner, the plot admittedly taken from a sick joke is disquieting. There is not a terrible amount of gore compared to many another modern movie, but what is unsettling involves the calm creepy façade of villainous Dr. Josef Heiter (Dieter Laser).

Unlike the classic mad man of science grinding an axe against scoffing colleagues, the bad doctor has retired to his forest house-to-die-for after a successful career separating the Siamese twins whose reddish fetal images decorate the pastel walls. Nor does motivation appear to be the disinterested advancement of science. Emotionless, he first experimented on Rottweilers now buried beneath a “3-Hund” slab, then diagrams and PowerPoints the surgery to be practiced on human guinea pigs. He is not obsessed with arthropods or anthropogenics -- centipedes or man’s influence on nature -- but envisions the reverse of the separation of joined bodies, by uniting now three and later four distinct individuals through grafting their alimentary canals. One mouth, a single anus and, counting hands and knees, twelve (then sixteen) legs.

It is never disclosed why Heiter dislikes mankind or, better, is aloof, perhaps Godlike as accused. But his is insanity instead of Promethean ambition or echoes of one flesh that He hath joined together not to be put asunder. Unengaged, asexual in dress or breaststroking in the nude, he is vindictive when canines or people show defiance. “Don’t take it personally,” he coos to a lorry driver from Holland whose tissue is not a match and who is therefore given a lethal injection. That leaves only two sedated and strapped to his basement hospital beds: typically, American airheads interested in men and partying more than monuments and culture on a European vacation. So inept that they haven’t the foggiest about changing a flat tire, Jenny and Lindsay (Ashlynn Yennie and Ashley C. Williams) are lost fairy-tale children in the night woods who stumble onto the deadly modern villa.

SPOILER ALERT

Teeth extracted and mouths sutured and stapled to rear ends, the young ladies have little to do apart from rolling their eyes and whimpering mightily. The speaking, cursing and eating head of the composite creature becomes Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura), tranquilizer-darted to replace the dispatched Dutchman and hollowly threatening that “Japanese possess unbelievable strength when riled.” This male third screams and struggles but in a surprising turnabout reveals doubts about his own value and about God.

A not-surprising escape thwarted and a broken glass door repaired, the nightmare seems hermetically sealed. Hope glimmers from the outside when detectives Kranz (Andreas Leupold) and Voller come to investigate, have their suspicions piqued, and return with search warrant and drawn pistols.

The girl in the middle is left at the bloody end, her position none too promising. Still, public appetite insatiable for reincarnations of Freddy Kruegers, Jasons and Jigsaws, “with a 12 person human centipede that will go full force in graphic details,” the already begun first follow-up is to make this installment “look like my little pony.”

Nothing jumps out suddenly to scary music, and blood does not gush all over. Rather, it is the idea here that should hold the interest and anticipation of some. Most, however, will see mere excessive sicko, not Psycho, unpleasantness for the sake of unpleasantness. 

(Released by IFC Films; not rated by MPAA.)