10 Insanely Intense Films Any Horror Fan MUST See

Tom Six’s Human Centipede trilogy may well be some of the most well-known filmmaking to emerge as part of the so-called ‘torture porn’ phase of horror. Even people who haven’t seen any of the movies know the gross-out joke it’s based on.

The films are, it has to be said, pretty uneven. The first instalment in the series is fairly conventional (and horrid) and the third film is a very odd (and tedious) affair indeed, but it’s the middle film in the series that really stands out in terms of sheer grimy, grubby intensity.

Martin is an obsessive fan of the first Human Centipede movie, and he abducts twelve unlucky souls in order to construct his own ‘100% medically inaccurate’ human centipede using his toolbox and duct tape. Lots of hideous moments follow, including ‘that’ sandpaper scene.

But it isn’t just the film’s obnoxiously unpleasant special effects that made the film so unpopular with censors across the world. It is the element of imitation that the film takes as its main theme: it deliberately plays with the idea, so beloved of those with a taste for moral panic, that some people may take inspiration from horror films and re-enact the appalling sexual violence that they show.

Pretentious? Disgusting? Goofy? Look, I never said the films in this list were all going to be good movies…