If Looks Could Kill/ Human Centipede

150. If Looks Could Kill
151. Human Centipede: First Sequence


If Looks Could Kill stars early 90s heartthrob Richard Grieco and Gabrielle Anwar.

Grieco stars here as Michael Corben, high school student. At his high school graduation ceremony, he's shocked to learn that he's a credit shy of actually receiving his diploma. As it turns out, he received an "Incomplete" in his French class. Luckily for him, his French teacher is organizing a trip to France for her students. If he can tag along and do the required work, he'll get his diploma. Unfortunately for him, at the same time there is international drama starting at the same time as his trip. In a case of mistaken identity, Corben is mistaken for Michael Corben, secret agent.

I've always liked this movie. When I was younger, it used to play on HBO all the time, thus ensuring that I'd see it pretty often. For a 14 year old, seeing a teenager as an action hero was cool as hell. And Grieco, while not actually a teenager at the time, was hot on the heels of his role on 21 Jump Street. So, his name was definitely out there. I also had a huge crush on Gabrielle Anwar at the time.

The story here isn't anything all that original, as mistaken identity movies have been prevalent throughout the years. It's not particularly bad though. There's a decent blend of action and comedy with some cool spy gizmos added to keep up the interest level. In terms of the cast, Grieco is not exactly the best actor alive. He's tolerable here though, thanks to a healthy dose of charisma. Anwar is solid. Support comes from Linda Hunt and Roger Rees with a small cameo from The Who's Roger Daltrey.

Overall, this is a good guilty pleasure flick. I don't highly recommend it or anything but it's worth watching if you stumble upon it.


Human Centipede comes to us from director Tom Six. This is his first English language movie.

This has been one of the most talked about movies of the last 8 months or so. At least to other geeks like myself that hang out at message boards and the like. Discussion started back in October and the hype has been building since. Upon hearing the premise, I was pretty excited about the prospects of actually seeing this.

For those not in the know, the title sums up the movie pretty well. A retired German surgeon whose specialty was separating Siamese twins wants to try connecting people rather than disconnecting them. He intends to take three people and hook them together via their gastric systems into the world's first human centipede.

All in all, I've got to say that this was one of the biggest disappointments I've seen in quite some time. The performances were bad. Lead Dieter Laser was really not impressing me much. Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie and Akihiro Kitamura weren't much better as the eventual three parts of the centipede. The story was about the only good thing to come out of this. It's original, to say the least. It's always nice to see something that hasn't been done before in this day and age of remakes, reboots and re-imaginings. However, it was just done piss poorly. This movie could have been so much more than it ended up being. Honestly, there's not enough gore and nastiness to please horror fans and the concept is too horrifying for non horror fans.

Overall, Human Centipede really isn't worth watching.