'Human Centipede' is having a moment

Indie horror film The Human Centipede grossed just $180,000 at the box office in its limited release last year. But director Tom Six‘s twisted tale of a surgeon who stitches together three victims so they share a single alimentary canal has since become a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Tosh.0, 30 Rock, and Stephen Colbert have all referenced the movie. There has been the porn parody (The Human Sexipede) and, less inevitably, a full-length musical version staged by Emerson College’s Chocolate Cake City comedy troupe. You can even buy a Human Centipede cat toy. Most recently, the season premiere of South Park concerned the introduction of a disgusting new Apple product called the HumancentiPad. So why has this film hit the sweet spot for so many comics? ”It’s about eating your friends’ poop,” laughs Jon Daly, who wrote a sketch about a human centipede survivors group meeting for Funny Or Die. ”It’s the ultimate nightmare, especially for the person in the middle. And the ultimate nightmare is always funny.”

The good news for fans of both extreme horror and pop culture parodies is that a sequel — The Human Centipede Part 2 (Full Sequence) — will be released later this year. ”It has a centipede of 12 people,” says director Six. ”I can’t wait to see what comedians do to that.”