Roger Ebert refused to rate “The Human Centipede (First Sequence)” on the grounds that a star rating simply didn’t apply. Though he’d similarly dismissed a handful of other films throughout his career, the 2009 body horror was the first to have disturbed him so deeply that it precluded any sort of rating whatsoever.
With his simplistic “thumbs up/down” rating system, Roger Ebert is arguably responsible for the fresh/rotten binary nightmare of Rotten Tomatoes. But while the famed critic relied on his digits to rate movies during his on-screen appearances, his written reviews were based on a slightly more appropriate four-star rating system — though even Ebert wasn’t a huge fan, writing in 2012, “I curse the Satanic force that dreamed up the four-star scale.” Even when using the star system, however, he would sometimes abandon it completely to hand out a simple “thumbs down,” a mark he bestowed upon around 60 films in his career. Some of the movies Ebert hated are actually worth watching, but many might not know there’s a tier below the dreaded “thumbs down”: the “I refuse to rate this film” tier.
This is the wretched space within the annals of Ebert history in which “The Human Centipede” dwells. According to the critic, it simply didn’t matter whether the film was good or bad, just that it “occupie[d] a world where the stars don’t shine.”
Roger Ebert found The Human Centipede too depraved to rate
IFC Films
It’s debatable how many films Roger Ebert rejected from his rating system, as his original Chicago Sun-Times ratings aren’t always carried over correctly to his website. We know that he declined to give a score to “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” simply because he wrote the screenplay. His website also shows no ratings for “Deep Throat” or “Behind the Green Door,” though it’s unclear whether Ebert actually scored those films originally.
One film he considered entirely outside the realm of the star rating system was the 1972 crime comedy that remains disgusting to this day, “Pink Flamingos” (though it was given a simple “Thumbs Down” on his website). In his 1997 retrospective review, he wrote, “I am not giving a star rating to ‘Pink Flamingos,’ because stars simply seem not to apply. It should be considered not as a film but as a fact, or perhaps as an object.” But even “Pink Flamingos” didn’t seem to shake Roger Ebert as much as “The Human Centipede,” which he described as “depraved and disgusting enough to satisfy the most demanding midnight movie fan.”
“No horror film I’ve seen inflicts more terrible things on its victims than ‘The Human Centipede,'” wrote the critic in his opening line. As pretty much anybody reading this will know, the film is about a deranged retired surgeon (Dieter Laser) who becomes obsessed with the idea of creating the titular abomination by sewing together his victims’ mouths and anuses. Imagining esteemed critic Roger Ebert sitting through that is sort of amusing in its own way, though the man himself was anything but amused.
Roger Ebert’s take on The Human Centipede is complicated
IFC Films
“The Human Centipede” is one of many R-rated movies that went to the extreme. After its release, Dutch director Tom Six went even further, managing to get the sequel, “The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)” refused for classification in the United Kingdom (though extensive cuts ultimately allowed it to be released). Roger Ebert steered clear of that follow-up and had passed away by the time the third film, “The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence),” debuted in 2015. Judging by his take on the original, however, Ebert simply wouldn’t have survived watching either of the follow-ups.
In his “Human Centipede” review, Ebert described a third-act escape scene as “so piteous, it transcends horror and approaches tragedy.” After struggling through all 92 minutes, he simply couldn’t envision a way to award a single star to Six’s film. “I am required to award stars to movies I review,” wrote Ebert. “This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don’t shine.”
There are plenty of movies that the critic didn’t like. For example, Ebert hated the movies of one billion-dollar franchise with a passion, and he even walked out of an Oscar-winning war movie. But “The Human Centipede” seemed to touch a nerve that few, if any, films ever did. Interestingly enough, the writer still managed to find something in the horror, writing, “Within Six, there stirs the soul of a dark artist,” and noting how the movie was more than an exploitation flick. Still, it remains the one and only film Ebert refused to award stars simply on the basis of its abject bleakness.
