In recent years, several Hollywood films have been partially shot in Chattanooga, including Leatherheads starring George Clooney, Water for Elephants with Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson, and the Jackie Robinson biopic 42 starring Harrison Ford, with another film, Will To Succeed featuring Helen Hunt, scheduled to start filming later this year.
Marking another victory for the film industry in Chattanooga, Founding Administrator Missy Crutchfield of the City of Chattanooga’s Department of Education, Arts & Culture announced at a press conference yesterday that she had successfully negotiated a deal with Dutch film director Tom Six and his studio Six Entertainment to have the fourth and fifth installments of the Human Centipede series filmed in Chattanooga.
“This will not only bring a great deal of work for those in the film industry here in Chattanooga, but also the local hospitality, tourism, and food-service industries will benefit as well, pouring as much as $1.4 million dollars into the area,” said Crutchfield.
The first film of the series, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) gained notoriety for its incredibly disturbing subject matter, about a deranged German doctor who kidnaps three tourists–two American women and one Japanese man–and surgically attaches the three of them together, connecting the mouth of one to the anus of the other, forming the titular creature.
It was followed by The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence), which many critics considered to be even more revolting than the original, and the third installment, The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) is currently in production.
Although the third film was originally intended to be the last film of a trilogy, Six was inspired by talks with Crutchfield to keep the franchise going for at least two more films, enjoying financial incentives provided by the City of Chattanooga but with one stipulation: the films must be uplifting in some way.
Scheduled to be filmed in the fall of 2013 in Chattanooga, The Human Centipede 4 (Small Hadron Shitcollider) will tell the story of a group of scientists who connect twenty people, human-centipede-style, into a ring-shaped configuration after feeding them some bad salmon, causing the resulting fecal matter to be propelled at astronomically high speeds around and around, allowing the scientists to test various theories about particle physics.
Following in 2014 will be the filming of The Human Centipede 5 (Assholes Across America), which involves a billionaire philanthropist who devises a plan to have volunteers form a human centipede that spans the entire continental United States, from coast-to-coast, to raise money for charity.
“I haven’t read any of the scripts or seen any of Tom Six’s films or even know anything about the plots of the movies, but the director asked me if I would like to be in one of the ‘segments,’ which was incredibly flattering, so I signed up right on the spot,” said Crutchfield. “It’s been almost three decades since I starred as ‘Anne #1’ in Model Behavior, but I think this might be my return to the big screen!”
“We’re connecting people together, one at a time, to form an Unbroken Centipede of Compassion,” said Crutchfield.
