Mille-pattes

n. – centipede
Chenille
n. - caterpillar or soft thick fabric
Chenil
n. – dog pound
The French have a flair for the dramatic, which can be demonstrated in their language. Take centipede as an example, centipede literally meaning 100 feet, in French translates to a thousand feet. I’m not sure exactly how many feet centipedes actually have, though because 100 already seems like a lot.

I discovered this because I happened across an article on a film titled The Human Centipede. I will leave it to you to discover what it’s all about at your own risk. In an email exchange with friends in Milan, fellow transplanted New Yorkers like us, I told them about it and suggested they google it to find out more. One did and emailed the other with me in copy saying WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T GOOGLE THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE!!!! It made me LOL as the kids say. In French that would be MDR for mort de rire or dying of laughter.

Well, I’m sure by now I’ve piqued your interest. My husband and I both indulge in the guilty pleasure of watching horror movies. I discovered in the review of the above mentioned film that what sets it apart from other “horror porn” films as they’re called such as Saw, Hostel, etc. is that more is left to the imagination thereby making it even scarier.

I can’t actually watch films like Chuckie or Halloween because of the sneak-up-on-you scare factor. I had to watch The Ring from the walk-in closet and when I was young I remember leaving the theatre in tears during Dawn of the Dead, which gave me nightmares for months afterwards. The Others and The Orphanage actually freaked me out pretty well, too. I’ve seen one French horror film with Cecile de France, a popular pretty French actress who plays a violent sexual serial killer. It was disturbing.

So I don’t know if I will allow myself to watch The Human Centipede. The premise alone is already shocking enough. And like a car wreck, I wished after the fact that I hadn’t looked at the trailer. The human imagination never ceases to amaze me – just when you think you’ve seen or heard it all, someone comes up with something unthinkable. And just to prove that point, there is already a sequel in the making.