Layton: ‘Human Centipede’ too gross

When it comes to film, I have an iron stomach.

Gore doesn’t bother me, violence… When it comes to film, I have an iron stomach.

Gore doesn’t bother me, violence is a non-issue and graphic sex … well, let’s just say I can handle my fair share. Films that might repulse others, even cause them to leave theaters or shut the movie off halfway through, I sometimes relish. I feel proud, as if I’ll win some invisible medal or join an elite club by sitting through something many find unpleasant.

I do, however, have my limit. But more on that later.

Films extreme enough to turn one’s stomach have intrigued me for years. When I watch horror torture-porn flicks, like any of the “Saw” or “Hostel” films, some of my friends shake their heads in disgust at how I could sit through, let alone enjoy, such “depravity.”

Previously, I hadn’t thought too extensively about why I (and millions of others) enjoy this brutal horror film subgenre. There exists the theory that an audience can watch horrible things happen to characters in a movie and feel psychologically sound because they’re simply characters.

But this is a little cynical for my taste — I like to think my enjoyment of a “Saw” flick is derived from some psychological mechanism where, by watching horrible things happen to people in a movie, I feel safer about myself and happy that my own life has never reached such a horrifying extreme.

Of course, there are also plenty of films that have a higher artistic pedigree that still repulse and disgust.

I made it the entire way through “Irréversible,” a French film that includes a brutal head bashing and a nine-minute rape scene. I endured “Antichrist,” the infamous Lars von Trier thriller that had Charlotte Gainsbourg performing one of the most brutal acts of genital self-mutilation I have ever seen. It was hard to watch, yes, but I thought the film was a work of art.

Then there are the films that bother people, and those people just appear uptight. Many people, for instance, chastised “Kill Bill” for its hyperviolence and gore. I thought it was entertaining as hell.

Even the new film “Kick-Ass” is receiving some flak for supposedly promoting violence in teenagers. In the film, a young preteen who goes by the name of “Hit Girl” slices and dices her way through bad guys with the precociousness of Dakota Fanning and the skill of “Kill Bill’s” The Bride. It’s a silly action movie, people — get over it.

So while I thought — up until yesterday — that I could stomach just about anything, along comes a little horror movie to be released in the United States at the end of the month that’s made me think twice about my propensity for the violent and obscene.

Seriously, stop reading now if you have a weak stomach because even reading this film’s synopsis is enough to ruin your appetite for days.

I tried to warn you.

“The Human Centipede (First Sequence)” is a horror movie that made the festival rounds late last year. The setup seems familiar enough: Two American tourists find themselves stranded in the backwoods of Germany and take refuge in an upscale house with a creepy (but aren’t they all?) doctor. So far, so typical.

It turns out, however, that this doctor has a plan. And that plan is to create a “human centipede” or the Siamese triplet. That is, he wants to take the two tourists and another prisoner and connect them via their gastric systems, creating one long, deformed and terrifying creature.

If that isn’t explicit enough for you, let me break it down. With a few simple skin grafts, the doctor sews one person’s head to another person’s anus and then does it again with the second person to the third. Someone is lucky enough to be at the front of the centipede (though I don’t really think anything about the situation could be considered lucky). Oh, and the film describes the procedure as 100 percent medically accurate.

I’m not sure why, but even the thought of this makes my skin crawl and my stomach knot. Of course, knowing my sinister appetite for curiosity, I watched the trailer and am now scarred for life. The image, however brief, of this experiment was utterly terrifying and vomit-inducing.

As if this weren’t bad enough, director Tom Six has announced he wants to make a sequel — this time with a 12-person centipede. He said that the first film was simply a tool for people to get used to the sick idea.

This will probably be the first disgusting horror movie that I permanently avoid. If I can’t make it through the trailer, how am I supposed to make it through the entire film?

If there are any souls out there brave enough to stomach the “Centipede,” let me know how it is. Via phone of course, because I don’t want to be vomited on.