Josef Heiter

"I'm Dr. Josef Heiter, retired but very well known as the leading surgeon in separating Siamese twins. Six months ago I designed a never seen operation on not separating anymore but creating, I transformed my 3 rottweilers into a beautiful 3 hound construction."

- Dr. Heiter

 

Dr. Josef Heiter or commonly and simply referred to as Dr. Heiter is the supposed main antagonist, however later the leading protagonist of the horror film The Human Centipede, and is arguably one of the most disturbing and perverted characters in cinema, even by horror standards - subjecting his victims to unthinkable horror in order to pursue his insane goals. He is based off of the real life Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

He was portrayed by Dieter Laser, who would later go onto play a completely different character Bill Boss in The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence).

Dr. Heiter was utterly obsessed with creating what he termed a "human centipede" - kidnapping three tourists and surgically joins them, mouth to anus, forming a perverse "centipede" but also causing unimaginable suffering to those involved.

History
Lindsay and Jenny, two American tourists in Germany, are drugged and kidnapped by crazed surgeon Dr. Heiter when they seek help after their car breaks down. The women awake in a makeshift medical ward and witness Heiter informing a kidnapped truck driver that he is "not a match" and killing him. When the women wake up a second time, Heiter has secured a new male captive, Japanese tourist Katsuro. The doctor explains that he is a world-renowned expert at separating conjoined twins, but dreams of making new creatures that share a single digestive system. He describes in detail how he will surgically connect his three victims mouth-to-anus. After Lindsay fails in an attempt to escape, Heiter performs the surgery on his victims, placing Lindsay in the middle, Katsuro at the front, and Jenny at the rear. Before beginning the operation, Heiter explains to Lindsay that he had experimented with creating a 'three dog', also joined mouth-to-anus, which died shortly after surgery. Heiter tells Lindsay that the middle dog of his creation experienced the most pain, and as a punishment for her escape attempt she will become the middle part of his centipede.

Once the operation is complete the doctor tries to train his centipede as a pet, and watches with great delight as Lindsay is forced to swallow Katsuro's excrement. However, Heiter eventually becomes irritated after being kept awake by the constant screaming of his victims and realising that Jenny is dying from blood poisoning. When two detectives, Kranz and Voller, visit the house to investigate the disappearance of tourists, Heiter decides to add them to his centipede as replacements for Jenny. Heiter fails in an attempt to drug the detectives, and they leave the house to obtain a search warrant. The victims attempt to escape from the ward, crawling up the stairs, and Katsuro attacks Heiter. Their attempt to escape ultimately fails. Katsuro confesses to the doctor, in Japanese, that he deserves his fate because he had treated his family poorly. Katsuro then commits suicide by slitting his own throat with a piece of glass. The detectives return to the house and conduct separate searches, as Heiter hides near his swimming pool. Kranz finds the makeshift ward and then hears a gunshot. He discovers Heiter's victims before finding Voller dead in the swimming pool. Heiter shoots Kranz in the stomach, and Kranz responds by shooting Heiter in the head. Kranz then falls in the pool, dead. Back in the house, Jenny and Lindsay hold hands as Jenny dies from her infection. Lindsay is left alone in the house, trapped between her deceased fellow captives.

Quotes

 * "I'll explain this spectacular operation only once. We start with cutting the ligamentum patella, the ligaments of the kneecaps, so knee extension is no longer possible. Pulling from "B" and "C" the central incisors, lateral incisors and canines from the upper and lower jaws, the lips from "B" and "C," and the anus of "A" and "B," are cut circular along the border between skin and mucosa, the mucus cutaneous zone. Two pedicelated grafts are prepared and lifted from the underlying tissue. The shaped incisions below the chins of "B" and "C" up to their cheeks connecting the circular mucosa and skin parts of anus and mouth, from "A" to "B," and "B" to "C," connecting the pedicelated grafts to the chin-cheek incisions from "A" to "B," and "B" to "C," creating a Siamese triplet, connected via the gastric system. Ingestion by A, passing through B, to the excretion of C. The human centipede, first sequence."

Trivia

 * Although the film claimed to use real-life surgical science, many experts have since ridiculed the idea that a "human centipede" could ever be created.
 * Being a method actor, Dieter Laser refused to speak to the three actors playing Heiter's victims during the filming of the movie, as he didn't want any kind of emotional attachment to them (as Dr. Heiter wouldn't have). This had put him into a minor conflict with co-star Akihiro Kitamura (who played the "head" of the centipede) who believed that Dieter was truly being hostile.
 * In the sequel set in the "real world", Martin Lomax, an obese mentally unstable man becomes sexually aroused by the movie The Human Centipede, and decides to copy Heiter's methods. However due to his not being a medical expert, he uses things like duct tape and kitchen appliances to create his centipede, which is larger than Dr Heiters. Despite being fictional, Heiter has an influence over Martin, who looks up to Heiter as a father figure and keeps a picture of him in his scrap book.
 * In the South Park episode, HumancentiPad, Steve Jobs tortured Kyle, a Japanese man, and a woman and made all three of them a "human centipede-esque" Apple product called the HumancentiPad. In the end, he had to pry them apart and let them go due to a loophole.
 * Dr. Heiter may have been inspired by the real life Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.
 * Dieter Laser appears as a new character Bill Boss in the third and final installment The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence). Doctor Heiter, along with the film's events is again a work of fiction, alongside the sequel The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence). Heiter appears in archive footage when The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is screened to the inmates at Bill Boss' prison.