The Human Centipede is a 2009 Dutch body horror film written, directed and co-produced by Tom Six. The film tells the story of a deranged German surgeon who kidnaps three tourists and joins them surgically, mouth to anus, forming a "human centipede". It stars Dieter Laser as the creator of the centipede, Josef Heiter, with Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie and Akihiro Kitamura as his victims. According to Six, the concept arose from a joke he made with friends about punishing a child molester by stitching his mouth to the anus of a "fat truck driver". Inspiration also came from Nazi medical experiments carried out during World War II, such as the crimes of Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
