Human Centipede director Tom Six reveals multiple sclerosis diagnosis in ‘final film’

Tom Six, the film-maker behind schlock horror phenomenon The Human Centipede, has revealed that he has been living as “a full-blown recluse” in a darkened Amsterdam apartment for six years after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

In The End of Tom Six, a homemade documentary that the Dutch director said would be his final film, he says that the stress over his failure to find a distributor for the follow-up to the Centipede trilogy significantly exacerbated his condition.

Released in 2009, independently produced The Human Centipede tells the story of a crazed scientist, played by German actor Dieter Laser, who kidnaps three tourists and surgically conjoins them in a chain, mouth to anus.

The film performed modestly at the box office but the horrific medical experiment of its title became global pop culture lore, cited in South Park and The Simpsons.

In 2011 and 2015, Six made two sequels that each referenced the previous film, to create a “movie centipede”. In 2018 the film-maker released a trailer for The Onania Club, about a group of wealthy women who get turned on by extreme human suffering, but the film failed to pick up a distributor.

‘A strong appetite for self-destruction’ … The End of Tom Six. Photograph: Courtesy of Tom Six

In The End of Tom Six, which is being released on a pay-what-you-want model on YouTube on 15 August, Six reveals he has spent the last six years “as a recluse” after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2020.

MS is a neurological disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms and the severity of the condition vary from patient to patient, but can include extreme fatigue, vision and memory problems, muscle cramps, spasms and stiffness, and difficulties with or loss of mobility.

“I can’t walk any more, reducing me to worming through my house like [a] fucking gargoyle,” the 52-year-old says in the film, in which he plays both himself and the director conducting the interview. “I’m a morbid lump of untouchable howling flesh.”

While Six notes that many MS sufferers make an effort to eat healthily and exercise after their diagnosis, he says he has a “strong appetite for self-destruction”, with “a black belt in ego demolition”.

He describes a daily routine that consists of lying on a Chinese opium bed in silk pyjamas, bingeing opioids and film noir movies, smoking Havana cigars and eating chicken curry, chocolate mousse and peanut butter. He doesn’t leave his home apart from night-time trips to a nearby cafe, for decaffeinated coffee.

Six says he did not reveal his medical condition at the time of his diagnosis because “I hate being a victim and get pity”.

The second half of his final film is mostly a complaint against “woke cowardice” and “safe-space crybabies” in the film industry, which he blames for the failure to get The Onania Club released. He said that the project was densely interwoven with references to global elite conspiracies and which would have become “even more of a success than The Human Centipede”.

Throughout the film, a “censor nazi” in an SS uniform interrupts the interview to point out which scenes will need to be cut or fitted with trigger warnings.

“The prolonged, extremely stressful battle accelerated his disease and totally ravaged his body up to the point that he is now nearing the end of his life,” Six’s producer Maartje Willems said in a statement accompanying the film’s release.