Leslie Nielsen: Goodbye To A Legend

Leslie Nielsen 1926 - 2010

(photo by Alan Light)

Sad news this week, as Canadian Comedy Legend Leslie Nielsen passed away from complications from pneumonia.

Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1926. His father was a constable in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which led to Leslie living in the extreme northern community of Fort Nelson, NWT. A town with only a few hundred people and hundreds of miles from any city.

During his teenage years, Leslie graduated from Victoria Composite High School in Edmonton, Alberta. He then enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and was trained as a gunman. However, Leslie had been too young to complete training to be sent overseas to fight in WW II.

Leslie then worked as a Disc Jockey for a Calgary radio station before enrolling in the Lorne Green Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto. While there, he earned a scholarship to Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, which ultimately launch his acting career. His first acting job was one episode of Studio One with Charlton Heston. Leslie was paid $75 for his appearance.

Leslie's career continued from there with mainly dramatic roles. And a lot of them. In the year 1950, Nielsen appeared in more than 50 programs. He continued on and branched out into motion pictures with moderate success until he was asked to audition for a role in Forbidden Planet, alongside Anne Francis. The movie was a box office success and resulted in Nielsen being signed to a multi picture deal with MGM Studios.

Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis in Forbidden Planet

Nielsen continued with dramatic roles during his time at MGM, and finally left the studio in 1959, ultimately dissatisfied with the quality of movies the studio had been putting out.

After appearing as the ship's Captain in the epic Poseidon Adventure in 1972 and starring in the action film Project: Kill in 1977, Leslie found his comedic niche playing the doctor in the classic spoof Airplane!

Airplane! directors specifically chose Nielsen because he had only been known for dramatic roles, and felt he could lend an air of ironic seriousness for the film. In the film his character responds to the line "Surely you're not serious?" with "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." The line would go on to become his trademark, and is considered one of the top movie quotes of all time by the American Film Institute.

After the success of Airplane!, Nielsen was attached to a new show called Police Squad, which first introduced the world to the Frank Drebin character. The show did not fare well and was cancelled after only a few episodes. Six years later, Frank Drebin would be resurrected in the Naked Gun series which would propel Nielsen to modern stardom for a new generation.

Through the 80s and 90s Nielsen appeared in what seemed to be every comedic spoof movie made. This trend continued into the 2000s with cameo appearances in the Scary Movie franchise. For the rest of the 2000s, Nielsen stayed away from motion pictures but did dozens of other projects including stage acting, documentaries, mockumentaries, voice overs, and celebrity game shows for charity.

in 2009, a sequel to the 3rd installment of the Naked Gun series had been announced. Sadly we will not get to see Nielsen in the project, due to his passing.

Over the span of his career, Nielsen appeared in more than 100 films and 1500 television programs. He has portrayed more than 220 characters.

The Human Centipede: The Sickest Movie of All Time?

So, prior to tonight, I had never heard of the movie called The Human Centipede (First Sequence). Actually, I stumbled across a reference to the movie while reading a review for another film. But the poster of the comment in which I was reading said that he was unsure if he could stomach watching the film.

Well, of course, this made me wonder what the film was all about. So a quick Google search later, and I was suddenly tossed into the midst of watching a movie trailer for one of the most disgusting concepts of all time. Truly.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is a film by Tom Six, a Dutch writer, director and producer. Upon first watching the trailer, the film starts out cliche, a la Hostel, but then quickly leaps into a more deranged direction, where in female tourists are used in a medical experiment to create a "Human Centipede" by surgically stitching them, along with an unknown Asian man, anus-to-mouth, thereby creating a 3 person creature who would share a single digestive tract.

Let your imagination run with that concept for a while.

Got that image in your head now? If your mind brought flashbacks of the Two Girls, One Cup video, that's ok. That's where your head should be right now.

Now I must say, as far as horror movie trailers go, The Human Centipede does a remarkable job of invoking feelings of horror and disgust while showing very little, if any, graphic detail. And, in my opinion, often the best cringeworthy films are works wherein there is little graphic gore shown. A good example of this is some of the prison scenes in the film Blindness. Sure, its not a horror flick, but those parts of the film certainly gave me the shudders.

So exactly how graphic does The Human Centipede get? Apparently not very (which I am sure many viewers are grateful for). However, the concept in itself was apparently gag-inducing enough, that it is reported that Tom Six did not reveal the mouth-to-anus details to investors while seeking funding for the film. And, as a result, many of the investors did not actually know about the complete subject matter of the film until it was released. Additionally, it has been reported that a number of auditioners for the project walked out of their reading due to sheer disgust at the concept.

The film debuted in 2009, and surprisingly, received fairly positive reviews from several film festivals. Mainstream reviews were less flattering, but there was the occasional silver lining. Entertainment Weekly for example, praised the direction of the film and the acting abilities of Dieter Laser (of the show Lexx), who portrayed the mad surgeon. However, EW also proclaimed Centipede to be "...The most disgusting horror movie of all time."

That being said, due to the modest success of The Human Centipede (First Sequence), Tom Six has been working on a sequel imaginatively called The Human Centipede (Full Sequence). Duh. What else would you call it? Six has released a teaser for the sequel (due out in 2011), where he says it will be so disgusting, it will make the first release look like "My Little Pony".

What is the plot line of the sequel? Well, a human centipede of course, but this time with 12 participants. And of course with a new lead as surgeon.

So at this point I have to ask: Have you seen The Human Centipede? Are you going to watch it? Would you watch the sequel? And what is your review on the movie?

You can view the trailer for the first film here. And here is the teaser for the sequel.