Insects. Arachnids. Myriapods. They come under the colloquial umbrella term of ‘bugs’ and they fill our nightmares. Or at least that’s the case for most of us. David Cronenberg fills his movies with creepy crawlies, and seems more fascinated and curious than afraid. One of the most indelible quotes from his classic The Fly, encapsulates both the fascination and fear held in equal regard for the cinematic depiction of insects. Seth Brundle says, “I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it, but now that dream is over and the insect is awake.”
Bugs have been used as a source of fear in horror cinema for a long time. Their many legs, many eyes, weird misshapen bodies, terrifying instinctual behaviors (have you heard of the assassin bug who wears the corpses of other insects it kills on its back for camouflage?), and oozing secretions of various venoms and sticky substances also make them rife inspiration for horror filmmakers. So many extraterrestrial and supernatural creatures in cinema have been concocted from what we know about bugs.
Keith Li’s Centipede Horror and Titus Ho’s Red Spell Spells Red center on the unleashing of ancient curses involving centipedes and scorpions. While these are technically myriapods and arachnids, respectively, I will be colloquially referring to them as “bugs” from here. Centipede Horror centers around two friends, Pak and Chee, who go to Singapore to investigate Pak’s sister’s mysterious death in the woods. They find out that she died on the grounds of an old village that was burned down, and the lone survivor has cast the “Centipede Curse” on anyone who he sees enter the village’s territory. The curse causes centipedes to crawl out of the host’s skin. In Red Spell Spells Red, a similar ancient curse is cast upon a group of filmmakers who uncover the tomb of a black-magic shaman.
In both films, the sound design for the insects is appropriately creepy, with every step of the many centipede legs giving an echo-y trickling sound. The large volume of centipedes and scorpions used in both films, (almost all live), are shown crawling on walls, out of holes, and onto the actors. The result is thoroughly unsettling visuals that will leave shivers down any viewer’s spine. However, that isn’t the limit of these films’ daring attempts to gross out anyone who watches.
In Centipede Horror, an anti-spell used by a good shaman to counteract the Centipede Curse is depicted by having the afflicted vomit centipedes. To achieve authenticity, the filmmakers and actors engaged in one of the most skin-crawling practical methods I’ve ever seen. They actually rolled up the centipedes, mixed them with a rice-porridge concoction (my guess is congee) put them in the actors’ mouths, and had them act “vomiting” them out. In Red Spell Spells Red, no vomiting was involved, but several sequences show dozens of scorpions crawling onto the actors, latching onto their hair and clothes.
These films didn’t use stunt doubles, and with limited budget and possibly limited pay, there’s quite a level of dedication involved by the actors doing things that I simply would not have the constitution to tolerate. But what of the bugs? Well, unfortunately, to say, many of them were explicitly killed on-screen during filming. One of the notable aspects of these two films is the unedited and unflinching level of animal cruelty that, while it only amounts to about a minute or so of screen time total, did warrant the creation of “Animal Cruelty-Free” cuts of both films.
The burned, poisoned, and smashed scorpions and centipedes are all real. With both films taking place near indigenous communities in Southeast Asia, various animals, including chickens, pigs, and frogs, are really chopped, dissected, and sacrificed on camera as well. These scenes are removed from the animal cruelty-free versions, but the dead scorpions and centipedes remain. This begs the question, morally and cinematically, is our tolerance for insect deaths related to our fear of them?
Op-ed columnist at the New York Times Tim Kreider wrote, “Ants, as individuals, do not seem like very complicated animals to me (I’m sure E. O. Wilson would correct me), but every time I smush one I am aware I am extinguishing for all eternity one being’s single chance to be alive.” In Hollywood genre films, insects are almost always public enemy number one. Horror and sci-fi utilize our personal hatred for all things buggy to create the monsters we remember most in our nightmares – the scariest rendition of the creature in John Carpenter’s The Thing is, without a doubt, the six-legged head that comes alive. Vincent d’Onofrio’s character in Men in Black is a cockroach alien wearing human skin. The Xenomorphs of the Alien franchise have all the characteristics of insects, from the proboscis mouth to the domed head and segmented abdomen, to hatching from eggs and cocooning their prey. Audiences are just waiting to watch all creatures die.
At the end of both Red Spell Spells Red and Centipede Horror, we witness hundreds of scorpions and centipedes slowly stop moving (most likely an insect spray was used). The intended reaction is clearly to feel relieved, even though hundreds of live creatures are dying before your eyes.
I think about my own reactions while watching these movies. When the pig sacrifice occurred, or the chicken was de-feathered alive and then had its head chopped off, I flinched and looked to the ground or away from the screen, but when one of the characters smashes a live scorpion with a rock, I felt completely unfazed. I may have done the same if I had seen one nearby. The source of our fears can often make us differentiate in ways that feel arbitrary and wrong in retrospect. The two Hong Kong cult horror classics Centipede Horror and Red Spell Spells Red are worth watching, but keep in mind that if animal deaths bother you, even if they are our dreaded insect buddies, watch the cruelty-free version. You’ll still get the gross and terrifying thrills without the on-screen explicitness.
