The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is a 2009 Dutch body horror film written, directed and co-produced by Tom Six. The independent film concerns a deranged German surgeon who kidnaps three tourists and conjoins them surgically, mouth to anus, forming the eponymous "human centipede". It stars Dieter Laser as Josef Heiter, the creator of the centipede, and Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, and Akihiro Kitamura as Heiter's victims. According to Six, the concept arose from a joke he had made with friends about punishing a child molester by stitching his mouth to the anus of a "fat truck driver".