Tom Six reveals MS diagnosis in final documentary
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- Tom Six revealed in his final film The End of Tom Six that he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2020 and has spent the last six years living as 'a full-blown recluse' in a darkened Amsterdam apartment, unable to walk
- The 52-year-old director blames the stress of failing to find a distributor for his follow-up film The Onania Club for exacerbating his condition, saying he now 'worms through his house like [a] fucking gargoyle'
- The Human Centipede (2009), Six's independently produced horror about a scientist who surgically conjoins three tourists, performed modestly at the box office but became global pop culture lore, referenced in South Park and The Simpsons
- Six made two sequels in 2011 and 2015 forming a 'movie centipede,' then released a The Onania Club trailer in 2018 about wealthy women turned on by extreme human suffering, which never secured distribution
- The End of Tom Six will be released on YouTube on 15 August under a pay-what-you-want model, with Six playing both himself and the interviewer in a film that doubles as a complaint against 'woke cowardice' and 'safe-space crybabies' in the industry
- Producer Maartje Willems said in a statement that '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 says he concealed his diagnosis at the time because 'I hate being a victim and get pity,' describing a daily routine of opioids, Havana cigars, and film noir on a Chinese opium bed
Why it matters: The documentary reframes Six's post-2018 silence not as artistic withdrawal but as the physical collapse of a filmmaker whose provocative work was blocked by distributors he now blames for hastening his decline. For audiences, it converts an obscure distribution dispute into a concrete medical tragedy — and the pay-what-you-want YouTube release on 15 August makes this effectively a public deathbed statement from a once- notorious cult director.
