Kranz enters Heiter's residence in First Sequence.
- "Herr Heiter? Guten Tag, Kriminalpolizei. Das hier ist mein Kollege Voller und Kommissar Kranz. Dürfen wir kurz reinkommen?"
- —Kranz's introduction
Kranz was a German police officer and one of the two criminal investigators that interrogated Josef Heiter for suspicious circumstances in The Human Centipede (First Sequence). Kranz was portrayed by actor Andreas Leupold.
Biography[]
Kranz was a Kommissar (detective) with the Kripo, short for Kriminalpolizei, along with his partner Detective Voller. presumably for the city of Mettmann, North Rhine-Westphalia. When two American tourists, Lindsay and Jenny, were reported missing, Kranz and Voller investigated the situation. The detectives discovered the tourists' discarded car and received a report from a witness claiming to have heard screaming near the residence of retired surgeon Josef Heiter.
Kommissar Kranz and Voller went to Heiter's home, where they began asking him if he knew anything about the whereabouts of the tourists. The detectives were greeted tersely and treated with unspoken austerity and open contempt throughout the line of questioning, with Heiter trivializing the missing persons as banalities unworthy of his time. When Heiter offered to get drinks, Kranz suggested coffee, but was disparaged by the doctor, who claimed he was so caught up in his research papers and studies, that he could only get them tap water, secretly laced with tranquilizers. When they confronted Heiter with steadily more incriminating evidence, he snapped at them, becoming erratic, calling their techniques amateurish and their allegations phony, commanding Kranz to drink his water like his partner had. Unmoved by his aggressive demand, he instead smacked it right out of his hand, leaving Heiter momentarily in shock. Returning to his sense, in a rage-stricken rant, he vows to remove Kranz from his position, only to realize that he's only confirming the detective's suspicions and backpedals, feigning embarrassment, stating he's simply stressed out, overworked and fatigued from his work, and admits he lost the grip on his emotions. He leaves to get a towel for the mess and to recompose himself, sneeringly denying the officers access to his basement, joking that it could be anything: a laboratory, an office, a torture chamber, without his permission to enter, they would never know. In his theatricals, he dropped the cloth, revealing a syringe, which he quickly passed off as insulin, supposedly for his diabetes.
Unable to act further within the regulations of the law, Kranz and Voller left Heiter's house and returned minutes later after acquiring a search warrant. The two detectives split up and searched the house. While investigating, Kranz entered the basement and found Heiter's make-shift clinic, crusted with traces of dried blood. Upon the discovery, he heard a loud thud from upstairs and immediately started looking for Voller, fearing for his safety. Checking the room directly upstairs, he made a grisly discovery: the two tourists, their eyes full of terror, attached to a man lying dead on the floor. Heiter had indeed been their perpetrator and unwillingly sew the abductees together into a human centipede.
Petrified at the sight, his mind refocuses on his original goal, finding Voller, leaving the muffled screams behind. Kranz rushed to the room and found Voller's lifeless body floating in an in-door pool, only to be shot several times moments later by a pistol-wielding Josef Heiter. Kranz, though disoriented and fatally wounded, manages to shoot Heiter in the head, killing him. Kranz died from his own injuries shortly after, his body joining Voller's when he slips into the pool.[1]
Personality and traits[]
When interrogating Josef Heiter, Kranz did so in a calm, cold tone of voice. When attempting to menace Heiter, Kranz showed little emotion, save for a single instance where he lost his temper and knocked a glass of water out of Heiter's hands. During his interrogation of Josef Heiter, Kranz mostly spoke in a soft, yet accusing manner. Between him and his partner, Kranz did all of the talking during their encounter with Heiter.