Hollywood has definitely ramped up the amount of on-screen gore and violence over the years,
but there've been a few movies that managed to exceed anyone's expectations.
Some movies live on in infamy for taking things just a bit too far.
Thanks to some supremely excessive brutality, here are some films that have become unforgettable
for all the wrong reasons.
"Hold onto your butts."
Old Boy
When we're talking about Old Boy, we're of course referring to Park Chan-wook's timeless,
jaw-dropping film, and not the unfortunate Spike Lee remake.
For those unfamiliar with the Korean revenge flick, a deadbeat, alcoholic dad gets abducted
and locked in a tiny hotel room for 15 years straight with no rhyme or reason as to why
he's been imprisoned there.
Understandably, as soon as he's released, he immediately sets out on a revenge mission
and finds one of the people hired to keep him in confinement.
To get back at him, he whips out a claw and hammer and goes to town on the man's mouth
… and, let's just say the resulting scene makes your worst trip to the dentist look
like a vacation to Disney World.
Fight Club
David Fincher's Fight Club had its fair share of scenes that went too far.
It spliced single frames of stuff into various parts of the movie, and its underground
fights had just enough meat-smacking oomph to them that viewers felt every blow.
Edward Norton's unnamed, everyman protagonist had a lot of pent-up rage against the world,
and he was finally starting to let it trickle out after learning the ways of the travelling
soap salesman, Tyler Durden.
Perhaps the most grueling moment of the movie, though, happens when Norton's character faces
down Jared Leto's "Angel Face" and pounds him into absolute oblivion, going well beyond
the established rules of Fight Club.
Norton's fists bashing into the man's once-pristine visage until it's a bloody pulp of bruises
and broken teeth easily leaves viewers stupefied by the narrator's sadistic, relentless assault.
Human Centipede
If you're unfamiliar with the premise of The Human Centipede, a quick Google image search
should be able to convey the sick experiments done by the film's maniacal villain.
Three tourists get drugged and imprisoned by a mad German surgeon who hopes to create
a new life form by sewing people together.
So, the devilish dude stitches the poor trio into succession from mouth-to-butt, with the
hopes that they form one single digestive tract.
And, as you might imagine, things don't go exactly to plan.
"Guys…
I'm really sick."
It's just as abhorrent and barf-worthy as you'd expect.
And the sequels only get worse from there.
Dead Alive
Before Peter Jackson became a household name with the Lord of the Rings, he directed a
series of low budget B-movies and horror flicks.
The most noteworthy of his earlier films would have to be Dead Alive.
This splatter flick focused on a man whose mother gets bitten by a Sumatran Rat-Monkey
and spreads an undead plague throughout town.
The central character then goes to absurd lengths to save himself and his girlfriend
from the decaying, cannibal horde.
And as gross, macabre, and fun Dead Alive is, its most messed up part would have to
be when a zombie baby rips its way out of the face of a poor victim at our hero's house.
Just use your imagination to figure out how the creature got in there, and kiss your appetite
goodbye forever.
The Exorcist
William Friedkin's groundbreaking horror film broke barriers and introduced a new kind of
terror that moviegoers were simply not ready for.
Linda Blair's portrayal of 12-year-old Regan MacNeil's demonic possession was unlike anything
fans had ever seen.
Little Regan's various stages of transformation and torture were both vivid and terrifying.
And the movie-loving world would be hard-pressed forget her gravity-defying levitation, that
360-degree head rotation, and all the projectile vomit.
And yet, all of it paled in comparison to the most shocking and controversial part of
The Exorcist…that crucifix scene.
When it comes to possession-centric violence, it just doesn't get any worse than that.
A Serbian Film
Now, here's a movie that might just be better left unseen altogether if not for its technical
brilliance.
A Serbian Film tells the story of a semi-retired porn star who is at the end of his rope financially
and decides to film some kind of artsy film that he isn't used to making.
For some reason, the art film's creators need a man of his "talents," and it isn't until
he reaches the set when he finds out why.
The art project is actually a snuff film, filled with horrific things no one should
ever get any kind of enjoyment out of watching, or filming.
Writer-director Srdan Spasojevic has said that the film's controversial violence is
symbolic of the Serbian people's horrific mistreatment by their government.
He wanted to create the opposite of the dull, predictable, and uninspired flicks made by
his countrymen, but unfortunately, the rest of the world didn't care for this graphic
metaphor.
A Serbian Film has since been banned in multiple countries and pulled from the shelves of most
major movie retailers.
Antichrist
Director Lars Von Trier is accustomed to controversy, with a filmography that includes projects
like Dogville, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac.
But his 2009 film Antichrist is the project that pushed viewers to the very brink of their
sanity.
Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg portray a couple who mourn the loss of their toddler,
who fell to his death while they were getting hot and heavy.
The father is a therapist who decides to help his traumatized lover by taking her to a cabin
in the woods.
What happens there forces the mourning mother off the deep end.
Gainsbourg's character eventually tortures herself and her lover in all kinds of appalling
ways, and the part that'll really make you cry occurs when Dafoe's crown jewels get smashed
to bits by a giant block of wood.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
Surprisingly enough, things actually do get worse from that point forward because this
movie just couldn't stop at tortured nether regions alone.
Of course not.
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