I've been wondering what movies truly bother people. I'm on a hunt to watch some REALLY enticing films. What makes you cringe? What gives you nightmares? What messes with your pysche? There are some pretty gripping thrillers and dramas out there, and among them are some sick, demented, frightening, and dastardly films. Which ones don't let you forget them?
Seven (Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman) did a fairly decent job on me.
LATE
There's an unforgettable scene in the otherwise highly forgettable movie Dead Presidents when a guy in a squad in Vietnam goes missing. They finally find him lying on the ground still alive, but with his hands and feet tied, his belly slit open and his genitals hanging out of his mouth. It's on screen for just a frame or two, but that's about all it took to sear into my brain.
Also, anything with Phoebe Cates in a sexual context disturbs me because she looks almost exactly like my cousin. (shudders)
i had the displeasure in my youth of seeing not a movie..but that faces of death crap.
For me it would be "Cannibal Holocaust".
After I saw it, it left a sickening feeling in my gut that stayed with me for a day or two.
I even woke up from sleep with gruesome imagery from it going through my mind a couple of times...remnants of a dream.
No joke.
That is a truly disturbing film!
Post Edited (01-09-04 01:36)
All the cannibal flicks are disturbing to various degrees, but that one is the worst. Makes you feel like taking a shower afterward.
HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER was disturbing because you knew people like that were really out there.
I just saw one called ISLAND OF DEATH [aka ISLAND OF THE DAMNED, WHO CAN KILL A CHILD?] which was pretty creepy. The kids on this island go crazy and start killing all the adults. It predates CHILDREN OF THE CORN by a few years and is much more disturbing.
I agree with jmc :Henry is a real corker. Michael Mann's Manhunter likewise is a film that really sticks in my head, disturbing visions, disturbing behavior, disturbed minds. Tom Noonan set the serial killer sociopathic bar, and it has yet to be surpassed, IMO.
"The Deer Hunter" with Christopher Walken and Robert Deniro is a movie that I've seen once, but it's images have stuck with me for years.
Like JMC and others mentioned Henry: Portrait of a Sereal Killer is a classic disturbing film, not only for it's strong content but it's realism also.
The film that really sticks out in my mind is a Spanish film titled "In A Glass Cage."
It's about a young boy who was abused by a Nazi who flees to a Spanish village. The young boy then finds the Nazi who's living in an iron lung and earns the trust of his wife and becomes his caretaker. Although he has some alterior motives that include psychological and physical torture, and revenge to some of the worst degrees put on celluloid. If you ever see In A Glass Cage it's truly an experience you wont forget, there are certain images in that film that crawl under your skin and die.
I saw "I Spit On Your Grave" years ago and I was truly disgusted with the long and humiliating rape scenes. When she cut off the one rapist's unit and locked him in the bathroom; then went downstairs to listen to classical music is an image that will never leave my mind.
Also, I have trouble with anything having to do with fingernails. There was a scene in some movie (think it was Buried Alive) where a crazed doctor pulls out a woman's fingernails with a pair of pliers. Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.
Well, I can say that the in the mid-80's I saw (not I seen : ) ERASERHEAD. Not sure why, but it is always first on my most distrurbing films.
Eraserhead is a pretty out there film. that fetus scene still makes me cringe ughh (shivering).
Poltergeist scared the hell out of me when i was a kid seeing it on the big screen. That friggin CLOWN gave me nightmares!
Watch Deliverance and you will never go camping or listen to a banjo again. A great film, but disturbing none the less is the Exorcist, get the full version, not the tv edited one. I've never seen it but I understand I Spit on Your Grave is another one.
I have this book of essays on horror films where they give a list of the 13 most disturbing horror films...a lot of them have already been mentioned here: ERASERHEAD, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, IN A GLASS CAGE, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, and HENRY....
I haven't seen IN A GLASS CAGE--might check it out someday. There's also one called MEN BEHIND THE SUN that is really supposed to be hard to watch, but I'm not sure if I'm up to that one.
I've been meaning to pick up the I SPIT DVD with Joe Bob Briggs commentary but haven't gotten around to it yet.
I haven't seen CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, IN A GLASS CAGE, nor I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE.
During my military service I saw a French film called Man Bites Dog. It's about a film crew that does a documentary about the life of a man who kills people for a living.
There are a number of scenes in the film that were flat-out disturbing, but the rape scene near the end comes leaping to mind. It's a freakish film about the debasement of the human psyche. Really disturbing. REALLY GOOD, but really disturbing.
I must agree with Grumpy Guy that Man Bites Dog (1991) is a fantastic film. A sequel to it that shows the hitman's life leading up to those events should be released within the next year or so.
As for disturbing, I'm gonna have to go with I Spit On Your Grave. There are two scenes that always come to my mind when I think of this flick. The first, like Neon Noodle said, is the scene where she cuts off the guy's penis in the bathtub then slowly and calmly walks to her living room and puts on a record of classical music. This scene always bothered me cause it's the only scene with music in the film. The other scene is of her running over the guy with boat and chopping him up with the outboard motor.
Das Experiment was also pretty disturbing for me. Watching the guards shave a prisoner's head, time him to a chair, beat him and then p**s on him really hit me pretty hard.
8mm also has a scene that really disturbed me the first time I watched it. The scene where Nick Cage beats James Gandolfini while he is tied up before setting the building on fire. I guess it was because it was such a major change in Cage's character. He had stayed the normal everyday guy until this point where he just snaps.
If we're talking horror movies, I'd say Jacob's Ladder, The Mothman Prophecies and The Devil's Backbone would be somewhere near the top of my list.
Not that the movie disturbed me but "Trainspotting" comes to mind, I can never quite watch any of the scenes involving the baby
Titticut Follies, an incredibly gritty documentary about life inside a mental hospital. I've only seen a couple of scenes from it, but one had footage of a patient being forcefed via a tube up his nose, intercut with footage of that same patient's body being prepared for his funeral. I usually have a pretty strong stomach, but that scene gave me a totally weird feeling for the next few days.
Grumpy Guy wrote:
>
> There are a number of scenes in the film that were flat-out
> disturbing, but the rape scene near the end comes leaping to
> mind.
In general, I find rape scenes very disturbing, though some are less so than others. I find it hard to watch rape scenes in a movie (even if not very graphic) with a female present. It's wierd - general murder scenes don't bother me all that much, but the rape scenes do.
The movie Irreversible (mad in France) is the most disturbing movie I've seen recently. It has a 10-minute (not an estimate - at least 600 actual seconds) rape/beating scene done with no cuts, a sene where a guy gets his face literally bashed flat by a fire extinguisher (a very realistic dummy was smoothly substituted for the guy after the first bash), and a guy's upper arm bone getting broken at a 90 degree angle. It also has a she-male prostitute flashing his genitals, and an extended scene in a gay sex club with lots of simulated sex. Not a movie I care to ever see again... but actually a pretty powerful movie for that one viewing I was willing to give it.
I must be getting squeamish in my old age, since I would not care to even watch a movie like this.
To tell you the truth, I watch movies to for fun - to laugh, etc. I don't care for movies that 'disturb' me. In my last job (Law Enforcement, working crime scene investigation), I guess I saw enough disturbing stuff for real. My first call-out my first week at that job was train vs. pedestrian, and the train won.
I once investigated a traffic collision that involved the deaths of two 15 year old girls (only one was drt, the other died after being helolifted to a level 1 trauma center). The firefighters, cops ambulance guys, everyone was standing around joking and doing that sick stuff that happens at scenes like that. This went on for a while, until one of the firefighters making some of the 'funnier' jokes realized that the dead girl he was making fun in front of was his very own cousin. He'd seen her the day before. He didn't recognize her because, well, sometimes you don't recognize people after they had been killed in car crash.
When a firefighter many many years ago, I also had to do things like cut the body of one of my friend's Dad out of his truck when he got T-Boned by a dump truck going 60 mph - with his kids standing across the street.
Also, one of the several fires I got to investigate that involved the death of a child under 5, had some extra sad circumstances. The mother needed to go to the store, and her 3 year old son wanted to go, too. But, she would not let him. They fussed a little bit. When she returned from the store, her son was dead, her husband was burned pretty badly, and her home was rubble. Some trip to the grocery store that was.
[I guess you can see why I have a lot of nightmares]
When I was younger, I guess I liked the grosser the better, but now my perspective has changed. And don't get me wrong, I do like fun horror movies (and other, similar genres) with all the fantastic, creative effects. But to this description, I just say, "wow, not my cup of tea."
-I don't care to watch rape depicted on screen, certainly not a long drawn out scene.
-I don't care for gay sex scenes, and certainly not gay rape.
Sorry guys, but real life is disturbing enough for me...I watch movies to ESCAPE from that!
Peace.
IRREVERSIBLE was too arty for its own good....the annoying drunken camerawork and story structure lessened the impact.
What is disturbing about it is that people are using the rape scene as a selling point. But in that sense maybe it's no different than the exploitation films of the past, except it's not supposed to be an exploitation film.