It’s an amazing thing when a
movie can dictate a physical or emotional response in people. But more often
than not there are movies that have scenes whose emotional responses aren’t the
ones that people want to talk about. Scenes that make the hair on the back of
your neck stand on end. Scenes that you secretly think are so cool, yet only
discuss them in quiet with your friends as to not let your family and neighbors
know you have some sort of crazy blood-lust.
Generally it’s scenes like this that a lot of us on AITH seem to remember and
discuss quite often. So in that spirit Ammon and I have taken some of our
favorite gruesome scenes in films and compiled them neatly in this top ten list.
The scenes that I have chosen will be titled in
RED
while the scenes that Ammon chose will be titled in
GREEN. And while these are
simply our personal favorites, please feel free to spit some bullets below with
some personal favorites of your own!
10. EVIL DEAD II: Eyeball Popping into Mouth
While this is actually more funny than anything scary, I have a few friends who
saw this flick as little kids and THIS scene was the one they always remembered-
for scaring the bejesus out of them. Crazy psycho witch-beast in the basement,
her head in the cellar door, Ash jumping on the door, popping her eye out of her
face- it flies through the air and WHAM! into the other dude’s mouth. Gross?
Squirm worthy? Totally disgusting? Only if your 5, and sometimes… those are
the thrills and chills that stick with you for life.
9. SE7EN: Sloth
Hey David Fincher, I’m in
the theatre watching your awesome flick SE7EN with my lady friend and was
wondering if you could maybe include a scene in it that I find so grotesque that
I throw up my ice-blue Kool-Aid and sour patch kids into my mouth. Oh wow, you
did do it! Seriously though this scene disturbs me to no end. Every time I see
John Doe’s victim for the sin of Sloth coming to life while lying in the bed my
stomach drops. The imagery of that guy laying there will haunt my dreams for a
long time.
8. SAW III:
Ankles
Out of all the scenes of
torture and mayhem that this third installment pushed the envelope with, the one
that still had me cringing as the end credits went up was Donnie Wahlberg’s
attempt at freedom- by smashing his ankle with a slab of porcelain. Oh, did I
say ‘smash’? I meant repeatedly smashed… until broken (into mush)…
just enough to slip out of the cuffs that was holding him prisoner. Ouch.
Actually, just thinking about it makes my ankle hurt.
7. PET
SEMETARY:
Gage cutting Achilles Tendon
Growing up watching FULL
HOUSE I always remember Miko Hughes as the smart-alec back talker who tore a
strip out of Uncle Jessie now and again. I always wondered why Stamos didn’t
stomp this kid into the ground, but than I saw PET SEMETARY and those FULL HOUSE
re-runs were never the same again. It’s creepy enough to see Gage return from
the dead and scurry around, but when he grabs his father’s scalpel and decides
that good ole’ Jud Crandall doesn’t need an Achilles Tendon anymore, it’s enough
to send shivers down anyone’s back. Imagine the back of your foot. That nice
tender area that you’ve managed to leave undamaged all these years. Now imagine
a crazy zombie toddler with a razor sharp scalpel cutting through it. Oh god, I
think I’m going to pass ou-
6. CABIN FEVER:
Shaving
Legs
I’m not big into shaving my legs (surprisingly, I’ve never
done it before), and after seeing Cerina Vincent shave her legs… after being
infect by a flesh eating virus… well, let’s just say I don’t plan on starting
anytime soon. You think cutting a knick or two is bad? How about a whole slice
of infected, bloody skin? After her flesh is melting off her body before our
very eyes, she decides that shaving her legs would be a good idea. Immense
vomiting and howls of discuss were heard in theatres around the world. The plus
side? She was naked during this entire scene…
5. STIR OF ECHOES:
Fingernail snapping in half
Right before this ghost
story came out, another similar movie by the name of THE SIXTH SENSE swept the
country by storm, overshadowing ECHOES- which, in my opinion, is far superior of
a film. While there were a few ‘jump scares’ throughout, it was the flashback
sequence that had me gasp and cringe like a little girl.
It all goes down when we see
what happened to the poor, dead girl (which is highly disturbing by itself): as
she’s slammed to the ground for a little gang-rape action, her fingernail snaps in half and rips completely off! And TO THIS DAY, this
image has stuck with me. If I needed any reason to keep my fingernails trimmed,
clipped and manicured- this was it!
4. ICHI
THE KILLER:
Tongue cutting Scene
In this ultra-violent flick,
it’s hard to choose a single scene that makes me cringe, because throughout the
movie there is so much f*cked up stuff going on, that it hard to decide which
one hurts the most. However the scene where Kakihara cuts off his own tongue
with a katana blade is so intense that it becomes like a train wreck that you
cannot turn away from. Every time I bite my tongue, I instantly think of this
scene and about how messed up it would be to cut your own f*cking tongue off. In
fact it’s so messed up we should watch it now!
See what I mean. That’s
scenes so insane that if a pregnant lady where to watch it, serious birth
defects may occur. Oh Takashi Miike, what is going on inside of that head of
yours!
3.
SAW II: Pit of syringes
When Shawnee Smith got
thrown into the pit of dirty syringes in SAW 2 I literally gasped. I can’t even
imagine what it would be like to fall into a pit of broken glass, but to fall
into glass that’s attached to dirty NEEDLES. Holy f*ck, I mean can you even
imagine anything so painful? Well maybe co-starring in BECKER for six seasons,
but at least she didn’t….oh wait, never mind.
2. IMPRINT:
Torture Squence #1 –
This flick was banned from cable TV- and honestly, for good
reason. This entry in the MASTERS OF HORROR series is seriously F*CKED from
beginning to end. But for me, the first torture sequence hurt the worse. And
just when I thought it would stop, it started up again… and again and again and
again… aghhhhhh! My fingernails, lips, mouth… I’ll never be able to look at
my fingers without thinking of piping hot needles being shoved underneath them…
I haven’t this exhausted from watching a movie since DEBBIE DOES DALLAS, but
that’s a completely different level.
1. ZOMBI: Eyeball/Sliver scene
I don’t know why Lucio Fulci
seems to hate the human eye-ball so much, but if you’ve ever seen his horror
films, it seems to be one of the common elements strung throughout. Being
someone who has a phobia about anything touching his eyes. Fulci’s extreme
ocular trauma shots, specifically the one from ZOMBI. When one of the undead
begin to pull the woman through the window pane and towards the sliver my
testicles shot up inside me. When the sliver actually punctures her eye, they
exploded. Don’t worry Lucio, I wasn’t planning on having kids anyways.
KILL YOU LATER!
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