Goriest Movies Ever?

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OK ... Starting this week-end I'm going to resume my sporadic campaign to cure myself of my blood phobia. Gonna kick back and keep my legs elevated through some gory flicks and try to stay conscious. My last treatment included successful viewings of Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Re-Animator, but an episode of E.R. put me down for the count. The Evil Dead movies are good because the violence is kinda cartoony, but recommendations of any REALLY GORY movies are welcome. Goriest movies of all time? What are they?

― jewelly (jewelly), Thursday, 26 June 2003 21:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Dead Alive

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Dead-Alive (known in other parts of the world as 'Brain Dead'), directed by Peter Jackson, probably has more ridiculous fake blood than any other movie ever made, and a set of vengeful zombie intestines to boot (plus the baby, for crying out loud, good lord)
SHIT XPOST

― Millar (Millar), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Braindead / Dead Alive seconded, Ginger Snaps, Starship Troopers... but they're all pretty cartoony. Hmm.

How about Japanese films? Kichiku dai enkai and Organ are very very gory (and putrid and spermy and most of all shitty)

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:03 (twenty-two years ago)

"seconded" = crosspostish for "thirded", obv.

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm. OK. Yes, reviews of the cartooniness and/or "realism" of the gore are much appreciated ...

― jewelly (jewelly), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Starship Troopers and Braindead/Dead Alive certainly score high on the cartoon factor. Otherwise there's always Band Of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and other latter-day expensive war movies. Strangely enough I enjoy both of these extremes but I can't stomach the in between of standard american horror. Hmm.

― Millar (Millar), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Men Behind the Sun is said to be the most gruesome film ever. Haven't seen it though. And then there's Tim Roth bleeding to death in Reservoir Dogs of course.

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:22 (twenty-two years ago)

"Battle Royale" has some nice bits!

― Millar (Millar), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:23 (twenty-two years ago)

the bit in eraserhead where the evil-deformed-baby-thing sort of opens up truely turns my stomach

― Bob Shaw (Bob Shaw), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky is ridiculously gory (really Dead Alive and this killed the gore genre--these movies are unassailable in that department). Before Dead Alive I would have said that Hershel Gordon Lewis' Bloodfeast and 2000 Maniacs (I think there were 2000 anyway. . . who can keep track) would have gotten some votes too.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:41 (twenty-two years ago)

two more from japan:

versus
koroshiya (aka "ichi the killer" in europe/USA)

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 26 June 2003 22:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I tried to think about this, but I can't be objective. I can't work up much of a response to seeing bits of latex or CGI being hacked up or pulled to pieces. It's real-life gore that I simply can't stomach seeing.

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Strangely enough I enjoy both of these extremes but I can't stomach the in between of standard american horror.

Wes Craven's take on that is that when horror movies try to show "realistic" violence (moving away from the cartoonish end of the scale) but don't show realistic consequences (moving away from the Private Ryan end), it's disconcerting -- in the bad way.

Anyway, I can't think of any first-hand recommendations offhand, but supposedly Final Destination 2 is fairly high on the gore scale, and I think it's either on video/DVD now or hitting it soon (I know I have it in my Netflix queue.)

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:13 (twenty-two years ago)

BTW Rob Zombie's "House Of 1000 Corpses" is to be avoided.

Another from Japan that has plenty of gore (and is completely fucked up to boot (oh and it's also ESSENTIAL THAT YOU WATCH THIS MOVIE BTW)) is "Tetsuo Iron Man" or "Iron Man Tetsuo" or just "Tetsuo" or whatever they're calling it. It has maggots in the first five minutes!! It's great! They turn into a giant robot cock at the end!

― Millar (Millar), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:14 (twenty-two years ago)

IIRC "Event Horizon" has some pretty nasty bits here and there, and the spaceship interior looks def, but otherwise that film is complete toss

― Millar (Millar), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:15 (twenty-two years ago)

on the Tsukamoto note search Tokyo Fist where an impossibly bruised man is struck with a radish. more maggots too!

also http://www.guineapigfilms.com/front.html

― Honda (Honda), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Argento's Opera

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought House of 1000 Corpses was fun (which is not the same as "good," but ...) -- it's Texas Chainsaw Massacre as done by Rob Zombie, basically, which means taking out the reeeeally lengthy scenes of nothing but screaming and running, and replacing them with a clown and a lot of unnecessary music-video-like cuts and interstitials.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:33 (twenty-two years ago)

interesting that you bring up event horizon, millar. i felt obligated to go into the icky scenes on pause and analyze them. some of that stuff is foul, foul - but it just flashes by so quickly. and some of it is hard to make out, because they are watching it on video monitors, (right?)

the whole movie isn't gory, but i was impressed with the murder scene in 'in the bedroom', in that it seems to leave you staring at the compromised body part just a little bit too long.

― ron (ron), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:55 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah Event Horizon is a movie with a lot of interesting parts and little ideas here and there, and then they basically fucked it all away with that ending - there's about 500 better/less tepid ways to put a cap on that plot (anybody seen The Black Hole? I mean really)

― Millar (Millar), Friday, 27 June 2003 00:57 (twenty-two years ago)

The Thing has some awesomely gory sequences. Chopper is similarly stomach churning in parts, especially the lopped ears sequennce.

what in the hell has happened to mr. carpentar's career? Ghosts of Mars is utter shite.

― Chris Radford (Chris Radford), Friday, 27 June 2003 01:14 (twenty-two years ago)

'Event Horizon' is the greatest movie ever!! I love the bit where Fishburne says "OK, I think we've seen enough" and he's trying so fuckin' hard to keep a straight face

― dave q, Friday, 27 June 2003 06:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Also if yr on the lookout for really sick flicks there's one called 'The Offspring', it's 4 vignettes and all of them are disgusting. In one of them a guy drowns his wife in the bath and then fucks a corpse who subsequently gives birth to a mutant baby that crawls out of the ground then kills people, in another these cannibals have human torsos and limbs hanging from a washing line

― dave q, Friday, 27 June 2003 06:58 (twenty-two years ago)

the last third of from duck til dawn is drenched in vampire and human gore.

― Chris Radford (Chris Radford), Friday, 27 June 2003 07:02 (twenty-two years ago)

D-U-S-K, though a duck vampire flick could be interesting

― Chris Radford (Chris Radford), Friday, 27 June 2003 07:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Er, how can watching fake-ish horror film gore cure one of the phobia? I'm curious!

Tetsuo is awesome but it's in black and white!

What about early Cronenberg, Shivers or Videodrome? Also.. there's got to be a good number of Italian horror films that'll work, like Fulci (sp?), I only saw one of his & it was thoroughly nasty - because the guy at the video store explained how they'd screened it at some all-night horror-fest in College Park, thereby causing well over two-thirds of the audience to leave.

― daria g (daria g), Friday, 27 June 2003 07:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Zapruder home movie

― oops (Oops), Friday, 27 June 2003 07:19 (twenty-two years ago)

hey, maybe anatomie, it is set in a med school & morgue etc. i can't really remember how much guts were in it tho

― ron (ron), Friday, 27 June 2003 07:23 (twenty-two years ago)

i was watching the show Autopsy on Hbo tonight. Yikes!! it's a documentary detective show with real blood and guts. saw a few bags full of cut off legs and arms and the body from which they (along with the head) were cut off of.

― JasonD (JasonD), Friday, 27 June 2003 07:44 (twenty-two years ago)

blood feast!

― Tad (llamasfur), Friday, 27 June 2003 08:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Just about anything from aforementioned Japanese directors Takashi Miike & Shinya Tsukamoto.

― JS Williams (js williams), Friday, 27 June 2003 08:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I've also heard that The Untold Story is pretty gruesome. It's a Hong Kong category 3 movie about a cannibal murderer, supposedly based on a true story.

― JS Williams (js williams), Friday, 27 June 2003 08:15 (twenty-two years ago)

any dario argento film.

― doom-e, Friday, 27 June 2003 08:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Any Lucio Fulci film.

― Ben Mott (Ben Mott), Friday, 27 June 2003 11:48 (twenty-two years ago)

The gore in The Thing is indeed awesome, but there's not much blood, just enough to fit in those little petrie dishes (ok ok, also the squirting arm stumps). The needle injection close-ups were harder to watch, for me at least.

― chester (synkro), Friday, 27 June 2003 15:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I hated it when they cut their thumbs open. Brr.

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Friday, 27 June 2003 15:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Faces of Death

― Chris V. (Chris V), Friday, 27 June 2003 15:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Nah, Traces of Death, which actually has mostly authentic footage in it. Not, you know, 'home movies' with 5 camera angles.

― oops (Oops), Friday, 27 June 2003 16:11 (twenty-two years ago)

"Highways of Agony"
there's nothing quite like watching actual carnage and death to teach kids how to drive...

― walker, Friday, 27 June 2003 16:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Why bother with films - go to rotten.com!

― Sommermute (Wintermute), Friday, 27 June 2003 17:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm, OK, Dead or Alive for the cartoony stuff, and then on to the Japanese flicks. And to answer somebody's question .... A long time ago a shrink gave me a book of very gory real-life pictures and told me to "de-sensitize" by looking at them but I said fuck it. Still have the book but hardly ever look at it. With the films, I can watch them with another person or people who will hopefully make sure I don't conk my head if / when I faint. Which I won't if I stay in the right position, but when I'm cringing and contorting in disgust it's easy to forget to keep the legs elevated, etc.

― jewelly (jewelly), Friday, 27 June 2003 17:50 (twenty-two years ago)

The blood in Clash of the Titans always creeped me out cause it had this bizarre gooey consistency and opaque maroon appearance, like it was mixed with cornstarch or something. Very unnatural and therefore more nightmarish, I guess.

Jewelly is it just blood that bothers you? What about bloodless amputations and decapitations, like when Luke gets his hand cut off in the Empire Strikes Back, or like you see on TV sometimes? (S+D, btw). Or zombies eating brains in Return of the Living Dead? (I'm trying to think of mostly bloodless gross-out stuff here. Help me out, people.)

― chester (synkro), Friday, 27 June 2003 19:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Not looking for bloodless -- bloody is the whole point (although that's what bothers me most). Needles? Faint. Gross stuff having to do with eyes? Faint. I haven't really catalogued it cuz I ordinarily avoid such movies at all cost, but now I'm seekin' 'em out.

― jewelly (jewelly), Friday, 27 June 2003 19:45 (twenty-two years ago)

(bloodless gross-out stuff: my friend sent me this email today, reproduced here in total: "Today I stepped on intestines.")

― chester (synkro), Friday, 27 June 2003 19:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh, eyeballs, ewww. Seeing someone turn their eyelids inside out could almost make little me pass out.

― chester (synkro), Friday, 27 June 2003 19:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I just watched a movie last week where a guy gets blinded by a nun with a painting razor! It was fucked up. He opens the trunk of the car, bam! She slashes his face and at first you only see the cut on the bridge of his nose and on the edges of his orbits - then they hit you with a close up of his eyes and you see that the cornea has actually been bisected, blood starts seeping out, he and the nun start screaming horribly; in the end the nun became a whore and he was given the death penalty for a triple homicide.

"The Humanist" - it's Korean.

― Millar (Millar), Friday, 27 June 2003 19:57 (twenty-two years ago)

two years pass...

Category A (hardest around, very disturbing)

august underground
august underground mordum
slaughtered vomit dolls
aftermath/genesis
murder set pieces
red room 2
MuZan E
beyond the limits
Das Komabrutale Duell
guinea pig: flower of flesh and blood/devils experiment
the untold story
ebola syndrome
men behind the sun
cutting moments
Neighborhood Watch
the pig f*cking movie
torched
tumbling doll of flesh
violent shit

Category B (extreme, do not watch with mother)

2000 maniacs
all night long 1,2+3
blood feast 2
Blood Sucking Freaks
bone sickness
broken the movie
carne
chinese torture chamber story 1+2
der todesking
ginger snaps
the gore gore girls
gummo
happiness
high tension
human pork chop
in a glass cage
inferno of torture
in my skin
irreversable
i stand alone
joy of torture 1+2
kichiku
a living hell
naked blood
nekromantik 1+2
pinocchio 964
red room
red to kill
reflecting skin
salo
schramm
scrapbook
street trash
suicide club
sweet movie

Category C (still pretty f*cked up, but in a more mainstream way)

baby of macon
bad taste/braindead
baise moi
basket case
Flavia priestess of violence
i drink your blood
jigoku
maniac
nightmare
pink flamingos
pleasure shop on 7th avenue
ravenous
re animator
rosemarys killer
santa sangre
society
trailer town
turkey shoot
vulgar
war zone
waxwork
wild zero
oldboy
versus
stacy
junk
Audition
Ichi the Killer
Visitor Q
organ

― Hatters mad, Sunday, 23 April 2006 22:10 (nineteen years ago)

woah, you know your stuff, it's almost a bit concerning. naked blood is something else entirely. my mate went a very funny colour when that girl ate her own eyeball with a fork.

― dog latin (dog latin), Sunday, 23 April 2006 22:53 (nineteen years ago)

I've never understood people who like movies based on how "disturbing" they are.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 23 April 2006 22:56 (nineteen years ago)

I mean, that was maybe cool when you were 15, but throughout the years I've come to realize how crappy a lot of so-called horror cult classics are. For example, I can't for the life of me understand why there's a remake of Hills Have Eyes, since the original is one of the most boring movies I've ever seen.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 23 April 2006 22:59 (nineteen years ago)

A lot of the category A stuff mentioned above is the really disgusting material (the August Underground/Mordam stuff in particular). That's the gore-for-gore's sake list. More disturbing, perhaps, is that a lot of those films/filmmakers have uncomfortable associations with creepy white power shit. The imdb messageboards for some of these movies (like "Murder S3t Pieces") are pretty nuts.
I'm a grindhouse fanatic through-and-through, but this stuff is mostly boring and irritating.

― Tiki Theater Xymposium (Bent Over at the Arclight), Sunday, 23 April 2006 23:12 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know if I found the gore a deal-breaker in Ichi the Killer or if it was the sheer stupidity of the film. I couldn't figure out how anyone could be entertained by it - what joy/entertainment is there in watching tongue slicing and all the other sadistm on display there?

Either way I turned it off and sold the DVD when I got to the tongue-cutting scene.

― milo z (mlp), Sunday, 23 April 2006 23:18 (nineteen years ago)

There's some decent and good movies on the list though, like War Zone or Happiness or Audition or I Stand Alone, which are actually about something, but I guess for whoever did this list the important thing is that a movie is disturbing and whatever content it has comes second. And I'm not saying gore cannot be used to a good effect, for example Cutting Moments is highly disturbing, but for a reason. Gratuitous gore, on the other hand, becomes more boring the more you see it.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 23 April 2006 23:21 (nineteen years ago)

ohhh christ, cutting moments was the roughest shit i've ever seen.

aftermath, a nacho cerda short film about a necrophiliac coroner, is also pretty fucked-up.

― gear (gear), Sunday, 23 April 2006 23:32 (nineteen years ago)

I don't have any interest in gory films for the sake of it.. although always curious as to why this sort of extreme cinema happens. doubt I would try and watch anything off that a-list though. I couldn't get through I Stand Alone (it wasn't the gore, it was the.. nihilism). Tried to watch In My Skin in the theater at a film festival (I always go for the French films, so..) but that too, I had to leave due to full on panic attack, I can't watch that.

Ravenous is a v good film, really underrated.

― dar1a g (daria g), Monday, 24 April 2006 00:39 (nineteen years ago)

'happiness' is totally creepy. love it

most gore in a mainstream film = carrie?

― chris andrews (fraew), Monday, 24 April 2006 00:45 (nineteen years ago)

I'm a bit bemused by how disturbing Hatters Mad considers "Ginger Snaps" to be. I saw it the other day on tv, and as someone who pretty much hates the kind of movies in those lists (i can't imagine watching anything on there voluntarily, with a few exceptions) i had no problem with it. It was grimly hilarious and fun I thought!
Could it have had serious cuts, so to speak?

― Masked Gazza, Monday, 24 April 2006 05:51 (nineteen years ago)

No, I've seen it (not on TV).. it's not that gory, just fun.

― dar1a g (daria g), Monday, 24 April 2006 12:49 (nineteen years ago)

most gore in a mainstream film = carrie?

Not even close. Heck, not even among Brian DePalma movies -- both The Fury and Body Double eat its lunch. And The Untouchables, too, probably. One very literal bucket of blood doesn't even approach the gore you can find in any big-screen horror release from New Line or somesuch these days.

― phil d. (Phil D.), Monday, 24 April 2006 13:55 (nineteen years ago)

Ebola Syndrome is a bit of a favourite of mine. It rehashes a lot of the themes from Untold Story but isn't as bleak, I actually find it mostly rather amusing in a completely messed up way.

I find extreme violence easier to take when delivered in this sort of over-the-top, darkly humourous way (Ichi would be another example).

― Mil (Mil), Monday, 24 April 2006 21:29 (nineteen years ago)

Suicide Club isn't event that gory wtf??! I've seen exactly one of the Category A Movies and almost all of the Category B and C. Apparently I am too big a wuss for the hard stuff.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Monday, 24 April 2006 21:37 (nineteen years ago)

The recent remake of Texas Chainsaw was just horrible, unbelievably gory and gruesome. It was so cliched and lousy but in the exact way to make you even more nauseous. Everyone's completely covered in filth and sweat even before the killing, so ugly and nauseating.

― Abbott (Abbott), Monday, 24 April 2006 21:38 (nineteen years ago)

gummo? happiness? "disturbing /= "goriest" clearly. I don't even think gummo or happiness were particularly disturbing.

good films tho.

And Dead Alive pwnz the comedy gore genre hands down.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 April 2006 21:48 (nineteen years ago)

I mean really no way would I place Salo or Santa Sangre anywhere near Nekromantic (which is a truly pointless waste of film and yes, genuinely gory)

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 April 2006 21:49 (nineteen years ago)

It's had a couple of mentions, but Men Behind The Sun is well worth tracking down if your tastes veer towards truly extreme cinema.

There's no way I could honestly say it's enjoyable to watch in any normal sense (a corpse exploding in a decompression chamber, a real child's body being dissected, various horribly well realised brutalities being perpetrated on prisoners of war) but its basis on real atrocities of war and quasi-documentary style means it lingers in the mind far longer than some of the other stuff listed.

― Bill A (Bill A), Monday, 24 April 2006 21:58 (nineteen years ago)

"anywhere near Nekromantic (which is a truly pointless waste of film and yes, genuinely gory)"

yer crazy. almost all his movies are comic masterpieces! tho, my fave is part two, and then der todesking and THEN nekromantic. schramm was kind of a dud though.

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 24 April 2006 23:22 (nineteen years ago)

I can't believe Man Bites Dog isn't on there anywhere. I guess it's more disturbing/funny than gory.

― josh in sf (stfu kthx), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 00:20 (nineteen years ago)

REDNECK ZOMBIES

― kephm (kephm), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 00:23 (nineteen years ago)

august underground was probably the most disturbing thing i've ever seen

― the unbearable lightness of peeing (orion), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 00:49 (nineteen years ago)

that category B list up there is pretty kooky. there is no way that scrapbook and gummo deserve to be on the same list.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 01:37 (nineteen years ago)

i can watch almost anything, and the untold story was almost too much for me. completely foul. and made with care! which just made it more disturbing.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 01:39 (nineteen years ago)

but really, Nekromantik 2 is a hoot! ah, my old film threat days. good times.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 01:40 (nineteen years ago)

not at all disturbing but quite fun...a forgotten 90s or so movie called Waxworks starring Zach Gilligan from Gremlins. Extremely gory classic horror homage and quite good camp fun. Not disturbing at all, but gory.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:08 (nineteen years ago)

can i take this moment to mention how much i love Living Dead Girl? oh, Living Dead Girl, how i love you. such a bloody beautiful bloody movie.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:16 (nineteen years ago)

I love how much easier it is to find this sort of stuff on Netflix than it is to find titty flicks.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:38 (nineteen years ago)

there is a titty flick netflix though isn't there? i forget the name. i would be tempted to disinfect the DVDs that came to me from such a service though.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:50 (nineteen years ago)

Anyone ever seen Stan Brakhage's autopsy film, 'The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes'?

― Ward Fowler (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 10:49 (nineteen years ago)

Ichi & Scratchy

― Markelby (Mark C), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 11:40 (nineteen years ago)

twelve years pass...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/01/banned-in-46-countries-is-faces-of-death-the-most-shocking-film-ever

Probably never see it - well maybe..

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 1 October 2018 22:07 (seven years ago)

Funnily enough the The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes is the nearest thing to Faces of Death that I've seen.

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 1 October 2018 22:09 (seven years ago)

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