The Top-10 Most Disgusting Movies

We’ve seen it all, haven’t we? We’ve seen heads exploding. We’ve seen intestines get ripped out of people’s bodies, and used as garrote wire. We’ve seen people get their bottom jaws pulled forcibly from their faces. We’ve seen people get stabbed to death, shot, drowned, strangled, savagely beaten, tortured, skinned, immolated and crucified. And, being the horror movie junkies that we are, have eaten up every second of it. It’s amazing the level of violence and gore that the average gorehound can tolerate. There’s a reason Fangoria magazine has lasted as long as it has. Our lust for red Karo syrup spilling out of rubber corpses cannot be sated.

However, this is not an article about gore. Finding the world’s goriest movies in a no-brainer (start with “Dead Alive” and work your way down), and is the frequent subject of horror movie fans’ conversations. What is far more interesting to me are the movies that still, perhaps decades after their making, have the power to make even the most desensitized teenager squirm in their chair. There are teenagers who can stomach the most horrifying amount of violence imaginable, and actually applaud the use of torture and rape in movies, but still may not be able to make it through certain films, as they are just too disgusting.

This is an article devoted to the most disgusting and disturbing movies ever made. Only one of them is disgusting strictly because of its gore level. The rest… well, lets dive into the fountain of unknown stagnant fluids.

10) “The Fly II” (1988)

Dir. Chris Walas

Let’s start off a little bit easy. David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of “The Fly” was one of the most visceral horror movies ever made. It was so focused on it’s lumpen, malodorous mutation of its protagonist into a giant insect, that critics began seeing its body horror as a metaphor for venereal disease. The film’s finale, in which Jeff Goldblum sheds his scabby hide to reveal a slick-with-grime, twitching monster underneath is still capable of providing fuel for your nightmares.

The film was a huge hit, so a sequel was put into the works. The director, Chris Walas, was a creature creator on the first film (as well as some other wonderful monster flicks from the 1980s like “Gremlins,” “Enemy Mine,” and “House II”), so we were promised, at the very least, some really nice monster design. The story followed the son of Seth Brundle, and the fly-like symptoms he displays. Daphne Zuniga played the love interest. The director could have given us a pat retelling of the first “Fly,” but what Walas gave us was a gooey, icky pile of fly spore that can turn just about anyone’s stomach.

The film contains: A woman giving birth to a mutated exoskeleton. A human baby being fished out of a mass of quivering pus. Eric Stoltz (the titular fly man) encasing himself in a sticky cocoon of filth. A man having his face melted off by acidic fly vomit (it doesn’t kill him). Another man being decapitated by a passing elevator. A man being forcibly mutated into a stump of human flesh.

9) “Body Melt” (1993)

Dir. Philip Brophy

A pure exploitation movie if ever there was one, Philip Brophy’s “Body Melt,” a latter-day entry in the powerful cycle of Aussie exploitation movies, has so little story, and so many gooey gore effects, it plays more like an SFX demo reel than an actual feature film. The film follows a detective as he investigates some mysterious deaths in a small Australian hicks ville. People seem to be mysteriously turning into puddles of goop. It turns out that a local military outfit is testing a new chemical weapon. Is there any tension here? Will they be stopped? Nope. We have a setup and a melting body. Repeat ad nausea um.

There is also a really, really wiggy subplot about a trio of horny twenty-somethings on a sex vacation in the deep outback. They find a family of dangerous rednecks who like to eat the adrenal glands directly out of freshly killed kangaroos to get high. The daughter looks like a big fleshy mongol, complete with low-brown facial makeup effect, and one of the horny boys has sex with her anyway. Watching the two of them get it on will make your gorge rise.

The film contains: Numerous people melting into colorful pools of chunky glop. An expanding and exploding stomach. An expanding and exploding tongue. And expanding and exploding penis (I kid you not). The aforementioned kangaroo brain-eating. Creepy mongol sex. Incest. The occasional murder.

8) “Meet the Feebles” (1989)

Dir. Peter Jackson

To most movie buffs and hardcore geeks, Peter Jackson is merely the director behind a series of films based on a popular line of fantasy novels. Before he became something of a geek saint, hooked on CGI and so-called “epic storytelling,” Jackson was dear to my own heart as the director of a series of extreme, and extremely funny, gore films. The man was once at the forefront of the gore cults, thanks to his involvement in 1992’s “Dead Alive,” (a.k.a. “Braindead”) perhaps still the goriest film ever made. He also started his career with a gross and enthused alien invasion film called “Bad Taste.” If you don’t know these films, you should do yourself a favor and seek them out. They will serve as important blocks in your gore education.

In 1989, though, Jackson had his most bizarre idea to date: He wanted to make a sick, seamy spoof of “The Muppet Show,” revealing all of the horrible dramas, sexual dalliances, drug addictions, crime dealings, and secret porn production that went on backstage. The result is hilarious… and really, really gross. Our hero is peerless and pure, but the Feebles Variety Hour is steeped in corrupted and petty souls who will kill, commit rape, and spread venereal diseases with impunity. In the right frame of mind, this film can be sublime. In most states of mind, it will be gleefully repellent.

The film contains: A frog shooting heroin, a stabbing, a fly eating fecal matter, tribbles peeing on an elephant and then getting crushed to death by a rolling barrel, a walrus fucking a cat, a rabbit vomiting on stage, a talking fish being eaten alive and then being regurgitated, a pervy aardvark sniffing panties, an illicit porn shoot, horrible scabs from a sexual disease, and a song about sodomy. There is more.

7) “Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist” (1997)

Dir. Kirby Dick

Bob Flanagan was a performance artist living with cystic fibrosis. His lungs were constantly full of fluid, and for the final few years of his life he was constantly on oxygen. Rather than allow his illness to keep him infirm, he channeled his pain into his sexual interests, and became a legitimate sub to his loving wife’s extreme dom. They played some pretty weird sex games, all of which added to their loving and caring relationship, and served to extend Flanagan’s life. Kirby Dick, the documentarian who has never shied away from extreme subject matter, turns his unflinching lens on Flanagan, detailing his every game, performance, and sexual proclivity.

This mean, of course, that we are treated to some pretty wiggy visuals along the way. Flanagan did not merely like to be spanked (although that was certainly part of it), but took his masochism to some amazing heights. He would hang weights from his genitals. He would be cut and scarred. He would shove unthinkable things up various orifices. I could go into more detail, but I’m not sure how explicit you want me to be. The film is fascinating, but it take a strong constitution.

The film contains: Flanagan being spanked. His genitals being cut with a scalpel. A pool ball being inserted into his anus. Heavy weights dangling from his scrotum. Him hanging upside-down and being whipped. His real blood. An unflinching closeup of him nailing his penis to a board. All of which are done for real.

6) “Nekromantik 2” (1991)

Dir. Jörg Buttgereit

Jörg Buttgereit is one of those filmmakers, like Nick Zedd, whose name is only known in the outside circles. He has made 17 films in his career, but is best known for a small cycle of films (including “Nekromantik” and “Corpse Fucking Art”) all about the romantic glories of necrophilia. The “Nekromantik” movies are not necessarily explicit in their level of gore – they were made on a really low budget, and are clearly using only whatever homemade effects they had at hand – but they are so frank in their close-up depiction of sticky, rotting, stagnant corpse love, that they transcend and become truly gut-wrenching.

“Nekromatik 2” follows the adventures of the dead corpse who used to be the hero from the first “Nekromantik,” as he is exhumed, in pieces, already black and squishy, and repeatedly raped by our new necrophiliac, Monika. There’s a whole weird plot about how she is trying to hide her necrophiliac tendencies from her new boyfriend, while she sneaks around getting off with the dead behind his back. This is a really, really icky film. There are tender and adult ways to depict necrophilia; just watch the 1996 film “Kissed” sometime. “Nekromantik” is clearly made by a crazed fetishist.

The film contains: Icky blackened corpses, sticky blackened corpses, On-screen masturbation, blood, guts, dismemberment, and a general unsavory tone.

5) “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” (1989)

Dir. Shinya Tsukamoto

I’ve tried to steer a little wide of certain Japanese feature films, as there are – as I’m sure the readers of Geekscape know – entire piles of hentai with tentacles raping schoolgirls. I declare any of those film exempt as they, I assume, count more as fetish pornography than they do merely sick movies. There is one wonderful cult film from the late 1980s, though, that I must discuss. Shinya Tsukamoto’s experimental film “Tetsuo: The Iron Man.” “Tetsuo” follows an unnamed salaryman (Tamarowo Taguchi) who is living in quiet awkwardness with his girlfriend. He has violent hallucinations/fantasies/attacks, where he is chased by clanky machine women in the subway, and raped by the vacuum-tube-like penis of a devil woman. It’s unclear as to why, but he himself soon begins to sprout machinery from his body.

The mutation scenes are a little unsettling, made outright terrifying by the shiny black-and-white photography, and frantic use of stop-motion animation. Pretty soon our hero has become an entire living pile of mechanical junk, and is being pursued by an equally mutated rival (Tsukamoto) in some obviously symbolic battles. By the end, they merge into a giant mechanical penis. More than a mere whacked-out Japanese curiosity, “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” is one for the ages. There are also two sequels.

The film contains: Bloody mutations. Machine rape. Quivering flesh. A guy slitting open his leg, and shoving a mechanical pipe inside. Maggots eating the wound. A penis turning into a drill. Weird animations. Guys spitting up big piles of pus.

4) Street Trash (1987)

Dir. J. Michael Muro

I once wrote an article on the worst films I had seen, and I listed “Street Trash” on it. It’s a horrible and horrifying movie. Like “Body Melt,” it’s little more than a series of largely unconnected gore effects, feeding into no particular story. It, however, has the added bonus of taking place in a the filthy, unsavory, and pointedly disgusting world of amoral, alcoholic, homeless criminals. The film purports to be a serious expose of the life of homeless people (I think), but is nothing more than people doing horrible things to one another, and then drinking a secret stash of booze that causes their bodies to melt.

That’s pretty much the only narrative through-line in the film: the case of poisoned booze. It is found behind the wall of a local liquor store, and is promptly stolen. Whenever some homeless wino drinks it, they melt. The melting effects are really impressive, if not gut-wrenching horrible to look at. Everything in between is sickening and dirty, and feels like a less savory version of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” It left me feeling sad and alone and covered with a thin patina of human filth. The oddest thing about the film: its director, J. Michael Muro, is actually a successful cinematographer and cameraman in Hollywood, having filmed such blockbusters as “Crash” (2005), “Titanic,” “L.A. Confidential,” and the “X-Men” films. I guess, while walking his steadicam around famous actors, working with high-profile directors, he was harboring secret fantasies of watching them turn into blubbering pools of jelly.

The film contains: Numerous people melting for several minutes at a time. A guy melting down a toilet. A guy’s feet falling off. A man getting his penis severed, and being tossed around like a football. A woman being accidentally smothered by a fat guy. Her corpse being raped in a landfill.

3) Pink Flamingos (1972)

Dir. John Waters

On film posters and trailers, the MPAA likes to list, briefly, why they gave certain films certain ratings. This film is rated “R,” for strong sexuality and language throughout. John Waters’ seminal classic “Pink Flamingos,” has one of my favorite of those descriptions: “Rated ‘NC-17,’ for a wide range of perversions in explicit detail.” And indeed, Waters delivers on every one of those perversions. The story is well-known: Babs Johnson (Divine) has been declared the Filthiest Person Alive. This is a title she is proud of. She maintains it by keeping her horrible mother (the incomparable Edith Massey) in a crib, giving rape victims to her pervy son, whom she occasionally fellates, and stealing meat by hiding it between her legs. Her rivals are the Marbles (David Lochary and Mink Stole) who kidnap and impregnate young women (using their gay butler), and then sell the infants to lesbian couples to fund their elementary school heroin dealing outfit.

You may have heard how films like “A Clockwork Orange” or “Midnight Cowboy” were rated “X” upon their initial release, and then learn that they aren’t so violent or sexy by today’s standards. The astonishing thing about “Pink Flamingos” is that, nearly 40 years after the fact, it’s still disgusting. It still has the power to outrage and nauseate. I don’t want to say that the film has no other merits, though. John Waters put a definite sense of humor, and a definite queery-cum-trashy aesthetic to his film that makes it strangely watchable. I still like “Female Trouble” much better, but “Pink Flamingos” is a classic.

The film contains: A big fat transvestite. Poo in a box. A chicken being crushed to death on screen, between the bodies of a rapist and his victim. Edith Massey in her underpants ranting about eggs. Divine fellating her “son” on camera. Divine licking an apartment. Raping. Vomiting. Flashing. A transsexual flashing. A singing asshole. Dismemberment. Murder. Weird, weird dialogue. And the infamous finale of actual onscreen coprophagy. Look it up.

2) “Cannibal Holocaust” (1980)

Dir. Ruggero Deodato

This film, like a few of the films listed above, was taken to court. People believed, you see, that the deaths on camera were real, and that it was, just as the advertising claimed, a legitimate snuff film. The filmmakers had to call the actors (Robert Kerman, Francesca Ciardi, et al) into court to prove to a jury that they were alive and well, and just actors in a well-staged, pseudo-snuff film. That the film didn’t actually kill people seems to be its only defensible detail. The rest of the film is so bloody, so gritty and realistic, and contains so much real-life violence, that it turns from a horror film into the ultimate experience in grueling horror (apologies to “Evil Dead” fans).

The story follows a documentary film crew as they venture into the wilds of Brazil, seeking to document some lost civilizations. The crew declare on camera that they are benevolent anthropologists, but reveal in side footage that they are hoping to make a shock “mondo” film, and perhaps kill some of the natives while they’re at it. When they find the natives, they are brutally slaughtered on camera, and eaten. A second team of filmmakers goes looking for them. They too are slaughtered. Its documentary style makes “Cannibal Holocaust” feel a bit too realistic at times, and horribly staged at others, lending it a definite snuff film vibe. It has no precedent. It’s a violent violent film, filled with gore effects that you feel are real. When they kill animals on screen, it is for real.

The film contains: Cannibalism. Torture. Rape. A guy being eaten in front of his peers. White men teasing and killing natives. Buckets and buckets of blood. Piles and piles of entrails. Entrails spilling out of a person. A turtle being killed and ripped apart on camera. A monkey being decapitated on camera. More gore than you’ll like.

1) “Salò, or: The 120 Days of Sodom”

Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini

Based on a story by The Marquis de Sade, Pasolini’s “Salò” is notable less for its sick content (which is plenty sick) and more for its high quality, and professional tone. Sure, it features hot young teenagers being forced to perform all manner of horrid sexual perversions, but you do get the sense that Pasolini had something very profound on his mind. That it was well-paced, well-acted, and well-shot only adds to how disturbing it is. This is not some weirdo in a basement, masturbating to his private torture fantasies. This is a meticulously crafted, bared-faced look in to the heart of human evil. Some might call it a great film. It was release don home video by the Criterion Collection. It’s probably, to this day, one of the most extreme and sickest movies I have seen.

The story is about a corrupt group of Italian higher-ups – a teacher, a politician, a priest – who have kidnapped a group of teenage boys and girls at the end of WWII. Their parents are all dead, and no one is looking for them. There is no hope. There is no rescue. They must perform increasingly horrible demands or face execution, or worse, continued torture. The images of the film are bad enough – boys and girls are raped and degraded, their resolve is eaten away, they are forced to eat shit and bathe in it – but, worse, the kids are gradually worn down by the adults until they have no personality, hope or resolve, and begin to accept their fate. Even when they’re being tortured and killed. “I’d kill you now,” one of the men says to his beloved charge at one point, “but I would only be able to experience that ecstasy once.”

Pasolini is a great filmmaker, and he is wildly hated in certain circles, and not only for this film. He was an open atheist in a Catholic nation (although he had his religious moments; he made “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” perhaps the best Christ movie ever made), and an open homosexual in front of the people whom that would piss off the most. With “Salò,” though, he may have gone too far. Pasolini was murdered in the street shortly after the premiere of his film, supposedly run down by one of the actors from the film, who ran over him with his own car. Whether a martyr to great art, or a sick pervert, Pasolini’s film is one to seek out. It is indelible.

The film contains: Whippings, strippings, crying children, emotional torture, physical torture, blood, more coprophagy, more berating, more rape, more blood, a general feeling of nihilism.

Witney Seibold is a film critic living in Los Angeles with his wife. He watches a lot of movies, not all of them sick and disturbing. He maintains his own ‘blog, “Three Cheers for Darkened Years,” which has compiled nearly 800 of his articles to date, including all the lists he’s compiled for Geekscape. He is also the quiet co-host of The B-Moves Podcast over at Crave Online with William Bibbiani. He likes to think he knows what he’s talking about.