Top 10 Most Disturbing and Sick Movies

198   8   7.9 

Freaks (1932)
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Tod Browning

Starring: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Henry Victor, Harry Earles, Daisy Earles, Daisy and Violet Hilton, Frances O'Connor, Johnny Eck, Olga Roderick, Prince Randian, Elvira "Zip" Snow
"We accept you, one of us! Gooble Gobble!"


"Freaks" Video

"But for an accident of birth, you might be as they are." Director Tod Browning delves into the depraved world of sideshow circus freaks to reveal that they have more humanity than the average asshole walking the streets.

Favorite freak: Prince Randian, "the living torso." Runner-up: Johnny Eck, "the half-boy." Freaks was based on the short story "Spurs" by Tod Robbins. Believe it or not, this masterpiece only runs for a total of 64 minutes! Also released as Forbidden Love, The Monster Show and Nature's Mistakes.

46   5.7   5.3 

I Spit On Your Grave (1978)
MPAA Rating: X
Director: Meir Zarchi

Starring: Camille Keaton, Gunther Kleeman, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace, Anthony Nichols
"You know, sometimes I look at these gorgeous-looking chicks, I mean the ones that look like real knockouts, sexy and all and I wonder if they gotta take a shit, too."


"I Spit On Your Grave" Video

I always thought Halloween or Friday the 13th started the trend of "slasher films" that polluted the box office throughout the late '70s and '80s - that is until I watched this extremely low-budget flick about a writer who travels to a cabin in the woods, gets brutally raped by a bunch of hillbillies and then exacts her revenge using a series of rather creative methods - including hanging and castration. Also known as Day of the Woman...

100   8   7.4 

El Topo (1970)
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky
"Too much perfection is a mistake."


"El Topo" Video

Alejandro Jodorowsky's totally bizarre, surrealistic masterpiece follows a gunfighter, El Topo (The Mole), as he makes his way through the desert and encounters one absurd situation after another in his search of enlightenment. One of the only films I'm aware of that has an armless, legless dwarf in the cast. Apparently, El Topo was one of John Lennon's favorite films. David Lynch was also a big fan. Jodorowsky once claimed, "I ask of cinema what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs."

NOTHING SAYS 'CHILDHOOD' TO ME LIKE JODOROWSKY

By Xanadu Xero

I grew up in Beverly Hills back when 'the homeless' were called 'bums' and I'd never seen one. When a black man strolling around meant the police would—PRESTO!—appear to question why. When maids wore uniforms to serve dinner and women called them 'my girl.' When no one wore seatbelts and moms smoked in cars with the windows closed.

This dull and bleak historical pause spun out in many ways but the most RIVETING to me was the advent of 'old', 'straight' people Turning On, Tuning In and Dropping Out. The most sensational of these was my Dad's good friend, B.

B. was a B.H. lawyer with a house full of Picassos, three kids and a fashionable wife. We went there for Superbowl Sundays . . . until one year there was no party.

B. fled from All That to wear caftans in a swingin' pad on Malibu beach with a 'conversation pit' round waterbed and heated floors. Peter Max replaced the Pablos. The wife was switched for a wispy dolt named Moonbeam—I think he took her from his son. I really liked going over there.

B. bought his way into the Psychedelic Elite and invested heavily in and/or brought EL TOPO to the U.S. I went to his screening of it for his old, rich friends stirred in with old freaks, though I'm not quite sure what 'old' was to me then.

Jodorowsky was there, and said stuff. I wore a vinyl polka-dot miniskirt, white tights and white boots—my bossest outfit. That movie BLEW MY (pubescent) MIND. It hacked up my ostenible 'reality', then flushed it.

The last time I saw B. was on the Party Circuit, as an adult. I was looking for a bathroom and spied him on the floor of a dirty bedroom, inhaling helium in a corner from a tank, squeak talking to no one.

262   7.5   7.4 

Audition (1999)
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Takashi Miike

Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina
"Words create lies. Pain can be trusted."


"Audition" Video

The friend of a lonely widower sets up a phony audition for a nonexistent film so the poor guy can find a new wife. He gets more than he bargained for - to say the least! Directed by Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike, the film starts out as a traditional romantic drama but gradually devolves into a disturbingly graphic horror flick - definitely not for all tastes!

1753   8.2   8.5 

A Clockwork Orange (1971)
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Stanley Kubrick

Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Warren Clarke, James Marcus
"If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."


"A Clockwork Orange" Video

Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his "droogs" go out on the town to partake in a little of the old "ultra-violence."

Director Stanley Kubrick brings Anthony Burgess' classic novel to life with this disturbing look at a future populated by teenage gangs. Look for McDowell's stirring rendition of "Singin' in the Rain." Here's what Kubrick said to counter the negative reaction voiced against the film's violence: "Sanitized violence in movies has been accepted for years. What seems to upset everybody now is the showing of the consequences of violence."

Johnny P's rating:

107   6   5.9 

The Last House On The Left (1972)
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Sandra Cassel, David Hess, Lucy Grantham, Jeramie Rain, Fred J. Lincoln, Cynthia Carr
"We don't wanna off someone first night out. I mean, it'd be a shame to get this floor all messed up with blood."


"The Last House On The Left" Video

The Last House on the Left would make a great double feature with I Spit on Your Grave for the truly depraved movie fan of the over-the-top, sadistic, revenge-fantasy flick. Believe it or not, the film was reportedly inspired by Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1961! The Last House on the Left was directed by Wes Craven, who would go on to direct The Hills Have Eyes and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

93   7.3   7.2 

Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986)
MPAA Rating: X
Director: John McNaughton

Starring: Michael Rooker, Tom Towles
"If you shoot someone in the head with a .45 every time you kill somebody, it becomes like your fingerprint, see? But if you strangle one, stab another, and one you cut up, and one you don't, then the police don't know what to do. They think you're four different people. What they really want, what makes their job so much easier, is pattern. What they call a modus operandi. That's Latin. Bet you didn't know any Latin, did you kid?"


"Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer" Video

Based loosely on the life of convicted murderer Henry Lee Lucas, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer follows roaming serial killer, Henry, and his demented buddy Otis, as they go on a random killing spree. Not a good movie to rent on a first date!

123   6.9   6.1 

Salo Or The 120 Days Of Sodom (1975)
by Alternative Reel Staff
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Starring: Aldo Valletti, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Giorgio Cataldi, Paolo Bonacelli, Caterina Boratto
"We fascists are the only true anarchists."


"Salo Or The 120 Days Of Sodom" Video

Based on the infamous book, The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade, Salo contains its fair share of disturbing imagery and graphic violence, including rape, torture and murder. For this reason, it is still banned in some countries even to this day - good luck finding an unedited copy! Director Pier Paolo Pasolini was brutally murdered shortly after the film's release.

335   7.6   7.3 

Irreversible (2002)
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Gaspar Noé

Starring: Monica Belluci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel
"Vengeance is a human right."


"Irreversible" Video

"Time destroys everything . . ." Extremely disturbing French film directed by Gaspar Noé, Irreversible features a revenge plot told in reverse chronological order (similar to Memento) - punctuated by extreme violence and a brutally graphic rape scene that runs approximately nine minutes. Noé's debut 1998 film, I Stand Alone, is also worth a look.

375   7.2   7.4 

Eraserhead (1977)
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: David Lynch

Starring: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates
"Well Henry, what do you know?"
"Oh, I don't know much of anything."


"Eraserhead" Video

"Eraserhead is an American film, but it's a little bit in an in-between place. It's like a dirty, little, forgotten, hidden corner. And I love those areas. You can discover secrets." —David Lynch

It took Lynch, a former art student, five years to make Eraserhead, a curious blend of Kafkesque horror and Orwellian nightmare. Jack Nance portrays total loser Henry Spencer (a couple of years ago, I read that Nance was murdered during a fight at a donut shop). "Poor old Henry, dead and gone, left us here to sing his song . . ."

After viewing this film, you'll know who served as the inspiration for fight promoter Don King's unique hairstyle. Lynch once revealed in an interview that he had a chocolate shake at Bob's Big Boy at 2:30 PM every day for seven years: "Two-thirty is Bob's time . . . I can think there and draw on napkins and have my shake. Sometimes I have a cup of coffee and sometimes I have a small Coke. They both go great with shakes."