10 Movies You Can't Un-See

Image via Complex Original

Any filmmaker, whether aspiring or popularly established, will tell you: The primary objective in making a movie is to create images that will last in viewers’ minds. It’s the fundamental reason for working in cinema—why make something that lasts 90 minutes and evaporates from audience members’ thoughts in less than 90 seconds? The most effective directors can successfully deliver scenes that subconsciously linger; hours after the movie has ended, while lying in bed, those moments replay over and over again in the old noodle.

Sometimes, however, the mentally repeated parts aren’t welcome. In the hands of morally corrupt provocateurs, the ability to transmit powerfully memorable images acts more like a dangerous weapon. Take writer-director Tom Six, for example. In 2010, he stormed into film’s uncharted waters with the nauseating The Human Centipede (First Sequence); you know, the one where a mad doctor surgically connects two hot chicks and an Asian dude together in an ass-to-mouth chain.

If you thought that was hard to stomach, wait until you get a load of Six’s follow-up, the black-and-white Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), which hits limited IFC theaters tomorrow (as well as IFC Midnight’s Video On Demand platform). It’s essentially 90 minutes’ worth of sadistic violence, with sliced-open kneecaps, hammered teeth, dead babies, defecated ooze seeping out of stapled mouths, and other noxious assaults on the viewer’s pupils.

How bad is Human Centipede II? Bad enough to rank amongst the sickest movies we’ve ever seen; i.e., movies that will forever remain in our thoughts, no matter how many nudie magazines or Pixar films we try to use as distractions. Join in our suffering by daringly peeping the following 10 Movies You Can’t Un-See. We apologize in advance.

Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

10. A Serbian Film (2011)

Before The Human Centipede II dethroned it, the heavily maligned A Serbian Film had made sick movie haters forget all about the first Centipede flick this past May. Months before its limited stateside debut, director Srdjan Spasojevic’s visceral, modern-day exploitation picture was the talk of genre festivals worldwide, earning a violent reputation as a film that’s nearly unbearable in its sadism. The loudest cry: “Beware of the ‘baby rape’ scene!”

In a rare case of fulfilled expectations, those who were brave enough to catch A Serbian Film after its pre-release hype learned firsthand that Spasojevic’s ruthless debut is every bit as eye-gouging as its been made out to be. It’s the story of a washed-up porn star, Milos, desperate to provide for his wife and young son, and when an opportunity arises to pull in serious cash, he jumps at it. The only problem is, his new employer’s only demand is that Milos do everything he says, which includes having sex with a bruised woman after she bites his penis and riding another woman doggy-style before hacking her up with a machete. How does Milos get his revenge? He kills one of the bad guys by thrusting his schlong into the guy’s eye socket.

And do we really need to once again recount the aforementioned “baby rape”? As if pairing those two words together doesn’t tell the whole story.

9. Flowers Of Flesh And Blood (1985)

We’re a bit conflicted here. On one hand, the point of this list is to highlight cinema’s most brain-tainting works, films with hardcore imagery that refuses to leave your head once the final credits roll. But there’s a flipside to that: By doing so, we’re inadvertently recommending movies like Flowers Of Flesh And Blood. If you’re twisted enough to click through this list, you’re obviously the type of person who’ll seek this out on DVD at some point—it’s like a highway commuter who has to look at the flipped over car on the side of the road. Or the pervert who’d watch a Rosie O’Donnell sex tape just to say that he did.

Unlike a faux Rosie video, though, Flowers Of Flesh And Blood doesn’t have a shred of R-rated humor, whether intentional or not. The second part of Japan’s six-edition Guinea Pig series of mutilation cinema, Flowers tracks a poor girl who’s put to sleep by an assailant armed with chloroform; when she wakes up, she’s bound to a bed, on which she’s then dismembered for viewers to see, and that’s it. Fade to black. You’ll be left wishing for a glimpse of Rosie in lingerie.

8. Blood Feast (1963)

Nearly 50 years after its splashy debut, Herschell Gordon Lewis’ breakthrough exploitation flick Blood Feast doesn’t exactly hold up in the effects department. The blood, which pours in abundance, now looks like shiny red paint, and the Z-grade direction and storytelling, then masked by the film’s initial shock value, is glaringly problematic. But there’s one thing no one can ever take away from Lewis: Blood Feast, widely considered to be the first-ever “splatter” movie, is the reason why a countdown of this nature can even exist.

Groundbreaking in so many evil ways, Blood Feast is the simple tale of an insane Miami resident who kills women in putrid manners, in hopes of resurrecting an Egyptian goddess. Yes, it’s a load of narrative malarkey, yet Lewis’ one-note flick is charmingly despicable. It took some major balls to make a gross-out of this kind back in '63, and Blood Feast doesn’t shy away from its vileness; the film’s most memorable (for all the wrong reasons) image is that of the antagonist pulling a hot blonde’s tongue right out of her throat. It’s a moment akin to the moon landing for gore-hounds.

7. The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence (2011)

Last year, Dutch filmmaker Tom Six unleashed The Human Centipede onto the masses, giving creepers everywhere the original idea of a lunatic surgeon who stitches three people together, ass to mouth. The plot and title alone were enough to cast a notorious reputation upon the movie, but, if you really watch the first Centipede, not a whole lot is actually shown. It’s sicker in concept than presentation.

And Mr. Six knew exactly what he was doing. An unremitting, 90-minute response to anyone who down-talked Centipede’s concealed gruesomeness, The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is Six’s black-and-white “fuck you.” The sequel’s meta set-up is rather clever: Obsessed with the first Human Centipede flick, a repugnant, live-at-home parking garage security guard named Martin (Laurence Harvey) bludgeons patrons, drives them to an abandoned warehouse, and forms his own 12-person centipede without any medical training.

What’s the next best thing for someone who doesn’t have proper stitching equipment? A rusty stapler, of course. Martin staples mouths to butt cheeks, which Six shows up close and wrongly personal; in order to make their gums easily attachable, Martin bashes out their teeth with a hammer, which, yes, Six shows in full-on shots; and, to make it easier for the victims to be on all fours at all times, Martin cuts open their knees and snips the tendons, which, indeed, Six…. You get the idea.

And we haven’t even discussed the crushed newborn baby, or the gastronomical symphony of canned-beans-induced shit. Made for no other reason than to punish audience members, The Human Centipede II leaves nothing to the imagination. Though, to be fair, Six does leave Martin’s sandpaper masturbation off screen. What a humanitarian, right?

6. In A Glass Cage (1987)

Of all the disgusting films on this list, Spanish director Agusti Villaronga’s artsy downer In A Glass Cage is certainly the most elegant. Viewed as a work of cinematic expertise, it’s actually quite commendable, powered by exemplary acting and a striking visual palette. It’s just not all that easy to subject one’s self to In A Glass Cage long enough to fully appreciate the movie’s technical prowess.

Unflinchingly mean-spirited, Villaronga’s historical button-pusher operates on a firm “humanity is awful” conceit. Klaus, an ex-Nazi psycho, who used to brutally torture young boys both physically and sexually, is left paralyzed in a “glass cage” after attempting suicide via a roof dive. His new nurse is a teenage stranger who reads through his charge’s journals, becomes obsessed with the stories of sadism, and proceeds to kidnap innocent kids and perform Klaus’ old tactics on them as Klaus is forced to helplessly watch.

When In A Glass Cage presents its devastating murders, Villaronga zooms in on the needles piercing hearts and blades slitting throats open, challenging the viewer to turn away. Not to mention, hate themselves for admiring such impressively executed malevolence.

5. Nekromantik (1987)

Don’t let that title fool you—there’s absolutely nothing “romantic” about this German freak show. Well, unless you consider a married couple’s decision to spice up their sex life by swinging with a rotting corpse to be the stuff of Danielle Steele novels.

Obsessed with necrophilia, Nekromantik’s main character, Rob, brings home an anonymous dead body found in a lake and uses it as a sex toy of sorts with his equally disturbed wife, Betty. You can’t have a threesome when only one of the men is thrusting, of course, so she wraps a condom around a steel pipe and straddles it during their naughty time with the corpse. Eventually, Betty takes off with the body, which she’s grown close to after reading to it and cuddling alongside of it. Rob, having sunk into a depression, takes his anger out on a neighborhood feline (washing himself with its blood and guts in a tub) and a hooker (killing her and having sex with the remains).

So, yeah, Nekromantik isn’t ideal viewing for your stay-at-home date night. Shit, it’s not even recommended for lazy Fridays alone in the crib. As a parting gift, director Jorg Buttgereit ends Rob’s misery by having him jerk off and stab himself as he climaxes; if you can think of an appropriate time to subject your eyes to that, pat yourself on the back. And, please, stay away from us.

4. Aftermath (1994)

Only 32 minutes long, Aftermath is the shortest experience on this list, but that’s in no way a handicap. Orchestrated by Spanish filmmaker Nacho Cerda, Aftermath is a dialogue-free showcase of pointless immorality, albeit of the well-shot and hypnotically contemptible kind. In a darkly lit morgue, a nameless mortician stays after hours at his place of work to further defile a female corpse after performing an extremely gory autopsy on the body. He probes her privates with his instruments, mutilates the body, and then adds necrophilia to his portfolio, snapping photos as he penetrates the stiff. Once he’s finished, the world’s worst mortician removes the woman’s heart and heads home to feed it to his dog. The end.

With no words spoken, Aftermath relies on its images to drive Cerda’s vision of casual horror—mission uncomfortably accomplished. The short film’s visuals will sear into your brain, but what Aftermath reminds us about is actually far worse. After we die, what happens next is out of our hands; any sicko can take cues from Cerda’s work here and desecrate our remains, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. Or at least we think that’s the point of Aftermath. Admittedly, we were too busy gagging to analyze it for any rich subtext.

3. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

You’ve got to give it to director Ruggero Deodato—he’s not a dishonest filmmaker. Just look at what he titled this one: Cannibal Holocaust. That right there implies all kinds of revolting imagery and depraved thoughts, which Deodato’s infamous exploitation flick delivers in bulk. It’s not like he called it Fun In The Jungle.

The only people having a good time in Cannibal Holocaust are the indigenous tribe members who tear through the fictional documentary crew at the movie’s center. Posited as a found-footage exercise, Deodato’s controversial picture supposedly shows footage from a missing team’s last days within an Amazonian jungle. What starts out as an all-access project meant to cover the cannibalistic tribe’s everyday practices quickly descends into the systematic killing of the documentarians.

Though, they had it coming: The men of the group rape one of the young female tribe members, which deletes her purity and causes her elders to impale her on a totem pole. As revenge, the Yanomamo natives chow down on one guy like his innards are a buffet and rape the crew’s sole lady before lopping off her head. Vegetarian Delight it’s not.

2. August Underground (2001)

Truth be told, our only assurance that August Underground is a legitimate movie is that it exists on both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes; otherwise, we’d have thought that this super-low-budget nightmare was an actual snuff film. There’s not a recognizable actor face to be seen in “director” Fred Vogel’s vile movie, nor is there anything that resembles cinematography, sound design, or post-production manipulation. August Underground progresses with the casualness of a home video, except that if it were a home video, the Feds would have tossed Vogel’s ass in the clink back in 2001.

The sick exhibition begins with Vogel beckoning the unseen cameraman to check something out in his basement. Once down there, we see a beaten-up woman tied to a chair, with one of her nipples missing. In the corner of the room is her dead boyfriend, whose castrated corpse is slumped over in a bathtub. One of his toes is later jammed into the woman’s mouth, which is then taped shut. That’s before she has piss dumped on her, poop smeared across her face, and her head smashed into a wall.

And that’s just August Underground’s beginning. In between Vogel’s murders, he visits a comic book shop and does other mundane things, giving the film a sadistically natural vibe. Basically, he’s a lot like every random, nondescript dude who walks by you inside the local GameStop. Except, you know, for his behind-closed-doors hobby.

1. Salo, Or 120 Days Of Sodom (1975)

Some unbearably scathing flicks, including several on this here countdown, parcel their shocks throughout the course of their running time; Salo, however, never steps out for air. From top to bottom, notorious Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s relentless “statement” film subjects the viewer to uncompromising cruelty, nastiness, and escalating grotesqueries. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Salo’s only moments of calm are its opening and closing credits, though the latter’s more apt to serve as the background noise for one’s inability to pick his or her jaw off the floor.

Based on the Marquis de Sade’s 1785 book The 120 Days Of Sodom, Salo’s plot is skeletal: Four powerful Italian men kidnap nine teenage boys and nine teenager girls, trap them in a huge mansion, and wreak unholy havoc on them for four months. Salo depicts every disgusting act perpetrated by the elders, including, in no particular order: heads are scalped, tongues are cut off, eyeballs are snipped out, one girl is forced to eat feces, and several poor bastards are raped in front of large crowds.

Pasolini, intending to make vicious points about fascism, shows everything, avoiding tricky edits in favor of steady-cam, front-and-center shots of each and every sick visual. One watch is all it takes for Salo to burn itself into your memory for years hence. Just writing about it makes us want to take a shower.