Horror book/movie lovers: which scene was too much for you? (spoilers)

[Binarydrone]

I don’t want this thread to be cluttered by any of those infernal spoiler boxes, so if you don’t want potentially any movie or book in the genre to be spoiled, this is not the thread for you.

I will start: For me, it was the scene in Clive Barker's Damnation game where the re-animated dog corpse started to eat its own leg. I got rid of the book after I finished it.

And you?

[Binarydrone]

I figured that I would go ahead and be the first smart-ass to do this. Sure, someone else may come along and do it again, but at that point it will just be a Johnnie-come-lately me too gesture, and with any luck not repeated. Time will tell.

[Cockatiel]

Ugh, Vitals. If you've ever thought about reading Vitals by Greg Bear, don't. It's not worth your time. I won't go into great detail about the plot, but it involves mind control and some shit about immortality. There was this one scene where someone was watching a movie of a mind control demostration by the Russians. In it, naked women walked around suckling puppies, oblivious. It was called the "City of Dog Mothers". One of the more distrubing things I've read.

No long after that I stopped reading the book.

[Mississippienne]

Gary Jenning's Raptor. Simply put, several characters venture into Hun territory to rescue the kidnapped wife and son of a Roman official. As they're fleeing the scene, the pregnant wife is killed and as she's dying, she bears her stillborn offspring. That's bad enough, until...

...her husband is also caught by a Hun, who attempts to rape him, but finding the Roman a little too lively for his liking, cuts a hole in his belly and proceeds to rape him through the gut. :eek: :eek: :eek:

Nothing else has ever matched the primal horror of that for me.

[Declan]

And you?

John Ringo's Gustfront

Peter Rabbit is just never gonna be the same anymore

Declan

[Evil Death]

My Little Eye, the movie. Specifically the ending, where













it becomes clear that the observers of the game - the audience, IOW - are betting on how long it will take the girl to die in the freezer.

[Binarydrone]

John Ringo's Gustfront

Peter Rabbit is just never gonna be the same anymore

Declan
I am not familiar with this work. What was the deal?

[MidnightRadio]

It's very rare that something I read in a book will actually make me gag with revulsion, but a scene in The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, of all people, did. It was the scene where Michael is smashing open the jars of heads immersed in some sort of preservative liquid and trying to get a psyching reading from them (looong story). It describes how the heads are so putrified that his fingers are sinking into the skulls. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to read in a Clive Barker or maybe a Stephen King book, but Anne Rice...?

[Einmon]

The worst thing to stomach for me wasn't a movie or a book but a computer game: In <i>Zork Nemesis</i> you have to cut off a corpse's head and then torture it with electric shocks until it starts talking. I turned to the walkthrough for the solution.

As to books, the murder scenes with the cheese and the rat in <i>American Psycho</i> made me skip the last few pages (I only read the the book, haven't seen the movie but can't imagine they'd transfer that to the big screen).

[Anaamika]

Huh. Blood/gore doesn't actually bother me too much, but there are four things that bothered me from various books over the years. They're all Stephen King, as horror isn't really my favorite thing.

1. It, the movie. The clown's teeth. The rest of the movie didn't scare me one bit. Ugh...they're like animal teeth, pointy, seperated, and all in diffferent directions.

2. The Shining, the book. The chapter where the boy is in the rom upstairs (208?) and the dead woman's in the bathroom. For me it started when she opened her eyes and they were silver. Don't know why that should freak me out so much, but it did and does. It went right on to when she catches him at the door.

3. A Stephen King short story, can't remember the name, but he's got golden eyeballs in his fingers. UGH. Then he cuts his hand off and it appears in his chest. Double UGH.

4. I just read this short story called the Moving Finger. About a finger coming up out of the bathroom drain, with many many many joints. What freaked me out was one part when the finger stopped tapping and pointed right at the guy.

Oh, and movie: The Alien has always freaked me out. Used to give me nightmares. I now I love AII, but I still don't let my SO hiss at night to scare me.

[FriarTed]

Poppy Z. Brite LOST SOULS- the gay male vampire father-son incest.

From Poppy Z. Brite (ed) anthology LOVE IN VEIN, a store I think someone else wrote with WHITECHAPEL in the title in which a man & his wife are performing a magickal ritual which involves the wife performing cunnilingus on a dying woman.

And yet some dark voice keeps tempting me to read her EXQUISITE CORPSE!


:eek: :eek: :eek:

[cichlidiot]

I think it was Hellraiser II, where a man is being flailed by spinning chains with fishhook like tips. Lot's of scenes from this movie were gross, but I looked away from the screen during that scene.

In Reservoir Dogs, when Nash's ear is cut off with a straight razor. I happened to be getting ready for work, and walked through the living room during this scene and just froze. "What the heck are you watching?"

[BrainGlutton]

I don't suppose The Passion of the Christ would count for purposes of this thread?

[Miss Purl McKnittington]

It's very rare that something I read in a book will actually make me gag with revulsion, but a scene in The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, of all people, did. It was the scene where Michael is smashing open the jars of heads immersed in some sort of preservative liquid and trying to get a psyching reading from them (looong story). It describes how the heads are so putrified that his fingers are sinking into the skulls. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to read in a Clive Barker or maybe a Stephen King book, but Anne Rice...?

The opening scene in the sequel to The Witching Hour was even more disgusting, I thought. (Can't remember the name at the moment.) Oceans of blood all over the downstairs of the Mayfair Witches' New Orleans house. And the incestuous love affair . . . blargh.

Anne Rice is perfectly capable of writing some terribly disgusting things. The Vampire Chronicles get pretty hoary. I'm thinking the scene in Pandora where the title character becomes a vampire. As her body "dies" and all the fluids and waste rush from it, she draws Marius' penis into her vagina. Male vampires, it would appear, have perma-erections. Just . . . ick. "I'm dying! Sex me up!"

Other than that, the end of Pet Sematary has always wigged me out. With the little re-animated boy roaming around, killing people. And Church, that poor undead cat.

These all pale in comparison to Mississippienne's, though. Jesus.

[Oregon sunshine]

I had to stop reading a book by Joyce Carol Oates called "Zombie", which is a first-person singular account from the point of view of a serial killer. He was trying to make people into zombies (for sex slaves) by doing home lobotomies with an ice pick through the person's eye. The specific scene which made me put down the book was when he was trying to lobotomize his first victim, and the person thrashed so hard in the bathtub that he broke the piano wire around his ankles. The narrator was so disappointed that the victim didn't survive the "procedure" to become his slave.

:shudder:

It was the emotionless voice combined with the horrific scenes that just - blew me away somehow. After that, even the name or a picture of the author gagged me out.

Oh, another thing... that was in 1995... I read the book when it first came out, and just last week, I was able to finally bring myself to read something else by Oates! Pretty powerful horror!

[The Asbestos Mango]

Early on in Hellbound: Hellraiser II, there's a scene with a tour through the underground cells in the asylum, where the really, really hard cases are kept. There is one guy who is hallucinating maggots crawling in his flesh and screaming, "Please, get them off me". The evil psychiatrist obliges by throwing him a straightrazor (IIRC, at this point he is kneeling over the mattress Julia died on, because the shrink wants to use the blood to resurrect her- been a while since I've seen the movie). The results are predictable. I'm a hardcore horror movie nut, and a very sick puppy, and this is the first time I recall a scene in a horror flick making me flinch. It was a bit too much.

[Alias]

In "From Dusk til Dawn" there's a scene where the vampires are all over this Asian guy, I think he's the minister's adopted son. Anyway, as the vampires start their feeding frenzy, he realizes that he's going to become a vampire if they kill him, so he begs his sister to kill him first. It's a pretty awful scene with him shouting "Please Kate, kill me!!!"

[SolGrundy]

I had been reading the comic book The Sandman regularly from the first issue and was getting to be a big fan of the series, until one about issue 6 or so. It was about a bunch of people who were trapped in a diner with a supernatural mass murderer (was that The Corinthian? Or did he come later?). It described how he would control the minds of the customers to make them do sexual and violent things to themselves and each other, eventually killing everyone in the diner. It was pretty graphic and disturbing, but the part that got me the worst was a single panel where he said something like "for one hour, he gave the people back their minds and made them realize everything that they had done."

That whole issue really got to me, and it turned me off the series for about a year. I eventually picked up another issue, liked it a lot and saw that that wasn't the tone for the entire series, so I started reading it again. And I had to go back and spend a fortune on back-issues to get all the ones I'd missed. (It had gotten insanely popular in the meantime.)

Another one from comics:
There's an issue of Preacher by Garth Ennis, where one of the characters is talking about the plane flight from Dallas after JFK was assassinated. He tells the story of going into the cargo hold of the plane, right after LBJ was sworn in, to find LBJ fucking the bullet hole in the president's skull, screaming "Who's in charge now, huh? Who's in charge now?!?"

That was about the most obscene thing I'd ever seen, and it turned me off the rest of the series. I mean, I think I "get" black humor and exaggeration, but that just crossed the line for me.

[Infovore]

For me there were two:

1. In Stephen King's Gerald's Game , the scene near the end where the woman tries to (or maybe she succeeds--I've kinda blocked it out) peel the skin off her hands in order to get out of the handcuffs, and

2. In Graham Masterton's Ritual, a scene where the protagonist is forced to cut off, cook, and eat his own finger to prove his sincerity in wanting to join a cult of self-cannibals. For that matter, lots of Masterton's stuff is pretty over the edge gorewise, but that was the worst and the only one where I had to put the book down for awhile before I could continue.

[DocCathode]

I had been reading the comic book The Sandman regularly from the first issue and was getting to be a big fan of the series, until one about issue 6 or so. It was about a bunch of people who were trapped in a diner with a supernatural mass murderer (was that The Corinthian? Or did he come later?). It described how he would control the minds of the customers to make them do sexual and violent things to themselves and each other, eventually killing everyone in the diner. It was pretty graphic and disturbing, but the part that got me the worst was a single panel where he said something like "for one hour, he gave the people back their minds and made them realize everything that they had done."

That would be Doctor Destiny. He started out as a standard supervillain. The Justice League accidentally destroyed his ability to dream. This led to him becoming somewhat insane and going from handsome to a kind of Gollum/living corpse thing. When Dr Destiny makes the people reveal secrets, one also reveals having sex with a corpse.

Back To The OP

That would be the a text file I found on this, my spare computer, when forced to stop using the laptop due to spyware. I was halfway through before the memories came back. It was my diary. I had erased nearly all the entries and blocked out the memories of my romance with Talia.

Warning-The following may be disturbing
I don't know how I could have done what I did. I remembered the sound of the motor, and the heat of it as I drove the screws into her flesh. I remember worrying, not about her, not that I would be caught, but worrying that the wood would split. I remember the ache in my elbows as I the hacksaw blade cut through her last of her finger joints. I remember the stink of gasoline. I remember the light and the heat. I remember the way extinguishing her with that hose reminded me of running through the sprinklers as a kid. I remember the sweet smell of her burnt flesh. I remember the ease with which bits pulled away from her body. Oh, how I remember the flavor of her! She was sweet, and salty, and spicy and so succulent. I remember worrying that I'd been too severe and that she was dead. But a vague moaning gurgle came from her ruined mouth. I remember making love to her one final time. I devoured her with kisses. Most of all, I remember the rapt, ecstatic expression from the instant I agreed to fulfill her birthday wish, until life finally left her. I remember the night she finally revealed her ultimate fantasy to me. I remember the look of terror in her eyes as she told me, fearful she'd be rejected again. I remember Talia's joyous squeal when I said that I would do it. I remember the look of pure and perfect love she gave me as I drove in the first screw. I remember the pleasure with which she savored her fingers as I popped each amputated section into her mouth. I remember her mangled cries as I made love to her. "ughiEssss!" "Oh khOd iiiEsss!" and over and over again "Ihhh huLuhUfff hUuu!" I loved her too.

[Kamino Neko]

I had been reading the comic book The Sandman regularly from the first issue and was getting to be a big fan of the series, until one about issue 6 or so. It was about a bunch of people who were trapped in a diner with a supernatural mass murderer (was that The Corinthian? Or did he come later?).

That was Dr Destiny (who, with the death of his mother, was able to go back to his real name (Dr Dee).), an old Justice League villain with the ability to manipulate dreams - because he had possession of Dream's jewel, it turned out.

That story (24 Hours) was the one that cemented my love of Sandman - and it remains my favourite.

The Corinthian wasn't introduced until the Doll's House story arc - which ties into 24 Hours, because one of the victims of the massacre was a friend of the main character in The Doll's House.

[Miller]

I had been reading the comic book The Sandman regularly from the first issue and was getting to be a big fan of the series, until one about issue 6 or so. It was about a bunch of people who were trapped in a diner with a supernatural mass murderer (was that The Corinthian? Or did he come later?). It described how he would control the minds of the customers to make them do sexual and violent things to themselves and each other, eventually killing everyone in the diner. It was pretty graphic and disturbing, but the part that got me the worst was a single panel where he said something like "for one hour, he gave the people back their minds and made them realize everything that they had done."

I believe that was Dr. Destiny. Doubly chilling because he was a fairly standard villain for the guys-in-tights before Gaiman got his hands on him. What got me was the scene where he carjacks a woman to get away from Arkham. They spend the drive talking to each other, he comes across as pretty sympathetic and almost likable, and then he shoots her. That really got to me.

Well, that and the girl in the diner with the skewers. "I can see! Sweet lord, I can see the glory!" Gah!

There's an issue of Preacher by Garth Ennis, where one of the characters is talking about the plane flight from Dallas after JFK was assassinated. He tells the story of going into the cargo hold of the plane, right after LBJ was sworn in, to find LBJ fucking the bullet hole in the president's skull, screaming "Who's in charge now, huh? Who's in charge now?!?"

That was about the most obscene thing I'd ever seen, and it turned me off the rest of the series. I mean, I think I "get" black humor and exaggeration, but that just crossed the line for me.

That wasn't Preacher, that was Hellblazer. Same writer and artist, though. I loved that scene. Not just because I like the idea of a Kennedy getting skull-fucked, but because its John Constantine who tells the story... and he's telling it to the ghost of John F. Kennedy, who's standing there with his hand on the back of his head to keep his brains from falling out. I thought it was hilarious. Then again, my "line" is pretty far out there. (Although, they didn't actually show LBJ porking the presidential brain pan, which probably would have been a bit much, even for me.)

[Pyrrhonist]

2. In Graham Masterton's Ritual, a scene where the protagonist is forced to cut off, cook, and eat his own finger to prove his sincerity in wanting to join a cult of self-cannibals.


You got that title wrong, the book was Feast. Highly recommended, but not for the faint of heart. I thought the kitchen scene near the end exceed the finger scene for over-the-top grossness.


I squirmed all the way through the movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion . Does that count?

[BrainGlutton]

2. In Graham Masterton's Ritual, a scene where the protagonist is forced to cut off, cook, and eat his own finger to prove his sincerity in wanting to join a cult of self-cannibals. For that matter, lots of Masterton's stuff is pretty over the edge gorewise, but that was the worst and the only one where I had to put the book down for awhile before I could continue.

King has already topped that -- he wrote a short story (forget the title) where a corrupt surgeon is shipwrecked in a desert island -- and when I say "island," I mean just a volcanic outcropping in the sea, with nothing growing on it. He has nothing but the heroin he was smuggling when the ship went down. He breaks his leg trying to catch a seagull, gangrene sets in and he knows going to lose the leg anyway -- so he dopes himself up with the heroin, amputates it with a jagged plank of wood, and eats it. It starts there . . .

[DocCathode]

That would be Survivor Type

[MidnightRadio]

And yet some dark voice keeps tempting me to read her EXQUISITE CORPSE!


:eek: :eek: :eek:I love Poppy Z. Brite, but Exquisite Corpse is really fucked up. As much so as American Psycho, I think.


There's an issue of Preacher by Garth Ennis, where one of the characters is talking about the plane flight from Dallas after JFK was assassinated. He tells the story of going into the cargo hold of the plane, right after LBJ was sworn in, to find LBJ fucking the bullet hole in the president's skull, screaming "Who's in charge now, huh? Who's in charge now?!?"I may be deranged, but that struck me as being terribly funny.

[norinew]

Originally posted by Elenia28
A Stephen King short story, can't remember the name, but he's got golden eyeballs in his fingers. UGH. Then he cuts his hand off and it appears in his chest. Double UGH.
This would be I Am The Doorway in the collection Skeleton Crew. Creeped me out, too.

[Stark Raven Mad]

That wasn't Preacher, that was Hellblazer. Same writer and artist, though. I loved that scene. Not just because I like the idea of a Kennedy getting skull-fucked, but because its John Constantine who tells the story... and he's telling it to the ghost of John F. Kennedy, who's standing there with his hand on the back of his head to keep his brains from falling out. I thought it was hilarious. Then again, my "line" is pretty far out there. (Although, they didn't actually show LBJ porking the presidential brain pan, which probably would have been a bit much, even for me.)

Preacher's got its share of pretty out-there stuff as well. The bit where

we find out that Odin from the meat factory has sex with a giant vagina made out of raw animal parts

was so sick it actually cured me of my munchies. No kidding.

[norinew]

This would be I Am The Doorway in the collection Skeleton Crew. Creeped me out, too.
Ooops, I was wrong about the collection it appears in: it's Night Shift, which also contains the amazingly disturbing Trucks.

[UrbanChic]

Back To The OP

That would be the a text file I found on this, my spare computer, when forced to stop using the laptop due to spyware. I was halfway through before the memories came back. It was my diary. I had erased nearly all the entries and blocked out the memories of my romance with Talia.

Warning-The following may be disturbingThat was...that was awesome. I mean, just awesome. I...I am in awe.

Bravo.

[FriarTed]

In "From Dusk til Dawn" there's a scene where the vampires are all over this Asian guy, I think he's the minister's adopted son. Anyway, as the vampires start their feeding frenzy, he realizes that he's going to become a vampire if they kill him, so he begs his sister to kill him first. It's a pretty awful scene with him shouting "Please Kate, kill me!!!"

I always thought the minister's (Harvey Keitel) late wife was Asian.

[Draelin]

I often surprise myself with the depths of gore and depravity I am willing to subject myself to in the name of "entertainment". Every now and then I'll shudder a bit, and I've been known to yell "Ewwww!" at a book sometimes, but I rarely get thoroughly freaked out.

But every time I watch Sleepaway Camp, the scene with the boiling pot of corn freaks me the hell out. It's not terribly graphic--in fact, at this moment I can't even recall if we even see anything happen. Maybe it's the fact that while it's unlikely someone's going to bury me up to my neck in a garbage pile and then take a lawnmower to my head, it's entirely possible that I'm going to spill a giant pot of boiling water on myself while making corn.

[Infovore]

You got that title wrong, the book was Feast. Highly recommended, but not for the faint of heart. I thought the kitchen scene near the end exceed the finger scene for over-the-top grossness.

Nope, I'm sure it's Ritual. Maybe it was released under different titles--I know some of Masterton's stuff has different titles in the UK and the US. Maybe one or the other was the original title. Must go hunt that up now for my own knowledge (I'm a big Masterton fan).

Yeah, good point about the kitchen scene. Thanks for reminding me. :) :eek:

[Infovore]

King has already topped that -- he wrote a short story (forget the title) where a corrupt surgeon is shipwrecked in a desert island -- and when I say "island," I mean just a volcanic outcropping in the sea, with nothing growing on it. He has nothing but the heroin he was smuggling when the ship went down. He breaks his leg trying to catch a seagull, gangrene sets in and he knows going to lose the leg anyway -- so he dopes himself up with the heroin, amputates it with a jagged plank of wood, and eats it. It starts there . . .

Yeah, I've read that one, and yeah, it was pretty awful. I think Ritual was worse, though. I'd blocked out the kitchen scene Pyrrhonist mentioned. :eek:

[Cluricaun]

There are a few scenes in the movie Dead Alive, but none so turning as when the zombie mother bleeds out in the pudding, and the fat man is just slurping it up. I could retch just thinking about it.

In print form there was a collection of zombie stories out a few years ago called "Book of the Dead". It was my first introduction to David Schow. His story is called "Jerry's Kids meet Wormboy" and his descriptions of Wormboy eating the guts of recently dispatched zombies it just as horrid an idea as can be described.

[Pyrrhonist]

Nope, I'm sure it's Ritual. Maybe it was released under different titles--I know some of Masterton's stuff has different titles in the UK and the US.


Okay, different US and UK titles. Look here (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Graham_Masterton.htm) for a complete list; other books by Masterton have different titles as well.


As long as we’re on the savory subject of cannibalism, Off Season by Jack Ketchum has some gory servings on the menu. The BBQ scene and inside the cave were rough.

All though I’ve never read it, yet, Bighead by Edward Lee is supposedly one of the grossest books ever written.

[ivylass]

I think I read somewhere that Stephen King once said he tries to scare the bejesus out of people, and if that doesn't work, he will try to gross you out.

Anyone notice the creepiest things seems to be violence against eyes and against children? The vignettes in Insomnia or The Stand, where children are either murdered or dying, get to me every time.

For that reason, I've only been able to read Cujo once.

[Sean Factotum]

I had to stop reading a book by Joyce Carol Oates called "Zombie", which is a first-person singular account from the point of view of a serial killer. He was trying to make people into zombies (for sex slaves) by doing home lobotomies with an ice pick through the person's eye. The specific scene which made me put down the book was when he was trying to lobotomize his first victim, and the person thrashed so hard in the bathtub that he broke the piano wire around his ankles. The narrator was so disappointed that the victim didn't survive the "procedure" to become his slave.
Oh, so that's what happened. Once the ice pick went into the eye, it was "Goodbye JCO!" for me.

[fessie]

1. Jacob's Ladder - Various scenes are too freaky for words, particularly when Tim Robbins is being wheeled around corridors.

2. The Hitcher - When the girl gets pulled apart by 2 semis. I wasn't really watching the film up to that point & have never seen the remainder.

3. A Clockwork Orange - Saw the first part of this film & couldn't take any more after the rape scene started. The way they slapped the woman, as if she was just an inanimate object, was scarier than anything they could've said.

[Alias]

I always thought the minister's (Harvey Keitel) late wife was Asian.

Could be. I haven't seen this movie since it came out, but the scene with him begging his sister to kill him has stuck in my mind forever.

[Chastain86]

God help me, but this is true.

One of the stupidest movies in history was "The Exorcist III." In this movie featured a scene with a wooden Jesus on a crucifix.

At one point, the Jesus on the crucifix opens his f*cking eyes and stares right into the camera. :eek: :eek:

I just about wet myself. It still freaks me out to think about it. Creepy, creepy, creepy. Unclean, unclean.

I still can't quite put my finger on why.

[BrainGlutton]

If you actually want over-the-top horror, check out two anthologies edited by Paul M. Sammon: Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror (St. Martins Press, 1990), and Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge (St. Martins Press, 1995).

[Cherry2000]

In Stephen King's Gerald's Game , the scene near the end where the woman tries to (or maybe she succeeds--I've kinda blocked it out) peel the skin off her hands in order to get out of the handcuffs

Aw man...that one freaked me out too. It was one of those times when my head was ok with what I was reading, but my stomach was definitely not. Just an uncontrolable "I'm gonna toss cookies" feeling. Not mentally upset at the whole thing, but a pure, physical reaction. Weird, huh?

The other one that gets me is a little known story called "On the Uses of Torture" by Piers Anthony. It's a short story in "Anthonology". It's about a guy who goes to some planet where the most venerated members of society are the torture masters. But to become one, you have to live through the torture yourself. Gets very detailed. It's hard to find the book...not too many copies in print I hear. And it was years before any publisher would even touch it.