The scene where the young woman falls off the airplane has haunted me to this day.
Reminds me of a similar scene in The Sand Pebbles, where Steve McQueen’s Chinese friend is being flayed by an angry mob, so Steve shoots his friend. Ugh.
In Combat Shock, the guy kills his wife, kills their deformed baby, and then shoots himself in the head. All shown on screen.
It’s certainly memorable.
Part of the story line involves Sherlock Holmes dealing with his mind slowly deteriorating. My late wife suffered from Parkinson’s, and it took a sudden turn into dementia. So the subject hits a little too close to home.
An understandable reaction.
I thought of this one just today. Po-han’s death profoundly upset me. I was 16 when it came out, first movie death that really grabbed me. Damn.
Another one that I’d forgotten about was 1974’s Buster and Billie. Billie’s rape/murder disturbed the hell out of me.
in one of those really bad 1980ies B-action movies (think: Stephen Segal / Van Damm ) an evildoer is lowered alive into an industrial meat-grinder in a meat processing plant.
then you can see the ground “beef” coming out below … and the movie was so bad, the ground beef was twitching …IIRC
anybody any idea what movie that could have been? (just wondering, no intention to revisit)
What I did revisit a few months ago was John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and I really found it quite lacking (compared to my memories)
I don’t see it already mentioned here, sorry if I missed it:
In the movie Sometimes a Great Notion, where the man is trapped under a tree trunk in the river, and as the water begins to rise, he knows he’s going to drown…
Not sure if this was mentioned yet, but Shireen’s death in Game of Thrones. Even though it wasn’t explicitly shown on-screen, watching a little girl burn to death, screaming for mercy, while her parents, who consented to it, watch impassively…dear God, nightmare material.
We’ve been watching a now-old HBO series on Amazon, “Six Feet Under.” It takes place in a funeral home. Starting each episode is a death, most often an adult. One episode began with the death of an infant, presumably crib death. It was very upsetting to me, not because of any personal experience, but just because. The adult deaths have sometimes been unsettling, even rather clever and bizarre, but the death of a baby was too much for me. It was just a step too far. I almost stopped watching the show over it.
Honestly, the De Niro shoot out at the end of Taxi Driver was extremely disturbing to me.
I read the book twice before seeing the movie (a long time ago). As horrible as the scene is on film, I think it was even more upsetting/tragic in Kesey’s novel.
Can’t believe it hasn’t been mentioned yet, but The Mist, based on a story by Stephen King, has one of the more disturbing death scenes, made all the more despairing by what occurs right after the death(s). Won’t spoiler it, but it occurs at the end of the film and will not be forgotten.
For short films, a 20 minute film from 1969 called “The Lottery” has a death scene that is set up during the movie but still is disturbing.
I’ve been bingeing on the UK series “Heartbeat”. Generally a lot of fun and nothing too heavy. But the show in which Kate Rowan dies is one of the saddest but well acted death scenes. I’m not one to cry during a show but this brought me close.
Consented to it? If memory serves, Stannis was the one who tied her to the stake. Yeah, pure nightmare fuel. When I did the Game of Thrones locations tour out of Belfast, our guide pointed out the field “where Stannis Baratheon won his father-of-the-year award.”
That franchise in general has some of the grizliest deaths imaginable. Hannibal gives Mason Verger hallucinogenics and convinces him to cut his own face off, then paralyzes him. In the TV version, Verger later dies when an electric eel is shoved down his throat. The worst fate may be Abel Gideon’s. Held captive by Hannibal, his limbs are successively amputated and he’s forced to take part in a feast of them each time.
To me grisly or graphic doesn’t equate with disturbing. Feeding someone their own brain while they are still alive is disturbing. I didn’t watch the Tv show so I don’t know what my reaction would be to those.
Got a new one as of last night. Caught the first half of the first episode of Gunpowder on Max last night. Two grisly executions- a woman was crushed to death and a man was hanged but not dead and disemboweled while alive than beheaded.
In the movie The Beast there is a scene where a man is slowly crushed to death under the tread of a T-55 tank. Feet first.
The scene with the ship in 3 Body Problem was one of those things that you think “This will look cool on screen”… and then the horror of the reality of it sinks in.