Kiss of Death, 1947. Well remembered - it was Richard Widmark, in his acting debut too. The character was called Tommy Udo. It was loosely remade in 1995 by Barbet Schroeder with an all-star cast.
More details at http://us.imdb.com/Title?0039536
George Romeo’s Day of the Dead. Pretty much the entire movie was just violent but several scenes stick out like:
-The one guy getting his arm amputated
-The other guy getting shot and then the zombies reaching into the bullet hole and tearing him apart.
- Some other guy getting his head slowly ripped off
-Gratuitous shots of zombies eating blood soaked entrails
Pretty much any scene where someone removes their own teeth:
-Neve Cambell in Wild Things
-Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys
We’re talking about one of three films here…
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The whole of We Were Soldiers. It built characters up, killed them. In lots of blunt, gory detail. The building up of the characters was the worst bit.
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The hobbling in Misery. Urgh.
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Recently, in City Of God where Steak n’ Chips is forced to shoot one of two young boys.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer… pretty much all of it, especially the part where Otis is watching the video they made of a home invasion.
I 'm a pretty desensitized product of our society… but that movie did some damage to my psyche. It’s a great movie… I never want to see it again, nor do I recommend it.
Pretty much all of Blackhawk Down.
I mean Blackhawk Down, damn it!
Oh, I remember it all right. I remember thinking that Paul Verhoeven was a real sadist.
I’ve seen more purely violent scenes, but I think the most effective violent scene was in Miller’s Crossing. It’s when Caspar suddenly freaks out and bashes the Dane over the head with the fireplace shovel, all while the wrestler guy is screaming. Scared the bejeezus out of me. "ALWAYS PUT ONE IN THE BRAIN!"
I also can’t watch The Untouchables anymore because of the scene with Al Capone and the baseball bat. It totally took me by surprise and was the most violent thing I’d seen in a movie up to that point. (It was one of the first R-rated movies I ever saw, IIRC…)
There is a scene in some movie (Qundun?) where Chinese soldiers storm Tibetan villages, and they force Tibetan children to shoot their parents with machine guns.
I agree that “Road to Perdition” was violent to the point of ruining the movie. It was well-framed and well-directed, but damn if the movie isn’t just downright depressing.
As for “Starship Troopers”–I think part of the point of the movie was the violence. It’s supposed to contrast from the propaganda of the Federal Network, etc. It’s supposed to illustrate facism at work–that wra is really awful and terrible, but fascists want to downplay that for the benefit of the nation.
Verhoeven’s definetly one to use violence as a medium, and it’s often lost on people. For example, in “Robocop”, the violence was done so gruesomely on purpose–to make it comedic. When you take something to an extreme, it has the opposite effect. That is, he made the movie so violent that it is no longer intened to shock, but to amuse since it’s so ludicrous (even by action hero standards, Murphy should not have survived his initial encounter with Clarence Boddicker).
Unfortuneately, I think that with Verhoeven’s movies, the graphic violence does not have the enotional impact of other movies since the characters are so one dimensional and cartoonish. No one in the audience cares when Dizzie or Lt Razzak (sp?) dies because…well…that’s what’s supposed to happen to the unrequited love interest and mentor characters.
How about the rape scene in Man Bites Dog? Or pretty much any other part of the film for that matter
3000 Miles to Graceland
The worst movie I ever saw. The scene in the casino where they just spray everyone with bullets is horrible.
My SIL insisted it was a comedy when we rented it. At the end, all 4 of us just had this blank look on our faces, and nobody said a word…
When Ehrin Mahgeney eats the “yellow” snow cone in Jackass:The Movie.
When the kid gets run over on the bike in the first Toxic Avenger movie.
Curb scene in American History X and Pyle taking one in the face in Full Metal Jacket.
Another vote for American History X.
FWIW Sen. Leiberman swears by the Center for Media and Public Affairs. They are always quoting each other. CMPA claim the “sceintifically” study incidents of violence in Movies.
Of the top grossing movies (they don’t look at indies and flops)
From 98-99 the top 3 most violent were
Saving Private Ryan
Blade
Ronin
In 2000 the top 3 most violent (of the big grossers) were:
The Patriot
Gladiator
MI2
just fwiw
I would have to put my vote in for the lawnmower scene from DeadAlive! The whole movie is the goriest thing I’ve ever seen but that scene takes the cake!
Of course, that measurement is a bit on the ridiculous side since it doesn’t (and can’t, since it isn’t an objective standard) measure GRATUITOUS violence.
Castaway?
I’m going with Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The scene where Leatherface comes up behind the guy as he enters the house and clubs him with a sledgehammer, and then the guy has a stroke…that was terrifying.
I watched Dune as a young teen when it first came on video, and the scene where Harkonnen yanks a young slave’s heart-plug kept me awake for a week or two of nights. Can’t watch it again. Want to. Can’t.
There was a shticky cyberpunk film with Ralph Fiennes and Tom Sizemore that I can’t recall the name of right now (and past experience tells me that some OC Doper will post the name shortly) where a serial killer “recorded” his own eyes viewing a woman’s face as he strangled her. This scene made my gf-later-wife so sick that we left a party early (and I was not crazy about it either)…no one else seemed to react. I have not seen the film since.
The other one that kept me awake for awhile was the scene in Se7en where a fella was forced to mount a prostitute with a knife-dildo thingy…brrrrrrrrrrrr
A lot of Last of the Mohicans made me sort of queasy. The massacres, the ending . . . Ugh.