I’m pretty thick-skinned; I can watch the most extreme slasher/war gore without batting an eye. However, I saw a movie during SIFF called Teeth (its original Italian title is Denti) that succeeded in making me and everybody else in the cinema squirm in horror. It’s about a guy who hates his teeth, and it features extreme closeups of dental work: metal probes working under gums, drills grinding enamel, pliers firmly gripping incisors while the patient whimpers. Yeesh.
In the Clint Eastwood movie The Rookie they have Eastwood tied to a chair. The villainess tortures him. She cuts his chest with razor blades. Eastwood takes it. That’s cool – I could take that, I tell myself.
Then sh does a good cop/bad cop. She tries to turn him on by licking his nipples. At this point I curl up into a fetal position. I hate having my nipples licked! I’d tell them the Normandy Invasion plans if she tried that on me.
I’ve got a thick skin for most types of violence- as far as I recall, I haven’t seen much that’s even made me blink, much less feel queasy. For some reason, the most uncomfortable moments I’ve had watching films have had nothing to do with violence. For instance, the one moment I recall actually feeling uncomfortable is the scene in John Waters’s Pink Flamingoes where the performer at Divine’s party prolapses his rectum, sliding it in and out of his body. That very moment was when I decided John Waters was my god, and Divine his prophet.
BTW, I highly reccomend Pink Flamingoes, but make sure to pick up the 25th anniversary (unrated) version, with some cool additional footage.
There’s a clip in “Stir of Echoes”, starring Kevin Bacon, of a girl who is pushing her hand down so hard that her fingernail snaps off her hand. I was up and off the couch after I first saw it. And of course, they have to show that fingernail thing about 5 more times before the end. I’m all shivery just thinking about it.
I also can’t handle the poor young cop in “Reservoir Dogs” getting his ear cut off. Holy cow, I can’t hear “Stuck in the Middle with You” without thinnking of that ghastly scene.
Oh yeah. And Mel Gibson having his toes smashed with a hammer in “Payback”! Oh my GOD! That is food for my nightmares.