We’ll just have to differ over our definitions, I think, although I’d agree that the sensationalism is certainly an important element in my definition. Cheers!
Being Canadian, I have to point out that this sounds a lot like David Cronenberg’s '82 film Videodrome, where people get brain tumors from watching an obscure porn channel on satellite.
James Woods is great in that one!
Since we’re now talking about disturbing documentaries, I’ll bring up Titticut Follies (about conditions within a very unenlightened '60s mental hospital). I also thought American Movie was a queasy, voyeuristic piece of trash, more so than anything by Jerry Springer.
Hmmm, late for the party, as usual.
End ‘o’ the world flicks, even if sometimes badly made, always seem to do me in. Here are a few that haven’t been mentioned yet (I think).
Fail Safe: the screeching of the phone lines as cities go up in nuclear smoke
Dr. Strangelove (yeah, it’s intended as comedy, but the ending chills me to the bone)
Colossus: the Forbin Project (computer takes over the world)
Miracle Mile: (Anthony Edwards has a hot date interrupted by global thermonuclear war)
The Quiet Earth: New Zealand-shot “last person on earth” flick; flawed but nightmarish, especially in the early going
Reign of Fire: the overall story is utter bollocks, but the realization of the dragons was really effective and actually gave me nightmares
The Day After: the destruction of Lawrence, KS, and the horrible fates of the survivors is haunting, even on a TV-movie budget
And a few others:
The Apartment: IMO, by far Roman Polanski’s most disturbing film, and that’s saying something
Schindler’s List (well, duh): the oozing sentimentality at the end does nothing to wash away the horrors of what came before; when people talk about the new, ‘darker’ Steven Spielberg of Minority Report, why do they forget this film?
Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone and The Fly: Creepiness incarnate, both of them.
Like most children, I was highly disturbed the first time I saw Old Yeller. I took an experimental psych class last semester, and we spent one day going around the room listening to ideas for various projects. One girl said she wanted to gauge reactions to different film clips.
Girl: I need to find a sad movie.
Everyone in the room: Old Yeller.
Platoon disturbed me so much that I walked out. I know that horrible things happen in war, but seeing a soldier bludgeon an infant to death was just too damn much.
Elephant Man left me emotionally raw.
Leaving Las Vegas was the antithesis of the feel-good Pretty Woman. The rape scene was particularly brutal. And it didn’t have a stereotypical Hollywood Happy Ending. Damn it was depressing!
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was freaky disturbing in the same sense that Psycho and Silence of the Lambs is.
I have to go with
The Shining
Boy’s Don’t Cry
Silence of the Lambs
My vote is
The People Under The Stairs
I completely agree with you on this one. I had the soundtrack first and I loved every song sooo much, I thought they were so uplifting. After a while, I bought the DVD and watched the movie and I don’t remember ever crying so much on a film before in my life. I was truly unconsollable and disturbed for days. I haven’t been able to see the movie again or even listen to the songs after that. I think it’s one of the most disturbing. Also David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET left me with a not - so whlesome feeling for days on end, and that song creeps me out when they play it as muzak at my office.
Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern which left me a weepy mess. And another for Testament, which also left me a weepy mess. (The weeping there started with the scene with the mom, the son and the mentally challenged boy in the car in the garage. Ugh.)
For a couple of new offerings - Last Tango in Paris is consistently referred to as a gripping, classic film. I found it distasteful and dreadful. After I watched it, I was simply nauseated. And Lady Jane, Helena Bonham Carter’s first major movie, about Lady Jane Grey, who ascended the British throne very shortly in the 1500’s.
I was sickened by the manipulations and political game playing throughout the story, but it was the end that got me. Lady Jane, as a “pretender” to the throne, is to be executed by beheading. Blindfolded, she is led to the chopping block and forced down on her knees. She is told to place her head on the stone, which was awful enough, but when she reached out her hands to guide herself to the stone, she couldn’t reach it, and she groped and fumbled to find it for it for an unending moment before the executioner reached down and roughly pushed her towards the place of her death.
It was all so cold and heartless I am actually getting a lump in my throat just thinking about it!
I second suburbia, faces of death, and the Lynch flicks mentioned: twin peaks and eraserhead.
I cannot believe that no one has mentioned Bad Lieutenant yet! Harvey Keitel plays a cop behaving very very badly, Nuns being raped with crosses, sick sick sick.
Oh, and also all the Troma films: toxic avenger, class of nukem high etc. They are more funny than anything else, but definately not for the weak of heart.
Closet Land (Alan Rickman/Madeleine Stowe). That just freaked me for days.
Jacob’s Ladder, ditto. Memo to anyone who thinks Event Horizon came up with disturbing images; Jacob’s Ladder does it better.
Failsafe gave me nightmares, American History X, Seven, Romper Stomper… : brrr :
Soylent Green, but not for the makeup of Soylent Green itself; rather, Edward G Robinson’s death scene utterly shattered me.
Wow, The People Under the Stairs scared the hell out of me as a kid. I had forgotten about that one.
This has been mentioned already, but The Talented Mr. Ripley disturbed me for weeks. I can’t even bear to look at the box cover in the video store. It was just so damn depressing and sad…
I was quite stoned when I saw Se7en and it gave me nightmares, which is very rare for me.
Videodrome is also freaky as hell.
It’s been a good decade or so since I’ve last seen it but I recall thinking that Blue Velvet was quite repulsive.
Also, Brazil left me unable to do anything but rock back and forth and stammer for a few hours.
There have been tons of movies that have disturbed me, most so much that I don’t even want to think about them enough to name them here. However, I hate not seeing a movie through to the end, and the only movie I had to stop watching was the later version of Cape Fear. It’s a little embarrassing, as I don’t think anyone else was as horrified by this movie as I was. It was the
scene where the bad guy is having sex with a woman, consensually, but then, when he’s taking her from behind, he anally rapes her and bites half her ear and cheek off.
Damn, I shouldn’t have thought about that scene when I’m already sick with food poisoning. 
eraserhead. I hated this movie. I first saw it in high school. I remember seeing a poster for the movie in a Rush video on MTV and I was expecting a kind of off-beat, funky, funny movie. Instead I found it utterly disgusting, and still 15 years later, I have to try to avoid thinking about some of the disgusting images in that film.
Blair Witch Project. This really disturbed me too, but I did not hate it. I did not see it in the theaters. I saw it at home (I think the first DVD I ever rented, actually) with my then-girl friend. I know lots of people found the movie boring, but I was completely drawn in by it. It seemed so realistic: no background music blaring “be scared now,” no stupid recycled dialog. Just a very freaky situation that felt incredibly real to me. We went to bed after watching it, and I still remember that the next morning I woke up feeling scared.
The cook, the thief, his wife, and her lover. I second the comments made above. I just found this gross. Not in a guy exploding after eating a “wafer thin mint” kind of outrageous way, but in a vivid way that made me nauseated.
Freaks, because you cannot distance yourself from the movie by saying “Those are just special effects”. They aren’t.
Regards,
Shodan
Event Horizon
Did anyone else see “naked lunch” on the Sci-fi channel a while ago?
One and only one : KIDS. I don’t know how I made it without leaving the theatre… Lot of people did…
And the curb scene in American History X.
Oh yeah, forgot about Blair Witch, scared to crap out of me…
A second vote for Miracle Mile…still scares the crap out of me.
I didn’t see any mention of Once were Warriors, a New Zealand film about the Mauri and the effects of cultural assimilation. Very disturbing.