What is the most shocking, horrifying (but not necessarily scariest) movie?

Cafe Society
21

Eraserhead is definitely close to the top of my list, but there is another one that has been at the very top ever since I saw it in the mid-1970s (although I’m not sure it counts under the OP’s terms, since it’s a documentary): The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes, by Stan Brakhage.

It is the third in a trilogy of 30-minute silent films. The first, Eyes, dealt with the police, and the second, Deus Ex, dealt with a hospital. Now, when I say “dealt with,” I don’t mean they were what you’d normally think of as documentaries. Both were very impressionist: A closeup of a hand on a steering wheel; a pool of blood on a street; a shot of a gurney wheel rolling. No story lines, just images, and not all of them recognizable, even.

Brakhage told the film seminar I was attending that as he was working on the second, he realized the third would have to be in the morgue. And that’s what The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes is: 30 minutes of silent color images of autopsies. Except that where the first two films rarely if ever showed much beyond a closeup of a small detail of the film’s setting, and that often out of focus, TAOSWOOE showed clearly, and mostly in medium shots, the slitting open of abdomens, the peeling back of scalps, the sawing open of skulls, and the removal of brains and other organs. The real thing, not prosthetics, not dummies. Real bodies of once real people.

More than one person got up and left the theater crying. I was only about 20 at the time, but it was without doubt the most intense experience I’ve ever had in a movie theater, before or since.

I took the title as a challenge, as Brakhage saying, this is something that we all have to see for ourselves, that we all have to deal with death. It was only after the screening that he explained, in response to a question, that it’s the meaning of the word “autopsy,” auto=self; ops=seeing.; i.e. seeing for yourself what caused death.

It’s available on DVD with 25 other Brakhage films, although unfortunately, the first two parts of the trilogy aren’t included in the collection.

22

I posted this one ealier in a “weirdest movie” thread, but Jisatsu saakuru (Suicide Club) is my pick, for a number of scenes. It starts with a mass suicide-by-train during the evening commute and gets steadily more disturbed from there.

23

Reservoir Dogs, good one.
How about the truck scene in Pet Sematary? If you’re a parent, you’ll have a hard time with that one.

24

Marathon Man. Pretty much the whole thing, not just the dentist scene.

25

I’ll have to cast a vote for Se7en, the scene where they’re interviewing the guy in the police station who was forced to assault the Lust victim, and he’s talking about what he had to do while the scene is intercut with the detectives discovering the device that John Doe made the guy wear (a harness with phallus made of blades). Gah. The guy is coming absolutely unglued when he’s telling the cops about it.

26

Henry, portrait of a serial killer.

27

Yeah, but Kate Winslet!

I remember Caligula as being gross rather than horrifiying – except for grabbing the baby by the ankles and dashing it’s brains out – or maybe I’m just blocking the rest.

28

I have a hard time watching the curbing scene in American History X. The sound of that guys teeth on the concrete gets to me every time.

Oh yeah, everything about the movie Kids was disturbing.

29

To add something new to the list, I nominate Audition.

I don’t want to spoil it, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.

30

I found Heavenly Creatures quite disturbing.

31

Bingo…exactly what I was coming in here to post. That scene still gives me fricking nightmares.

32

Wasn’t there a scene from (I think) Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra where they have this giant S-shaped blade, with the same profile, from the side, as a playground slide. The blade is aligned vertically, and the victim was supposed to sit on the top and be pushed down it. And Taylor looks right at the guy she orders to test it out…

It may be it was so affecting to me because I saw it while very young, but still…

33

Went to a Riverside CA drive-in back in 1978 to see a double feature. The first movie, Halloween, was certainly shocking and disturbing, but the second feature gave me nightmares for a week.

34

Try Funny Games.

35

I thought about posting this in “Scariest Movie” but maybe shocking and horrifying is closer (although you should be scared too, really).

http://www.the-snu.co.uk/Threads.htm
As the link notes the particulars are a bit out of date, but hey,the bombs are still there and I’ve never seen a film that does as well at making the unthinkable feel real. I haven’t seen it since it came out but there are scenes that are burnt into my brain…particualrly the ending.

36

That scene got me, too. It comes up a lot in this kind of discussion so I reckon it must be fairly near the top of any “recoil in shock” list.

37

Blood Simple.

It wasn’t so much that Francis McDormand pinned Emmet Walsh’s hand to to window sill with the knife. It was when Emmet pulled the knife out. Sloooooowly. shudder. I could feel every millimeter of that blade.

As Roger Ebert said, don’t see this movie if you’re squeemish, because it will definitely make you squeem.

38

Happiness

39

Well, it not a movie, but I would have to say the episode of Zim I assume you got your username from, badbadrubberpiggy.

40

I second Henry:Portrait of a Serial Killer. Only movie I’ve ever turned off (the “home movie” sequence).
One scene that really affected me even though the rest of the movie wasn’t upsetting was the “load lightening” scene in Amistad. Just the cold, calculating way the slaves had to stand around as the crew prepared to shove them overboard.

Yuck.