There’s a little dark something that lives within all of us. Some of us control it. Some of us ignore it. Some of us are never even able to identify. it Those who live by the horror-sharpened sword know that darkness well, seeking it out in the most extreme films. And those people – whether sick, healthy, normal, psychotic, or other – deserve a little nod from time to time. Now is that time. Check out ten of the most disgusting, memorable murders featured on film!
Oh, and for the record, we’re going to avoid taking the easy route and have excluded all the Final Destination flicks!
Ghost Ship: We’ll keep it real honest here; Ghost Ship was a pretty mediocre movie. Hell, that could be considered a generous statement. But one scene, the opening shot, was absolutely brilliant. When a snapped cable sails through a massive ballroom and cuts every last passenger in half, it’s shocking. It’s also wonderfully gory and sets the tone for a wild and graphic picture. Too bad the rest of the film couldn’t live up to that awe-inspiring bloodbath.
Death Proof: Be honest, you didn’t see this sequence playing out exactly as it did. Never did you imagine crushed skulls and flying extremities, but that’s exactly what Quentin Tarantino delivered: a head-on collision that yielded a stunning explosion of graphic gore that simply cannot be ignored! One of the best moments in the film? You bet your ass! It’s just a damn shame that so many sexy young ladies had to meet such an early demise.
Scanners: The amount of practical effects that went into this scene is just glorious. In 1981 computer-generated special effects weren’t exactly the norm. And that made exploding heads a real challenge. But Michael Ironside didn’t seem concerned in the least bit during Scanners. In fact, he put this poor fool through fatal misery without a wealth of regard. An all-time great here… and I’m still convinced it actually happened!
The Hills Have Eyes (2006): Next to Scanners, Alexandre Aja’s remake of The Hills Have Eyes features the greatest exploding head on film. The split second we see that loony gas station attendant sitting in the shitter, shotgun in hand and aimed at his filthy melon, we expect a death scene that forces a smile on the face. What we didn’t expect was a picture of realism as the man’s brains explode in stomach-turning fashion. An absolutely riveting shot.
30 Days of Night: It doesn’t take 10 minutes to know that Billy may store some weakness inside of him. As it turns out, he’s weak and cowardly through and through. He executes his own family. He fails to fend off the vampires, subsequently being bitten. He then plays a hand in one of the greatest decapitation scenes in history, and he’s not on the delivering end. Eben takes this asshole’s head right off, and the special effects are so mind-bogglingly convincing that it’s deeply jarring. I still can’t believe how amazingly real this looks. Watch this and catch a case of guaranteed willies.
Jason X: Liquid nitrogen to the face, followed by a savage, savage smash session. It’s absolutely horrifying and original in equal measure. Do we need to say anything else? Really?
Alien: No one saw this coming. No one. Kane, as you’ll likely remember, was attacked by a facehugger in the earlier minutes of Ridley Scott’s Alien. That spidery bastard – for lack of a better term – impregnated Kane, leaving a vicious little monster growing inside the man. And it isn’t long before the nasty bugger is prepared to see freedom. When he does burst from the man’s chest in a spray of ruby red, it is absolutely shocking. For those that don’t know, Ridley Scott didn’t inform the cast exactly what was to happen during this specific scene so when that monster breached the flesh of Kane and everyone around looked mortified and near passing out, it was all real.
Saw III: 100 percent honesty here: I cannot watch the scene in which Tim finds himself strapped to a torture rack… that turns at horrid angles and snaps bones, compound destruction, flesh tearing away as the bone bursts outward like a drowning man breaching water, eager for his first breath. It’s a fucking disgusting scene. My stomach rolled many a time during my inaugural Saw III viewing. And you couldn’t pay me to watch that again.
Dead Alive: When Lionel Cosgrove went full-on ape shit and broke out that wicked lawnmower, we all knew shit was about to get real, as the kids say. And real it got. Five minutes of severed limbs, shreds of stringy, mangled flesh, and to the best of my knowledge (research was conducted; I was unable to definitively find another film that spilled more buckets of the sticky stuff), more bloodshed on screen than in any other instance. If you haven’t seen this scene, you haven’t lived… as odd as that sounds.
Hellraiser: Holy hell… Frank gets torn to fucking pieces!! Think about that! Imagine insanely sharp hooks – attached to thick, sturdy chains – piercing your skin, stretching to that point of bursting, and pausing. Only to rip the skin from the body in one grotesque explosive sequence of blood, flesh, and palpable sadism. It’s a scene that has long haunted me and will likely never cease to do so.