Most disturbing movies you've seen?

Super Trooper said:
I'm going to defy Hudson's sticky and just show the pictures. If you can't figure them out, too bad. :evil:

andalou.jpg
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I saw someone have this clip as their avatar. How did they accomplish the slicing of the eye? And what movie was that? I thought that was extremely sick and uncalled for.

I hate disturbing movies. I think they have no purpose or simply hold the knife at the wrong end (no point to that either).
 
Jacob's Ladder (aka Dante's Inferno) with Tim Robbins. Disturbing. Especially the deleted scenes.
 
aravance said:
Jacob's Ladder (aka Dante's Inferno) with Tim Robbins. Disturbing. Especially the deleted scenes.
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Yes.

A good horror movie that is amazingly unspoken of around here considering all of the genre talk.

That movie gave birth to a few now-common trends in horror movies that you didn't see much of before it came out (particularly the in-camera effects and cutting) I can't think of another similar horror film that feels as real as this one.

Wasn't this the film that popularized the under-cranked spook shot seen in so many (lame) horror movies of the 90's?
 
Pet Cemetary when Gage gets by but the semi and then turns into Chucky.

Pi.

Barfly (but still a good movie)
 
Huate Tension a.k.a High Tension.

Had to cut this one off twenty minutes in and I haven't put it back into the DVD player.

The first time you see the killer in his camper ... I wanted to lark.
 
Kholi said:
Huate Tension a.k.a High Tension.

Had to cut this one off twenty minutes in and I haven't put it back into the DVD player.

The first time you see the killer in his camper ... I wanted to lark.
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Hey it gets better, Sounds like you didn't get to the real MEAT of it yet! Pun intended.:)
 
for a while there was a slew of art house french movies that really bothered me. "fat girl" is one and probably the most personally disturbing film i've seen recently.
 
the_fusionist said:
I saw someone have this clip as their avatar. How did they accomplish the slicing of the eye? And what movie was that? I thought that was extremely sick and uncalled for.

I hate disturbing movies. I think they have no purpose or simply hold the knife at the wrong end (no point to that either).
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The eye that was sliced was from a cow's head. The area around the eye was shaved, leaving only the eyelashes. Upon repeat viewing it's obvious it's not close to the same eye, but it's still a very shocking scene for a film from 1929.

Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) was the first film by the father of cinematic surrealism, Luis Bunuel. He penned the script with another surrealist guy named Salvador Dali. To appreciate the violence in the film, you have to understand the purpose of surrealism.

Grabbed/simplified from wikipedia:

In Breton's Surrealist Menifesto of 1924 he defines surrealism as: Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

Breton would later qualify the definition by saying "in the absence of conscious moral or aesthetic self-censorship," and by his admission through subsequent developments, that the definition was capable of considerable expansion.

Like those involved in Dadaism, adherents of surrealism thought that the horrors of WWI were the culmination of the Industiral Revolution and the result of rational thinking. Consequently, irrational thought and dream-states were seen as the natural antidote to social problems. The surrealist diagnosis of the problem of the realism and capitalism civilization is that both utilize a restrictive overlay of false rationality, including social and academic convention, on the free functioning of the instinctual urges of the human mind.

While Dada rejected categories and labels and was rooted in negative response to WWI, surrealism advocates the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination according to the Hegelian Dialectic. The Marxist dialectic and other theories, such as Freudian theory, also played a significant role in the development of surrealist theory.

Surrealist philosophy connects with the theories of psychiatrist Sigmund Freud in that Freud asserted that unconscious thoughts (the thoughts of which one is not aware) motivate human behaviour, and he advocated free association and dream analysis to reveal unconscious thoughts.

It is through the practice of automatism, dream interpretation, and numerous other surrealist methods that surrealists believe the wellspring of imagination and creativity can be accessed. Surrealists look to so-called "primative art" as an example of expression that is not self-censored.

Back to me.

So when you're watching a surrealist film you need to understand that the traditional roles of narrative and storytelling are given a different meaning. The eye slicing and other disturbing images in Un Chien Andalou are part of an exploration of the subconscious or dreams of Bunuel and Dali and serve a very clear purpose. According to Bunuel the only rule for the writing of the script was that "no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted."

Now none of this might work for you. We're now looking at a film that's nearly 80 years old and was made during a time when the art world was coming to grips with the horrors of World War I. However, it's undeniable that the film is a seminal masterpiece created by two of the most talented surrealist artists ever to share their work.

Of course, I'm an unapologetic lover of Bunuel's films and hope to make something half as good one day ... though with a bit more narrative thrust.
 
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