Name the Most Shocking/Subversive Film You Saw in Your Youth

Definitely the movie Hardcore with George C. Scott as a father who goes undercover and underground in the 70s porn industry to try to locate his missing daughter. I think what I knew of porn was Playboy or Hustler and the cute names of Debbie Does Dallas or Deep Throat with out any understanding of what that meant. It was eye opening at about 15.

I doubt anyone else would consider it shocking but as a kid seeing a lead character get graphically gunned down in the 70s movie Mother's Day was shocking to me.

Faces of Death. I couldn't watch all of it though. There's a scene of a small puppy that gets butchered in a Vietnamese home and cooked for family meal. It scarred me because I grew up loving animals ever since childhood. I have read synopsis of far more disturbing films than watched though over the years.

I don’t know if the hyper violence in movies today would make it seem tame, but Death Wish with Charles Bronson really freaked me out. I seem to remember a gang robbing and old lady in the middle of the produce section of a grocery store, and when she hesitated to give up her wedding ring, out came the bolt cutters! Chopped off her finger!

The Australian movie "Walkabout" really left an impression on me. My older brother took me to see it in the mid seventies when I was 9,

The Exorcist bothered me the most. I was 17 but too shook up to sleep in the bed that night - I slept on the floor.

Didn't mind Clockwork or Goodbar and didn't see the others.

Probably Ken Russell's The Devils

It scared the shit out of me

Last Tango in Paris came out around the same time - I didn't get what all the uproar was about. A little necrophilia, so what? They didn't show much.

ERASERHEAD!!! My partner and I were baffled by it and fascinated by it at the same time. Like nothing we had ever seen. We took several friends with us to see it various times and almost lost those friendships. People just looked at us, like, WTF!?

I would watch pretty advanced/risque movies for my age. I'm not talking about R rated modern (then) stuff which was harder to watch at 13, but stuff a 13 kid shouldn't really be watching but was more accesible if you had cable. I remember being 13 and watching Lolita from 1962 and my mom saying I shouldn't be watching that at my age, which I thought was weird since a black and white movie never was overtly graphic or anything. To her credit she let me watch it anyway And staying up late to see Apocalypse now because I was obsessed with Marlon Brando. I obsessed about Last Tango in Paris but that one I only got to watch around 15....I think I watched Tie Me up, Tie me down then too.

Pretty colorful stuff. I miss those days of starting to understand more adult matters and with some of the greatest movies ever filmed to teach them to me.

Gummo, watched it on IFC as a tween…still disturbed

The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the early 1970s, I was about 10yo at a drive-in theater, and the threat of Leatherface chasing me with a chainsaw scared the crap out of me, I couldn't sleep for a month...

I saw the original "Assault on Precinct 13" when I was about 13. Seeing Kim Richards getting shot in the chest was pretty shocking.

I saw John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" when I was 20.

I've always wanted to watch Gummo but have never gotten around to it r11

Millennial, I grew up kind of desensitized to sex, violence and slasher films, so I would say Gummo as well. It was the first time a film made me physically ill - it likely had to do with Harmony Korine's style of filming, which made the viewer feel like a bystander in all the horrible shit that was happening. It felt as though you were directly sitting in on that poor disabled girl being pimped out by her brother or the young boys killing the cats. There was also a general tone of unease throughout. I've only seen it once all the way through, but I remember it so well to this day.

The Exorcist seriously traumatized me for a long time. The book and movie.

LIQUID SKY

LOOKING FOR MR GOODBAR

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (70’s Original)

Oh yeah the Exorcist even gets reference in the Ghostbusters movie. I had a friend who was terrified of watching the Exorcist. The gist is poor little Regan gets taken by a demon. Levitation, projectile voimiting, head doing a 360 etc. Good movie.Totally fake though.

Is Gummo the movie that has a scene with a weird looking boy shitting in his bathwater?

Yes r19

Necrophilia in Last Tango? When was there necrophilia in Last Tango in paris?

There was a movie on Cinemax when in its Skinimax days, called Liz or Lisa, or something like that, and it showed graphic sex which to a kid like me was shocking, I think the movie was edited hardcore porn, or that was the rumor.

Animal Farm

We know what The Exorcist is about, R18.

The one Grandpa made of us and Mom found and then Dad and she made another one with me.

It hurt. I'm still shocked.

r23 how did you find a copy?

When I was about 10-11 or so the local TV station played Luchino Visconti's The Damned, completely uncensored, late one night, and I watched it all through as my folks were out and I couldnt sleep.

Blowup

Morgan (A Sutiable Case for Treatment)

The Belles of St Trinians

Kind Hearts and Coronets

The Stepford Wives (the original, of course, written and released as the Second Wave of Feminism took hold, and exploring men's real fantasies about what they wanted from women - with a stellar cast and a shocking finale)

And additional votes for OP's A Clockwork Orange and Looking for Mr Goodbar

^*A Suitable (not Siutable) Case for Treatment

your mommas' super8.

This shit. I watched it on late night public access when I was a kid.

R22 Oh the Skinemax era. I remember the first one I saw with my older sister and her friend late at night....it was softcore but pretty hardcore soft core and I watched cunnilingus for the first time being performed at the tender age of 10. Pretty sure it was this movie.

Exorcist III scarred me when I was 8. I've written about this in other threads. I saw The Exorcist later and it was less scary, but the subliminal demon face during the priest's nightmare stuck with me for years.

Gummo, I saw it during a choir trip home stay in Bakersfield, CA when I was 15. I hadn't conceived of that level of nihilism yet and it was a lot for me to wrap my head around. I managed to see Kids on premium cable and it was also disturbing but less otherworldly.

The last was when I was 19 or 20 in college. Someone put on Cannibal Holocaust at our fraternity house and despite being pretty jaded at that point I was still very shocked and disturbed by that film for some time to come.

Please tell me r31 was released as a comedy

The Cove.

Jill Learns About Periods.

Either Martin, with its unexpectedly disturbing psychosexual horror (for a young virginal teen), or Peter Greenaway's The Baby of Mâcon, which I saw later

Beyond The Valley of The Dolls, especially when cutie Michael Blodgett gets beheaded. And prime dick wasted on Meredith Baxter!

Suddenly, Last Summer at age 11

Bonnie and Clyde as a young adult + Clockwork Orange + Pink Flamingos

The Omen

I was when I saw this so bot young, but I Spit On Your Grave was the most disturbing thing I’d ever seen. I regret watching it.

You bitches are slipping.

[R23] I worked in a car factory in the 80s.

I heard Helen Mirren, in an interview, say that making this movie was a blast, and that they all had a lot of fun.. It's definitely got an all star cast.. I haven't seen it though for like 25-30 yrs. don't remember much, but I do know the history...it was definitely insane!

Does anyone remember a movie where a crazy scientist/doctor turns a hottie into a snake? Did I imagine that movie, lol?

Found it!

Not super subversive, but pretty adult, I remember watching A streetcar named desire when I was 13 and me not understanding the ending and telling my mom who told me Blanche had been raped. and I think that's the first time she acknowledged rape was a thing...I already knew about that a couple a few years back but I remember feeling so adult that my mom discussed that with me for the first time/.

[quote]Does anyone remember a movie where a crazy scientist/doctor turns a hottie into a snake? Did I imagine that movie, lol?

I'm willing to bet it was "Sssssss" with Dirk Benedict and Strother Martin.

Saló was fucked up. A Serbian Film. The Fine Art of Love. The Guinea Pig ones were shocking at first but meh.

r47 I watched it around age 12, and I didn't understand that she had been raped either. I thought he just beat her up at the end.

Dawson's 50 Load Weekend.

I can understand a 13 year old not getting it but plenty of grown ass adults watch it and still don't. It's like, seriously...?

R48- Yes, thank you. I confused it with the movie Venom, which also scared me.

Sorry, R52 was a reply to R50

R33 I also found Exorcist III more disturbing than the original. The killer using the superior vena cava or inferior, through the heart to drain the victims of their blood while still alive, is horrifying. So is the imagery you described.

The Omen bothered me more than the original Exorcist, as well.

I never saw anything I found truly nightmarish until I saw Requiem for a Dream, and I was an adult.

Don't forget this scene in Exorcist III!!

Is "youth" early 20s? If so, then Singapore Sling (1990) was the most disturbing yet fascinating film and remains at the top of the list. Also on that list is Audition (1999), directed by Takashi Miike.

Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles” is pure evil in Muppet form.

I've been looking for this movie for years and cannot find it. it takes place in some urban landscape I assume New York City, but hell it could be Brazil. From what I recall the family is speaking Spanish, but there was English too. In the opening scene the entire family is gunned down in their small apartment, everyone except one child. I saw this film when I was like 9 and it was shocking because it was so graphic, and treacherous; even the other children siblings were slaughtered. It was the most graphic display of violence in such a realistic fashion I had ever seen on film. The realism of the apartment, the family, and then a group of gunment just slaughter them one by one. I can't even remember the rest of the plot of the film because I don't think I had chance to finish it but that opening scene always haunted me. When I visited relatives in New york City I hated staying in their apartments.

Anyone know what this film might be?

R59 You might be thinking of "Gloria," either the original with Gena Rowlands or the remake with Sharon Stone. It has a pivotal scene where a mob accountant and his entire family (save one lucky kid) were killed by a hit squad. The family was Puerto Rican.

Cruising with Al Pacino

Nothing was off limits, in either books or film. Period, from as long as I could watch or read. My behavior was regulated and sometimes my emotions. Not my mind.

For that reason, I can't remember ever being shocked. Disturbed, but that's not the same thing.

It did me no harm, that I can tell.

When I was 16 I rented Tromeo & Juliet at the video store and it was wonderfully sick.

Andy Warhol's Bad

Liquid Sky

Female Trouble

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Faster Pussycat Kill Kill!

Taxi Zum Klo.

amazing that in the late '70s this played in an upscale atlanta suburban mall theater

Glitter

My fifth grade teacher showed us a short film based on Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”

I was most horrified at how casual everyone was while doing their evil.

I still can picture the finale of this film vividly, and it’s been 40 years since I saw it as a ten year old.

Here it is, if any of you want to share in my trauma.

r69 I must have had a teacher who showed it too, because it looks vaguely familiar.

I know we read the story.

The films I saw in college in the 1980s -- in particular those that were shown on campus -- were among the most shocking. Which is interesting, since college campuses these days seem to play it safe with everything.

My first week on campus, I went with two other freshmen boys to see Debbie Does Dallas presented on a big screen in one of the old lecture halls. Yes, a hard core porno was shown to college students in an official campus classroom as a moneymaking endeavor for one of the campus clubs. Nobody thought it was inappropriate and I think it was kind of an annual tradition.

Other films I can remember seeing on campus included A Clockwork Orange, Apocalypse Now, Brazil, and Pink Floyd's The Wall -- all films that had "cinematic" sex and violence, and again, all shown in campus classrooms or lecture halls.

My favorites were the collections of shorts that we would see. One was called Animation Celebration, I think it was in 1989, and I have looked for it because I would like to see some of those shorts again. Another was called A Celebration of Bad Taste, and it was an odd assortment of short subjects, cartoons, and blooper outtakes. There was nothing inappropriately shocking in it -- things you had heard about before like the Flintstones selling cigarettes, outtakes from Star Trek, and the most violent episode of The Three Stooges. But what I remember was the audience gasping in surprise but also howling with laughter upon viewing Bob Clampett's Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs.

Heathers shocked me. Now it's just tame in comparison to the stuff they make.

Shocking - When I was about 12, one of the local TV stations showed PSYCHO unedited late one night. I stayed up to watch it (alone!), but I really knew nothing about it. I was completely unprepared for the shower scene, Arbogast's death on the staircase, and the discovery of Mrs. Bates in the fruit cellar.

Subversive - A few years later, I got my parents to drop me off at an R-rated double bill. (They didn't know it was rated R and the theater didn't bother enforcing it.) I don't remember what the main feature was, but my focus was on the second anyway: THE BOYS IN THE BAND. Even though I was only 14 or 15, I knew I had found My People.

All of the hell raiser movies. That pinhead demon was frightening to me.

The Little Girl Who Lived Down The Lane was disturbing.

Looking for Mr Goodbar

R29 no he eats spaghetti while taking a bath.

Liquid Ass

Bad Timing

Joe - directed by John Avildsen, starring Peter Boyle. Yikes.

The Tin Drum. I was a kid and stumbled onto this on the old latenight "Bravo" network. Fuck. I couldn't sleep after.

Oh the Omen. Watching the Damien grow up to be the anti-christ. That was fun.

Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972) with the tagline: It's only a movie

The chicken fucking scene in Pink Flamingos made me barf. We all took hits of acid for the midnight SF showing. All was well until Crackers fucked some hens with his gf.

Fellini Satyricon freaked me out too. But the little nymph boy made me hard.

2001: A Space Odyssey

SECONDS by Frankenheimer (with R. Hudson)

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

TRAS EL CRISTAL

Straw Dogs

IMAGES by Robert Altman. A very convincing point-of-view mindfuck, showing the viewer just what it must be like to go insane. It was terrifying to me.

Similarly, DON'T LOOK NOW, by Nicholas Roeg.

“The Shining”

“Faces or Death”

Harold and Maude

Eating Raul

[quote]SECONDS by Frankenheimer (with R. Hudson)

R85 I was expecting a "Rock Hudson movie" and was surprised.

^That movie is one of, maybe *the* most terrifying movies I've ever seen, and the first time I saw it, accidentally enough, I happened to be taking some VERY strong LSD. The movie was one of the last major Hollywood movies to be released on video. I'm not sure why that was, but I'm not very surprised. "Seconds" is supposedly what pushed Beach Boy Brian Wilson off the deep end, mentally. Hudson's character's name after "the operation" is Mr. Wilson...

Thanks, OP. Great thread. Watching some of these movies now, they don't evoke the mind-provoking chill they did back in the day but they are still worth a viewing.

The Devil in Miss Jones

Suicide Club

Don't Tell Anyone(1998), a Peruvian film about a young man trying to come to terms with sexuality.

I'd seen plenty of porn before, but at the time, I thought the film's sex scenes were pretty jaw dropping for a regular film.

"Night Tide" with a very young Dennis Hopper. The 1960s was a great decade for shocking/subversive independent movies and a great training ground for future creepy artists like David Lynch.

I was in my 20s and caught a rainy day Saturday matinee double feature of "Eraserhead" and "Freaks".

I actually watched A Clockwork Orange as a kid. It was my dad's favorite movie. He also owned an original poster for it, which hung in my family's living room.

I watched a bunch of 1970s movies as a kid in the 90s, because they were my parent's favorites, and they didn't care about things like ratings. I also saw all the Vietnam War movies because my dad was a Vietnam vet and loved those movies, which I still think is weird. I saw Cabaret, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Chinatown, and a bunch of others while still a child.

My sister, who also watched those movies, is an academic now and is a considered an expert in films of that era.

The Cook, the Thief his Wife and her Lover.

1989, I was 16 and pretentious. Cut school to see this in Manhattan.

Was bored/scared/repulsed and most of all- confused.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2; I was a freshman in HS when this was shown at a party. I just remember the constant background noise (whoosh whoosh whoosh) and thought of cannibalism made me go outside and puke (no drinking or drugs)

I tried to re-watch "The Cook, the Thief,"etc. sometime a few years ago, having seen it in a theater when it first came out. The film is beautiful, sumptuous even, and it's an interesting film, but the "bad guy", the Thief, is so loud, nasty and bombastic all through the movie, that it is just unwatchable, totally unbelievable. Everything that comes out of his mouth is unbearable. If a man was really like that, his own henchmen would kill him the first chance they got. I had to just turn it off.

HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER is pretty lively.

When I was around 8 I was traumatized by a low budget vampire movie, The Return of Count Yorga. Then when I was around 14 I was freaked out by The Exorcist when it was finally aired on TV. I remember crying hysterically thinking the devil was real. Finally sometime in the 80s I was deeply troubled by Looking for Mr. Goodbar. To this day that final scene flashes in my mind occasionally: the stuff of nightmares.

Quasimodo would chase me whenever I turned the lights in our garage.

Pete's Dragon

R104 Quasimodo was horrific! I had to sleep with the lights on for a week.

Mrs. Miniver

I made the mistake of watching the old "Daughter of Dracula" all by myself on television one afternoon when I was about 6. It scared me so much I got up and turned the tv off during one of the cemetery scenes. I watched it again, or tried to, when I was about 30, and noticed that it was so badly made, you could actually see the tombstones wobbling as the characters floated through the graveyard. I couldn't believe that it had had so much impact on me as a kid.

I'll mention two movie going experiences.

The Exorcist didn't scare me as much as I thought it would while I was watching it, but it really rattled the hell out of me after the fact. It was as if the movie got into my subconscious.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar had an even worse effect on me several years later. I remember I had difficulty sleeping that night.

I saw Night of the Living Dead when it premiered on a local TV station in the NY metro area around 11:30 on a Saturday night. I watched it by myself in the living room with the lights out while my family was asleep. When it was over and all of the rooms were pitch black, I literally ran to my bedroom and hid under the covers.

"Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom." I wasn't a child; I was 22.

Catch 22. It had 2 shockingly violent scenes that I had just never seen anything like before. Granted these were days before everything was shock and gore. I carried those disturbing images for years. I do not know how ambulance and police do their jobs.

When I was six or seven, I was at the neighbor's house. They had on Fatal Attraction and didn't turn it off. I watched the whole thing.

It scared the SHIT out of me!!! Especially the bunny scene.

That night, I refused to go to bed alone. I remember crying and saying, "Mommy, I watched something at the Henderson's I shouldn't have!!" My mom was NOT happy with the neighbors.

As an aside, I totally remembered the couple's child as a boy. I was shocked years later when I caught it on TV and saw she was really female with shot hair.

When I was 8 and my brother13 we were dropped off at the multiplex to see a French/Czech SciFi animated film called Fantastic Planet, which was quite the psychedelic eyeful in 1973. There were tribes of naked humans, which at one point had a big orgy and it all starts with big blue creatures toying with a human woman and her child and killing the mother and adopting the baby as a pet.

It was way over my head, but my brother had a better idea about how subversive and weird it was. He threatened to kill me if I told our parents what the movie was about, I guess he had chosen it, but I think most Americans really had no idea what it really was and that it wasn’t really a kids movie. I was of course so shocked by the whole thing that I was complacent, but had I known better I could have most likely held it over his head for months and demanded he do my bidding.

When I was a kid, probably in the 6th grade, my best friend and I wanted to go see "The Party" with Peter Sellers in it. His mother FORBADE him to go see ANY movie with Peter Sellers in it, based on Sellers' reputation, somehow. I have no idea what she was basing that on. We did go see it anyway, of course, without her knowing about it. It was just about as dumb as The Pink Panther movies, sillier, but with lots of sex jokes, and probably drug allusions. Certainly there was anti-Indian satire / racism, but that would not have been a big deal back then.

1968 Bonnie & Clyde. It was the first major film with such graphic violence. I still remember seeing the shooting scene.

Pink Flamingos in 1972. It had just opened. At a long-gone movie theatre on the UWS. None of us had ever seen a film like that.

When I was a kid, my parents would get together with other couples and play cards until the wee hours. All of us kids would bring sleeping bags and were SUPPOSED to sleep in the den of wherever we were, but of course we would stay up and watch tv. One night we watched NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. We were all WAY too young to watch that. I remember being particularly freaked out of over the little girl zombie.

Saw that FACES OF DEATH thing in high school and it really fucked me up. I could never watch anything like that now.

This older British horror film called ‘To the devil a Daughter’ which includes a scene where a woman in labor has her legs tied together and her stomach gets bigger and bigger til it pops (or that’s how I remember it).

Peter Jackson's Bad Taste

Blue Velvet

I can't really say youth, but over the last year I have watched a lot of the new french extreme movement of the 2010s, Salo, a f ew other classics.

A Serbian Film

Salo - Although I find the context of Salo shocking, I think more is made out of it than it is. It's almost a bit campy but obviously the themes are very disturbing.

Martyrs - I feel like this is the most shocking film I have seen other than real life footage.

The Bridge

Irreversible - shocking-ish

Ok, no one will have seen this. No one SHOULD have seen this. But in the 90s, I went to a local film-art event (at a regular movie theater, but put on by a group with no regular space) and they had invited a German director to present and do a Q&A about a short film of his. He said it was based on the tale of Cain and Abel, but I couldn’t tell you how. It was filmed at some Viennese palace (just the grounds, probably on a tour!) and there were foppish 17th century dressed characters.

But the director/slash star showed a reverse slow-mo scene of him pulling a full-sized plastic baby doll OUT OF HIS ASS, with particular attention to the shoulders of the baby doll clearing his asshole.

There were no questions from the audience.

It was shocking for art film in 1992. Today? I think Dolf Dietrich does that on onlyfans, so probably not as shocking anymore.

[italic] The Hills Have Eyes [/italic] and [italic] Boxing Helena [/italic]

I saw Andy Warhol's "Trash" at a revival house. I think it was the passive camera and the fetishizing of others' suffering that messed with my head.

Need I say more?

[italic]Boxing Anne of Green Gables[/italic]

I was repelled by a video by this model.

He sat on a toilet and then lifted his left leg to display a lengthy river of brown excrement flow from his bowel into the bowl.

Most shocking: The Last Picture Show, which has permanently shaped my view of Texas. The rape of the little boy still haunts me.

Most subversive was Pink Flamingos. Actually it has a lot in-common withTLPS, being a angry commentary on the rot underlying American-mainstream culture.

I saw Mondo Cane in 1962 with my father. He was a lover of odd films and this one was really disturbing. He also took me to see graphic Samurai films, you know, beheadings, sword slashings, blood flinging, that sort of stuff.

He was an amazing father. Creative, eccentric, innovative, free-thinking, loving, generous, but he definitely had a weird streak. It rubbed off on me. When I look at that Monde Cane today I'm shocked. I can't believe he thought it was a fitting movie for a 12 year old to see. No wonder I'm so weird.

On the other hand, he had a business in a gay neighborhood bordering on Chinatown. He never said an unkind word about anyone, what was important to him was that you were honest, worked hard, educated yourself, and help those in need. In spite of his quirks, I adored him.

If you watch the linked film, beware. It's truly shocking and subversive.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes. The Statue of Liberty scene was shocking.

R69, read the story and saw the movie . Deeply disturbing

Beneath the Planet of the Apes was the sequel, you dolt.

Caligula. I sat frozen in my seat, unable to walk out because I was so sure that would mark me as unsophisticated or lacking a strong stomach or something. Thank ghod I’m not either 1) that young; or 2) that dumb anymore. No one but me cared if I sat there or not and I was just dying to get outta there!

THE DEER HUNTER. Saw it as a freshman in college. I guess it really brought home that Vietnam was fought by guys my age.

There were a few. When I was 11 I saw Fellini Satyricon. Also Natural Born Killers, Hairspray, Johns, A Clockwork Orange, Hustler White and Pretty Baby. I saw all of these before I was 15. I was left unsupervised with cable and a late bed time. I grew up to have a deep appreciation of film so I’m thankful.

I forgot Boxing Helena and Whore. I really loved that movie. I’m not saying all of these were masterpieces but I was never afraid to watch something different.

R11 and watched that as an adult and have never recovered.

Mannequin.

Saw Night of the Living Dead at the drive-in --- that's how old I am. Scared the shit out of me and my 'buddies.' We were so freaking freaked. It's on TV every once in a while now and I feel like a fool.

R122 [quote]Boxing Helena

I stumbled on that on some late-night freak fest. Yikes!

Dead Ringers with Jeremy Irons about the two perverse gynecologists. Based on a true-fucking story!!

I was blessed as a teenager with an awesome record/video store on the campus of U of Kentucky, called Cut Corner. The cult section was amazing. Basketcase, Basketcase II, Frankenhooker, Liquid Sky, the homoeroticism of Matador and Querelle, Eraserhead, John Waters, etc. Amazing. Then I moved to Chicago where I had the Fine Arts Theater and Music Box.

Damage. It was fucked up.

The Comfort of Strangers -- I was young and thought Rupert Everett was beautiful so had to look it up. It was shock and awe! Rupert, Christopher Walken, Helen Mirren, Natasha Richardson. Christopher fuck/kissing Rupert was beautiful but violent.

R141 Basketcase!

[quote]THE DEER HUNTER. Saw it as a freshman in college. I guess it really brought home that Vietnam was fought by guys my age.

R133 There was a DL thread about movies you would never watch again. The Deer Hunter was mine. It was both shocking and subversive.

You're welcome, r144. If you've never had the pleasure, Basket Case is about a young man who carries around his formerly conjoined twin in a basket, and he's very angry.

R146 Watched it once, don't care to see it again.

"Das Boat" Our female German language teacher showed it to us second year students my senior year. She also showed us "Cabaret" the same year.

R148 Do you mean "Das Boat" or "Das Boot"?

Querelle. I snuck in at 14.

I was really young when Boxing Helena came out and I saw it when I was older. It was a huge disappointment. Wasn't there a lot of drama surrounding this film? Didn't they switch actresses or they had to totally edit it so that it wasn't nearly as dark. I just remember controversy and the movie sucked.

^ Yes, they switched from an A Lister to a D Lister.

The Great Santini.

'If' (1968) with Malcolm McDowell. I was about 12 and watched it with my brother. It was the summer holidays and mum had gone to bed leaving us to watch TV. I'm not sure I understood any of it but it was so seriously weird that it stuck in my head.

Michelangelo Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point."

I guess some thought it should be rated X back in 1970, but it got an R.

I was well under 17, but I guess I got in because my over 18 sister was with us. I remember she had no idea what this film was about. She and my other sister actually wanted to leave half-way through because they were really bored with it. We stuck it out till the end, though.

I remember thinking Mark Frechette was hot. .. I guess he ended up joining a cult, robbing a bank, and dying in prison still in his 20s.

I took a blind date to go see 'Happiness'.

I loved it - he never called me back.

Finding a copy of Mondo Trasho at Blockbuster video of all places. Pink flamingos was the next one I watched. I made my bf watch it and he was on the couch in the fetal position crying "WHY would you watch this more than once!?"

I was a very confused but aroused teenager when I first say Jamon Jamon

Troll

The Red Balloon.

Leprechaun in the hood

I fucking LOVE Fellini Satyricon. I wish I could have been young when I first saw it, but I don't think I would have appreciated it as much then.

The Elephant Man

R162 shut up and watch Troll!

For me I'd say it was the John Waters movies first, and then The Living End. And Happiness.

Pink Flamingos is still just as shocking today as it was then, if not more so. It's the one John Waters movie I don't think I could watch again.

Martyrs, The Last House on the Left, Gummo, and Requiem For A Dream bothered me and I still think of them and shudder.

A few of those cheap 70's and 80's horror films shocked me as a young kid, but I've been able to enjoy them more for camp value these days. Stuff like Sleepaway Camp and Pieces were incredibly disturbing to me at age 9 or 10, but they're darkly funny to me now.

Happiness is a good one! I was in my 20's for that but still thoroughly disturbing.

Jaws

Nowhere was especially crazy to see late at night as a kid because just about everyone in the movie was someone I recognized from normal mainstream stuff. Christina Applegate, Shannon Doherty, Beverly D'Angelo, Ryan Phillipe, Heather Graham, and of course the guy from Baywatch brutally raping and beating an innocent girl.

[quote] The Elephant Man

My older brother took me to see The Elephant Man when I was maybe 7 or 8. I was very scared going in, worried about what the title character was going to look like. I was horrified when he was finally revealed, but then grew unbelievably attached to him as a character. The scene where the porter and all his customers break into Merrick's room at night and pull him out of bed upset me so much, I ran out into the lobby, crying. My poor brother had to go get me. And then, I was reduced to a sobbing mess at the end, even though I didn’t understand all the imagery with the stars and the mother. Never change, David Lynch! (Thank God, he hasn’t.)

The Night Porter with Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde. He was a Nazi commander, and she was one of the Jewish women in the camp. They meet years later and develop a strange s/m relationship, and it ends horribly. Depressed for days afterwards.

This movie was pretty disturbing to me. Sad and cruel.

I watched r172 recently. Agree.

This thread inspired me to watch Gummo for the first time

Prick Up Your Ears (1987)

R162 it has gotten better as I’ve gotten older. I remember when I was I had some friends over and attempted to watch it. They were horrified.

R158 oooh I love that movie. Javi was fiiiiiiire. Kind of a dumb ending though.

R172 I remember talks about the movie when it came out about people wanting to give it an NC-17 rating just out of how cruel and manipulative the leading men were. Still have yet to see it myself but that always piqued my interest.

r178 the ending is brilliant.

R171, I believe the s&M relationship started already in the concentration camp.

I actually liked the ending. At least they wind up together...in a way.

"The Savage is Loose," starring and directed by George C. Scott.

OMG Faces of Death!!! Ugh - R116 same. Never again.

Ugh ... Gummo is almost suffocatingly depressing

Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot". How it passed the censors is beyond me

Wilder's films, under cover of comedy, were often dark looks at society and sex.

I'd put Love In the Afternoon and Sabrina and Double Indemnity into the list. The first two linked Dewey's young virgins with far older men, and the third . . . Murder for passion and money.

Fuck it piss on it and leave

The Baby

R184 who was Dewey? ‎Melvil Dewey?

When I saw Silence of the Lambs for the first time as a kid, I came very close to throwing up when Migs threw the cum at Clarice. I was so shocked! It makes me giggle now.

Mysterious Skin

Boys Love

My Breast starring Meredith Baxter Birney

Anything starring Shirley MacLaine.

Babe the 🐷

The Professional. Clockwork Orange.

I wanted to puke after Se7en. Saw it at a matinee then went to dinner with my parents, but I couldn’t eat.

I was so innocent, R188, I thought he just spit a loogie on her.

Naked Lunch. When the pretty boy got fucked and then eaten by a giant insect I walked out of the theatre and raged about that stupid trash movie all the way back to my boyfriend's place.

Interestingly enough R178/179, both the leads in the film are said to be raging assholes in real life.

I've never seen In the Company of Men but it seems like a gender swapped version of the Shape of Things. Neil Labute is pretty one note.

Good GOD some of these movies sound horrific beyond belief. MARY! Gummo? Holy SHIT. Stuff where animals get killed- no thanks.

Faces of Death when I was 13. I only made it through 2 minutes. Done. Never again.

I Spit On Your Grave (both old and new) were intense, not shocking.

Why was Looking For Mr. Goodbar disturbing? A ho gets killed at the end (spoiler alert).

Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn (1977). I remember watching it when it was first on. With Mitch Cooper from Dallas, Jan Brady, and (gay) Earl Holliman!

Like many unsuspecting filmgoers, I was scarred for life by "Nell."

A previous poster brought up Catch 22. I had forgotten about that. My father brought me to see it as a boy thinking it was probably just another war movie. I remember those two scenes very well and that was 52 years ago! They are burned in my memory. I could have done without it.

Eyes Wide Shut - still don’t know what I watched.

Last Exit to Brooklyn

I must’ve been sheltered. For me the answers are Welcome to the Dollhouse and Pecker.

Amazon Women on the Moon. Also- Trading Places when I saw the unedited version on VHS, having only seen it on TV.

When I was in high school, drive-in theaters were still a thing. You could park on the service road near the theater and tune in on AM radio to get most of the audio. The most sordid thing we watched was Kinky Coaches and Pom Pom Pussycats. I don't remember most of it because we were pretty high.

Did anyone see Léolo? Canadian French movie about a kid who thought his father was a tomato that raped his mother? There were grotesque toilets scenes, pre-teen boys trying to fuck a cat. And it was comedy! But not for the faint of heart.

[quote] Also- Trading Places when I saw the unedited version on VHS, having only seen it on TV.

Now that's just sad.

The Road to Salina, a film about the love story between a brother and a sister, who expelled from home, decide to have sex on the beach. At least that's the way I remembered it after watching it as a young teen.

The Ruling Class with Peter O'Toole.

Their meaness always leaks.

The Panic in Needle Park

R213 Screenplay written by DL favorite Joan Didion and her husband, for contrast they also wrote Streisand’s Star is Born, which many felt disturbing as well.

The Streisand version of A Star is born deserves some credit for getting sways from the stupid premise of the make less drowning himself in the ocean. Otherwise, it was such a shitty movie.

There was some fucked up film I saw on cable when I was in my teens. It was called erotic tales and one of the stories was this guy in the rural south who’s motorcycle would turn into a woman and fuck him when he rode it. He let an actual human woman ride on it once with him and it threw them both off in a fit of rage.

Yentl

Sweet Movie, a 1974 European movie with actual shitting, pissing drinking and a bunch of other gross stuff depicted on screen.

R216 LOL! That is just funny😄

Beloved. Where the young hot slave owners milked that black slave girl’s tits while she was pregnant. They licked up her milk.

Yentl is responsible for any and all gender issues I may have experienced during December of 1983. It was quickly rebuffed when I saw Two of a Kind during my 6th grade Christmas break.

Ulzana's Raid. Which of all things was on a double bill with Sweet Charity. After the Indians(you called them that back the) started playing catch with heart I was out of there.

R221 I guess you did deserve a second chance then.

Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu getting jacked off and shown fully-frontal naked by a prostitute on-screen in "1900"; it doesn't help that she then has a epileptic fit. Later on in the film, Burt Lancaster as an older guy, has some kid stick his hand down his pants. Quite a film.

And doesn't Donald Sutherland sexually abuse a boy and then kill him? Yes quite a film.

Sutherland is usually such a good actor, and he has been directed really badly in that film to a pretty terrible performance.

Not a great film but it had a strong effect on me. As a child I made the mistake of seeing Last House on the Left (1972). I've avoided slasher films ever since. I can enjoy horror, but it has to be the more psychological kind. I don't want to watch helpless people being tortured, even if it's obviously bogus.

Thirteen. I lived a sheltered life as a child and teenager, so watching this was shocking. Also, based on what some of my friends told me, Thirteen was similar to my friends' experiences at that age.

I watched Kids not too long ago, and that movie made Thirteen look like a Lifetime movie.

Faces of Death

Silence of the Lambs. I was 11 or 12. My parents were very strict about the movies/TV I could watch, but my cousins would watch whatever they wanted. It was the first really adult movie I ever saw. The Miggs scene went over my head, I thought he did throw blood at her, but the blood wasn't shown, or I couldn't see it well because it was VHS. I didn't yet know what semen was. Anyway I loved the movie, it's one of my favorites, 30 years later.

Certain parts of Tommy when I was six years old really confused me, and messed me up. Mostly this part where Tommy goes into that contraption with the needles in it.

Last Tango in Paris that I saw when I was in college. It depressed me to almost despair for a few days. Not sure why. Don’t really remember why. I guess it has to be a good film to cause a reaction like that?

I agree with you R231, the Acid Queen scene was bizarre.

R233 yeah, no six year old should see that.

Looks like that Tommy clip is censored. Not the full thing.

This is more like it. The way they escort a blind kid into what appears to be some kind of torture device...

It wasn't in my youth, I was 30 when I saw this, but it's hands down one of the worst movies I tried to watch. It's based on the very true story of Armin Meiwes. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, as soon as someone says a movie is bad, I have to watch it out of morbid curiosity. It took me three attempts to finish watching this. The last 15 minutes or so are the worst.

I forgot to add, since several people mentioned Faces of Death, almost the entirety of that movie and its sequels were completely faked. If it makes you feel any better for having seen them, lol.

“Vertigo.” I was shocked by the ending. I genuinely had no idea.

R239 didn’t you faint when u saw that much DL cited early 60s horror movie with Julie Christie?

I saw The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man on the Moon Marigolds when I was like 7. Freaked me out. I thought "I guess some people are like this."

But yeah little kids should be kept away from anything that shows mental illness.

Luna. Jill Clayburgh fucking her 15 year old son.

In high school (‘79-‘84) we watched both Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971). Looking back, we were treated maturely and were expected that we could handle the adult material. I know the class thought the nudity in R & J was titillating and funny. I can also remember a female student making a complaint about ACO.

I can’t imagine the fragile butterflies watching these films in high school in 2022.

R243 you must be absolutely ancient. I read A Clockwork Orange in HS a mere 13 years ago and the book is WAY more graphic than the movie. Don't believe everything you hear about the younger generation on Fox New, gramps.

[quote] "Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom."

I had to turn it off when they started eating shit.

Stomach turning.

Repulsion scared the crap out of me. I had never seen insanity depicted so relentlessly. The scene where the walls try to grab Catherine Deneuve has stuck with me all these years. Jesus, Polanski was a sick fuck.

[quote] Name the Most Shocking/Subversive Film

I know what 'shocking' means, OP, but what do you mean by 'subversive'?

Something morally subversive from the 1970s or 80s?

I couldn't watch Salo after the scene where the teenager gets pinned to the ground and his eye is popped out with a knife.

Did Salo hurt anyone's acting career by the way?

[quote] acting career

The participants weren't actors.

Pasolini didn't want 'actors', he wanted real human beings!

1) The wicked witch and her flying monkeys.

2) Mandingo and the realization that men were sexy and that sexy black men with huge cocks were absolutely shockingly subversive and confusing.

Requiem for a Dream

Deer Hunter

I'll never watch either of these again.

Not me, of course but a Frend of mind told me he went with his mother to see Suspiria (1977) when he was 10 years old and soon afterwards, he developed nervous twitches

"Kids"

R249 didn't the director of the film get murdered by his gay lover?

R209- it wasn’t the swear words. It was the sexualized nudity .

Pulp Fiction was pretty shocking to me for that rape scene.

On The Beach

^Pasolini was killed by Pino Pelosi (interesting last name, that). A 17-year-kid whom Pasolini had apparently picked up.

I've seen nearly every movie Pasolini made, and a curious thing about them is that they look amazing on a big screen in a theater, but when seen on something the size of a television, there is just nothing to them at all, they hardly hold your attention. Another movie that comes to mind like that is Lynch's "Blue Velvet": in the theater, it was really edge-of-the-seat creepy, but on a tv it was like some kind of badly made, dimly lit, corny soap opera episode, almost laughable. It's hard to understand what could make for such a huge difference.

I second (or third, really) Kids. It made me terrified of teen boys and left me feeling profoundly disturbed to think that teens could act that way. I saw it when I was like 16 or 17 and still in high school.

Benedetta (recent, Paul Verhoeven, same director as Showgirls) was pretty disturbing and subversive but in today’s movies you can get away with the content more. Had it come out in the 90s or prior, people would have thought it was more shocking and subversive.

Verhoeven is hit or miss. I loved The Fourth Man and enjoyed Soldier of Orange and Spetters, but some of his Hollywood efforts left me cold.

Turkish Delight (1973), erotic Dutch film with a VERY hot and young Rutger Hauer

R219 I tried finding a clip but there’s nothing. Of course that shit was German

Threads

I agree Turkish Delight was some fucked up shit. The sex party scene near the end of Requiem for a Dream was so disturbing to me. I don’t even know why because I’m a whore.

The Blue Lagoon gave me a shocking lust for Christopher Atkins.

R257 Pulp Fiction fucked me up with that whole gimp sex slave thing.

How disgusting can people eating plates of melting chocolate ice cream be? I mean it might not be very appealing but revolting?

I fourth or fifth "Kids". I was in middle school when it came out and it was playing at an arthouse cinema where they didn't check ID or make a big deal. I thought it was shocking. Especially the ending scene with Casper and Chloe. I still think it's a shocking movie which paved the way for Euphoria.

Gregg Araki's "The Doom Generation" came out around that time and though it was little more campy, the castration/rape finale was also very shocking.

I’ve never seen that documentary about Mr. Hand who has sex with animals and died, because I thought it would be too disturbing. Has anyone seen it?

R270 Yes, I saw it years ago. I remember he was dropped off at a hospital and died from a punctured colon. I don't remember that his name was Mr. Hands but I do remember there is a documentary about the people who have sex with horses.

I read Looking for Mr. Goodbar but never saw the movie. Now I have to find it.

That was actually a pretty good documentary, R271. There was a full length documentary about men who fuck horses that actually got decent reviews. I watched it over quarantine. I totally forget what it's called and Seri didn't have a response when I said " what is the documentary where men fuck horses?".

Kids. That Larry Clarke film about degenerate teenagers roaming NYC. I was around 12 at the time it came out. My cousin used me as a cover so she could bring her older boyfriend over. In the middle, they left me to watch the movie alone while they went into her parents' room to have sex. Good times.

So many votes for Kids!

I found the total lack of empathy and lack of giving a shit about another human life horrifying, and that’s what disturbed me—the cruelty of the boys. Beating up the person in the park, stealing booze, screwing as many young girls as they could, the rape scene at the end. Kids acting like adults and doing adult things and horrible things. It was all disturbing.

Did Harmony Korine act that way himself growing up?

And yes, Euphoria is like Kids: the Show.

Fear No Evil, which I watched on HBO. The gay forced kiss in the shower, oh my god.

Pretty Woman

I think another reason why Kids was so disturbing to me is that I was so scared of HIV, even in middle school, because I knew I was gay and I feel like back then the message at school and at homes was gay = AIDS = death. To see such you characters, like the girl who loses her viriginty in the opening sequence who was probably around my age at the time, knowing she would get HIV was very scary to me.

r275, the only difference I would say is the Kids is more subversive but the teenagers depicted in were more on the fray of society. The behavior was becoming increasingly more common but was not the norm. Euphoria accurately depicts teenage life in suburbia today. Kids was New York City youth, not regular teens.

r275, Kids is much more realistic. Everyone in Kids is a sociopath.

I meant to say Euphoria is much more realistic.

The Painted Bird

L. A but only in the late 60's/early 70's-Once upon a time in Hollywood.

R283-Oops wrong thread

Mrs. Doubtfire

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

What shocked me about "Blue Velvet" was all that Frank said or did--everything. At first, I thought Frank was raping Dorothy with his scissors. I had to change the channel as soon as I thought that. Watched the whole thing years later. You know, after all these years, it still disturbs me. Frank was a monster.

"The Elephant Man" shocked me most in that scene where the carnie "handler" beat the poor guy with his walking stick. It horrified me that anyone would do such a thing to a man who was so vulnerable and helpless. I was just a kid when I saw the film, so that may have been a big part of the shock I felt. I was either nine or ten. I saw it on TV via Cox Cable. Same with "Blue Velvet." I was probably too young for that one, too.

I was like 9 or 10 when Kids came out. I’ve never seen it.

There was some movie I saw about this troll thing monster who at the end fell to its death on some stalagmites or stalactites. What was it called?

I thought Kids tried too hard to shock and that made it less interesting and shocking.

Mosquito Coast, the 1986 movie with Harrison Ford, River Phoenix, Helen Mirren. Made over 30 years ago and is still current.

W.R Mysteries of the Organism

Bully

Kids

The Piano

Pan's Labyrinth

Oldboy

Psycho, The Exorcist, Clockwork Orange, Last Tango in Paris

- and a relatively mild horror film but it left me shook - The Haunting (1963 version with the delicious Lesbian tension between Claire Bloom and Julie Harris.) The part I couldn't get out of my mind was the doorknob changing shapes as the house started its possession of Julie's character.

Also was upset by Sweeney Todd, too graphic or something, or maybe just a bad time in my life.

I was with friends and actually walked out on Clint Eastwood in Magnum Force - sat there and watched the popcorn machine. I was disgusted, not rattled as with the above.

A tie between "Cinderella" and "Bambi".

I need to watch Salo in full. I only watched clips of it out of morbid curiosity. I watched a few Pasolini films like Medea, Teorema and 1001 Nights. I just know he loved him some naked twinks.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I looked for pods under my bed for years.

"I Am Curious (Yellow)"

Eyes of Laura Mars

Cruising

Se7en

The Human Centipede

Looking for Mr. Goodbar

A Clockwork Orange

All of them macabre: Disturbing and horrifying because of involvement with or depiction of death and injury.

R294 Cinderella didn't bother me but Bambi was devastating! Old Yeller was another one that tore me up.

It wasn't the films I saw. It was the ones I was in.

Out of all the guys who were part of the process, there are only two of us still alive.

Good times. And true.

Flatliners. Crap film. I remember being shocked by the black girl cussing. That was then.

Mini series, Helter Skelter 1976. I was ten. It was very upsetting. Still is.

Taxi Zum Klo and Pink Flamingos. I wasn't prepared for them as i knew little about them except that they were showing at a neighborhood arthouse cinema.

Mrs. Miniver when Theresa Wright was machine gunned down while Greer Garson was holding her.

Possession

Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left 1972

Yes, Wes Craven. For me, The People Under The Stairs 1991.

The Exorcist

Irreversible

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Jaws. I grew up in a beach town in CA and, at the time, was probably about the same age as the kid who got killed on the raft.

Eraserhead. The thought of the "baby" crying non-stop still creeps me out.

Un Chien Andalou

LADY IN A CAGE

A 1964 theatrical release with Olivia de Havilland and the late James Caan which I first saw on television. Had never seen anything quite so shocking on network television before. I don't think it was edited much for TV. And the film is still shocking today.

The Tin Drum was the first film that shocked me. The Painted Bird was the first book.

Therese and Isabelle. Throbbing teen boner through that one

Joe - little seen film with Peter Boyle as lead. Yes, THAT Peter Boyle - the dad from Raymond. It blew me away.

Boxing Helena. I'm afraid to watch it again.

After reading the posts, I know that I never want to see Gummo.

Last Exit to Brooklyn. Based on Hubert Selby book. Selby's Requiem for a Dream also induced nighmares.

R113 WTF?

the sailor who fell from grace with the sea. that movie fucked me up.

A Serbian Film and Salo, for sure.

My older neighbor loved Andy Warhol, since he was studying art. At 13, I pretended I also enjoyed Warhol so he would show me the movies starring Joe D'Alessandro, especially Flesh, Trash, and Heat. Joe was so hot and forbidden to this gayling.

After reading this thread I feel something is off with me. I liked Requiem, I managed to see 'Kids' in a very small local 'art/film'theatre which usually would show foreign films, and with my damned mother there. She LOST her shit when the skatepark beatdown hit its climax. Loved Last House on the Left (the entire vibe of all 70s, no hope, no redemption, take out as many sons of bitches while you're going, Deathwish'esque grittier realistic films was really a terrific shift from the camp of the 60s.)

I can't handle the movie, π, more due to the soundtrack than anything else. I also made the idiotic decision to drop acid and watch Altered States- not a good trip, and a horribly dumb movie.

I had lived with a film major for a few years and they gave me several signed VHS movies they couldn't stomach, Pink Flamingos (signed by Waters) and Clockwork (with Kubricks signature). Her father was a well connected financial manager so I got very lucky.

One odd one is Midnight Cowboy, that movie leaves me feeling depleted and depressed and in a general funk for a few days after viewing. I've watched it so many times I'd have thought the effect would lessen, it doesn't. Same with Ciao Manhattan, but those two titles seem so out of place in this thread.

I got into horror at a young age by watching them mostly in their edited for TV forms. I wasn't used to seeing all the gore, so stumbling upon the unedited versions at the video store a few years later was always an eyeopening and disturbing experience. Some of those Friday the 13th movies really shocked me. Part 4 especially. Something about that fat hitchhiker eating a banana and getting stabbed through the neck messed with me. All that banana drool coming out of her mouth mixed with the blood.

Anything that mixed sex and gore usually disturbed me, too. It made me feel such conflicting things as a young kid with hormones being turned on one second and disturbed the next. Dressed to Kill was one like that. I couldn't have been more than 9 or 10 when I saw that for the first time and thought it was the naughtiest movie ever made.

And how would Dress to Kill fare today R325 isn't this psycho some sort of trans?

aka DRESSED TO KILL

Yes, the killer is trans and many people have mentioned it. I was on a trans documentary on Netflix recently and everyone went on and on about what a dangerous stereotype it was.

R290- I had always wanted to see Mosquito Coast and saw your post and finally watched it.

Very good film and you are right- very timely.

I got a little teary at the end.

I’m curious about seeing The Tin Drum. What exactly is so shocking about it?

Have you ever eaten an eel, R330?

R325- Hah. Very weird. Same here. That kill in F13 Part 4 always bothered me too. It was very gritty. And I think I felt even worse because she was fat.

R330 / R331 Or forced to drink piss?

Definitely “Happiness”

I saw The Exorcist when I was 9 and became obsessed with it for a few years. Probably not a good thing.

[quote] What's one film you saw as a teen/youngling that shocked America and/or you personally? Think along the lines of: Salo

Oh, the times I wanted to see Salo as a teen/youngling! Of course the problem was I had to be accompanied by an adult, but my parents wouldn't take me, no matter how hard I begged them to.

"But Mother: it's [italic]Pasolini![/italic]" I would cry.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

Thank everyone. I will never watch Salo or Gummo.

The Din of Madelon Claudet

sin, that is

Gummo isn't shocking if you live in deep rural America. It was basically a more dramatic live-action version of Beavis and Butt-head. Deformed-looking white trash living in third-world conditions in dilapidated houses, trailer parks, kids going around on bikes torturing cats, having dirty ass moldy tap water and tons of incest. I hate to say that the negative reaction it got was more due to the fact it was far too true to life. Just like Julien Donkey-Boy.

This music terrified me as a child:

I saw this movie “Sssssss” when I was a kid. About a crazy scientist turning men into giant snakes! I remember being really fucked up by it, although I’d probably find it cheesy today. I was also VERY into the shower scene with hunky Reb Brown, even though I didn’t know WHY.

Funny, all these years I thought the heroine was played by DL fave, Miss Kay Lenz, but it was “Poor Man’s Kay Lenz”, Heather Menzies.

Taxi Driver. Teen hookers, assassins and Scorsese oh my!

Probably Shortbus in undergrad.

I was traumatized by Planet of the Apes when they showed the stuffed astronauts with glass eyes in the museum.

I was seven I think.

I still haven't seen the Exorcist.

However, once I got an AIDS diagnosis about 26 years ago no movie or tv show was too scary or gory for me.

Deliverance.

On the 4:30 Movie on WABC-TV New York Channel 7 I watched Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? in the spring of 1978. I was too young at twelve years old to appreciate it's CAMPINESS I found it horrible to watch- especially when she serves up that sweet budgie on a platter to her sister the next day. Who knew that a horror film from 1962 could be so horrifying.

[quote]The Australian movie "Walkabout" really left an impression on me. My older brother took me to see it in the mid seventies when I was 9,

The story was incredibly flimsy and only centered around sexual attraction and violence. It could have been so much more, but we never really got to know these characters. David Gulpilil gave a great performance though.

Sweet Smell of Success was a truely shocking movie at the time and still is today.

Salo. Made it to the shit eating scene and thought not for me.

Deliverance - Ned Beatty being raped, the character with his arm twisted round his neck - later learned the actor could do that trick, the arm coming out of the water with the rifle.

Klute - someone looking through Fonda’s rooflight - there’s someone on the roof. Chills.

The Exorcist - more scary later. It was the sort of movie which plays in your mind.

American x

The Last Temptation of Christ. For a Catholic boy, it sure shocked the senses. And yet the movie affirmed faith. Those protesting fundamentalist's needed to.watch the movie.

Haven't read this thread, but I can almost bet a bunch of people born around 1980 will say Gummo.

I honestly can't remember anything about the film except a gay dwarf (I think), but I know it really disturbed me.

I was truly shocked when I watched Leaving Las Vegas as an 18 year old. The extreme alcoholism was hard to watch but what really bothered me was the sexual violence and degradation.

Irreversible

Youth as in under 18 - I would have to say Kids. It was shocking and I had never seen anything into that. It also fed and reinforced the AIDS panic that was instilled and taught to us as actual kids. Around that time, The Doom Generation came out and that was pretty shocking as well. Those were more shocking to me than like a traditional horror film like Scream which came out at a similar time. Henry and June was another one but I didn't really understand it at the time.

[quote] Irreversible

I watched that recently and it made me nauseous with the filming. I am obsessed with Gaspar Noe. Have you seen Climax? That was a fantastic film and I just watched Vortex in the cinema which was another gem. You either get it or you don't with him.

Speaking of brutal rape, as a kid, watching the now iconic "Showgirls", I thought the rape seen was very brutal and not necessary. It went on far to long and the physical violence and rape against Molly didn't seem needed.

R349 your description of Walkabout makes it sound more like The Blue Lagoon. I got a lot more out of the multi-leveled Walkabout than you did.

The 1991 film POISON had a scene at the climax that deeply grossed me out. I can’t even watch the trailer in case it’s there. It made me sick.

I saw [italic]Boxing Helena[/italic] with some friends from college and we laughed all the way through. When the camera panned out and it became apparent what Julian Sands had done to Sherilyn Fenn, my friend Karen started singing this.

I can’t believe Fenn had her arms and legs removed for that role!

They were reattached shortly afterwards, tho.

Wasn't faces of death all fake?

What was so bad about Henry and June?

[quote] I'm willing to bet it was "Sssssss"

Sounds like a movie about eldergays.

Instead of going to prom, we went to see Pink Flamingos.

City of God a Brazilian film. I saw it on TV and was traumatized by the scene where children are told to shoot each other. Could a movie like that be allowed today? Talk about triggering.

[quote]R364 What was so bad about Henry and June?

I imagine the young viewer was taken aback by it being (or trying to be) frankly erotic. I don’t remember a ton of skin or anything, but there may be a 3-way… and 2 of the characters have sex up against a wall or something.

It was one of those movies given an NC-17 rating, or whatever it was. Not an X… but more than an R.

Henry & June starred the gorgeous Fred Ward. He was over the top sexy in that movie.

I always looked at Gummo as a very Jerry Springer kind of dark comedy. So disgusting as to be amusing like a John Waters movie or something. I've never forgotten it, but I haven't had the urge to watch it again in 20+ years.

It’s the first movie I saw Uma Thurman in where I thought, “Oh, she’s really an ACTRESS!”

She’s good in it.

^^ re: HENRY & JUNE

R370 Harmony Korine is great at dark comedy like Spring Breakers. Most of the cast of Gummo were unknowns. He based it off his childhood in Nashville. I also refuse to believe Harmony is straight.

R367 It's based on facts and true events, so it would probably be able to be made now, it's an incredible story.

MAME

Eraserhead. I loved every minute and thought it was hilarious and endearing. Imagine my surprise years later to find out people class it as a horror film and even some David Lynch fans can’t bear to watch it, But I was a punk (a proto goth really) and in love with that dark aesthetic.

The wheeled monsters in Return to Oz were really creepy.

I remember GUMMO as being kind of sweet and funny, and I'm pretty squeamish as far as creepy movies go, don't really like scary movies. I remember especially when the little boy (about 6), wearing (I think) only some boxer shorts and a pair of pink and white rabbit ears on his head, suddenly jumps out from behind a big pile of garbage in the county dump, pointing what looks like a Colt 45, and screams at 2 people, "FREEZE, MOTHERFUCKERS!!" It's one of the funniest things I ever saw in a movie, and I've see LOTS of them.

Return to Oz was very creepy. I think it's very dark fro a very young view - such a departure from the feel good Wizard of Oz.

R303 I'd seen two edits of this, one was a video store rental, the other aired on a premium channel and I was obsessed with the book, the movie, and the second that aired was substantially longer. I didn't know they were from a TV miniseries, and as a miniseries is probably the best I've seen as it totally worked as a movie.

There was one other documentary titled Manson which was very creepy. Those old deserted set/ranches were the perfect inadvertent horrific setting for the 'family '.

Song of the South (1947)

Bonnie and Clyde when my friend and I went to see it in 1967 when we were teens. It was rated M which meant under 17 not allowed without being accompanied by an adult but we knew the kid at the ticket booth and he let us in. It was the first time so much blood, which looked real, was shown. Of course, the massacre at the end was also shocking. I knew this was a huge change in the history of movies and it's still one of my favorites.

Gaspar Noe isn't a fan of the gays, and he's also an abusive asshole.

Last Exit To Brooklyn. I rented it from Blockbuster as a young teen and the closet gay guy gets strung up and Jennifer Jason Leigh has a gang bang where they are lined up.

When I was 11, my 21yr old brother took me to my first R-rated movie: Lenny. (I was already into the Oscars and intent on seeing every movie nominated!).

I'll never forget: the grandmotherly ticket-lady saw me, then gave my brother this stern look and said, "This film is border-line X". My brother, now a little embarrassed, said something like "it's okay" and took the tickets. Now I couldn't fucking wait!!

Thinking back, it was a lot for an 11-yr old to take in. I knew there was bad language, we all said fuck in the schoolyard anyway, but his stand-up was still, (like the thread title), pretty subversive. And lots of sex and Valerie Perrine nudity. Definitely soft-core and more than I'd ever seen. I jacked off many times thinking about it, so I guess I hadn't realized my love of dick yet. (that might have started sometime later when I saw Jan-Michael Vincent naked in Buster and Billie).

R384 The closeted gay guy was Jerry Orbach! Jennifer Jason Leigh got fucked to death in the gang bang. Hubert Selby's book was even more shocking.

R278 Yes, that the virgin got HIV after her first experience, while the sexually active girl tested negative was just underscoring the randomness of it. Of course, that meant Telly, the kid who would only sleep with virgins, had HIV and was giving it to every first-time girl he sleep with. The movie ends with Casper raping Jennie, thus exposing himself to HIV.

I wasn't surprised to hear that one of the cast later committed suicide. They were "authentic" street kids, with all those issues. The guy who hanged himself, Justin Pierce, was described as an effective actor because he was so broken from his childhood - a description that reminded me vividly of descriptions of Brad Renfro.

Sneaking in to watch "Blue Lagoon" was shocking/subversive to me because it turned my adolescent cock into steel. Mmm, Christopher Atkins was so severely fuckable.

R378 Was he 'sleeping with' these girls or fucking them? I'm assuming you meant he was fucking them. I don't think you can spread HIV by sleeping.

Larry Clark made those movies because he gets off on them. He tries to fool people into thinking he is making serious art, but he just likes being around all of that teenage skin. He's a pornographer.

R390 By the time of Teenage Caveman featuring Andrew Keegan, he dropped all the pretense of "art" because that was softcore Cinemax type stuff. I tried watching Marfa Girl and it was so unwatchable I could not finish yet Clark still made a sequel.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

When I was a kid, my dad took me to see ODE TO BILLY JOE, but I don’t think he realized it was going to be that “dirty”. He yanked me out of the theater during the whore house scene. It wasn’t until years later that I saw the whole thing and learned Billy Joe jumped off the bridge because Roscoe P. Coltrane fucked him!

I was 8 when I saw Ode with my sister and her friends. I just went along with them because I liked going to the movies. I had no idea what was going on.

R242 Bertolucci directed both Luna and Last Tango in Paris

Back in late '71 or thereabouts, I went to a Saturday midnight showing of the infamous Dustin Hoffman movie, "Straw Dogs," which was notoriously violent for those days (and it was subsequently not shown or rented in the US for about 30 years). The theater was pretty sparsely filled. Right before the movie started, in came a hugely tall old man, wearing a sport coat, and leading a gaggle of more than 10 CHILDREN, none of whom appeared to be more than 10 years old. They sat a couple of rows ahead of where I was sitting with 2 pals. They sat quietly through the entire movie (in which a cat gets hung to death in a closet, a very violent rape scene, Hoffman splashes one of his attackers directly in the face with a potful of boiling whisky, and a man gets decapitated by rolling into an open, steel beartrap). None of the kids cried or made a sound. When it was over (~2 a.m.), they all solemnly stood and left without making a sound, in single file. Four decades later and I still wonder who they were, where they came from, and WHY the theater managers let them sit through that nightmare.

When I was somewhere around 10-12 years old I saw the film Cool Hand Luke on television on a Saturday afternoon. I went to an all white Catholic grade school and was used to getting singled out for a variety of real and imagined infractions because racism. I do have a defiant and mischievous personality which I recognized in the character of Luke. It was devastating to watch him come to his end because I did identify with him.

One of my high school US history teachers used two or three class periods to show us Cool Hand Luke for some reason. He was probably hungover or something. He loved the eating-50-eggs thing. That's my primary association with that movie, sadly.

What a creepy story, r396.

I think it’s funny that the children’s movie Return to Oz made this list, but to be fair, it was fucking terrifying for children. Queen Mombi and her 32 heads in glass cases, waking up and screaming in that hallway when Dorothy knocks over something in the Queen’s original head case is an image I will never forget.

Interesting chat with RETURN TO OZ writer/director

I made a point to avoid most mindfuck movies, be they thrillers or horror movies.....had enough of that in reality.

The one I remember making me uneasy as a teenager/young adult was Harvest Home, featuring Bette Davis. It was made in 1974, I think, but I saw it in the early 90s.

The story has its horror elements but the metaphor of what it was saying hit hard, in the same way that reading The Lottery hit me hard.