TIME: "Top 10 Ridiculously Violent Movies"

[JamesG]

Top 10 Ridiculously Violent Movies


"Machete", a film that grew out of a fake trailer in the 2007 movie "Grindhouse", promises plenty of absurd violence.

TIME looks at other flicks with over-the-top mayhem:







1. The Passion of the Christ (2004)







Mel Gibson's portrayal of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his final 12 hours alive can best be summed up by a quote from film critic Roger Ebert. "The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus," Ebert said, also writing that it was the most violent film he had ever seen.

That's Roger Ebert saying that — a man who has seen more films than most people ever will.





The movie was derided by critics as anti-Semitic and was called "The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre" by Slate's critic David Edelstein.


But the over-the-top brutality didn't keep movie watchers away: the film grossed $370 million in the U.S. and even sold 4.1 million DVD copies in its first day.













2. 300 (2007)







As a film, 300 does a lot of violence.


First, this frenetic, computerized gorefest bludgeons and butchers history, recasting the ancient Battle of Thermopylae into a crude and uncomfortably racist romp.

(Sure, director Zach Snyder can justifiably say his movie is based on the Frank Miller comic book, not Herodotus or Xenophon, but tell that to the generation of American kids who'll now forever associate Persians with hapless, degenerate sissy men and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)




Then, 300 wreaks violence upon your eyes. Some have described its stylized action — which in many respects takes its visual cues from the current crop of video games — as "beautiful."

Clearly, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder or, in 300's case, the impaler.







The band of Spartans, their digitally enhanced abs rippling in the Hellenic half-light, slice and dice their way through the onrushing Persian horde.

Blood flows everywhere, limbs are hacked off, decapitated heads pirouette in the air, spears penetrate sternums and every other part of the human body. Bodies pile up one after the other, then get put into a wall of bodies. Everyone dies in a red mist.

And for what, exactly? A frat-boys-gone-wild epilogue scene.



War, it was once asked, what is it good for? 300 is an apt illustration of its pointlessness.













3. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)







Italian director Ruggero Deodato began as an apprentice under neorealist master Roberto Rossellini. Decades later, he would use some of those techniques to film one of the most realistic, infamous and troubling horror flicks ever made.


In what is certainly one of cinema's oddest phases, Italian exploitation filmmakers of the 1970s made a slew of movies about cannibals in jungles.


Cannibal Holocaust is the most famous of the group.

Actually filmed in the Amazon rain forest, Holocaust purports to show found footage of a group of filmmakers that went into the wild looking for sensational stuff only to meet a grisly end — a conceit that preceded The Blair Witch Project by two decades.






Banned at various points in several nations, the movie almost landed Deodato in prison, as Italian authorities were so convinced by the violence on-screen — rape, murder, mutilation, skewerings, castrations, beheadings — that they assumed the director had actually murdered his actors.

It was only once he was able to present them in person that all charges were dropped.


Notoriously, though, several animals were killed during the filming of Cannibal Holocaust, including a large turtle, a monkey and a pig.













4. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) / Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)










Quentin Tarantino's two-volume epic is a postmodern orgy of blood, music and quintessential QT kitsch.


A homage to some of the director's favorite genres — kung fu, exploitation and spaghetti westerns — Kill Bill tells the story of the Bride (Uma Thurman), who used to be the most dangerous member of a crew of assassins called the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, led by Bill (a remarkably cool David Carradine).

Upon realizing that she is pregnant, the Bride decides to ditch the killing game and settle down to a normal life with a record-store geek. This doesn't sit well with the rest of the gang, particularly former flame Bill.






Without ruining all of the film for you, it is essentially a bloodthirsty rampage of revenge that takes the Bride from California to Japan to Mexico, where she slices up countless goons, cuts off the top of Lucy Liu's head and plucks out Daryl Hannah's eyeball in the process.

Making no effort to be subtle — the blood squirts by the gallons and bodies are dismembered by the dozens — the violence is so caricaturish and campy, it's the kind that the whole family can enjoy.

Or not.













5. The Wild Bunch (1969)







Nearly every western made since the 1950s has been a "last western," mourning the loss of the frontier and its replacement by the forces of modernity.

But few have been as ambivalent about the romance of the western myth as Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.





Set in 1913, long after the days of cowboys and outlaws had run their course, the film follows a group of grizzled veterans as they drift through a world that has no use for them anymore.

But in between the bunch's existential elegies for the life they used to lead, Peckinpah inserts orgies of shocking violence.


By the time of the film's famous final showdown — in which the men indiscriminately mow down waves of Mexican soldiers — it's clear that the outlaw code the men claim to follow is just as meaningless as the brutality they inflict.













6. I Spit on Your Grave (1978)







A woman vacationing in the woods is captured by a group of men who take turns raping her. She escapes.

Later, she hunts the men down one by one and pretends to seduce them. Then she kills them. The end.




An endless parade of indignities against the human body occurs throughout the course of this late-'70s exploitation film: beer-bottle sexual assault, bathtub stabbing, castration by outboard motor.

Is this purely reprehensible trash or, as its director claims, a feminist critique of male sexual violence?



No matter the interpretation, I Spit on Your Grave is still nearly impossible to watch 30 years later.













7. Hostel (2005)







For years, young Americans have flocked to Eastern Europe in search of a "culturally broadening" experience, i.e. hard partying, easy sex and all around general recklessness.

However, if there was ever a movie to deter carousing youngsters from such a hedonistic pilgrimage, Eli Roth's flick would be just the one to do it.





After being seduced by beautiful Russian women in a Slovakian disco, three friends — Paxton, Josh and Oli — find themselves in the throes of a sadistic underground torture ring where savagely disturbed rich people can pay to mutilate and kill live humans.

That alone should be enough give you an idea that there is some messed up stuff going on this movie, but we'll continue.


Josh gets tortured with a drill before violently having his throat cut, Oli loses his head and Paxton makes it out of the prison a couple of fingers lighter than when he came in.

Like we said, it's messed up.













8. Battle Royale (2000)







In case you haven't seen the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, here's what you need to know:

Society has collapsed, 800,000 high school students are delinquents and the fascist Japanese government has passed the BR Act, forcing lawbreaking teens onto a desert island, "Survivor"-style.

There, they are forced to fight to the death. The winner (if there is one) is allowed to go home.




It's basically Lord of the Flies if you replace the book's underlying political and philosophical overtones with senseless mayhem, subtitles, government-issued exploding neck collars and ninth-graders who get stabbed in the forehead.













9. A Clockwork Orange (1971)







Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, based on Anthony Burgess's novel of the same name, shocked society at the time of its release.

Graphic rape scenes were censored in the U.S.; a British teenager found guilty of manslaughter in 1972 allegedly drew inspiration from the movie's violence

(other copycat incidents would lead to Kubrick withdrawing its distribution in the U.K.).





The film's antihero, the ultra-violent (a term coined by Burgess) Alex, and his pack of "droogs" go about beating, violating, torturing and killing before Alex is arrested and left at the mercy of the state, which is hell-bent on reforming him.

Satirical and dystopian, A Clockwork Orange has been read as a comment on the primal brutishness of man, the limits of free will and the dangers of an over-controlling society.

Ironically, it carried a civilizing note as well: sales of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony — a prominent piece in A Clockwork Orange's excellent score — spiked after the film's release.













10. High Tension (2003)







Director Alexandre Aja's latest film — Piranha 3D features a man getting his penis bitten off by killer fish. And that's a major Hollywood film.

So one has to expect far worse, in terms of violence, from his earlier stuff. He doesn't disappoint.




Director of the remake of Wes Craven's disturbing family-in-peril film The Hills Have Eyes, Aja preceded that by three years with this French horror flick about a girl who witnesses the slaughter of her friend's family while staying at their home.

There are a lot of sharp objects in this film (knives, axes, chainsaws), and they're all used in very effective ways. Yet for all the violence, it's the film's unforgettable ending that leaves the audience feeling most violated.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/pa...015850,00.html

[Torgo]

Hm, interesting list. I'd have a couple of films up there over Hostel.

[JamesG]

Originally Posted by Torgo

Hm, interesting list. I'd have a couple of films up there over Hostel.

Yeah, I guess they wanted to keep their list to mostly mainstream flicks.

I was sort of surprised to see Battle Royale up there because I thought that not many people are familiar with it.

[PlayOn]

No 'Saw'? Color me shocked.

[HuntingtonM15]

Cannibal Holocaust is one of the most repulsive movies ever made. I can't believe I watched it.

[PlayOn]

Originally Posted by HuntingtonM15

Cannibal Holocaust is one of the most repulsive movies ever made. I can't believe I watched it.

Reading it, it sounds horrible. Animals were killed during the filming; people thought the deaths were real. Glad I never saw it...and never will. Horrid.

[HuntingtonM15]

Originally Posted by PlayOn

Reading it, it sounds horrible. Animals were killed during the filming; people thought the deaths were real. Glad I never saw it...and never will. Horrid.

Yeah, I wouldn't even recommend it to a horror fan. Even without considering the animal torture, it's a pretty awful movie.

[JamesG]

Originally Posted by PlayOn

No 'Saw'? Color me shocked.

The SAW flicks are actually pretty tame... at least to me.

I've seen much more violent flicks compared to the SAWs.

[JamesG]

Originally Posted by PlayOn

Reading it, it sounds horrible. Animals were killed during the filming; people thought the deaths were real. Glad I never saw it...and never will. Horrid.

Not only that but the director didn't like how some of the animal killings went on the first take... so he brought in more animals to be killed for the re-takes.

[MrCleveland]

"Passion of Christ" is #1?

Wow...and that's on my Top-100 list of favorite films!

[PlayOn]

Originally Posted by JamesG

Not only that but the director didn't like how some of the animal killings went on the first take... so he brought in more animals to be killed for the re-takes.

Wow.

And, I've seen more violent movies than 'Passion'. 'Kill Bill' for instance and 'Saving Private Ryan' (have yet to see 'SPR' but heard it was pretty gory.) For 'Passion' to be number one is rediculous, IMO.

[Torgo]

Originally Posted by HuntingtonM15

Yeah, I wouldn't even recommend it to a horror fan. Even without considering the animal torture, it's a pretty awful movie.

Cannibal Holocaust is very popular amongst many horror fans. I didn't like the animal scenes, but I liked the rest of the film. There are quite a few Italian movies of the cannibal genre from back then that used real animals. But, because of these animal scenes I've only watched these films once.

[HuntingtonM15]

Originally Posted by Torgo

Cannibal Holocaust is very popular amongst many horror fans. I didn't like the animal scenes, but I liked the rest of the film. There are quite a few Italian movies of the cannibal genre from back then that used real animals. But, because of these animal scenes I've only watched these films once.

Yeah, I know that it is but I personally don't know why. Animal scenes aside, I thought it was a horribly boring POS. Though, it's hard to even say "animal scenes aside..." because they're so disturbing it's hard to think about anything else.

[Torgo]

Originally Posted by HuntingtonM15

Yeah, I know that it is but I personally don't know why. Animal scenes aside, I thought it was a horribly boring POS. Though, it's hard to even say "animal scenes aside..." because they're so disturbing it's hard to think about anything else.

We all have different tastes.

[JamesG]

Originally Posted by PlayOn

Wow.

And, I've seen more violent movies than 'Passion'. 'Kill Bill' for instance and 'Saving Private Ryan' (have yet to see 'SPR' but heard it was pretty gory.) For 'Passion' to be number one is rediculous, IMO.

How can you list a movie that you haven't seen to be used for comparing?

That is like trying to argue which movie is funnier and then mention a movie that you haven't seen, but then state that you 'heard' it was funny.

That argument doesn't work.