Grossest moment: Dana and Marty, appalled by their discovery of an evil underground lab housing hundreds of horrifying creatures, unleash them from their cages, which tear apart the facility’s armed guards and defenseless workers.
The Saw movies (2004 – present)
The torture porn of Saw needs little introduction: it’s the go-to commercial franchise for those looking for a quick gore hit. There’s ostensibly a story linking all of the films together, but they’re exercises in gross-out depravity first and foremost—each new trap a demonstration of gnarlier effects, all to be watched through glances between our fingers.
Grossest moment: You could justifiably pick an individual trap from each film. But the scene that sticks with me most is the one in which someone’s head is crushed between two blocks of ice in Saw IV. It’s just … popped, like a grape between teeth.
The Fly (1987)
Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle, a scientist trying to perfect teleportation, goes and turns himself into a fly in this David Cronenberg classic based on the short story by George Langelaan. Silly! You could pick plenty of Cronenberg films for a list like this—no other filmmaker is more synonymous with body horror—but The Fly is the most out-and-out gruesome, not least as it hits its climax.
Grossest moment: The aforementioned climax, when Jeff Goldblum is replaced by the towering monstrosity that is the Brundlefly, a human-housefly hybrid that spits corrosive bile and definitely isn’t fun at parties.
This story originally appeared in British GQ.
