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News > Featured: TOP TEN TORTURE SCENES

Written by Noah Sanders

 

There’s a certain type who loves a good torture scene.  I don’t mean the psychos, or the sadists – I mean the people who get a solid thrill out of being absolutely horrified.  Those who love sitting at the edge of their seat, fingernails gripping a loved one, trying as hard as they can to draw their eyes away from the very sick, very wrong imagery flooding the screen. 

I’m one of these torture-scene-loving S.O.B’s, and, to honor my love, I’ve compiled a list of the scenes that I think encapsulate the great vomit-inducers.  Apologies to grindhouse lovers: it’s noticeably lacking exploitative films, and I blame that on my low grindhouse knowledge.  It’s a problem, and I’m trying to fix it. 

So, put on your raincoats, ‘cause it’s going to get bloody.

Enjoy.

 

10.    Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980) – The Starfish Skewer

The Movie:

A group of documentary filmmakers head in to the jungle to capture the savagery of a tribe of cannibals.  Let me just say, it ends badly.  As in: "gang rape" and "beheading" badly.

The Torture:

The filmmakers stumble into a field where a bizarre Yanomamo sex-rite is occurring involving a native lass’s poopchute and the business end of a sharp stick.  The sickest part is the glee the filmmakers get in shooting the footage.  It’s like Christmas for these fuckers, but instead of getting a Wii, they get a chick with a slice of lumber in her pooper.  And you thought Hollywood was fucked up before…

 

9. Saw 2 (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2005) – The Needle Pit Swan Dive

The Movie: 

That crazy old Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell) is at again with those darned traps of his.  This time though he’s trapped a bunch of whiny criminals in a house full of (oh my!) DEADLY GAS!  Once again, all the Z-list actors have to figure out his ingeniously retarded traps or die from poison gas inhalation. 

The Torture:

Former druggy, future psycho Amanda (Shawnee Smith) stumbles upon a syringe full of antidote, but that damn thing is locked away.  Where’s the key?  In a pit full of dirty, used syringes.  The sheer stomach-turning gruesomeness of Amanda’s attempt to dig – DIG! – through a pile of syringes is absolutely horrifying.  By the end of it, the sort-of-hot Amanda is a screaming, blubbering, human syringe pin-cushion.  Yikes.

 

8. Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006) – The Ball-Sack Beating

The Movie: 

Bond’s back baby, Bond is back.

The Torture: 

Enraged foreigner Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) doesn’t need lasers or shark-filled pits to torture his captives.  Nope, he just needs a broken chair, an exposed ball-sack, and a nice wet piece of rope.  Too bad: Bond's gonads are as bad-ass as he is, and this super-spy takes the groinal beating and keeps on asking for more.  At one point he even smiles through bloodied lips to gloat, “Now everyone will know you died scratching my balls.”  Manly!

 

7. Braveheart (Mel Gibson, 1995) -  The Hanging, Racked, Innard Twist

The Movie:

Wee Willy Wallace is mad.  Mad at the Brits and mad at his lily-livered countrymen, and he’s just not going to take it anymore.  He grabs a group of his loyal Scottish cronies and heads out to flash his buttcheeks and kick some royal British ass.

The Torture: 

It’s a three-step process for a looming bad-ass like William Wallace.  First, they try to hang him, but that doesn’t work.  Then, they get out a couple more ropes, slap them on his appendages and try to pull his limbs like salt-water taffy.  But, still, Wallace won’t break.  Finally, they just lay him on the cross, and start diddling his innards with some wicked looking silverware.  All it takes is for Wallace to shout “mercy” and they’ll stop the torture, but he’s too Irish (I mean tough, not drunk) for that (Editor's note:  we know he's not Irish).  So, when he motions for a word, he doesn’t scream for mercy.  Nope, he just opens his mouth and screams “FREEDOM!”  And then they cut his head off. 

 

6. Oldboy (Chan-wook Park, 2003)

The Movie:

Businessman Oh-daesu goes out for a drink - or seven - one evening and ends up kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years.  And that’s just the first twenty minutes of this amazing film.  What follows is a graphic swath of revenge, retribution, and disturbing discovery (including an intimate dining experience with a live octopi) that puts any U.S. release of 2003 to shame.  

The Torture: 

It’s fifteen fucking years locked in what could be the Crackwhore Hourly Suite at the local Howard Johnson, with nothing to do but contemplate death, hallucinate, and watch your life in the outside world fall apart on television.  Let's say you try to kill yourself:  your shadowy captors will just keep your imprisoned ass alive.  Chan-wook Park eschews gore, and turns solitude in to a crushingly oppressive force.  Setting the stage for what I consider to be one of the top ten films of all time. 

 

5. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino,  1994) – Bring Out The Gimp

The Movie:

It's Pulp Fiction!  If you don't know it, you shouldn't be reading this list.

The Torture:

One leather clad gimp, one bruised-up black man named Marcellus Wallace.  It's a whole lot of gangster ass-rape, and nothing about it is pretty.  Luckily for you, me, and Marcellus Wallace, Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) has a samurai sword and a mad-on for some redneck killing.  Slice, slice, dice, dice - end of story. 

 

4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) – Dinner With The Family

The Movie: 

If you’re reading this site you should know this shit, but I’ll summarize it quickly.  A van full of long-haired hippies stumble upon a house brimming with some of the craziest back-road psychos ever to grace the silver screen.  Let’s just say it’s a hippie massacre.

The Torture:

The remaining hippie, Sally (Marilyn Burns), after some of the weakest escaping of all time, is finally captured by the sadistic rednecks of House Leatherface.  They don’t kill her though, oh no, they just tie her down for a good-old family dinner.  The main course?  Mashed up humans.  This scene has to be thirty minutes long, and I swear to god Sally screams bloody murder for the whole friggin’ running time.  It’s probably the least bloody segment in the whole film, but I promise you, if you’re brain isn’t a feeble mushy mess after this one, you might just be a serial killer (Editor's note:  or a redneck).

 

3. Casino (Martin Scorcese, 1995) – The Big Squeeze

The Movie: 

Mobsters, mobsters, mobsters – but none of those East Coast pansies.  This is all the classic glitz and glamour of Las Vegas’ toughest Italians played by Hollywood’s toughest actors.  It’s an epic tragedy from start to finish, chronicling the rise and fall of some-a-biggest gangsters to ever walk beneath the glowing neon of the Las Vegas Strip.

The Torture: 

Vices are useful tools.  Good for, you know, holding things and, uh, keeping stuff stable.  But Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) likes squishing things with his vice, especially the bloodied heads of low level mob-goons he doesn’t particularly fancy.  And this isn’t your average “tighten your bolts” squeeze, this is a five inch tightening that ends with a screaming goombas shiny peeper poppin’ out.  Couple this eye-explosion with Joe Pesci’s special brand of fuck-laden psychotic intensity, and you’ve got a scene sure to tickle your hurl-button.  Grade-A, one-hundred percent pure torture enjoyment!

 

2. Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005) – Japanese BBQ

The Movie:

I know it’s just a throwback to older exploitation films involving high quantities of titties and torture.  But you know what?  I love this flick. I love the campy kills, and over-the-top gore and think it’s the best gore-fest horror film that’s come out in a while.  So, screw those who disagree with my high ranking.  Hostel deserves its position. 

The Torture:

Good news: Paxton (Jay Hernandez) has murdered his pain-happy captor and is now, sans two fingers, well on his way to escaping the horrific torture Disneyland he’s ended up in. Bad news: after hearing Kana’s (Jennifer Lim) pained screams, he’s decided he needs to play knight-in-shining-armor and save the girl.  When he finally finds her, her sadistic playmate is gleefully burning off half her face with a blowtorch.  Uh-oh!  Paxton kills the baddie and saves the day, sort of, but, in a delightfully disgusting scene-finale, he has to snip off Kana’s dangling eyeball.  And, seemingly, snipped eyeball cords spurt a lot of pussy nastiness. Es ist ausgezeichnet!

 

1. Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999) – Old Pincushion Face

The Movie:

Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is a lonely man after the death of his wife.  Instead of going about it the usual way though (you know, "dating") he decides to set up an elaborate screening process to find himself a perfect little Japanese lady-friend.  Enter Asami (Eihi Shiina), a tasty tart with a few secrets to hide – including an apartment delightfully furnished with only a phone, some carpet, and a chopped up man in a burlap sack.  Souuuuuuunds romantic! 

The Torture:

Skip the four-star restaurant and bouquet of roses, seemingly slighted psychopath Asami has other plans for her and Shigeharu’s big date.  Namely, lying in wait until he gets home and torturing him endlessly until he dies in a pool of his own blood.  What kind of torture you ask?  Well, there are a lot of needles - mainly in the eyeballs (all graphically filmed by gore-master Miike) - and one hell of a foot removal using only a shiny piece of razor wire.  It’s horrific, disturbing, and absolutely masterful.  It tops my list, not only because of it’s pure cinematic horror, but because the screening I first attended started with an audience of sixty, and by the time Asami’s torture had reached it’s conclusion, had an audience of only me.

Thanks for reading.

[Updated:  Digg users found this article before it was actually finished.  Sorry, guys.]