Disturb Me

Do you ever watch movies just because they are disturbing?

I have :wave:

I’m not sure if this is something to be proud of or to even tell people but I have a thing for disturbing movies. Not so much gory but movies that make you cringe or feel uncomfortable watching.

These are movies I watched purely because I heard they were particularly unsettling:

Pink Flamingos

I heard about this movie from my parents who’d actually seen it in the theaters in when they were in college. I remember them telling me horrible and disgusting it was. They told me about the main character played by Divine (a large transvestite) who believes “she” is the most disgusting person on the planet. When they told me she actually eats dog shit on screen I think that was something beyond I could comprehend. The movie was raw, badly made and was the staple for cult classics.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover

Again, another movie my parents told me about. Why they kept telling me about these movies and then were shocked when I actually hunted the videos to watch them I’ll never know. I knew this was more of an NC-17 kind of film but I also knew it was bizarre. It was in fact, very strange. It was also boring and didn’t make much sense. A few times I felt like I was on acid as they’d move from room to room and all the colors would change along with that room color :twitchy: The only really screwed up part of it was when the man ate his wife’s lover’s penis as a delicacy.

Happiness

Also, any movie done by [insert director] is bound to be so dark you are too uncomfortable to watch it with anyone and too embarrassed to be caught watching it by yourself. Both [fill in] and Welcome to the Dollhouse are pretty dark but his darkest was Happiness. My friend and I, another person who liked to find creepy movies like this, heard about this movie on the radio and had to see it.

We anxiously waited until it was returned to the video store so we could rent it. We drank wine and ate nachos. We also watched the entire movie in silence with our mouths hanging open in shock. From the first scene with John L humiliating himself to the last scene where the son finally becomes a man it’s really hard to watch. The movie has depression, humiliation, obsession, masturbation and even a pedophile just to make sure you’re sufficiently horrified. What made it worse for me was somehow I had empathy for most of these people, that was truly horrifying.

Gummo

I think I heard about this movie from a friend of mine who was like “if you want to see something shocking, check this out” so of course I did. I think if it hadn’t been so slow and boring it would have been pretty bad but there were enough moments in it for me to include this movie in a list of Movies You Don’t Want To Watch With Your Family. There is a weird kid in this movie, he just looks funny I guess but I’m not sure. He goes around killing cats for Chinese restaurants. There is a mentally disabled girl who’s father rents her out as a prostitute. There is a scene with a kid in a really dirty bathtub that you’ll just have to take my word for. I believe the movie was supposed to be kind of like a documentary about a white trash town.

Eraserhead

I can’t forget this one, I think this one bothered me above all the others.  David Lynch has a way of making things seem really screwed up without doing much; it’s a gift I suppose.  The film is a grainy and the best way to describe it is like a bizzarre dream.  You know those really strange dreams you have and when you wake up you just can’t figure out what the fuck it was about?  That’s what it’s like watching this movie.

The main character has a baby but the baby is more like a scrietching alien that just won’t shut up.  There is this woman who looks like she has cotton balls in her mouth that sings in the heater.  There is a scene the family is eating these tiny little chickens that when you cut into them blood quirts out.  To add to this movie it just drags on in the worst way but I was determined to watch it all the way through.  Sometimes I think David Lynch is just trying to torture movie goers, not that I blame him.

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