Body Horror Movies | 5 Morbidly Disgusting Displays of Body Horror That Caused Us To Cringe

More than any other movie genre, body horror carries the grotesque capacity to sinisterly crawl beneath our skin and offend the psyche in deeply disturbing ways. Whether via wickedly distorted anatomical imagery or through obscenely gratuitous lashings of unregulated gore.

Whichever way you slice and dice your preferred body-horror fix, exposure to these shockingly repulsive scenes typically triggers within us a wildly volatile response - be that a visceral cringe or guttural shudder as the graphic horror hellishly comes to light.

For some, the sight of sickening, despicably grotesque bodily abominations is all too grim a reality to bear. Still, to a select sadistic few, there's something devilishly dark about the body horror genre. Due, in part, to the deep psychological scar tissue so often inflicted upon the reveal of morbid obscenity.

So for those satanic scoundrels above, I am proud to present six gut-wrenching examples of body horror guaranteed to inflict a gaping wound or two.

Videodrome Film Body Horror

Screenshot taken from the Movie Videodrome. The copyright for this image is likely owned by either the publisher, creator of the work, or the actors depicted. My personal rationale for fair dealing: The image is used solely for critique commentary to illustrate an example of body horror in the specific film it concerns | Could not retrieve a suitable image in the public domain | I have used a lower resolution, scaled-down image.

Speaking of wounds. Nothing generates visual displeasure, quite like a gaping hole in the stomach. (We've all been there!)

To create Videodrome's notorious chest-slit sequences, Chrononberg would wisely enlist special make-up mastermind Rick Baker, whose talented effects crew included artists previously known for An American Werewolf In London's viscerally brutal transformation scene.

Videodrome, however, would have Woods glued into specially crafted chest apparatus - something he swore never to do again.

In Cronenberg's sickening body horror sequence, Woods hesitantly reaches into his stomach and rummages around inside, inducing nothing but winching revulsion from the audience.

Anyone who has traumatophobia should look away now.

Reanimator

Screenshot taken from the Movie Reanimator. The copyright for this image is likely owned by either the publisher, creator of the work, or the actors depicted. My personal rationale for fair dealing: The image is used solely for critique commentary to illustrate an example of body horror in the specific film it concerns | Could not retrieve a suitable image in the public domain | I have used a lower resolution, scaled-down image.

Based on H.P Lovecraft's celebrated fictional work, Stuart Gordan's often overlooked cult classic brilliantly balances dead-pan humor with gratuitous bucketloads of gore. All while exposing disturbing degrees of body horror, guaranteed to force a grimace.

As luck would have it, one such scene involves a talking head severed from the body, whose traumatizing imagery conjures, at its decapitated core, a killer gut reaction and a disgustingly grotesque aesthetic.

Even today, the viscerally jarring dissonance of reanimated bodies, dismembered but still living, creates some of the most visually offensive, cleverly conceived concepts of body horror ever made.

The Society

Screenshot taken from the Movie The Society. The copyright for this image is likely owned by either the publisher, creator of the work, or the actors depicted. My personal rationale for fair dealing: The image is used solely for critique commentary to illustrate an example of body horror in the specific film it concerns | Could not retrieve a suitable image in the public domain | I have used a lower resolution, scaled-down image.

Once again combining comedy with scares, Brian Yuzna's stomach-churning social satire stands as a pillar stone of body horror, containing some of the most hideously inspired works of the genre ever assembled.

In 1992's The Society, an elite cabal of sickening depravity is savagely exposed through a series of obscenely gross bodily distortions that manipulate the human anatomy in deeply cringe-worthy ways.

Whether citing the creepy but comical anus for a face, its various reverse-body disfigurements, or the revolting flesh-fusing orgy sequence at the film's finale, Screaming Mad Georges' surrealist special effects work is a shockingly spectacular sight to behold, offering up a freaky circus show that 100% warrants a watch.

Tetsuo The Iron Man Film Body Horror

What do you get when splicing Lynch's gritty, visually melancholic landscapes, Cronenberg levels of body horror, and Svankmajer's dynamic use of stop-motion trickery? A deeply disturbing monstrosity guaranteed to instill shivers, that's what.

In short, Shinya Tsukamoto's profoundly unsettling synthesis of man and metal is one of Asian horror's oldest displays of bodily terror, but it's probably the most gut-wrenchingly impactful too.

A flick not for the faint of stomach, Tetsuo's morbidly grotesque mutation produces a harrowing portrayal of metal merging with human flesh. Yet, perhaps hidden in its subtext lies societies' rarely explored fetishistic obsession with cybernetic enhancements.

Dead Ringers Film Body Horror

Screenshot taken from the Movie Dead Ringers. The copyright for this image is likely owned by either the publisher, creator of the work, or the actors depicted. My personal rationale for fair dealing: The image is used solely for critique commentary to illustrate an example of body horror in the specific film it concerns | Could not retrieve a suitable image in the public domain | I have used a lower resolution, scaled-down image.

Spearheaded by Jeremy Ion's magnetic central performance as two twin-brother gynecologist doppelgangers, Dead Ringers mixes strange psychosexual energy, sadomasochistic eroticism, and shudder-summoning body horror to conjure one of Cronenberg's most creepily compelling pieces of cinema.

Unlike Cronenberg's Double Lover, which displays visually jarring bodily fusions of breast and head, Dead Ringers conjoins its sexually charged twins by stringy chords of gelatinous tissue.

Done via dream sequences, Cronenberg's exploration of twincest issues sprawling, surface-level samples of body horror to illustrate the act's skin-crawling nature and society's gross intolerance to it.

That's your five disturbing displays of Body Horror in Film History. Be sure to send in your most sickening examples in the comments and check out our other video on horror's most harrowing practical effects.