In my last list I looked at the films which exist entirely on shock value with no real worth beyond that shock value. This time however I will be looking at the kind of films that convey complex themes and are beautiful despite the shocking imagery. I was originally going to talk about Saló in this list however after criticisms of the film being overly talked about, I have decided against it.

10. Oldboy (2003, Park Chan-Wook)

Although not as controversial as some of the films on this list, Oldboy does feature its fair share of messed up scenes. The film contains scenes of a man cutting his tongue out with some scissors and also features an incestuous sex scene.

Beyond that, however, Oldboy acts as a modern day allegory of the Ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus. Which follows the tale of a man who ends up sleeping with his own mother by accident and when he finds out, stabbing his own eyes out. Parallels can be drawn between the two stories with the character of Dae- Su being tricked into sleeping with his daughter and the symbolism of him cutting his tongue out.

Oldboy goes beyond this however being part of the director Park Chan-Wook’s vengeance trilogy. The vengeance trilogy thematically almost act as cautionary tales against revenge, showing how it leads to nothing but hatred and suffering.

Among the trilogy however most critics and the general audience agree that Oldboy is the best film of the trilogy at getting these themes across with it having an average rating on IMDb of 8.4 which is the highest of the trilogy. The film also comments on this idea of small actions having big consequences.

The whole revenge plot present in the film only exists through the fact that Dae-Su spread some childish rumours when he was a teenager which eventually led to Woo-jin’s sister’s suicide. This makes a very poignant point on how we should think more on our actions and how something that seems insignificant to us may impact someone else tremendously. Oldboy is a poetic masterpiece that is thematically impressive despite how shocking some of it is.

9. The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971, Stan Brakhage)

The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes feels more like some spiritual journey of our own mortality than just a film observing autopsy footage. The film resolves around Stan Brakhage filming autopsy’s of dead bodies with no music or any dialogue of any kind the film is purely observational. However, despite this many people have found the film to be quite a transcendental experience.

It is a film that is perhaps one of the most shocking and sickening by context alone, showing around fifty minutes of footage of dead bodies. Strangely it doesn’t come across as a sickening film. This is because the film affirms our own mortality. As humans we like to think of ourselves as something more than animals, however this film through observation alone conveys the fact that when we die we are made of bones and organs the same as all the other mammals. Because the film is purely observational, different people will get something different out of this film.

For instance if a religious person watched it they may see it as almost a religious experience, this is the beauty of Brakhage’s work in all its avant-garde beauty, like a painting it can mean so many different things to so many different people. It is a film that may be hard to watch or sickening for some but to others it is a beautiful reaffirmation of our humanity.

8. Man Bites Dog (1992, Benoît Poelvoorde & Rémy Belvaux & André Bonzel)

Many people might think that Man Bites Dog would be more at home in the “10 Controversial Movies That Exist On Their Shock Value Alone” list due to its shocking and often absurd nature. However it is a film that is both interesting thematically and an impressive achievement. The film was made on an extremely low budget of $33,000 and yet had a very creative and interesting premise which is very unique.

The film is made in a mockumentary style, with a camera crew following around a serial killer as he goes about his remorseless killings. The Serial killer character is one of those well-developed villains who is made interesting due to how charming he is. He spends the film indulging in killings, causing an old lady to die from a heart attack by shouting at her to save a bullet or smothering a child to death.

Despite the horrendous actions, the killer is still somewhat of a likeable character, he’s funny and charming yet utterly lacking remorse during his killing sprees. What sets this film apart is how it blurs the lines between good and evil.

At the start of the film the camera crew are observers of this mad man’s antiques however very subtly as the film progresses the film crew themselves start indulging in all the gratuitous acts of violence the serial killer is. It is a film that revels in absurdity, but it feels like with its extremely dark humour it is making a commentary on violence in films and how we can watch the most horrendous actions take place on screen without being remotely shocked.

It feels very post-modern in nature with its mockumentary style combined with its utter absurdity. Man Bites Dog might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it is certainly a very interesting film well worth your time.

7. The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin)

The Exorcist is a film that may seem cliché however it is an extremely necessary and important film for this list. During the 70s in the UK we saw a huge hostility to controversial films about religion. Much like Life of Brian which came out later in 1979 The Exorcist was banned in several counties around the UK due to its controversial nature towards religion.

The film comments on evil in the sense of it being more of a spiritual force than something that is chosen via free will. The fact that a young innocent girl is the one possessed by the demon is important as it is extremely contradictory as you wouldn’t imagine these two things would come together. Seeing evil as something unexplainable and uncontrollable is a big driving force towards the horror present within the film.

Another part of the film that is extremely interesting is how the exorcism of Regan runs parallel with Father Karras in a metaphysical kind of way. At the start of the film we see how he is crippled by feelings of guilt due to the fact he can’t look after his dying mother financially.

Throughout the film he talks about how he isn’t sure whether there is a god and how he’s losing faith. Arguably you could say that the film is just as much about Father Karras inner turmoil over his faith as it is about The Exorcism itself. The climax of the film further solidifies this idea of Father Karras exorcising himself of his guilt and restoring his fractured faith. The film is undoubtedly a classic and one that any horror fan should make their next watch.

6. Titicut Follies (1967, Frederick Wiseman)

Titicut Follies is a film by the incredibly underappreciated independent documentarian Fredrick Wiseman. Any number of his films could have worked in the context of this list however Titicut Follies is definitely one of Wiseman’s most shocking and though provoking films.

Wiseman has a very unique style when it comes to documentaries, his approach is entirely observational, and we see no talking head interviews or any interviews of any kind for that matter and no commentary from the man himself. This style works to Wiseman’s favour as it combines perfectly with his intimate style of cinematography which involves lots of close-ups of subjects.

His films make you feel as if you are a spectator in the room watching everything unfold and lacks the cold disconnect most documentary films have with their over reliance on talking head interviews and voice overs. The film itself revolves around Wiseman filming what takes place at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane during the 1960s. There is so much upsetting and hard to watch imagery such as a man being force fed through a tube and guards winding up a poor patient for their own amusement.

The film ,although upsetting, conveys how awful mentally ill people were treated during this time period arguably better than the likes of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). The film created controversy upon its release leading to Wiseman having to fight a court battle with Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court which wanted the film to be destroyed, however Wiseman fought back but unfortunately it was ruled that the film could only be shown to Doctors and other medical professionals on the grounds that they felt it violated the patients privacy.

Fortunately the film was ruled as being allowed to be viewed by the general public in 1991. Wiseman stated that he felt the state tried to censor his film because it painted a state institution in a bad light. Luckily the film went on to be hugely inspirational leading to several unethical institutes to be closed down, it is truly one of the most eye opening documentaries ever made.

In the world of cinema, so many directors have a message or idea they wish to get across. Some of these ideas are conveyed in such a shocking or absurd manner that it really drives the idea home. Legendary directors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini are masters of this with films like Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) which speaks of the dangers of fascism and mass consumerism.

However, there are definitely some films which are shocking for no other reason than to be shocking. These films are usually grotesque in nature and achieve nothing but making an audience want to vomit in their seats. Please note the controversial parts of these movies are from the stories of these films, not any opinions from this author or Taste of Cinema. Here are 10 controversial films that exist on their shock value alone:

10. Hostel (2005)

Starting this list we have a film that has left in its wake a very interesting legacy. Hostel is one of the key inspirations for the Torture Porn sub-genre of horror along with the likes of Saw (2004) and Wolf Creek (2005). This sub-genre is very similar to earlier video nasties with excessive gore and violence on screen except with the advantage of having a larger budget than its predecessors and a wider cinematic release.

Films in this genre have tended to do rather well at the box office. According to box office mojo, Hostel had a budget of $4.8 million and made a huge profit of $47,326,473. Although this film is undoubtedly gory and shocking, it still isn’t as explicit as some of the entries on this list. The film features several torture sequences which portray a man’s Achilles tendons being cut, fingers mutilated and other gruesome acts of torture.

The film revels in its own absurdity and shock value as this is all the film really has going for it. Such examples of this absurdity is the gang of kids known as the ‘bubble gum gang’ who attack and kill people who don’t give them bubble gum. Not only was this film considered shocking for its impact on creating a new horror sub-genre but also due to how it disgusted and offended Slovak officials on its release.

The film showcases a very inaccurate view of Slovakia, portraying it as a poor under developed country filled with slums. One Slovakian Member of Parliament said this about the film: “I am offended by this film. I think that all Slovaks should feel offended.” This shows how the film has a legacy of being shocking due to extreme portrayals of violence and gore whilst also being offensive with its representation of Slovakia.

9. Roadkill: The Last Days of John Martin (1994)

This feels like a very sadistic short. Roadkill starts with our star John Martin wandering around town and through a graveyard with nothing to signify the upcoming absurdity with the exception of a bloody title screen.

After we see John walk around for a bit, we are immediately thrown into the world of this deranged serial killer. Which consists of chopping up giant rats and other mutilated body parts, and wandering around his house which has blood smeared on every wall possible with bits of guts and intestines lying grossly on the floor. Shockingly things manage to get even worse as this short goes on. John Martin decides to leave his house and capture two unsuspecting victims whose car has just broke down.

After capturing these two, John proceeds to keep one of them in a small cage naked whilst he butchers the body of the other one in front of them. The short ends with him eating bits of human intestine whilst watching TV. From this synopsis alone you can see just how gory and explicit Roadkill really is.

This film is made entirely for shock value alone with its sickening gore that includes decapitation, faces stuck to the wall and body parts practically everywhere. It is certainly a very hard film to stomach and one that certainly achieves its goal of leaving its audience disgusted. Other than this, however, it really hasn’t got any value other than good practical effects, and an affinity for the macabre.

8. The Burning Hell (1974)

The Burning Hell is a movie that lacks any semblance of subtlety and comes across extremely intolerant considering it is trying to act as a propaganda conversion piece for Christianity. This film remorselessly relishes in this idea of all non-Christians going to hell. On the gore front this film is relatively light, despite showing scenes from hell and a decapitation, the practical effects are pretty bad, not making it sickening to watch in any capacity.

The shock value from this film comes more from its aim to provoke an audience. Most of the film features a bullish preacher who attempts to fear monger people into attending his sermons by warning them that if they don’t they will go to hell.

In fact one scene points out just how tone death this film is, in this scene we are introduced to two bikers. Both are Christians who we assume are part of a contemporary church who have come to the more traditional church to discuss the philosophy of Christianity with him.

The two bikers say that this idea of Hell is ridiculous as a loving God would never condemn his subjects to eternal torture, however the preacher tells them that if they don’t believe in Hell and come to his sermon, they will both burn in hell.

One of the Bikers quite understandably gets annoyed by the Preachers telling him he’s going to Hell so he leaves with his friend angrily. Following this he has a roadside accident and comes off his bike and somehow gets decapitated. The friend runs immediately to the preacher’s church and asks if his soul is safe.

Remorselessly he tells him that his friend’s in Hell but he’s more worried about the friend and then tells him to join his sermon to stop him going to Hell. The fact that this film is nothing more than victimising propaganda trying to shock people into converting earns this film a spot on this list.

7. The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1895)

This film may be the most influential one on this list. Acting as arguably the first horror film and also the first decapitation on screen, this movie must have shocked audiences to the extreme on its release.

To put it into perspective, this movie came out in the same year as The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat which involved a train coming into a station. At the time this film had people running out of the cinema in fear of being hit by the train because film was an incredibly new medium. So to put it into context, this film must have given people nightmares with what they perceived to be a real beheading.

If we judge the film on what we see today, it is still just an illusion that relies on shock, the film presents no message to speak of and the only action seen is someone being executed with an axe. For today’s standards, this film is relatively light on the shock value.

Maybe if a child watched it now they might be disturbed by the imagery. However anyone above that age would see that it is clearly just a cut where the actor is replaced with a dummy. Back in 1895, films were mainly either purely observational such as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) which just observes workers leaving a factory, or acting more as visual illusion as seen in the work of George Méliès with films like The Four Troublesome Heads (1898).

The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, although lacking substance, is arguably one of the most influential early films and pushed the boundaries of what can be shown on screen.

6. Teeth (2007)

What more can be said about this movie which is arguably one of the most absurd films of all time? Why Lichtenstein thought that his script was worth $2 million to make is beyond comprehension. The film’s plot revolves around a girl who suffers from Vagina dentata which in the real world is nothing more than a folk tale found in different cultures and religions.

This could have been cleverly played out to make an interesting point on fear of growing up during puberty and feeling different from your peers which films like Carrie (1976) portrays so well. However, it is clear that Lichtenstein isn’t competent enough to make a film as provoking as Carrie, instead opting for cheap shocks and poorly written characters.

The film relies entirely on its shocking premise, almost every male character who comes across the main character Dawn turns out to be an evil rapist and subsequently end up getting their penis bitten off. Some of the imagery is truly absurd such as a crab crawling over a man’s severed penis and another scene where a dog eats a man’s penis which has just been severed.

Maybe on a psychological level you could argue that the film discusses the idea of male impotence and the subconscious fear of losing your masculinity, however, the film comes across way too silly and over the top to make that point well.

Beneath artistic controversy lies a debate surrounding the nature of art: its mimetic powers and its goals.

There are several positions towards these topics. Plato moved from banning artists to approving them under certain institutional conditions. In one of his most famous sayings, Nietzsche insinuated that controversial figures were nothing but a means for strengthening the status quo. Such positions have contributed to restrict a subject that is now regarded as classic.

From exploitations to open treatments of both classic and temporal matters, cinema, as the seventh art, has not avoided controversy.

This is a list of 10 of the most controversial movies from the last five years. It includes movies that extended, either consciously or unconsciously, the vast amount of controversial titles included in modern cinema. In addition, some of the movies listed here explored the possibilities of distribution in alternative platforms, as a result of the controversy surrounding them.

10. Escape from Tomorrow (Randy Moore, 2013)

Set in a surrealistic world, “Escape from Tomorrow” follows Jim (Roy Abramsohn), an unemployed father, as his fragile sanity is challenged by a chance encounter with two underage girls.

“Escape from Tomorrow” is seen more as controversial due to its uncomfortable story. Mostly shot at Walt Disney World and Disneyland without permission, it moved from being compared to films by David Lynch and Roman Polanski, to bringing up several speculations about its chances of surviving an eventual lawsuit from Disney itself. This matter became especially cocnering, due to the movie’s negative depiction of the parks.

Nevertheless, Disney’s strategy to overcome the “Escape from Tomorrow” issue was arguably the best it could take for both parts: they ignored it. Such a course of action stopped the media attention the movie was getting and allowed for the movie’s eventual release.

9. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)

One of the most notable films of 2010, “Black Swan” shows the dark side of major ballet companies. Envy, betrayal, and insane competition are only some of the topics that surround Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), an ambitious ballerina whose mind begins to break as she obtains the lead role of her company’s next production.

The film’s public and critical acclaim faced several accusations surrounding the legitimacy of Natalie Portman’s Oscar-winning performance.

Dance Magazine’s editor-in-chief Wendy Perron asked about Portman’s double, American Ballet Theater soloist Sarah Lane, and the credit she was given in the movie. As a result, Portman’s credit for her dancing in the film and her dance double’s role was largely speculated. Lane eventually stated that her main interest lied in the defense of ballet as an art that cannot be mastered in a year.

8. The Bunny Game (Adam Rehmeier, 2010)

Leaving no space for redemption or recess, “The Bunny Game” is an extreme but widely criticized improvement to the exploitation subgenre. It focuses on a trucker and a prostitute named Bunny. While she’s just trying to survive another day, the trucker, who is an insane fetishist criminal, is committed to driving her objective to the edge of its proverbial cliff.

Regarded as offensive and misogynist, the film’s brutal and non-apologetic sequences earned it a ban imposition from the British Board of Film Classification. In the United States, it took four years to receive a proper release. Few movies have stressed the artistic merits of “The Bunny Game”. Torture porn, snuff-like and “pointless” are some of the other labels that have made this movie infamous, offered with a statement of “watch it at your own risk.”

7. The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence (Tom Six, 2011)

“The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence” exploits all the extreme elements its quite controversial but ingenious precursor lacked. Openly referential, it follows an alienated loner (Laurence Robert Harvey) who is committed to creating his own 12-person human centipede, after his obsession with the original movie leads him to confuse the boundaries between reality and fiction.

Though regarded as disgusting, Tom Six’s “The Human Centipede: First Sequence” (2009) was celebrated due to its simplicity and originality. On the contrary, the second sequence was largely panned. Six was involved in a frontal attack from the British Board of Film Classification that led to the movie’s eventual 18 certificate after 32 compulsory cuts, including scenes of sexual and graphic depravation.

Edited in Australia and banned in New Zealand, “The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence” had a more favorable distribution in the US, where the considerate IFC Films gave audiences barf bags at the movie’s screening during the Fantastic Fest in Austin and parked an ambulance out front as a gimmick.

6. Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

Arguably the most conscious facet of Lars von Trier’s so called “Depression Trilogy”, “Melancholia” is an allegoric reconstruction of the topic from the viewpoint of two sisters (Kristen Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg). As the planet Melancholia begins traveling dangerously close to Earth, Justine and Claire’s already fragile relationship gets ultimately challenged.

“Melancholia” became an undeniable critical success. Its dramatic recourses, though predictable, were celebrated as effective along with the graphic beauty that von Trier seemed to pursue since his 2009 film “Antichrist”.

Nevertheless, “Melancholia” was overshadowed, perhaps deliberately, by its always controversial director. When asked about a past statement regarding the Nazi aesthetic, von Trier claimed to have sympathy and comprehension for Hitler and, mockingly, claimed to be a Nazi himself.

As a result, the attention given to “Melancholia” moved toward von Trier’s statements; he was named persona non grata by the Cannes Film Festival and, in spite of a series of apologetic declarations, has shown more caution in press conferences ever since.