With it being halfway through October, and Halloween not far of now, it seemed like the perfect time to dig through the extensive Limelight catalogue and exhume some of the bloodiest, goriest films, perfect to get your Spooky Season started and screaming!
To not do permanent psychological damage to any readers who have stumbled into a gore blog not knowing their Craven from their Cronenberg, we’ll start a bit bloody and work our way up to the sickening stuff that’s for experienced gorehounds only.
Tap out at any time if you start to feel green, and keep your arms and legs inside the viscera-covered car, as we set off on a sangre-soaked slaughtercoaster ride through the most shocking sinema…
You were warned.
We’re starting mild, but that doesn’t mean poor Bill Pullman doesn’t get through the wringer. His character gets a nail put through someplace very uncomfortable (his scrotum), is buried alive AND drowned in blood at the same time, and encounters A LOT of manky dead bodies.
9. Rabid
We can’t do a ‘Ten Goriest’ without a film from the director known as the ‘Baron of Blood’!
David Cronenberg’s Rabid sees Rose (Marilyn Chambers) get involved in a horrific motorcycle accident, whisked away to a very conveniently nearby plastic surgery clinic and definitely not legally used to try out an experimental grafting technique. Don’t worry, she makes a full recovery. She just now has a stinger in her armpit that can pop out and kill and infect people with a zombie-like virus. You win some…
The aforementioned stinger and the damage it does to the various men who attempt to have sex with Rose is responsible for the majority of the bloodshed, but this being a rabies-zombie outbreak mash-up ensures a heck of a lot of biting too.
Gross, troubling, still not TOO gory.
8. The Psychic
Another major player, when we’re talking gore, is Lucio Fulci. Like Cronenberg, he also has a cool nickname, ‘The Godfather of Gore’, which means he is right at home on our list.
The Psychic sees a clairvoyant woman discover a bricked-up body in the basement of her house and set about discovering the victim’s identity… and killer. But, she’s now also putting herself in harm's way too.
More restrained than the majority of Fulci (stab everyone in the eye) films, The Psychic is a classy and suspenseful giallo. But still features a woman falling off a cliff and smashing her face on so, so many rocks all the way to the bottom.
A precocious little girl accidentally discovers an amulet that gives her total control over an intergalactic warrior, who must now do as she commands. It’s all fun and games until a group of monstrous assassins track him down and unleashes havoc on their small town.
Actually, even then, it’s still fun and games. This one is crazy gory, but fun crazy gory, not scary or upsetting crazy gory. Still, any body part that can be ripped off IS ripped off, and, in some cases, used to make a weapon to remove more body parts. People and creatures alike are eaten, vomited back up, crushed, exploded, shattered, ripped to shreds. I mean, come on, it literally has “gore” in the title.
More fun gore, but slightly scary at times, fun gore, is abundant in the brilliant and criminally underseen Uncle Peckerhead.
A punk garage band have their van stolen, and it looks like the tour is cancelled until they bump into a weird old roadie. He has a van, will do most of the driving, and prefers to be called “Peckerhead”. Oh, and he’s a demon who, at midnight, will consume human flesh. Luckily, when dealing with rival bands, club owners that won’t pay, and anyone else that’s a jerk along the way, that comes in quite handy.
Sooooo much ripping apart and eating of sooooo many people. But with a heart. In its mouth. Highly recommended.
Trouble Every Day is a French arthouse horror from Claire Denis, the director of Beau travail. Its arthouse credentials are further flashed by the presence of not only Vincent Gallo (Buffalo 66), but Beatrice Dalle (The Big Blue) too.
Gallo is an American in Paris searching for a mysterious blood doctor, while Beatrice Dalle is his ex, confined to the house because she tends to rip strangers to pieces and drink their blood.
With gallons of the red stuff sloshing around, faces getting chewed off, and an unforgettable sex scene, we are not messing around any more. (btw, the new Eureka! transfer is gorgeous)
4. Opera
As per Cronenberg earlier, we were never not going to have some Dario Argento in here.
A young opera singer gets her big break, but is also being stalked by a psychopath who likes to kill people in front of her. Inconvenient.
Opera is peak Dario, at his craziest in terms of plot, camerawork, kills and reveals, and, most importantly for our list: famous for the scenes where Betty has needles taped beneath her eyes, that will prick her if she blinks, to force her to not look away from the killer’s slayings. Also, people get blown away, hit by cars, impaled on coat hooks, stabbed with scissors, and sometimes even have their eyes pecked out by crows for good measure.
The top three are where we get into the crazy stuff. Your mileage may vary, as you are either going to be repulsed and feel physically sick, or find it all so over the top it’s more winced at with a half-smile.
Either way, hold tight, because guts.
Human Lanterns is a kung fu film that also manages to be disturbingly disgusting at the same time. Your typical two rival martial artists have a lot of incredibly choreographed fights, but the villain is a psycho in a skull mask who… there’s no other way to say it: makes lanterns out of the skin he peels from the faces of women he has kidnapped and tied up… while they’re still alive.
A splatter classic. It’s not an ironic title. This one is the full-on real deal.
Tracing a cannibal virus, some doctors and a reporter find themselves on an isolated tropical island. Sounds lovely. It is not lovely. They discover a mad scientist is creating a zombie army which proceeds to literally rip everyone's guts out.
Impaling, stabbing, insides on the outsides, eyes plucked from heads, heads split open, and, awesomely, an off-board motor to the face, sending brains everywhere!
It was always going to be number one. Absolutely infamous. Also known as ‘Make Them Die Slowly’. A true-blue video nasty. Described as “the most violent film ever made”.
Three friends venture into the Colombian jungle to study cannibals. What could go wrong?! The cannibals may have actually been pretty chill - we’ll never know - but they have been being used as slaves by a gang of drug dealers, and when they rebel, they do every and anything you could possibly imagine to both their captors and the wannabe anthropologists.
The parts you would most like not to have chopped off or have hooks put through to hoist you aloft are number one on the cannibal's list. Second, is eating them, as well as your brain, and your apparently delicious guts. This baby holds the Guinness World Record for the number of countries it was banned in.
All ten films are available now on Limelight.