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ABOVE THE BEYOND
Readers Grossest Movie Moments

The following are the best 10 entries from you, the Hot Button readers, when asked for your grossest film experiences. Some of you chose regular movies, like Spice World or Batman and Robin, while others of you wrote about fairly mainstream films. Style was often as valuable as substance. And some of you went way, way, way over the 100-word limit. So, here you go. Hope those of you who didn't get an eyeball for your troubles will try again next time.

WARNING: THIS IS GROSS AND GRAPHIC. You have been warned.

10. From Joey: "Well, you've asked for 'the most disgusting moments on film,' but you didn't say that it had to be a movie. The easy winner is the Faces of Death series (yes, it was released on video only, but almost all of the footage is shot on film). Scenes include: a guy getting drawn and quartered, several autopsies, a sex orgy celebration involving a dead body (The participants would cut up the body and use the organs to smear all over themselves as others would lick it up. They would eat the organs, screw the dead guy, blah blah blah), a man with a bomb strapped to his body and it goes off, (There is nothing but a bloody mess... with his head perfectly intact. He's there staring at his gooey body with his eyes and mouth wide open-horrified.) The worst one was a Vietnamese family preparing dinner. The mother grabbed a live puppy from a box, put it on a cutting board, and cut it open. The puppy was yelping even as she removed some of the guts." [David Note: Discounted spot on list due to video status.]

9. From Cliff: "OK, first the joke answer: the full-Monty Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant. OK, now my REAL sickest moment: it's in 1981's Omen III: The Final Conflict, which a mother hallucinates how her baby's face would look if she scorched it with the iron in her hand. Maybe it was the concept, maybe I was just immature, but I actually had hysterical blindness for a few minutes after that! Shuddery stuff, that."

8. From Krillian: "In The Dark Backward, Bill Paxton is out at the dump. Can't remember why. He happens upon the dead body of an obese naked lady. I think she had a necklace on. Bill Paxton looks around. You figure he's going to take the necklace. No, he starts licking the corpse. Around her neck, over her breasts, nibbles some. Bill!!!! Ewwwww! The make-up made it clear she'd been dead for days."

7. From: killcows "My grossest film moment ever was during the movie Alien 3 when the dog-like alien was eating one of the convicts. The alien was dangling the man's body in the air (they stick to walls). Another convict was standing below the murder, and the blood from the other guy was spilling out all over his head and into his open, screaming mouth. This was after it stuck its little second head tongue through the head of the guy it was dangling, which was gross enough."

6. From Matt H: "The first time I was ever grossed out at the movies still remains with me after almost 40 years. It's the opening sequence of Horrors of the Black Museum when a pair of binoculars are delivered to a woman who we assume is going to be the star of the picture. She places them up to her eyes and metal spikes jut out from both eyepieces killing her instantly. The terror and nausea I experienced watching these first few minutes of this film have never left me, and I've never been able to watch that movie again." [David Note: This film has had the same effect on me, though I didn't know what the name of the film was until this moment. And I'll be renting it as soon as I can find a copy.]

5. From Jeff H: I would have to go with this one scene in Bertolucci's 1900. WWII is coming to an end, and the people of this one town are seeking revenge on Donald Sutherland and his wife for being the leading fascists there. The people start throwing horse manure at them, and one of the locals starts stimulating what looks like the rectum of a horse (and we see this in glorious medium shot) to get it to produce more of the organic material. We cut away to the locals continuing to hurl more of the fecal matter at ol' Donald and the misses, then we cut back to this guy standing there with a good old steaming heap of fresh--need I say more?--which he takes and shoves in Dandy Don's face. Not quite on an artistic par with the tongue ripping scene from Blood Feast, but damn close!"

4. From Ryan D: "All right. A choice scene from Dead Alive. It's a fairly simple setup -- our good guy is on one side of a large room full of undead, bloodthirsty, fairly-mutilated zombies, and he wants to get to the other side. Being a resourceful protagonist (and this being a Peter Jackson film) he uses the most logical tool possible to work his way through. A lawnmower. Propping the bottom of lawnmower in front of him, he begins to walk to the other side of the room. The impending chaos is almost indescribable. Being zombies, they don't bleed just plain old red blood, but rather an assortment of red and green, with a hint of blue for variety. One of the key scenes is when our hero slips on some zombie insides, and falls on his back. we get to see a zombie fall on top of him, and turn himself into zombie goo. But this is the best part -- our hero, now covered from head to toe in zombie blood and guts, looks back at the room he just went through, and sees that there are still some stragglers. Pause. So what does he do? Why, he primes up his lawnmower, and starts his way back through. Brilliant. After the first viewing of this at my house at about 2 a.m., there was a standing ovation. Truly, one of the most disgusting scenes I have ever seen committed to film."

3. From David: "The most disgusting scene I've ever seen was in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Her Lover (or whatever the damn movie is called). The scene that grossed me out is the little boy who was painted blue and naked and supposed to be an angel of some sort. And some man comes up to him and gropes him and (performs oral sex on him), though all you see is the back of the old man's head. I never saw the rated American release and don't know if they cut out that scene or not though I'm sure they left enough of it in to gross even you out."

2. From Jim M: "Germany produced two World Wars and two Nekromantics. I only witnessed the latter. N-1 features the leading man stabbing himself repeatedly in his stomach whilst flashing back to skinning a rabbit, as he spurts gouts of semen and blood from an engorged hard-on. N-2 tries to top this by having the leading lady decapitate her boyfriend with a handsaw in the midst of having sex, as he grimaces and blood sprays all over the walls, the bed, the girl and anything else in the vicinity. She then ties off the guy's erect member, grabs her dead ex's blackened head (which she had earlier dug up from its grave), replaces the still-twitching bloody head with it, remounts the guy's post-death and goes at it all over again. Obviously, it helps to see this to believe it, but I do NOT recommend it."

1. From V. Werner: I haven't a clue where we are, but there's ants. many ants, crawling. they're infesting everything and something is deteriorating. the music isn't helping.

then there's this man. he has a blade in his hand. he stands behind this woman, and with his free hand he grabs her face and pulls her eye open wide...

close up. even closer. he squeezes her eye with his fingers and, very slowly, the blade closes in on her face.

he swiftly slices through her eyeball. her eye oozes liquid and splits in two. i don't think i've seen anything as disturbing since.