Halloween Top Tens: More Gore

Bored of the standard Halloween specials and the same selection of horror movies? Well this is the series for you.  In the second of my Halloween Top Ten lists, I’m going to look at gore. Lots of it. From the films that thrill us with plenty of arterial splatter to the books that will turn your stomach. This is by no means the definitive list of the goriest fiction around, like any top ten it’s a matter of personal opinion but I’ve tried to cover a range of media and styles as well as recommending similar titles. So without further ado, let the bloodbath begin!

Tokyo Gore Police

How can we go wrong with a film with the word “gore” in the title? I’ve mentioned this movie before in my Frightfest retrospective: a darkly funny, blood-soaked foray into Japanese extreme cinema. In a dystopian future Tokyo, a sinister mad scientist known as the “Key Man” is turning people into mutant “Engineers” and the only thing that stands in his way is a team of quasi-military “Engineer Hunters” in fetching SS-style uniforms. You’ll be amused as frequently as disturbed; the black humour of advertisements announcing that “cutting yourself is cute” is neatly balanced by surreal sequences such as a decidedly weird fetish club scene complete with mutated strippers. Nice!

The film’s suitably gory trailer

If you like your gore with a sharp satirical edge, try the dark humour of “Ichi the Killer” (mentioned below) or the slick revenge-flick “the Machine Girl” by the same team as TGP. Or if you prefer the surreal, disturbing side, why not baffle yourself with the frenetic but less visceral “Tetsuo: the Iron Man”?

Mum and Dad

Another film I discovered at Frightfest, so nasty that the audience were given sweets to distract from the horror of it all: this absolutely repulsive micro-budget British thriller is guaranteed to appal. Unfolding like an up-to-date English version of “Texas Chainsaw”, it tells of a dysfunctional “family” living in the shadow of Heathrow airport. Gathering new victims and stealing goods from the airport itself, a sadistic couple known only as “Mum” and “Dad” induct a new “daughter” to their strange world. This is a phenomenally nasty film, with every imaginable squicky scene on show; from masturbation with innards to a man crucified to the wall as a Christmas decoration. No punches are pulled and the audience sees slightly too much of everything, but it’s well acted and surprisingly convincing. Just don’t watch it while eating!

Another trailer, again pretty nasty

Like your gore low budget and horrendous? Well for more family “fun”, the obvious place to turn is the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, also dealing with the subversion of the nuclear family but surprisingly bloodless to modern eyes. For those who like their horror with a British accent, why not try the films of Neil Marshal; “Dog Soldiers” is nicely gruff and will change the way you look at superglue forever, while “the Descent” manages to tick all the right boxes as a visceral, cringe-inducing and claustrophobic venture.

Repo! The Genetic Opera

This film is a bit like marmite, people either adore it or despise it. But if the idea of a gore-slicked rock opera doesn’t send you screaming in terror, then you might enjoy this anarchic, high-concept nonsense. Set in a dystopian future where organ failures have crippled society and an evil corporation is having genetically engineered organs repossessed from the entrails of debtors, it’s a strange combination of high melodrama and low comedy. Oh and there’s gore. Lots and lots of gore. Whether it’s Bill Moseley and Nivek Ogre lobbing innards at one another, Anthony Head playing ventriloquist with an unconscious victim, or Sarah Brightman getting impaled, there’s plenty of celebrity splatter to enjoy here, all played out against a rocky goth-industrial soundtrack. Perfect!

Repo’s very musical trailer

Obviously in terms of cult musical madness, “Repo” has a lot in common with “Rocky Horror”, but if you want something darker with plenty of spurting claret, “Sweeney Todd” has to be the one of the bloodiest musicals around. Who can resist a film that features Johnny Depp in a neo-Victorian outfit slathered with blood?

Ichi the Killer

With slick direction from Japanese maestro Takashi Mike, and everything else slick with bodily fluids, this weird, dark and occasionally very funny thriller features a mesmerising performance from Tadanobu Asano as a sadomasochistic yakuza with more body piercings than sense. With some very strange fight sequences and very disturbing torture scenes featuring everything from suspension from hooks to ghastly self-mutilation of the tongue, it switches from horrific to silly frequently. Gross, but a lot of fun.

If you enjoyed “Ichi”, why not check out some of Mike’s other work, especially the deeply disturbing “Audition”.

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite (1996)

The first novel on this list is by sensual splatterpunk supremo Poppy Z Brite. Although Brite’s work has since gone onto less extreme fare, this novel still has the power to seduce and shock. It tells the twisted tale of a love affair between convicted English serial killer, cannibal and necrophilliac, Andrew Compton, American torturer and cannibal Jay Byrne and decadent Vietnamese degenerate, Tran. What makes Brite’s work so distressing is the frank realism of it, the reader is constantly wondering how she knows these things! Stir into the mix a heavy ladling of perverse sensuality in the form of heady, erotic prose and you have a deeply disturbing novel. Violent death just shouldn’t be this sexy.

If you’re enticed by Brite’s prose, why not try her first novel “Lost Souls”, a lurid tale of vampires, rock stars and steamy sex. If you like the strong gore but are a little perturbed by all that gay sex, why not try the work of Clive Barker, whose work is discussed below, and takes a franker and less erotic take on the splatter genre.

The Fly

Ah where would the body horror genre without David Cronenberg? Although these days his films are more likely to take the form of violent thrillers, his earlier work is pure visceral delight. The Fly is one of his best known pieces, more polished than the earlier “Scanners” or “Videodrome” but still focusing on the unsettling motifs of bodily corruption and mental instability. A remake of a 1950s classic, it follows the doomed experiments of a brilliant scientist who has invented a teleportation machine. But when he sends himself through the device, a fly gets into the pod and the insect’s genes are spliced together with his own. The result is a strange, grotesque but strangely touching story, as “Brundlefly” struggles with his sanity, his humanity and his girlfriend. Combining an interesting story with some really nasty special effects, it’s a truly memorable movie. Who can forget Jeff Goldblum peeling off his fingernails, gobbing on food, or snapping a man’s arm in a wrestling competition?

A very atmospheric trailer for “the Fly”

Love “the Fly”? Check out the head-exploding weirdness of “Scanners” or the disturbing psychological journey of “Dead Ringers”, both by Cronenberg. Or for more body-horror, why not watch John Carpenter’s “The Thing”, another visceral remake of an early classic.

The Books of Blood by Clive Barker

Four volumes of viscera from splatterpunk’s most famous adherent, “the Books of Blood” are a series of short stories linked which, as the opening tale tells, were written by angry spirits on the flesh of a phoney medium. The tales have been adapted into graphic novels (“the Yattering and Jack”) and movies (“Midnight Meat Train” and the upcoming “Books of Blood”) but it’s in their original form that they pack the meanest punch. The key to Barker’s style is his ability to make the horrific appear frank, almost mundane, yet keep it immediate and revolting. The result is unforgettably ghastly.

The trailer for the upcoming adaptation of the first story in the collection

If you’re a Barker fan, chances are you’ve already seen “Hellraiser”, which will be discussed in a later article, but you might also like the recent adaptation of “Midnight Meat Train” which nicely captures the taught, gross feel of the story.

Saw

Although the myriad of sequels have proved increasingly lacklustre, the first installment in this lucrative franchise remains wonderfully sick. Turning the faceless killer of the slasher genre into an ingenious puppermaster with a twisted agenda is no mean feat, and the story itself is intricate enough to suggest that Jigsaw, the killer, is as bright as the dialogue would make out. But the real star of the show is the nifty array of torturous puzzles. Expertly shot, we always see just enough to turn our stomachs but not so much as to dampen our imaginations. Take the climactic sawing sequence; we see only glimpses of the saw penetrating flesh, the rest is suggested by evocative sound, screams and performances. And it works a treat.

Yet another trailer, you get the idea

We all know that the film spawned a hit-and-miss franchise, but the second film is almost as good as the first. Sure the subtlety may be lacking from “Saw II” but few films include anything as cringe-inducing as the syringe sequence!

Braindead (also known as “Dead-Alive”)

Before he became the king of epic fantasy, Peter Jackson made low-budget gore films heavy on effects and light on seriousness. “Braindead” is the very zenith of silly zombie flicks, nicely lampooning the genre but ensuring the humour never outweighs the stomach-turning squick and enthralling spatter. So in this brilliant piece we get everything from a zombie granny eating her own rotting ear, a zombie baby on the rampage, and a lawnmower chopping down an army of walking corpses. There’s no better word for this but “fun!”

The extremely silly and very funny trailer for Braindead. Covering your eyes is not compulsory.

If this is your idea of fun too, you might want to give “Bad Taste” a go, an even sillier Jackson film involving exploding sheep, angry aliens and a man with his brain falling out. Or why not check out the “Evil Dead” trilogy (discussed below)?

Evil Dead

Though the second “Evil Dead” film may be a more polished and far funnier one, the gore quotient of the first film is higher and more effective: it doesn’t matter how many times I see that pencil stab into that ankle, it still turns my stomach. When a group of teenagers go out to a remote cabin for a weekend away, they don’t realise that an ancient evil is stalking the woods.  With his friends falling foul of the horror, hopeless everyman Ash Williams must fight them off. It’s over-the-top, and often camp but it’s still easy to see why it ended up on the “video nasty” list as it’s low budget style doesn’t get in the way of the viscera. If the gore looks surprisingly realistic, it’s because the crew used off-cuts and innards from a butcher’s shop (stored in a fridge that didn’t quite work) for some of the effects. The infamous tree rape scene is pure exploitation gold too, if it weren’t so silly, it’d be horrifying!

The surprisingly tame trailer for “The Evil Dead”

The second film is superior but slightly less gross, making up for the loss of gore with funnier and spookier sequences and some fabulous stop-motion fun. The third film, “Army of Darkness” is sillier still but unfortunately overdoes the goody humour at the expense of the creepier scenes. The trilogy remains one of the best gore/comedy-horror franchises there is, and the “teenagers out for fun in the woods” motif has been copied by everyone from successful splat packers like Eli Roth to indie shock flicks like “Eden Lake”.