Via USA Today’s Hip Clicks, here are two lists certain to start an argument among you and your fellow film buffs.
One is Premiere magazine’s list of the 25 most shocking moments in movie history. Most of the moments you’d expect are there, led by the big reveal in The Crying Game, though my pick for the most shocking moment ever (Janet Leigh’s murder in Psycho) comes in only at No. 4. Surely, the sliced eyeball in Un Chien Andalou (No. 10), the horse’s head in the bed in The Godfather (No. 14) and Divine’s doggie-doo dinner in Pink Flamingos (No. 16) deserve to be a lot higher as well. Also, the list is heavily weighted towards recent American movies (like The Sixth Sense, left); where’s the moment in the silent Phantom of the Opera where Lon Chaney’s mask is pulled off, or the last five minutes of The Vanishing (the original Dutch thriller, not the lame American remake)? It’s cool to see 1931’s The Public Enemy on the list, but at No. 2? The James Cagney death scene cited here isn’t even the most shocking, moment in this movie; that honor goes to the iconic moment earlier in the film where Cagney shoves a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face.
The second list is the Onion AV Club’s countdown of the most underrated films of the past decade. I’m not yet sold on The Brown Bunny, and both American Psycho and Office Space are both too beloved by large cults to count as underrated, but I’m happy to see on the list such films as The Underneath, Dead Man, Starship Troopers, and especially Josie and the Pussycats. (Yeah, you’re snickering, but it was a merciless anticorporate satire with some excellent tunes sung by Letters to Cleo’s Kay Hanley. Any movie that has Carson Daly playing himself as a Manchurian Candidate-style brainwashed killer has its heart in the right place.)
Watch the movies on this list back to back and you’ll see an alternate, subversive, underground history of the turn of the millennium.
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The eyeball slicing scene in Un Chien Andalou is so gross. My eyes are hurting at the thought of it.
There is a similar scene in Ingmar Bergman’s masterly “Cried and Whispers” with Liv Ullman and a piece of glass. Granted, the ear-cutting in “Resevoir” is unforgettable, but how about the adrenaline-pumping scene in “Pulp Fiction”? Also, Marchello Mastroianni whipping back the personnages of his libido to the rousing tune of Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries,” Glenn Close tripping off to derisive aristocratic boos at the end of “Dangerous Liaisons,” Burt Reynold’s losing his fingers over the in-her-prime Rachel Ward in the oft-forgotten classic, “Sharky’s Machine;” or, more contemporary-film-minded, Tilda Swenson and Benjamin Bratt’s impossibly disgusting “spoon scene” in “Thumbsucker.”
I don’t get an article from the underrated films link. I get the menu sidebar and search function, but the main page, even after trying a search, remains a blank green. Is anyone else having troubles?
Shocking, as in I didn’t see that coming, has to be in A Beautiful Mind, when you realize John Nash has hallucinated several characters. tres cool.
The ending of the Usual Suspects! Keyser Sose. I agree about the Sixth Sense and A Beautiful Mind both being shockers.
Primal Fear has to be one of the most underrated AND shocking movies – Richard Gere and Edward Norton at their absolute best, and the ending is spectacular.
I agree with someone below that Primal Fear is greatly underrated and has a great shocking twist!!
I am happy to see some of my personal guilty pleasures honored as underrated like That Thing You Do and I even really enjoyed Vanilla Sky including the Spanish version, Abre Los Ojos.
I don’t however agree about a couple…Unbreakable and Birth. Both painfully boring. Not the worst movies ever, but boooring.
I have to agree with the Josie and the Pussycats inclusion. All the product placement is hysterical and gets me right where I work.
You want a great movie?
Watch Colossus: The Forbin Project.
Great flick!
They should remake it with Harrison Ford.
Ok, Unbreakable. Seriuosly, I screamed for my life back at the end of that. Bad, bad movie!!
The scene from “Cries and Whispers” features Ingid Thulin and a shard of glass.
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I would like to post another shocking movie/drama that has a very cult following..
The film is called ‘Threads’ & deals with the subject of nuclear holocaust.
It was made in 1984 & deals with the UK city of Sheffield. From the start you follow a family (until the bomb drops)… from there you gradually realize that no-one wins in a war of nuclear proportions.
This film does not have any hero’s & the ‘heroine’ (if you can call her that) has her own road with a baby on the way.
I have seen many horror films, to the point where I can probably predict whats about to happen. None has shocked me more than this film.
Try it & see… get through the first 40 minutes & I guarantee you will be gripped, sickened & you might even question yourselves.
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