Warning: Gross imagery and descriptions follow. Obviously!
The human body is a mystery. A mass of tissue, muscles, vascular systems, and 70% water? Are we just walking flesh balloons filled with liquid? None of it makes sense, yet I'm here typing these words. There will forever be a fascination with our earthly vessels, and that curiosity extends to horror cinema. Filmmakers who embrace "body horror" analyze our insides by inventing horrible ways to push bones to their breaking point, or rearranging our figure to nearly unidentifiable levels.
As we'll explore in the list below, the body horror subgenre is both existential and graphic in equal handfuls. Special effects designers have come up with the most horrible tortures and traumas our bodies can endure, leaving audiences cringing in their seats. From 1950s titles like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Fly to 2024's The Substance, body horror is always en vogue and will continue to push the limitations of physical forms. With that in mind, let's take a look at the best body horror movies ever made.
25. Dumplings
Fruit Chan’s savory Hong Kong midnighter Dumplings dishes body horror of a different flavor. An aging former actress chases eternal attractiveness by eating Aunt Mei’s fetus-stuffed dumplings. As Aunt Mei’s customer demands stronger remedies, abortions and “fresher” fetuses become the next move. Chan doesn’t save viewers from bloody realism as Aunt Mei performs backroom operations, shows ingredients being prepped, and doesn’t shy away from the grotesqueries of the chef’s recipes. I think chopped-up fetuses stuffed into doughy pockets counts as some twisted as [bleep] body horror?
24. Taxidermia
I don’t have nearly enough time to unpack the generational Hungarian trauma that flows through György Pálfi’s Taxidermia. The film, following the lineage of three men, spotlights a horny WWII soldier, a Cold War-era speed-eater with big dreams, and a modern-day taxidermist who’s dangerously dedicated to his craft. Through each chapter (structured like an anthology), Pálfi uses bodily horrors to convey gluttonous themes that leave us retching. From a sex scene atop butcher’s scraps to competitive eaters emptying their stomachs, Taxidermia might not be obscenely gory, but that doesn't mean it saves its audiences from feeling queasy or overwhelmed by Pálfi’s sometimes cartoonish, other times morbid treatment of his characters’ meatsuits.
23. The Ugly Stepsister
I won’t lie. I tentatively had The Substance in this spot, but ultimately decided that while Monstro Elisasue is a gnarly monster, and the handoff between character versions in that film is creepy, The Ugly Stepsister is the closest I’ve ever been to vomiting in a movie theater.
Emilie Blichfeldt’s twisted take on Cinderella is more like Cinder-Hell-a for its main character, Lea Myren’s Elvira. She’s trying to beautify herself for “Prince Charming,” but given the period setting, surgeries and remedies are archaic. Nose jobs are a chisel and hammer, while weight loss comes from tapeworms. Elvira’s body is maimed, augmented, and tortured all in the name of beauty pageant standards, which can be both hilarious and unforgiving. Blichfeldt sustains a darkly comedic tone, but then we get to the film’s finale and, well, let’s just say the tapeworms have to come out eventually. It’s a nauseating display of bodily horrors mixed with excellent sound design of squelches and gurgles in the worst way (compliment), and that’s why The Ugly Stepsister overtook The Substance.
22. Xtro
What the actual hell is this movie? Xtro feels like a grab bag as toy soldiers and clown playthings come to life, or a panther appears to maul someone, yadda yadda. So why’s it here? Because there’s some fantastic body horror by way of alien pregnancies and gestation periods, watched at rapid speed in full, and other aliens-turned-to-humans effects that embrace the reconfiguration of our skeletal insides. Xtro narrowly escaped becoming only the second British-made video nasty, thanks to the especially “offensive” birthing sequence. It’s a wild ride that doesn’t make much sense at times, but as for its body horror pedigree? You bet Xtro has enough surprises in store.
21. Exte: Hair Extensions
Are you afraid of the tiny bobbleheaded hair man? Well, you might be after watching Exte: Hair Extensions! This absurd Japanese take on body horror is about (in the simplest sense) possessed hair extensions that kill the new wearers. Visuals play off popular J-Horror scenes where neverending strands of black hair are pulled from gagging throats, except here hair spills out of mouths, eye sockets, ears, any opening. As the film gets crazier, you’ll encounter what’s basically “The Hair Man,” a final boss battle I’d rather save for your discovery. Exte: Hair Extensions is batshit crazy even by J-Horror standards, which is the reason why it makes the cut.
20. Tusk
Kevin Smith’s Tusk is certifiably grade-A body horror. Justin Long’s arrogant podcaster is turned into a walrus through painful body modifications, as Michael Parks’ retired seaman brings his best friend, “Mr. Tusk,” back to life. Long’s final form, this chunker of a walrus stitched together with human skin, is a Frankensteinian abomination of nature with tusks fashioned from the podcaster’s bones. It’s a goofy film at times, on par with Smith’s sense of humor, but the quilt-like design of Long’s animal costume is nightmare fuel. It’s strange, sickening, and unique, all in equal measures.
19. Cabin Fever
Eli Roth’s feature debut is known as a sickness-based horror movie, but that doesn’t mean it’s not body horror. Cabin Fever is about college students celebrating October break in a remote cabin who contract a deadly flesh-eating virus, and holy heck, does Roth make our skin crawl. Maybe it’s Marcy shaving scabs in the bathtub, or any other representation of disintegrating flesh. The pulpy, reddish mess that’s left behind as the virus eats through victims is vile with emphasis, from floater corpses to chewed-apart doggie leftovers. Yeah, this is definitely made by the guy behind Hostel.
18. Slither
How can we not include this 2000s horror-comedy about bloated bodies and slithery aliens? James Gunn’s Slither is a modern update on the classic science fiction blueprint of meteorites bringing danger to Earth, filled with Gunn’s B-movie sensibilities. Michael Rooker transforms into a lumpy tentacled version of himself as a taste of Gunn’s body horrors, or there’s the poor woman who balloons to an exaggerated size, filled with baby slitherers. The adolescent wrigglers choose victims by sliding into their mouths, which alone is enough to make us uneasy. Gunn’s fun-loving nature skyrockets Slither’s entertainment value, but the filmmaker’s early days working for Troma are evident through gratuitous and slobbery effects that have us cackling with glee.
17. Videodrome
Do I really have to explain why Videodrome is on this list? Or any David Cronenberg title?
The “King of Venereal Horror” hails the new flesh in his satirical, sadomasochistic ode to perversities broadcast to the masses. The flesh gun is just an amuse-bouche compared to the other body horrors that await. The way James Woods digs into his stomach slit, or accepts a Betamax tape like he’s a tape-player, stand out. Then, of course, there’s the finale where a man bursts from the inside-out as tumors emerge. Cronenberg, you spoil us.
16. Brain Damage
As a nearly decade-long New Yorker, I’ve gotta give Frank Henenlotter a little love. I’m choosing Brain Damage because, well, it does horrible things to bodies. Henenlotter’s self-proclaimed ode to Faust is about one man’s free ride on a parasitic organism’s trippy hallucinatory fluid. Between the colorful auras and surreal unrealities our protagonist sees, there’s heaps of gore thanks to lil’ old Aylmer, the phallic parasite with a Jeffrey Combs-like voice (John Zacherle). It’s a soothing, calming tone, but don’t expect body horror visuals to soothe or calm.
Look no further than when Aylmer’s victim Brian tries to go cold turkey in a repulsive bathroom. Brian’s losing it, and starts poking inside his ear. After yanking out a blood-drippy length of tissue, his ear pops off. Bloody goop starts waterfalling out of the wound as he howls in agony with a Bruce Campbell quality to his comedic delivery. ‘Tis but a taste of the sludgy, mucky imagery of Brain Damage.
15. Body Melt
Remember 1000 Ways to Die on SpikeTV? Well, Body Melt is like 1000 Body Horror Ways to Die.
Philip Brophy’s Australian horror commentary about healthy living goes horrendously goopy when the residents of suburban complex Pebbles Court become unknowing test subjects for supplement pills with abhorrent results. Tongues engorge like tentacles, ribs slip out of torsos, and a whole slew of other outstandingly graphic side effects occur. Director Brophy and co-writer Rod Bishop come from an experimental art and music background, once part of the Melbourne collective → ↑ →, and that experimentation makes Body Melt so exquisitely unpredictable. If it can happen to a body, it’ll happen here.
14. The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)
While I like The Human Centipede (First Sequence) more than Tom Six’s depraved and disgusting sequel, I cannot deny this continuation’s bodily horrors. Enter Laurence R. Harvey as the … er… complicated Martin Lomax, a superfan of the first movie who wants his own 12-person centipede. The tollbooth attendant’s methods are much cruder—he’s no surgeon. Martin severs knee ligaments and knocks teeth out with a hammer, then opts for staples and duct tape to assemble his ass-to-mouth monstrosity. The disturbed loner is much more forceful, cramming funnels down throats to force-feed cream of mushroom soup, or injecting laxatives to cause a chain of violent defecations that will make you question every life choice that led you to watch The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence).
But it’s more than the centipede. It’s Martin masturbating with sandpaper. It’s the newborn baby crushed under a vehicle’s acceleration pedal. It’s the tongue removal, or the anal mutilation. There’s surgical precision to Six’s first film, where this sequel is the equivalent of using the services of a butcher with a 1-star Yelp rating. Intentionally, of course.
13. From Beyond
Humans are such easy prey, in that Stuart Gordon knows how to sell body horror to the masses.
From Beyond is a different beast than Gordon’s Re-Animator, pitting Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton against science fiction unknowns. There’s a Lovecraftian feel as scientists dare peek beyond reality, but are mutated into unsightly shapes of muscle and tissue with engorged pineal glands. Hazy pink filters wash over mucusy, inhuman creatures with elongated necks and slimy appendages, vibing on fluorescent hues. Everything gets bizarro when bodies intertwine and start fighting each other from the inside—heads separating into twos that gnash at one another. It’s Gordon doing what Gordon does best, and earns our respect on this list.
12. Re-Animator
Back so soon, Mr. Gordon? Re-Animator is a masterful horror comedy that might be what you describe as a gassed-up morgue party. You have to compliment Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, and David Gale for how their performances bring Gordon’s kooky back-from-the-dead flick to life. There’s a slapstick charm to a headless Dr. Hill fighting back, or later scenes when reanimated corpses are blundering around, knocking medical equipment over. Gordon delights in playing with dead bodies in different stages of autopsies, as well as Herbert West’s experimentations. It’s all very ’80s and wacky, but that doesn’t negate the fact that Gordon’s a power player in the body horror arena.
11. Teeth
If Teeth were shown in sex-ed classes, the world would be a different place.
Jess Weixler stars as Dawn O'Keefe, a teenage abstinence spokesperson turned manhunter thanks to her vagina dentata. Men don’t need to be afraid—Dawn only bites their dongs off if she’s not feeling relaxed or consenting. But Teeth is a horror movie, and it’s loaded with dismembered members. Dawn handles the abusive men of her hometown one by one, doling out her unique brand of sexual punishment. It’s a fantastic film driven by womanly rage that bites back at patriarchal evils and brings the body horror, mixing in vigilante justice as a treat.
10. Hellraiser
Clive Barker’s body horror sights are stupendous in the original Hellraiser adaptation. The Cenobites are these sadomasochistic explorers—demons to some, angels to others—with body modifications like pins in heads or exposed gums. Then there are the “pleasures” shown to those who complete the iconic puzzle box, leading to psychosexual tortures that treat punishment as euphoria. Hedonist Frank Cotton feels cold chains tear his flesh apart, like drying pieces of leather stretched to their limits. With all the flayed corpses, chunks of tissue, and the Cenobite’s handiwork strewn about Hellraiser, its repulsive reputation is handily earned.
9. Meatball Machine (2005)
After Tetsuo: The Iron Man but before Tokyo Gore Police, there was Yūdai Yamaguchi and Jun'ichi Yamamoto’s Meatball Machine. The “tokusatsu” horror film—a live-action film that heavily uses practical special effects—stylizes robotic, almost mech-like body horror visuals to tell a tale of aliens overtaking human bodies. If you get “infected,” a metallic box spawns a baseball-sized creature that taps into your nervous system and uses you as a fighting machine. You lose identity, becoming a repulsive mess of rubbery tubing, newfound weaponry, and disfigured flesh that’s now silver and greasy.
Its homage to Tetsuo is obvious, and you can see where Tokyo Gore Police is an easy comparison. There are so many gross juices as a lonely factory worker watches the love of his life becoming one of these extraterrestrial battle bots. Then you’ve got the squishy insides of the alien’s cockpit, brutal death scenes as fighters lose, and the hallucinogenic scenes where hands come out of raw wounds like someone’s hiding behind guts. It’s a blast from start to finish, and a worthy addition to any body horror list.
8. Altered States
Did you expect to find William Hurt’s feature debut on this list? That should make more sense when you find out it’s a Ken Russell movie (adapted from Paddy Chayefsky’s science fiction novel of the same name).
Altered States is a psychotropic dive into planes of consciousness. Hurt plays a psychopathologist and tenured Harvard professor dabbling with shared hallucinatory experiences who ingests a ceremonial concoction of mushrooms and shrubs that sends him on more than a vision quest. As Hurt’s intellectual uses deprivation tanks to unlock his body’s deepest primordial connections, so does his body start to devolve, with x-rays reading gorilla traits. Russell subjects Hurt to pulsating effects as his skin puffs and retracts, forming new shapes and testing the limits of existence. It’s all very unsettling and unnatural, until a finale that re-atomizes him beyond our world.
7. Tokyo Gore Police
Japanese horror doesn’t get more buck-wild and bizarre than Tokyo Gore Police. Yoshihiro Nishimura’s tokusatsu masterpiece tells of a dystopia where a virus turns people into Engineers fitted with biomechanical weapons that emerge from sustained injuries. Lose an arm? It grows back as this raw tissue claw you can use to snap Engineer Hunters in half. Lose the top half of your head? Your eyes grow back as cannons, and your brain stays exposed. It’s a magnificent display of battlefield repugnance hinged on sadism and fetish modifications, like a person stretched into the shape of a chair that [checks notes] pisses on bystanders.
Tokyo Gore Police keeps the graphic body horrors coming, whether characters are drawn and quartered, stream rain showers of blood, or women who turn their bottom half into a creature’s mouth. Just when you think you know what to expect, Nishimura lands another knockout visual. If you like your body horror with the insanity of a Japanese midnighter, look no further.
6. The Blob (1988)
Ah, yes, the first of three 1980s horror movies I hold as the decade’s “Holy Trinity” in terms of outstanding practical special effects.
Chuck Russell’s The Blob remake marked the breakout for special effects guru Tony Gardner. As the pinkish blob would attack unlucky Californians, the digestion process showed in grueling detail. Look no further than poor Paul, whose body is decomposed under an acidic filminess that’s transparent enough to watch his flesh sizzle off and bones deteriorate until he resembles Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” painting—except way grosser. Gardner has too much fun not only mobilizing the film’s blob, but also ensuring each bodily breakdown leaves you wincing just as hard as the last.
5. Street Trash (1987)
You can’t talk about body horror without J. Michael Muro’s syrupy ode to Brooklyn, Street Trash. The concept is simple: If you drink toxic Tenafly Viper liquor, you melt into a colorful slop.
You’ve probably seen the iconic clip of a hobo turning into sludge while on a toilet. As he screams in pain, his body disintegrates as brittle bones snap, flesh flops into a goopy mound, and vibrant blues, greens, and purples swirl into a gunky discolored viscera. Then you’ve got the detached penis keepaway, explosive reactions to Tenafly Viper, and countless more instances of rainbow-bright oozes as bodies liquify. Street Trash has its fun with body horror, but don’t presume it plays safe.
4. The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter’s The Thing is a highlight reel of bodily horrors thanks to an assimilating extraterrestrial organism. Rob Bottin's creature effects are on full display whenever another victim is outed. Is it even possible to pick a favorite? Norris’ body becomes a massive gobbler that chomps off arms, or Palmer’s head becomes a bubbly, puss-filled mess before splitting open into a reptilian-like mouth. All the human-Thing hybrids are creatively unforgettable as they rupture, burst, and evolve into hellish new forms, cementing The Thing as part of the golden standard that would define practical-forward ’80s horror films.
3. The Fly (1986)
Another Cronenberg pick? Stop playing around, there’s no such thing as a best-of body horror list without 1986’s The Fly remake. Special effects artist Chris Walas and make-up artist Stephan Dupuis won an Academy Award for their “Brundlefly” creation, hiding Jeff Goldblum under pustules and insectoid deformities. Visual gags involving spit-up and sticky excretions give the bodily mutations an over-the-top ickiness, while Goldblum eccentrically owns his character’s transformation. It’s one of the best examples of practical effects in the ’80s, and still stands as a benchmark in the effects community—Cronenberg at his buzziest, y’all.
2. Tetsuo: The Iron Man
Tetsuo: The Iron Man is unlike … well, nearly everything. Shinya Tsukamoto's experimental Japanese fever-dream is like a steelworker’s fetish video as an unnamed protagonist turns into a metallic monster. We watch as the man’s scabs start shimmering, his penis turns into a whirring drillbit, and more modifications remove any semblance of his human form. The film is largely non-conversational and relies on imagery, but golly, does that not matter. Few horror films do exactly what it says on the tin with Tsukamoto’s emphasis and commitment; an avant-garde ironworks freakshow that’s greasy, gonzo, and kinda romantic in the end… somehow?
1. Society
This list is a smorgasbord of body horror delights, but has anything topped Society’s “shunting?” Brian Yuzna turns conjoined commentaries about elitism into a writhing mass of high-society sleazebags absorbing into one another. Hands reach out of now rubbery mouths, stretched-out lips suction onto another’s torso, and the term “butthead” takes on new meaning. I mean, a character saves himself by pulling a “shunter” inside out—and that’s hardly the most offensive imagery Society serves its audience. Yuzna goes crazy with bodily juices, cartoonishly elasticsed human figures, and the film’s orgy of body-melding pleasures. It might be a generic body horror favorite, and that’s for a reason.
What are you favorite body horror movies? Is that an oxymoron? Let's discuss in the comments!
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