The films

Franco women-in-prison, made fast and cheap. On the list for the category rather than the content.

Cannibals who look like they were recruited outside the catering truck. Almost impressively bad.

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Devil Hunter

Franco at his most indifferent. Ninety minutes of jungle and a monster with bulging eyes.

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Piggy

Spanish, a bullied teenager, and a moral problem she is left holding alone.

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Trouble Every Day

Claire Denis made a vampire film with no vampires, and it was booed at Cannes.

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Daughters of Darkness

Elizabeth Báthory in an empty Ostend hotel out of season, and it is the most elegant vampire film ever made.

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Cemetery Man

The last great Italian horror film, and it is a romantic comedy about a man who shoots the dead for a living.

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La Llorona

A Guatemalan dictator on trial for genocide is haunted in his own home. The weeping woman as historical reckoning.

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Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

The real Santa Claus is a horned thing frozen in a Finnish mountain, and a drilling company has found it.

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The Loved Ones

An Australian teenager says no to a girl for the school dance, and she holds her own dance instead.

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A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

Fulci's best giallo, a fever of LSD dreams and a murder that may not have happened.

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Flesh for Frankenstein

Shot in 3D with Udo Kier and a spleen. Warhol's name on it, Paul Morrissey's film.

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Frontier(s)

New French Extremity meets Texas Chain Saw, against the backdrop of a real French election.

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Them

A French couple terrorised in a house at night, 77 minutes, and it claims to be true.

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Bacurau

A remote Brazilian village disappears from the map and finds itself hunted for sport. Weird, angry and unclassifiable.

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Black Sabbath

Three Bava stories introduced by Boris Karloff, and the middle one is the most frightening thing Bava shot.

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Inside

The most extreme film on this site. A pregnant woman, her house, and a woman with scissors.

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Four Flies on Grey Velvet

The third of Argento's Animal Trilogy, and the least seen because it was legally locked away for decades.

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Revenge

Reworks the structure with the assault largely off screen, which removes nothing it needs.

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The Cat o' Nine Tails

The middle of Argento's Animal Trilogy, and the one he liked least. A blind man and a reporter chase a killer.

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The Vanishing

A man spends three years looking for his girlfriend and is finally offered the answer on one condition.

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Blood and Black Lace

The giallo template, and still the best-looking film in the category.

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Climax

A dance troupe, spiked sangria, and Gaspar Noé's camera refusing to cut. Unbearable by design.

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Infinity Pool

Brandon Cronenberg again. Wealthy tourists, a legal loophole and Mia Goth having a wonderful time.

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Thelma

A Norwegian student with a repressive religious upbringing discovers her desire has physical consequences.

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Possession

A divorce film with a tentacle in it. Adjani's U-Bahn scene is the most extreme acting on this site.

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High Tension

The film that named New French Extremity in the popular imagination, and its ending is still being argued about.

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Vampyr

Dreyer shooting through gauze at a plot that barely exists. Closer to a bad dream than a film.

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Raw

A vegetarian vet student develops an appetite. Julia Ducournau's debut and a genuine coming-of-age film.

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Martyrs

Two films stapled together, and it takes its argument about suffering completely seriously.

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Eyes Without a Face

A surgeon steals faces for his disfigured daughter. Filmed with a tenderness that makes it far worse.

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Les Diaboliques

The film Hitchcock tried to buy and missed. Ends with a title card asking you not to spoil it.

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Titane

Won the Palme d'Or. A film about a woman, a car and a grieving fireman, and it is not a comedy.

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Irréversible

Runs backwards and uses infrasound to make you physically unwell. About 200 walked out at Cannes.

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The Others

A twist that survives a second viewing, which is rarer than it sounds.

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The Substance

Body horror about how the industry treats women over fifty, with Demi Moore doing the bravest work of her career.