Extreme / Transgressive

WATCHcult

Absurd

D'Amato remaking his own Anthropophagous as a Halloween knock-off. Grim and dull in equal measure.

WATCHcult

Alucarda

Mexican nunsploitation with an actual argument, and everybody in it screams for eighty minutes.

WATCHcult

Angst

An Austrian film about a killer released from prison, shot with a camera rig nobody had used before.

WATCHknown

Apostle

Gareth Evans doing folk horror with the fight choreography left in. Much nastier than expected.

WATCHobscure

Axe

68 minutes, shot in nine days, and oddly melancholy for something on a banned list.

WATCHcanon

Barbarian

Go in knowing nothing. The structure is the point and every synopsis ruins it.

WATCHcanon

Battle Royale

A class of Japanese schoolchildren are dropped on an island and made to kill each other. Kinji Fukasaku's last major film.

WATCHcanon

Beau Is Afraid

Ari Aster's three-hour anxiety odyssey, and it is horror only in the sense that being alive is.

WATCHknown

Blood Feast

The first gore film. Shot in four days for 24,500 dollars and it looks it, which is half the appeal.

WATCHobscure

Blood Rites

Andy Milligan shooting in Staten Island with a hand-held Auricon. An acquired taste nobody acquires.

WATCHknown

Bone Tomahawk

A slow western for 90 minutes, then one scene people never forget. You will know it when it starts.

WATCHcanon

Braindead

The bloodiest film ever made at the time, and it is a comedy about a man and his mother.

WATCHknown

Bring Her Back

The Philippou brothers' second, and considerably harder to sit through than the first. Sally Hawkins is the reason.

WATCHknown

Cannibal Ferox

Sold as the most violent film ever made. Lenzi chasing Deodato and killing more animals to do it.

WATCHcanon

Cannibal Holocaust

Found footage nineteen years before Blair Witch, and six animals actually died to make its point.

WATCHcult

Censor

A BBFC examiner during the video nasties panic starts to come apart. Essential viewing for this site specifically.

WATCHknown

Climax

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

WATCHcanon

Day of the Dead

The bleakest of Romero's trilogy, hated on release, and Tom Savini's best work.

WATCHknown

Demons

Lamberto Bava, produced by Argento, and it is a film about a cinema audience being turned into monsters inside the cinema.

WATCHcult

Don't Go in the House

A man with a flamethrower and a steel room. The mother is the point and the film knows it.

obscure

Don't Go Near the Park

Cursed cave dwellers from 12,000 BC eating people in modern Los Angeles. Incoherent throughout.

WATCHcult

Dumplings

An ageing actress buys rejuvenating dumplings from a woman in a housing estate. You know what is in them.

WATCHcanon

Evil Dead II

Half remake, half sequel, and it turns the first film into slapstick without losing the nastiness.

WATCHcanon

Evil Dead Rise

Moves the cabin to a Los Angeles tower block. The cheese grater is the sequence people talk about.

WATCHobscure

Exposé

The only British film on the DPP list. A novelist, a typist and Fiona Richmond in a farmhouse.

WATCHknown

Faces of Death

A mondo compilation whose most famous scenes are staged. Sold as real and marketed on being banned.

WATCHobscure

Fight for Your Life

A home invasion built entirely on racial abuse. Genuinely hard to watch and not for craft reasons.

WATCHknown

Fresh

The title card arrives 33 minutes in, which tells you what kind of film it intends to be.

WATCHknown

Frontier(s)

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

WATCHobscure

Frozen Scream

Every line is dubbed, including scenes with nobody talking. Almost hypnotically incompetent.

cult

Gestapo's Last Orgy

Nazisploitation, and the tag exists because the shelf gets documented, not because this is worth time.

WATCHknown

Green Room

A punk band plays the wrong venue. Jeremy Saulnier does not flinch and neither does the film.

WATCHcanon

Hellraiser

Clive Barker adapting his own novella, and the Cenobites are on screen for about eight minutes.

WATCHknown

High Tension

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

WATCHcult

Hounds of Love

A Perth couple abduct a teenage girl, and the film is about the fracture between the two of them.

WATCHcult

Human Experiments

A women-in-prison film with a brainwashing subplot. Linda Haynes deserved better material.

WATCHknown

Ichi the Killer

Miike at his most gleefully unpleasant, and the sickbag handed out at Toronto was a marketing stunt that worked.

WATCHknown

Infinity Pool

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

WATCHknown

I Saw the Devil

A secret agent catches a serial killer, releases him, and does it again. And again.

WATCHcult

Island of Death

Mastorakis watched Texas Chain Saw, counted the perversions and wrote a list. It shows.

WATCHknown

I Spit on Your Grave

Ebert called it the worst film ever made. Clover argued the camera is with her throughout. Both cases are live.

WATCHcult

Jigoku

A student's guilt drags everyone he knows into a Buddhist hell, and the last third is that hell in detail.

WATCHcult

Killer Nun

Anita Ekberg as a morphine-addicted nun in a hospital. Nunsploitation with an actual performance in it.

WATCHcult

Late Night Trains

Last House on a train, scored by Ennio Morricone, which is a sentence that should not be true.

WATCHcult

Love Camp 7

The film that started the nazisploitation cycle. Lee Frost, a backlot, and no defence available.

WATCHknown

Man Bites Dog

A Belgian film crew follow a serial killer and gradually start holding the equipment for him.

WATCHknown

Mandy

Nicolas Cage, a chainsaw duel and Jóhann Jóhannsson's last score. Not for everyone and not trying to be.

WATCHknown

Maniac

Joe Spinell wrote himself the lead and Tom Savini blew his own head off on camera.

WATCHobscure

Mardi Gras Massacre

An Aztec-obsessed killer in New Orleans. A Blood Feast remake in all but name, and slower.

WATCHcanon

Oldboy

A man is imprisoned in a room for fifteen years with no explanation, released, and given five days to find out why.

WATCHcult

Pieces

A chainsaw killer on a Boston campus, made by Spaniards, and it is gloriously incoherent.

WATCHknown

Raw

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

WATCHcanon

Ready or Not

A bride versus her new in-laws and their family obligation. Very funny and mean.

WATCHknown

Re-Animator

The funniest Lovecraft adaptation ever made, which is not what anybody expected.

WATCHknown

Santa Sangre

Jodorowsky's most coherent film, which is a comparative statement. A circus, an armless mother and a son who lends her his hands.