Movies That Went Too Far

The movie industry is no stranger to pushing things too far: more explosions, more gunfire, more sex, more gore, and everything else you could possibly add for the sake of capturing the attention of the viewer. We've assembled a group of movies for you to wince at—all with scenes that have become unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.

Scenes where somebody eats poop are always stomach-churning — even in Caddyshack, where everyone knows the poop is a candy bar, you still try not to eat while watching. Now imagine a scene where the actor is consuming real, actual feces. That's what happened in Pink Flamingos, if you're wondering what movie to avoid on a weak stomach.

The actor is question is drag queen Divine, who stars as Babs Johnson, the "filthiest person alive." At the end of the film, after straight-up executing pretenders to her dirty throne, Babs decides to prove her filthiness by eating dog feces fresh from the pooch's booty. You can go dig up the video if you like, but, you know ... why? The scene technically breaks the fourth wall, as the narrator calls Divine "the filthiest actress in the world," which makes sense since the feces was 100 percent legit, warm, and stinky.

The scene became so infamous that it threatened to overshadow everything else Divine did. According to a biography about him written by his mother, Divine routinely encountered people who insisted he was a coprophile who ate poop all the time and who loved to talk about it at parties. In reality, he insisted, he only did it that one time and only because the script told him to. Why he didn't just use fake poo like so many practical jokers, who knows. Probably most viewers would've found that more than filthy enough, but you can't argue with the advertising payoff.

Part of what makes The Shining so scary is how scared Shelley Duvall appeared throughout it. She was so convincing as Jack's terrified, victimized wife, you'd swear she was scared out of her wits for real. As it turns out, that's because she was, and Stanley Kubrick made her that way.

According to Duvall herself, via the book The Complete Kubrick, "Stanley pushed me and prodded me further than I've ever been pushed before. It's the most difficult role I've ever had to play." It was so difficult, in fact, that she spent the brunt of her filming time sick from stress. Meanwhile, co-star Jack Nicholson, in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures, said the insane perfectionist Kubrick made Duvall film the bat scene — where Nicholson went full-on crazy, prompting Duvall's traumatized character to hit him with a baseball bat — a ridiculous 127 times. That meant dealing with Nicholson's craziness while screaming her head off 127 times, and it stressed her out so much that she reportedly discovered her hair falling out in clumps. All that for a five-minute scene that was probably perfect by the second take.

No wonder Duvall so eagerly accepted roles like Olive Oyl in Popeye afterward. It's way less stressful to watch Robin Williams eat spinach and go "ah-guh-guh-guh-guh-guh-guh" 127 times.

David Fincher's Fight Club from 1999 had its fair share of scenes that went too far. It spliced single frames of man junk into various parts of the movie, and its underground fights had just enough meat-smacking oomph to them that viewers felt every blow. Edward Norton's unnamed, everyman protagonist had a lot of pent-up rage against the world that he was finally starting to let trickle out after learning the ways of the travelling soap salesman, Tyler Durden. During one point of the movie, Norton's character got into a fight with an unnamed member of their crew. This character, played by Jared Leto and referred to as "Angel Face" in the movie's credits, got his face pounded into oblivion by Norton, going well beyond the established rules of Fight Club. Norton's fists bashing into poor Angel Face's once-pristine visage until it was a bloody pulp of bruises and broken teeth left viewers stupefied by the narrator's sadistic, relentless assault.

The "butter scene" in Last Tango In Paris is hard enough to watch as is: Marlon Brando, angered that Maria Schneider's character wants to end their affair, attempts to rape her using a stick of butter for lube. She kills him for his actions, but that doesn't make the scene any less disturbing. It becomes far more skeezy, however, once you realize the scene was all too real.

As Schneider herself had claimed for years (and director Bernardo Bertolucci admitted in 2013, two years after Schneider died), that butter-rape scene was not in the original script. While plenty of movies feature script deviations, this one wasn't discussed with Schneider at all. Brando and Bertolucci created it on their own, and didn't tell Schneider until minutes before they were ready to shoot. She had no time to say no, and judging by what she's said in the years since, she absolutely would have. Her screaming and crying during the scene was 100 percent real, and even though Brando didn't actually do anything sexual, she still says she felt "a little raped."

It didn't help that neither Brando nor Bertolucci apologized to her afterward, probably because neither thought anything was wrong. Brando assured her, before shooting the scene, "It's just a movie," while Bertolucci felt guilty-yet-proud, saying, "I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated." Mission accomplished, at the low, low cost of all human decency and respect.

It's near-impossible to film a non-disturbing rape scene, and Irreversible didn't even try. On the contrary, the film seemingly set out to make the most graphic, cringe-worthy rape scene imaginable.

At the start of the film, Monica Bellucci's character is raped and her assailant is murdered. The rest of the film — provided you can stomach any more — is the story told backward, like a ridiculously difficult-to-watch Memento. The rape itself, while obviously scripted and fictional, is among the most harrowing ever put to film. Even Bellucci herself admitted (via the Scottish Record and Daily) she can't watch it. "When I see [it] on screen, I can't handle it. I turn my eyes away," she claimed. It's not because she was tricked into doing it, a la Last Tango In Paris. It's simply because the scene is that disturbing, not to mention long. The filmed version goes nine minutes, but previous takes went as long as 12.

The film's reception was almost unanimously negative (one critic likened it to "having someone rest their dirtiest finger on the back of your throat"), and over 200 people walked out of its showing at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival), but Bellucci is proud of the scene. Irreversible's director, Gaspar Noe, is too. He argued, "[The rape] has to be as powerful as it can be, to be disgusting enough, to be useful. If you do a movie with a rape and don't show it, you hide the point." He made his point, many times over.

A Serbian Film is filled to the brim with scenes that are better off forgotten. It tells the story of a near-retired porn star who is at the end of his rope financially and decides to film some kind of artsy fartsy film that he wasn't used to making. For some reason, the art film's creators needed a man of his "talents," and it isn't until he reaches the set when you find out why. The art project is actually a snuff film filled with scenes of pedophilia, necrophilia, rape, and all kinds of horrific things no one should ever get any kind of enjoyment out of watching, or filming. Director and writer Srdan Spasojevic claims the film's controversial and sexual violence is a symbolism of the Serbian people's horrific mistreatment by their government. Spasojevic also claims he wanted to create the opposite of the dull, predictable, and uninspired flicks made by his countrymen. Unfortunately, the rest of the world didn't care for this graphic metaphor or the director's reasoning, as it has been banned in multiple countries and pulled from the shelves of most major movie retailers.

Danish director Lars Trier is accustomed to controversy with the likes of Melancholia and Nymphomaniac. But his movie Antichrist is the project that pushed viewers to the very brink of their sanity. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg portray a couple who mourn the loss of their toddler, who fell to his death while they were getting hot and heavy in the bedroom. The father is a therapist who decides to help his tramautized lover by taking her to a cabin in the woods (because that always turns out well). The two engage in forceful lovemaking and all kinds of sadomasochistic encounters, and the mother ultimately goes off the deep end. Gainsbourg's character tortures herself and her lover in all kinds of ballsy, appalling ways, but the part that'll make you cry occurs when Dafoe's crown jewels get smashed to bits by a giant block of wood. And yes, things actually do get worse from that point forward.