Top 10 Body Horror Flicks

Body horror is one of the most fascinating subcategories of horror. These films typically deal with fears of our body being violated through mechanisms such as disease, mutilation, medical experimentation, sex, mutation, or just unnatural contortions. Movies of this ilk became more prominent with the advancement of special effects in the late 70s and early 80s and the emergence of auteurs like David Cronenberg, Stuart Gordon, and Clive Barker. The Japanese also have been particularly keen on warped depictions of the human anatomy.

Body horror films tend to illustrate the violent collision of technology and biology, and contextualize our fascination with the next step in our evolution as a species, as well as the physical manifestation of psychological or societal anxieties. The body horror film’s nature as a mashup of the physical and the metaphysical provides it latitude to take on many forms: a gross-out special effects showcase, a psychological thriller, a slapstick comedy, a sober arthouse piece.

Because of this, there’s a pretty huge range of movies on this list. For the sake of variety, I’ve limited the entries to only one per director, lest this become a list of David Cronenberg’s 10 best films.

10. Leviathan (1989; Dir: George P. Cosmatos)

There are “better” movies than Leviathan, but the horrors of the ocean inevitably affect me. The crew of an undersea mining operation are contaminated by genetically tampered vodka and begin mutating into hideous aquatic creatures. The special effects by Stan Winston are fantastic and while Leviathan is a very straightforward monster movie, its mix of great casting, claustrophobic location, excellent creature design, and solid execution make it a movie that’s easy to return to again and again.

9. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989; Dir: Shinya Tsukamoto)

More a frenetic cyberpunk music video than a true movie, Tetsuo concerns itself with the slow metamorphosis of an everyday man into an amalgam of flesh and metal and the metal fetishist who’s obsessed with him. This is a collection of surreal black and white imagery and sound and fury. This was one of the first films from Japan to delve into the subgenre and remains a beacon. Tokyo Gore Police (2008) is another great example of Japanese body horror, but had to go with the classic.

8. Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988; Dir: Tony Randel)

This is going to be a somewhat controversial pick, I’m sure. Why not go with Barker’s original Hellraiser? While Hellraiser teased body horror, primarily through body modification and torture, Hellbound went full-on grotesque by positioning both Dr. Channard and Julia on a quest to become cenobites. The scenario allowed a lot more actual bodily transformation in pursuit of human evolution, a concept at the heart of body horror, and Hellbound significantly upped the weird gore quotient and made the original film seem a little quaint in that respect.

7. Society (1989; Dir: Brian Yuzna)

It’s not on purpose that three of the first films on this list were released in 1989; I guess that was just a gross year. Anyway, Yuzna’s moist commentary on class warfare starts out normal enough. Of course, there’s something off about Bill’s high-society family, but he can’t quite figure out what until he begins suspecting his parents and sister are part of a ring of orgies and incest. The truth is somehow even more disgusting, as revealed in one of the most insane finales of all time that showcases the truly mind-bending special effects of Screaming Mad George. In Society, the rich are literally eating the poor, in the sloppiest way possible.

6. From Beyond (1986; Dir: Stuart Gordon)

Gordon’s loose adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story, about a scientist who invents a device that allows communication with and travel to another dimension infested by gooey monsters, is probably his yuckiest film. There are a lot of scenes of wet skin in various stages of transformation, sprouted additional appendages, and egomaniacs in search of power and knowledge no matter the cost to their earthly flesh. The great John Carl Buechler (RIP) supplied the astoundingly nauseating special effects.

5. Taxidermia (2006; Dir: Gyorgy Palfi)

This Hungarian production is more of a surrealist pitch black comedy than a horror film, but it’s every bit as horrific as the other entries on this list. It tells three stories, one for each generation of the same screwed-up family: One is a poor man with tendencies towards bestiality; the next, his son, is a champion speed eater who becomes monstrously obese in his old age; and the last, the speed eater’s son, is an introverted taxidermist, stuck taking care of his obese dad and looking for any reason not to kill himself in an inventive way. It’s a bleak movie that illustrates the extreme effects mental illness can have on the body.

4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978; Dir: Philip Kaufman)

In Kaufman’s version of this familiar story, the Second Red Scare is re-imagined as an alien invasion in which people are duplicated through a slimy process that shows off a lot of half-formed, veiny people-things before the original is exterminated. In addition to a special effects extravaganza, this movie is a masterpiece of suspense and allegory, and one of the best examples of body horror as a vehicle for examining human society.

3. The Fly (1986; Dir: David Cronenberg)

Videodrome (1983), Rabid (1977), Dead Ringers (1988), Crash (1996), and Existenz (1999) could all have made a version of this list, but The Fly is both Cronenberg’s most disgusting movie and his most human. The slow, gruesome transformation of Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle is all the more excruciating to watch thanks to the genuine chemistry between Goldblum and Geena Davis, as well as the film’s astute observations about the dangers of playing god. The special effects by Chris Walas stand as nearly the best in the history of the horror genre, outdone only by those in the movie that tops this list.

2. Alien (1979; Dir: Ridley Scott)

Although Scott’s sci-fi/horror masterpiece isn’t overtly focused on violent human transformation, the titular alien’s lifecycle involves a parasitic takeover of a human host that results in the very gory eruption of the creature from the host. Throw in the shades of sexual violence in the adult creature’s appearance and behavior and you have a body horror nightmare set in the confines of space.

1. The Thing (1982; Dir: John Carpenter)

Rob Bottin’s ingeniously grotesque effects work in Carpenter’s best movie set the bar unbelievably high -- so high that it’s yet to be topped. No horror movie has ever felt so viscerally impactful. The violence on display in The Thing is both nearly incomprehensibly alien and also painfully human. The alien found beneath the ice not only takes you over, it completely undoes and remakes you in the most savage way possible. Carpenter’s film perfectly captures the isolation and fear created through pandemic.