orderandlaw

Allow me to introduce what I mean by exploitation film.

An exploitation film is a typically low-budget film that creates a stir. There's several genres of exploitation films...

Texas Chainsaw Massacre could be considered one of these.

However, there are two films that I would like to nominate for this thread.

#1: I Spit On Your Grave aka: Day of the Woman.

For a detailed review, click here.

Basically, we have a film that is so deprived, so utterly disgusting, you have to wonder what the hell the financiers were thinking. There's a twenty minute rape scene...twenty horrible minutes. There's a terrible scene where a man loses his manhood in a bathtub. There's hangings, mutilations, and sheer debauchery.

Awful, awful film. Read Roger Ebert's funny review here

Trailer

I'll save # 2 for later...

True_Story1011

August Underground

Rypro 525

if you can put up with it, watch it with the Joe Bob Briggs commentary. who would have known that a movie like this could be so entertaianing and funny w/ the commentary on.

JJE-187

Baise Moi is worse than I Spit On Your Grave

Mondo Kane

Tenement doesn't usually get mentioned a whole lot, so I guess I'll give that one a shout-out.

Rockmjd23

for Roberta Findlay.
Any of the many cannibal or mondo films with real animal killings are pretty extreme.

Brack

Porky's

beesonosu

House of the Edge of the Park certainly wouldn't qualify for the "Most Disturbing" exploitation film but I think it serves as a great definition/representation of the classic exploitation fare. It's directed by Ruggero Deodato of Cannibal Holocaust "fame" and stars David Hess (Last House on the Left) and Giovanni Lombardo Radice aka John Morgen (City of the Living Dead, Cannibal Apocalypse, Cannibal Ferox, Soavi's The Church and Stage Fright). All of the films I mentioned have a place in my heart.

Norm de Plume

In a real-life disturbing connection, Findlay's husband was decapitated by a helicopter atop the Pan Am building in 1977.

As to the topic, it has been hashed out in about half a dozen threads here at DVDTalk over the years.

Cardiac161

Some consider it exploitation and some call it historical:

Men Behind the Sun - film about the atrocities of Unit 731, the Japanese research unit of the Imperial Army in Manchuria. What made it controversial was the scene of the autopsy of an actual corpse, and a cat eaten alive by a horde of rats amongst others.

Apone

The way rats were taking bites from cat's eye socket was horrible. Ugh!

TheySentYou

i could almost say Caligula would fit in the exploitation category... and it was extremely high budget. the fact that Tinto Brass directed it makes it even more exploitation-esque.

it had some disturbing elements to it.

Original Desmond

Ive seen so many of them, i'm so jaded, i find nothing disturbing anymore

Salo i guess deserved a mention

Ok , how about Emanuelle Around the World which in it's uncut form has an all too explicit scene of a tied up women getting raped by a dog.

The August underground series are pretty gross

I don't find any of the cannibal movies disturbing anymore, i find them funny

I find the whole concept of the Nazi sexpolitation subgenre disturbing. It;s not that they necessarily feature more violence, torture, sex and rape than other subgenres, it's that the whole subgenre is in such bad taste given the historical context.

I actually found the scene when the kids were getting shot and thrown in the fire in Rambo 4 to be pretty disturbing

zombeaner

The sequel Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre, is no walk in the park either. Black Sun is made more effective from its use of dramatic recreations of atrocities punctuated with actual photographs from the events of Nanking.

The first film that ever made be feel sickened, or more aptly, it made me feel dirty, was Last House on the Left. It is a dirty nasty rough little film.

Giles

'Fight For Your Life' - talk about a ultra nasty racist flick

Charlie Goose

Death Wish II - Not really a low-budget, but exploitation nonetheless. The beginning of the end for Charles Bronson's respectability. He spent the rest of the 80s and early 90s making mostly ultra-violent garbage.

Jam Master Jay

Black to the Future?

mathbes

Thriller: A Cruel Picture (They call me one eye)

label : Synapse Films

Synopsis form amazon : An unflinchingly brutal and graphic cult revenge flick that toiled in obscurity for decades before being exhumed by Quentin Tarantino as the inspiration for actress Daryl Hannah's one-eyed murderess in Kill Bill, Swedish director Bo Arne Vibenius' sophomore directorial effort is not for all tastes. Of course, not being for all tastes and being effective are two items that are not mutually exclusive, and viewers would be hard pressed not to feel the utter anguish of tragic mute figure Frigga's plight after seeing her repeatedly subjected to a variety of savage acts -- both sexual and otherwise. Though some may find Vibenius' choice of utilizing hardcore sexual inserts to document her decent unsavory at best and unforgivably exploitative at worst, there is little question that the visionary director's unique approach was years ahead of its time (the same technique sharply divided critics when used in the 2000 shocker Baise-Moi), and that it most certainly makes the violation of the already fragile protagonist much more personal and effective. Equally important in making mute Frigga's slow decent into revenge-driven bloodlust believable is starlet Christina Lindberg's wordless, expression-driven performance -- and it's fascinating to watch as her heartache slowly gives way to a kill-crazed blood frenzy. Though Frigga's hard road to the bottom has been documented in the kind of graphic detail that can often be difficult to watch, when she does finally take aim at her tormentors, the eye-patch-wearing angel of death's roaring rampage of revenge is presented in even more graphic detail -- with virtually every kill hauntingly presented in super-slow motion to achieve maximum visceral impact. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The Valeyard

Showgirls

The Bus

I know we have these threads all the time but I hadn't heard of Tenement or Fight For Your Life Before. I don't think I will ever see the latter, however.

I'm glad someone brought up Hei Tai Yang 731 (Man/Men Behind the Sun). I got the DVD ages ago but still haven't seen it.

My DVD of Thriller: A Cruel Picture is rotted. I doubt Synaps will issue me a replacement.

Another good one we haven't mentioned, although it's not 70s exploitation in the strictest sense, is Flowers of Flesh and Blood from the Guinea Pig series. What makes it so marvelous is that the setup for the movie takes about 2 minutes and it's just a gorefest for the remaining 40 minutes.

Zodiac_Speaking

Nightmare City
New York Ripper
Zombie
I Drink Your Blood
Manson Family (Van Bebber film, I know it's not that old but...)

DJariya

Irreversible.

I was literally sick to my stomach seeing a beautiful and sexy woman like Monica Bellucci being being beaten to a pulp and viciously raped. This was an extremely vicious movie.

The Bus

Well I'm sure someone here can recommend a movie where an ugly girl is viciously raped, if that's more appealing to you.

visitor Q

Shit, I thought I was going to lose dinner just after 10 minutes in. The rest was a walk in the park.

To the OP, as far as disturbing low budget exploitation films go, don't forget to try Japanese director, Miike on for size. Visitor Q, Gozu, maybe even Ichii are good places to begin. Probably tame compared to some of the films mentioned already, but each of his offerings have a certain appeal, for better or worse.

Frankly, the worst that I've witnessed would be Salo or any others involving children. Children are not open game, period. The most disturbing aspect is that the humiliation, degradation and just the sheer nature of the film is based on fact. Celluloid is one thing, reality is completely another.

Zen Peckinpah

Ah yes, a tride-and-true sleaze-o-rama, complete with Laurence Fishburne in pink visor sunglasses.

"I see you believe in Jesus. Well now you're gonna meet him.

Some disturbing examples:

Frank Henenlotter's movies, if only because I find beautiful women getting violently murdered disturbing. I love Brain Damage for its brilliant drug addiction metaphor (you can argue the deaths of the characters are people the protagonist alienates) and the dark humor, but are truly unsettling. And I'm fine with Basket Case until

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which shouldn't be considered exploitation at all because of its unflinching narrative and Michael Rooker's haunting performance. Similarly, The Devil's Rejects stands out as sort of a true-crime tale never told; William Forsythe personifies disturbance in that one.

I Spit on Your Grave has a lot of intriguing things: the infamous rape scene (which goes on for an unbearably long time), the bathtub scene, and a repressed perv who looks like Rick Moranis.