While a lot of us just like to be scared out of our wits, there’s a subset of the horror community that relishes blood and guts like one would savor a fine meal, and clocks kills like a track and field coach times the 100-meter dash. If that describes you, then we have just what the doctor ordered, namely twenty-five peerless images from some of the bloodiest, goriest movies we’ve ever laid eyes on… and no, that does not mean we cut out our eyeballs and laid them on a physical copy of the film, but that’s a healthy start.
Check out the gallery below for The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror, and be forewarned that this is extremely NSFW, and not for the faint of heart. If you don’t like grisly scenes of mutilated bodies you might want to sit this one out… and watch The Last Unicorn or something.
The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #1
28 Weeks Later (2007)
What this sequel lacked in the original's taut suspense, it more than makes up for in blood and guts, as with this soldier's big old melon getting the full-on Gallagher treatment.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #2
August Underground (2001)
Fred Vogel—a former make-up student of Tom Savini's and professor at Savini's school—has become a regular cottage industry with his low budget splat-tasias, starting with this $2000-dollar found footage flick. Here, Vogel stars as a serial killer named Peter documenting his nasty habits.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #3
Blood Feast (1963)
Often called the "Godfather of Gore," Herschell Gordon Lewis (now 86 and still filming!) made the very first splatter film with Blood Feast, and while the food Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold) is cooking up out of gorgeous women might not be strictly Kosher, it's still as transgressive (and bright red) as the day it was served.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #4
The Burning Moon (1997)
German director Olaf Ittenbach's VHS wonder is ugly, shot-on-video and feels like something you would order secretly through Silk Road from some sicko in… well, Germany.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #5
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Just because it's meta doesn't mean it's not messy. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon concocted one of the most subversive big studio horror movies in decades, especially in the last act when our heroes Dana (Kristen Connolly) and Marty (Fran Kranz) find themselves in the monster menagerie. In a desperate attempt to save themselves from security forces, they unleash all the monsters, which results in the epic bloodbath you see before you.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #6
City of the Living Dead (1980)
Sweet teen couple Rose (Daniela Doria) and Tommy (future Cemetery Man director Michele Soavi!) are making out with a side order of heavy petting when the apparition of a hanged priest causes her to bleed from the eyes and vomit her intestines out. Tommy doesn't fare much better, having the back of his skull crushed and his brains squeezed out by an unseen ghoul… and just when he was getting to second base! In a career built on a foundation of gore, we salute you for this one, Lucio Fulci.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #7
Day of the Dead (1985)
Affectionately known as "the gutbuster" among some aficionados, make-up maestro Tom Savini set the gold standard for zombie kills with this one. Of course, that first-class jerk Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) should have seen this one coming a mile away, a memorable death for a memorable military dirtbag.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #8
Dead Alive (1992)
In a movie which features a scene where a man lawnmowers a house full of zombies until he's literally knee-deep in gore, why go with this shot? Because it's a baby ripping a woman's face in half from the inside.
Peter Jackson raised the bar for splatstick with this zombie farce, a bar that arguably has never been bested.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #9
Demons (1985)
Mario Bava's son Lamberto Bava shows what a chip off the ol' block he is by literally having a demon chip a piece of this random movie theatergoer's block off. Ouch!
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #10
The Driller Killer (1979)
Banned in England as part of the notorious "video nasties," Abel Ferrara's breakout feature sported the tagline "There are those that kill violently," and boy howdy do they ever. Ferrara himself, credited as "Jimmy Laine," plays struggling New York artist Reno Miller who has a thing for killing derelicts and hobos with a you-know-what.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #11
Entrails of a Beautiful Woman (1986)
This sequel to Kazuo 'Gaira' Komizu's Entrails of a Virgin provides yet more ample evidence that… That Japanese splatter filmmakers, are supremely awesome and supremely deranged?
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #12
Event Horizon (1997)
This piece of the hell visions that Sam Neill's Dr. Weir imparts goes by at nearly subliminal speed, but dammit once you slow it down it's creepy as all heck! Paul W. S. Anderson's cult favorite may be cheesy (who builds such an obviously evil-looking spaceship?) but it proves the director an effective shockmeister when he wants to be.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #13
Evil Dead (2013)
With so many horror flicks these days relying heavily on CGI blood and digital gore, we gotta give it up to Fede Alvarez for using the real stuff in his remake of Sam Raimi's cult classic. In the case of this shot from the finale, there were literally gallons of the real stuff raining from the sky, along with a practical dummy getting it's genuine-ass head chainsawed by Jane Levy's heroic Mia.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #14
Gong Tau: An Oriental Black Magic (a.k.a. Voodoo) (2007)
Herman Yau, the madman who also gave us such gross-out classics as Ebola Syndrome, went all-out with a prosthetic baby death to make even the most hardened viewer wince. Goo-goo ga-GAG!
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #15
Gutterballs (2008)
A disco-themed bowling alley in Surrey, British Columbia (the town Patton Oswalt once described as "a suburb of Vancouver the way boredom is a lesser state of excitement") is the scene of abundant carnage and nudity… at least for the runtime of this Canadian killer flick. Are those USED condoms attached to the guy's hollowed-out eye-sockets? Icky. Next time use empties, you crazy Canucks!
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #16
Hannibal (2001)
Besides inspiring the recently-cancelled TV show, Ridley Scott's sequel to Jonathan Demme's (let's face it, far superior) Silence of the Lambs instantly became the #1 favorite of German Craigslist cannibals everywhere. The scene where Justice Department asshole Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta) gets his just desserts is exactly the kind of thing that made Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter the world's most popular foodie.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #17
Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985)
Sybil Danning explodes a man's head using her mind… you know, the way werewolves do! This is a sequel in pretty-much-name-only, despite the participation of author Gary Brandner and the continuation of journalist Karen White's bloodline.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #18
Inside (2007)
And if the Japanese weren't bad enough, here came the French to lay claim to "The Most Fuckest Uppest" award. This twisted tale is blood-soaked to the bone, and features a psychotic woman who is stalking a pregnant lady in the hope of cutting out her unborn child with a pair of scissors. Our image comes from a scene where a police officer trying to aid our preggers hero gets his face blown out by a shotgun blast.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #19
Men Behind the Sun (1988)
Although ostensibly based on the truly horrific goings-on inside the secret Japanese biological weapons experimentation Unit 731 during WWII, controversial director Mou Tun-fei (who has helmed everything from martial arts to hardcore porn) makes you feel even ickier for the grindhouse exploitation feel he lends each scene. Case-in-point: a woman's arms are exposed to extreme cold, and then all of that skin is boiled and ripped off in one swift motion.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #20
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
This is a horror movie. It sure is something seeing Jim Caviezel hanging from a cross after being pummeled for something like an hour straight of screentime in Mel Gibson's morally questionable rehashing of only the goriest parts of the New Testament. It's what Harry Knowles referred to at the time in his review as "Fajita Jesus," and that still seems rather apropos.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #21
Pieces (1982)
Once you see this '80s drive-in favorite, you'll wonder how Leatherface got such a trumped-up rep. The slasher in this film is like Jimi Hendrix with that chainsaw. Seriously, he de-torso's the girl seen here, but that ain't all: He's building a human puzzle out of body parts! As the tagline says, "You don't have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre!"
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #22
Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991)
There's too many scenes of extreme gore in this cavalcade of cartoon violence, so why not salute the shot "The Daily Show" (during the Craig Kilborn-era) made famous for all those years! A man obliterates a prisoner's head with his bare hands, which is almost as bad as a scene where a prisoner attempts to strangle the title hero with his own intestines.
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #23
Scanners (1981)
This list would not be complete without the most famous exploding head of all-time. David Cronenberg, back when he was still in his super groovy body horror phase, actually used a shotgun pointed up at the dummy head to get the desired effect, done in cooperation with make-up artist extraordinaire Dick Smith (The Exorcist, Amadeus).
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #24
Splatter: Naked Blood (1996)
If you think the title of this horror flick is a little raw, it's actually a remake of Hisayasu Satō's earlier movie titled "Genuine Rape." Yeesh. In similar fashion, we're giving you a shot from the film's most infamous scene where a gluttonous woman removes and eats her own eyeball, but we're not showing you the part where she eats her labia and nipple as well. .
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The 25 Goriest Shots in Horror #25
Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
And finally we end on yet another Japanese entry, from inventive FX splatter maestro and director Yoshihiro Nishimura.
