1. The Passion Of The Christ
Mel Gibson. Seventies Aussie heart-throb. Eighties American action/comedy star. Nineties Oscar-winner. Noughties pariah. And then there came Expendables III. When you look at Mel Gibson the director though it would be easy to look at his debut, The Man Without A Face, and think he was just going to be a nice, simple director of middle-fare mainstream pap. Then there came the Oscar-winning, and surprisingly violent, Braveheart. Latterly, there was the quite brilliant, and again violent, Apocalypto. In between though came one of the most violent mainstream movies of all time. A true horror show and the highest-grossing torture-porn movie of all time, The Passion Of The Christ. Telling the story of the last days of Christs life, Gibson gives us a violent depiction of this time as Jesus effectively battles Satan, and the human desire for punishment. He is beaten, humiliated and, eventually, crucified. The eventual ending, of Christ rising and defeating Satan, is still drenched in the constant violence we have witnessed beforehand. Yes, you could shoot back because this was independently financed but it received such a mainstream release that the film grossed an incredible $612million worldwide, largely due to the evangelical community that backed the themes of redemption and forgiveness. Its hard not to look at the violence though and think that Gibsons influences arent so much the stories in the Bible, but the horror directors Dario Argento, George Romero and Lucio Fulci, such is the level of blood-letting. There we have it, the ten bloodiest mainstream movies in history. That would be one hell of a film marathon. Bloody hell.