While shows like Man v. Food have left us a little demystified by the appealing world of extreme over-indulgence, the egg scene in Cool Hand Luke stands as testimony to the human endeavors to eat as much as we can, simply to impress people. During his stint in prison, Luke (played by Paul Newman) claims he can eat 50 eggs in an hour, and with little else to do, his fellow inmates turn this claim into a challenge, with money and pride at stake. What follows is an increasingly difficult scene to watch. As (like most eating challenges) the first half goes by without incident, it's when Luke reaches the thirty mark that viewing becomes a little harder to stomach, for both characters and audience. Tears begin to stream down Newman's face and a close up of his stomach shows it to be grotesquely bloated - one inmate describing it as 'like a ripe melon what's gettin' ready to bust.' It's enough to put you off ever eating an egg again, before even imagining how fifty of them would sit in the stomach, or the smell...
