10 Hardest-To-Watch Scenes In Cinema History

For the love of God, never again!

by Sam Hill
Cinema has a strange and beautiful power - one that is unique and inapplicable to any other medium but its own. The ability to make you laugh, cry and think - sometimes all at once. To inspire and to change the world. To teach and to comfort and to make you realise that - despite its many, many flaws - the world is actually a wonderful and magical place. That said, the cinema also has the ability to make you beg never to have to see things ever again. Ever. And that, dear reader, is where this list comes in. Its aim is to explore those moments in cinema that forced you to reconsider the entire medium; individual scenes that the mere thought of cause you to wince in pain, all these years later. Moments that scarred you and continue to haunt you whenever your idle thoughts drift back to them. Scenes filled with inhuman levels of awkwardness, unbelievable violence, or those that had you shouting at the screen in a frenzy, wondering why, God, why, did anybody ever put this on a screen? These 10 moments are hard-to-watch for a variety of reasons. Chances are that, even revisiting them in written format, you'll find the process of remembering insanely difficult...

10. "Squeal Like A Pig!" - Deliverance

Deliverance tells the inherently eerie story of four friends who set out on a river rafting trip into the Georgia backcountry, only to find themselves caught up in a situation they never expected to face. Things get off to a fine start, all right (despite a weird encounter with the locals), but soon enough the boys find themselves held at gunpoint by a couple of sick hillbillies - one of whom reveals some seriously depraved intentions. So the hillbilly proceeds to strip Ned Beatty's stuffy, overweight businessmen character down to his white underpants, before riding him around like a pig (cue the famous line) and eventually raping him - all whilst a terrified Jon Voight watches on at his humiliated, degraded friend, wondering if he's next. The scene is horrifying because it feels realistic. It might have been parodied across the years, but going back it's plain to see that it has lost none of its power. Burt Reynolds' arrival on the scene (and subsequent rescue) might lend some cathartic energy to the sequence, but there's no getting away from the fact that this is one of cinema's most harrowing and uncomfortable scenes. Credit to Ned Beatty for going along with it.

9. Bottle To The Face - Pan's Labyrinth

It seems to comes out of nowhere, which is half the reason why the infamous bottle scene in Pan's Labyrinth has affected so many people over the years - people whose idea of a good time is "not sitting through said scene ever again." Set during the Spanish Civil War, the moment in question occurs when the evil Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez) decides to punish a rebel using the bottom of a glass bottle to batter his face into nothingness. After whacking him around the chops with it, Vidal grabs the rebel and pulls him in close, and then proceeds to bring it down in a sequence of bloody terror. The sound effect as the bottle collides with said rebel's face and nose is enough to send shivers up your spine, but there's something about the way that Vidal just keeps going and going and going like some demented robot that renders this scene as plainly horrific. Even in a dark fantasy film, this sort of violence was just unexpected.

8. Cutting The Arm - 127 Hours

127 Hours was pretty much billed as "that movie where James Franco cuts off his own arm," which is precisely why everyone went to see it. Everybody knew, then, that - at the end of the film - Franco's unlucky hiker, Aaron Ralston, would be forced to cut off his own limb. What nobody quite expected, however, was just how effective director Danny Boyle would be at rendering the sequence so that you felt the physically pain of actually doing something so heinous. The arm-cutting sequence in 127 Hours is a mini-masterpiece in itself - a brilliantly conceived moment that makes the most of visual and aural techniques to ensure that audiences feel the inherent nightmare of Ralston's self-amputation. The giddy camerawork, coupled with the electrical nerve "pangs" on the soundtrack, made this one hell of a sequence to sit through. And one that you can admire without ever wanting to see it again.

7. Spaghetti In The Bath - Gummo

Unlike most of those included here, this scene isn't hard-to-watch because it's violent. There's no weird sex stuff and there's nothing particularly tense about it, either. It's just weird. Endlessly, bizarrely and outright creepily weird, because what? What is this scene? Gummo is a very strange film that comes courtesy of director Harmony Korine, perhaps best known nowadays as the filmmaker behind Spring Breakers. It's a film built from experimental vignettes with no clear plot or set narrative. The moment occurs when the film hones in on a really odd-looking boy as he sits in a dirty tub being washed by his mum, and proceeds to gulp down a plate of spaghetti. That's enough to make you feel sick on its own, but there's even more: said child is given a chocolate bar, which he accidentally drops into the water, re-finds, and then eats like nothing happened. The whole thing is incredibly disgusting, with a set-up that seems to have been designed purposely as a way to make anyone watching super uncomfortable. Compared to the other entries on this list, Gummo's spaghetti scene might seem tame, but don't be fooled: it's just as hard-to-watch as any of them, albeit for different reasons.

6. The Hobbling Of Paul Sheldon - Misery

What is it about this scene, exactly, that makes everyone so uncomfortable? After waking up in the home of his "Number One fan," former nurse Annie Wilkes, injured novelist Paul Sheldon is held captive and forced to write a new book. But things get horrible when Annie fears that Paul might escape, so she takes a "precautionary measure." It lasts for just a couple of frames, and there's no blood - just a quick shot of a man's ankles moving into positions that they were never supposed to after a crazy woman places them between two wooden blocks and hits them with a sledgehammer. It's the stuff of nightmares - stuff that somehow manages to be even more disturbing than what was in Stephen King's original novel (Annie actually cuts off Paul's leg, but the hobbling just feels even worse). There's a serious cringe-factor associated with this scene that means nobody in their right mind could watch it with their eyes fully open. It's definitely one for the "peer out from between your fingers" approach, because it's plainly awful to experience. No thanks.

5. "Ass To Ass" - Requiem For A Dream

If there was ever a movie to be used as an advertisement against drug use, it's Darren Aronofsky's plainly depressing Requiem For A Dream - a motion picture that contains approximately eighty-seven very uncomfortable and very distressing scenes. The worst of the bunch, and one of the most hard-to-watch movie scenes of all-time, has been nicknamed "Ass to Ass" by those who know it. In said scene, the tragic protagonist Marion (Jennifer Connelly) is subjected to a scenario so inherently despicable that you never, ever want to experience it again once you've sat through it once. So what happens? Essentially, Marion meets up with a pimp who promises to score her some drugs if she partakes in a sex show for a bunch of creepy businessmen. The scene is shot in a purposely disorienting way that only serves to make it all the more humiliating for Marion, who - at one point - is made to sit with her buttocks against another girl's as a dildo is inserted between them both. In all, it's one of the nastiest sequences you'll ever see.

4. Patsy Is Whipped - 12 Years A Slave

As a motion picture experience, it's hard to beat 12 Years A Slave for outright harrowing. The true story of free man turned slave Soloman Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is filled with countless moments of horror, anguish and injustice, and Steve McQueen's movie does not shy away from showing each and every one of them in the most realistic way possible. The hardest scene to watch in 12 Years a Slave, then, is the one that sees slave Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) relentlessly whipped by Solomon on the orders of plantation owner Epps (Michael Fassbender). Not only is the inherent set-up downright tragic (Solomon being forced to brutally assault his friend), but the scene goes on and on and on as Patsey screams out - her back reduced to shreds when the cruel Epps decides to take over. The close-up of Patsey's shredded back afterwards is genuinely sick-inducing, and this shot cements the whole sequence as one of the most distressing in all of cinema. Not to mention that the sense of history - the knowledge that this stuff actually happened once upon a time - imbues everything you see with an added layer of shock that is near unbearable.

3. The Curb Stomp - American History X

Say "American History X," and most people tend to think of one thing and one thing only: the curb stomp scene, which - years later - remains one of the most disturbing and outright uncomfortable scenes in movie history. This moment sees racist, skinhead Neo-Nazi Edward Norton taking a black kid who attempted to rob his house out onto the street and forcing him to bite the curb. "Now, say goodnight!" he yells as we close-up on the white teeth biting said curb, before Norton stomps on the top of his head, cracking his skull in two and killing him instantly. This scene is hard-to-watch if you don't know it, and even harder to watch if you know it's coming; the sort of movie moment that instinctively causes you to clench your own teeth together (and close your eyes) as it happens. Interestingly, the actual "moment" lasts less than a second and it isn't particularly graphic. The horror is all in the build-up and the implication of violence. It's hard to imagine a death more degrading as this one.

2. The Rape - Irréversible

It is notorious as one of cinema's most sickening and unbearable scenes, made so by the fact that it takes place within the confines of a single take - no cutting away to make things easier on the audience. Just a horrific sexual assault, as it happens, in real time. This is the infamous rape scene in Gaspar Noé's insanely controversial film Irréversible, of course, and it is without a doubt the most difficult to watch of its kind - the most brutal depiction of the most unforgivable act ever committed to celluloid. At 11-minutes long, it's hard to know how to feel about the sequence that sees Monica Bellucci attacked in an underpass and subjected to outright torture by a stranger. It's that harrowing. The scene caused a major stir when the film was first released because many viewers felt violated having been forced to sit through such a long and grim sequence - one that drags on and on until you feel like it has to end. And it doesn't. Art or exploitation, Monica Bellucci must be commended for taking on such a brave and risky role, though. But you wouldn't want to sit through it again. Once was torment enough.

1. Mellish Gets Stabbed - Saving Private Ryan

It's the unrivalled and endlessly uncomfortable blend of incalculable frustration and anger that makes this particular scene so unbelievably hard-to-watch. Indeed, it was the inspiration for writing this list in the first place, because no other scene in movie history sets up a situation quite so primed to make an audience so insane with rage. The moment comes as part of Steven Spielberg's epic World War II film Saving Private Ryan, of course, which has its fair share of hard-to-watch scenes scattered throughout. But this... this is on another level. The set-up is as follows: Sgt. Mellish (Adam Goldberg) enters a house and gets into a fight over with a Nazi over a knife, who proceeds to pin Mellish down and slowly... slowly... slowly... begins to push to knife towards his chest. It doesn't happen in slo-motion, but it sure as hell feels like it. The worst part of the scene, however - and the reason that this moment tops the list - is because there's a fellow U.S. soldier, Corporal Upham, cowering on the other side of the door, just a stone's throw away from being able to save his friend. And he's too scared to do it. It's the kind of scene that has you shouting - nay, screaming - at the screen for its entire length, just begging Upham to kick down the door and save his pal. He doesn't, and Mellish dies. Why would you ever want to watch it play out again? Like this article? What do you make of our choices? How would your own version of this list have looked? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
Contributor

Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.