10. Django Unchained
Django Unchained always promised to be something of a hard watch what with its themes of slavery and all the violence inherent within it, and in the hands of Tarantino you knew you were in for something uncomfortable. True to form, he didnt disappoint. Taking inspiration from the 1975 film Mandingo, his operatic Southern confronted you with possibly the worst form of slavery fighting to the death. Whether or not this actually happened in the real-life antebellum South and the scholars are certainly split on the subject the scene conjured up from this phenomenon was almost unwatchable. Namely, two muscled black fighters lay into each other watched on by a risible Leonardo Di Caprio and original Django Franco Nero, and it was just brutal. This wasnt movie fighting, this was to-the-death fighting, sweaty and full of desperate violence. Grim enough as that was, it becomes even more shocking when Di Caprios man snaps the other guys arm and drives his thumbs through his eyes, the other man screaming all the while. A regular movie might just leave it there, but this is Tarantinos world, and the winner is required to finish off his opponent with a hammer, and you see the life leave the unfortunate fighter in a show of shocking brutality. It was just an awful, awful watch from start to finish and a devastatingly effective way to introduce the audience to Di Caprios character Calvin Candie, painting him as a racist, privileged psychopath. So really, the scene did it job but it still remains haunting.