4. In A Glass Cage (1987)
Waving the unwatchable banner for Spain, Agusti Villaronga brings this art house shocker to the table. Throwing sadism, Nazism, paedophilia, homosexuality and torture into the mix, the film follows an ex-Nazi who is hooked up to an iron lung and a young man who nurses him. The twist? The young man was one of the ex-Nazi's former torture victims. The ex-Nazi Klaus is an incorrigible perverted old monster, having molested, tortured and killed young boys after the war in his Catalonian house. Faced with being caught, he throws himself out a window but instead of dying he ends up paralysed in an iron lung. He has a bad time of it, his wife wishes he would just flat out die and then enter Angelo, one of his former victims masquerading as a nurse. What unfurls is a masterclass of perversion: Angelo kills the wife, Angelo brings young boys to Klaus and injects one of them with gas and cuts another boy's throat, Angelo removes Klaus from the iron lung to die of suffocation, he then reenacts his abuse on Klaus's body and gets into the iron lung himself. I wouldn't exactly call this film 'fun' to watch - the theme of paedophiliac torture is a difficult one to stomach, even in a film as well made and as well acted as this one. It has garnered a cult reputation since its inception as being a 'difficult film to watch' - in fact some scenes are nearly intolerable to watch. I am sure that this film can be read on many more levels that are beyond the capability of the reviewer but it has made the list due to its ability to shock and appall and its sheer unpalatability for the majority of the film.