10 Scariest Scenes In "True Story" Films

Oftentimes, we prefer to examine our most salacious, nausea-inducing headlines with a safe layer of fiction protecting us. Such is the case with the true story of Gertrude Baniszewski, a single mother whose actions were so horrific no actual studio would touch the raw material in hazmat suits.

It took horror novelist Jack Ketchum to first bring Baniszewski's negligence and subsequent torture, rape and murder of 16-year-old Silvia Likens to national attention in his book The Girl Next Door. Though somewhat fictionalized to give the story some thematic heft rather than just document awful things that occurred, Gregory M. Wilson's adaptation of the book is a stomach-churning depiction of the brutalization of an innocent girl.

That same year, Showtime was producing a film based on the same crime entitled An American Crime starring Catherine Keener and James Franco. Despite the larger cast (though Wilson's film features Ghostbuster's William Atherton) and a story more in line with the facts, critics hailed Wilson's film as the superior - with Stephen King calling it the most upsetting horror film since Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

But whichever version of events you prefer, both are equally upsetting, including scenes involving graphic rape, branding with hot pokers, vicious beatings, cigarette burns and more. Both are the chore to sit through they were intended to be, which explains their seeming lack of notoriety. This was the brutal reality no one was ready to sit through.