12 Disturbing Sci-Fi Movies You Must Watch (But Only Once)

6. Naked Lunch

Junky author/ troubled Beat poet William S Burroughs admitted his gruesome satirical “routines” were unfit for film due to their grotesque content and surreal sense of humour, with the often disgusting imaginings incorporating imagery far past the limits of traditional censorship as the writer attempted to make sense of his drug-addled visions and interrogate his personal demons.

So you already know David Cronenberg had to do it to them.

Believe it or not, this 1990 effort starring Robocop’s Peter Weller as the author’s stand-in actually tones down the novel’s content, but nonetheless leaves the viewer with a horrific, hallucinatory trip into the subconscious of a deeply tortured man. Whilst it’s a trip all serious cineastes should take in order to witness the potential cinema has as a tool of anti-censorship expression, it’s also a distinctly bad trip which you may well need a while to recover from.

Cathal Gunning

Cathal Gunning hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.

See more from Cathal