20 90s Movie Scenes That Traumatized Us All
3. Reservoir Dogs - Stuck In The Middle With You
Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) torturing and mutilating a policeman while dancing to Stuck in the Middle of You didn't just horrify audiences; it changed the world of film forever. With this controversial debut movie, Quentin Tarantino brought extreme violence into mainstream cinema, and the torture of Marvin (Kirk Baltz), the unfortunate cop, is easily the picture's most brutal moment and the one that broke people the most.
In fact, one of the most affected people was Michael Madsen himself. He struggled to perform this all the way through due to its brutality. At one point, Kirk Baltz ad-libbed the line, "Please, I've got a little kid at home!" and that left Madsen nearly unable to complete the take. At the time, he had an 18-month-old son at home. For the rest of his life, Madsen still had reservations about Reservoir Dogs despite it making him a star.
He certainly wasn't the only one with reservations. Back in 1992, audiences simply were not used to this kind of violence, and many people walked out of Reservoir Dogs, including, believe it or not, the legendary horror director Wes Craven. Tarantino has continued to indulge in brutal violence throughout the rest of his career, but nothing else since has rattled people quite as much - after this, they knew what they were getting with this bloodthirsty auteur.