There is perhaps no greater honor a horror filmmaker can receive than to hear that their film made audiences ill. Here are some horror movies that made audiences physically sick in theaters.
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00:00 There is perhaps no greater honor a horror filmmaker can receive than to hear that their
00:05 film made audiences ill.
00:08 Here are some horror movies that made audiences physically sick in theaters.
00:13 Macabre was director William Castle's 40th feature film, but really, it was his first,
00:18 at least as an independent creative.
00:20 Castle, who previously made movies for Columbia and other studios, began branching out into
00:26 horror movies in the late 1950s, after a long career of studio-mandated westerns and other
00:32 genre cheapies.
00:34 By that point in his career, Castle, always interested in gore and horror, understood
00:38 that in order to sell a movie to a young, hungry audience, one must have an angle.
00:44 A gimmick, if you will.
00:45 Castle, tapping into a very general paranoia about extreme horror films killing their audience
00:51 members, openly proclaimed in the advertising for Macabre that there was a very real possibility
00:56 you may die of fright.
00:58 "Bring someone with you to see this motion picture.
01:02 You'll want some live hands to hold during the performance."
01:06 If true, this would have been a headache from an insurance standpoint, so Castle acted accordingly.
01:13 Upon arrival at the theater, audience members were handed a certificate for a life insurance
01:17 policy, backed by Lloyd's of London, that would award the viewer $1,000, which is equivalent
01:23 to about $9,700 in 2022, should they die of fright in the theater.
01:30 Additionally, Castle hired actors to dress as nurses and remain on standby in theater
01:35 lobbies to check the vitals of anyone who might be close to death, due to Macabre's
01:40 intense scenes.
01:41 Macabre, by the way, is merely a fun potboiler that features a kidnapped child and someone
01:47 being sealed inside a coffin alive.
01:50 While possessed of an EC Comics-like wickedness, there is nothing so horrifying as to scare
01:55 you to death.
01:57 Nonetheless, and one can posit that this was to attract the attention of the pretty actresses
02:01 hired to play the nurses, there are a few stories of young men fainting in the theater
02:06 because Macabre was just that scary.
02:09 Regardless, the gimmick was a hit.
02:12 Macabre made millions, and Castle made several of the best horror movies of all time, with
02:16 even more elaborate gimmicks in the future.
02:20 The Exorcist is often called the scariest film of all time, and, until 2017 with the
02:26 release of It Chapter One, the highest-grossing horror film in history.
02:31 That said, William Freakin's horror masterpiece has no shortage of legends associated with
02:36 its reputation.
02:38 Not only are the film's curses part of public record, and were even covered in the debut
02:42 episode of Shudder's Cursed Films documentary series, but audience reaction to The Exorcist
02:48 was intense and dramatic.
02:50 Stories persist to this day that certain moments in The Exorcist cause audience members to
02:55 faint.
02:56 "Did you do that?"
02:58 "Ahh."
02:59 The most notorious scene, and the one that has the legends attached to it, involves the
03:04 12-year-old Reagan McNeil doing something immensely horrible with a crucifix.
03:09 This is a scene that was also featured in the William Peter Blatty novel upon which
03:13 the film was based.
03:15 It was this scene that allegedly inspired the legendary Fitz of Unconsciousness.
03:20 Add to that scene any number of horrifying images, such as projectile vomit, heads turning
03:25 backward, or levitation, and you have a shockingly scary movie that has truly stood the test
03:30 of time.
03:31 Notoriously walked out on at the Cannes Film Festival, and often considered one of the
03:35 most disturbing feature films ever made, Gaspar Noé's Irreversible set out to make audiences
03:41 sick.
03:42 With a message of "time destroys everything" and told in reverse scene order, Irreversible
03:47 is one of the most aggressive and perhaps one of the more pessimistic movies ever made.
03:52 It also contains a notorious sexual assault scene wherein Monica Bellucci, who directed
03:57 the scene herself, is attacked in an underground passage.
04:01 It's incredibly difficult to watch no matter how desensitized you are.
04:06 Not at all content to merely shock audiences with an extended scene of extreme sexual violence,
04:11 Noé also used an experimental sound technique during the film's early scenes, employing
04:17 ultra-low frequency bass notes that had previously been developed as a non-lethal weapon intended
04:22 for use on the battlefields of World War II.
04:25 Certain low sounds have been known to induce nausea, and Noé wanted his audience to feel
04:30 that nausea.
04:31 Add to that a severe beating in a club, loud music, and flashing strobe effects, and you
04:37 have a vomiting audience just waiting to happen.
04:40 Mercifully, the film's violence is relegated to its first half, and the falling action
04:45 lets audiences recover.
04:46 Nonetheless, the horror of the opening scenes lingered with audiences, and left many feeling
04:52 physically ill, leading some to flee the theater, struck by fits of queasiness.
04:57 However, if the goal of the film was to leave people feeling ill, then Irreversible was
05:02 a rousing success.
05:05 Hungarian filmmaker György Pálfi's 2006 film Taxidermia is a difficult one to stomach.
05:12 Presented in vignettes, the film follows several generations of men as they face the darkest
05:16 appetites of their bodies.
05:18 This involves trauma to sensitive areas, violating a pig corpse, a great deal of overeating,
05:25 and a climax wherein a character uses an elaborate machine to remove their own internal organs.
05:31 Partly a meditation on the nature of our relationships to our physical forms, and partly a grand
05:36 guignol horror oddity, no one will leave Taxidermia without several disturbing images burned into
05:42 their brains.
05:43 "Come on, let's go!
05:44 Why are they doing this?"
05:47 "Just run!"
05:48 There are plenty of dark and gross moments to choose from, so it's difficult to say which
05:52 moment in particular inspired the most vomiting.
05:55 But vomit, audience members did.
05:57 Anecdotally, as someone who worked in a movie theater where Taxidermia played in 2006, audiences
06:03 had to step out during the competitive eating scenes, wherein two of the main characters
06:07 hastily shove large quantities of gelatinous meat-like substances into their mouths.
06:13 The film also experienced walkouts during the final self-taxidermy scenes, as there
06:18 are numerous close-ups of actual pulsating organs.
06:22 It's unclear how Palfey achieved these effects.
06:26 It's safe to say we've heard more dry heaves during Taxidermia than in any other movie,
06:31 unless you count those we suffered during the latest Space Jam film.
06:35 Lars von Trier's 2009 film Antichrist is the first part of what has come to be called the
06:40 Depression trilogy, which also includes 2011's Melancholia and 2013's Nymphomaniac.
06:48 All three films delve into the intimate details of the depressed mind, exploring the unusual
06:53 connections our brains manifest when soaked in sadness and mourning.
06:58 In this, sex and death become interlinked.
07:01 The natural world becomes dank and forbidding.
07:04 "Chaos reigns."
07:08 Our relationships to others become hateful and suspect.
07:12 The invading force of depression often lies, convincing you that you have no self-worth.
07:17 Lars von Trier struggled with severe suicidal depression for many years, and he was uncompromising
07:23 when he put his own emotional state on camera in Antichrist, using actress Charlotte Gainsbourg
07:28 as his mouthpiece and Willem Dafoe as the obnoxious male who insists on analyzing away
07:33 something that is too overwhelming to ever be analyzed.
07:38 Antichrist is about a wife and a husband who recently lost their young child to an unfortunate
07:43 accident while they were making love in the shower.
07:46 The sadness and mourning following the event leads to a retreat to a remote cabin in the
07:51 woods, as scary and foreboding as anything from an Evil Dead movie, to heal.
07:56 Needless to say, they do not heal.
07:59 Madness begins to infect them both, and the film climaxes with Gainsbourg attacking Dafoe,
08:04 inflicting some horrid genital trauma and screwing a lodestone through his leg.
08:10 We here at Slashfilm can personally attest to the film's nauseating effects, as not only
08:15 did the movie make some of us feel ill the first time we saw it, but we also witnessed
08:19 moviegoers leave the theater in visible disgust during its more gruesome scenes.
08:25 It will take a strong constitution to see Antichrist, but the film will reward you with
08:30 an accurate portrait of what it feels like to be depressed, something that not all people
08:35 have the ability to understand.
08:38 When it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, Julia Ducournau's Ra inspired
08:43 calls to the paramedics.
08:46 Reports from the venue said that several audience members had passed out during the screening.
08:51 Given the film's cannibalistic subject matter, it's easy to see why.
08:55 Ra, true to its title, features a lot of chewing on uncooked meats, and in several notable
09:01 sequences, human meat that's still alive.
09:04 Additionally, there is a scene in Ra where a real horse is actually anesthetized on camera,
09:10 which only added to the fleshy authenticity of the film.
09:14 Don't worry, though, there's no need to make an urgent phone call to your local PETA representative.
09:18 The horse was okay.
09:20 Ducournau, with Ra, and her latest film, Teton, appears to have an emerging thesis in her
09:25 body of work about our human flesh prisons, and our slavery to them.
09:30 We are our bodies, and our appetites rule us.
09:34 That the cannibalism in Ra was presented so frankly may have a lot to do with the reaction
09:38 it got at TIFF.
09:40 This is no wicked game or exploitation movie.
09:44 This is a movie that confronts audiences in grotesque but meaningful ways, and it's true
09:48 to Ducournau's credit that she was so effectively able to get under everyone's skin.
09:54 While the above films made people sick, the 2018 Canadian mockumentary Antrum, the deadliest
10:00 film ever made, is the only one that claims it will kill you right in the title.
10:05 Perhaps taking inspiration from John Carpenter's films In the Mouth of Madness and his Masters
10:10 of Horror episode Cigarette Burns, both of which featured fictional films that caused
10:15 viewers to go mad, Antrum is a movie about a fictional movie that has a 100% fatality
10:20 rate among its viewers.
10:22 Staged in BBC documentary style, it involves a lot of convincing period detail as it unfolds
10:28 the style of a mad European filmmaker in the 1970s whose film was infected with a curse.
10:35 Think The Ring via Cannibal Holocaust.
10:38 A disclaimer at the head of the film declares, "Antrum is not safe."
10:43 "One by one we pray to thee, protect us from all we'll see."
10:48 As far as we've been able to discern, no viewers of Antrum have actually died after watching
10:53 it.
10:54 However, any claim that a film is so scary it might kill us is certainly going to attract
10:58 our attention.
11:00 After all, what better way for a cinephile to go out than to be killed by a film?
11:05 That being said, we implore you to make some popcorn and watch the film that's built around
11:09 the ultimate horror movie promise.
11:12 [Dog barking]
11:14 (whooshing)