What if the call was coming from inside the house? As in from inside that aging, broken, tired house you call your human body? It’s the ultimate unseen villain. The body is simultaneously a mystery and a miracle and it suffers from a lot of design flaws, like easily breakable bones, puncturable organs, and susceptibility to demonic possession. It’s no wonder writers, artists, and filmmakers have been exploring the evils from within since Day One, and it’s a subgenre of horror we never grow tired of—unlike our decrepit bodies. We’re still awaiting the day we can replace our arms with machine guns, but until then, we present a dirty dozen of our favorite lo-fi body-horror films that ooze, gush, spray, implode, and explode.
12. Guinea Pig 5: Mermaid in the Manhole (Hideshi Hino, 1988)
The Guinea Pig series is more or less torture-porn with accomplished effects, but devoid of depth and joy. The exception is Guinea Pig 5: Mermaid in the Manhole. An artist discovers the titular mermaid in the titular manhole and as he paints her portrait, she begins to decompose. Her scales melt off and her skin dissolves into bubbling bursts of color and gore. She is dying but his art is thriving. You can practically smell the decaying fish smell that emanates from her rotting corpse. It’s a descent into madness and gore and we get to bear witness. (AC)
11. Ozone (J.R. Bookwalter, 1994)
Ozone is a low-budget triumph on every level. The editing is expert, the photography is excellent, and the plot, dialogue, and even acting are engaging. But, there is one element that propels this film from great to greatest: the monster known as the kingpin. He looks exactly like Jabba the Hutt strung out on every single drug available at CVS, including the birth control pills and the morning-after pills. It is a grotesque beast to behold, one where you gasp in sheer amazement. Director J.R. Bookwalter’s genius shines as he throws in every single effect culled from his exhaustive archive of DIY horror magazines and books. There are legitimately dangerous explosions, chunky gore, rivers of blood, latex masks laden with moist warts, monster transformations, zombie make-up effects, and a punk with a Mohawk made from a circular saw blade. So, this movie has pretty much everything. (AC)
10. Meatball Machine (Yudai Yamaguchi and Juichi Yamamoto, 2005)
Just like you and me, directors Yudai Yamaguchi and Juichi Yamamoto grew up on American 1980s horror splatter films. If it sprayed, it played, as the saying goes. As budding filmmakers, they wondered, what if they could combine body horror with the effects of tokusatsu television shows and America’s obsession with dangerous weapons and senseless violence? And what if, just like Doritos, they could make it extreme? More blood, more gore, more action, more squished heads that explode with strawberry jelly and rotting meat, more everything. The flow of horror had mostly gone from West to East, but Yamaguchi and Yamamoto wanted to reverse the tide and show the West how it’s done. The result is a supercharged death machine with robotic arms that are giant power drills and also flamethrowers. (AC)
09. Breeders (Tim Kincaid, 1986)
There can never be enough horror films about pregnancy, the ultimate body horror experience. Rosemary’s Baby, The Brood, Prevenge, The Suckling, the list goes on and on. But only one emerges as our favorite lo-fi body horror movie ever directed by one of the most successful gay porn filmmakers of all time. Tim Kincaid took pearl-clutching exploitation, roaring violence, and gushing practical effects and lovingly nurtured them into a writhing alien baby with gnashing teeth. He’s the father we’ve always wanted and deserved. Let’s also appreciate Teresa Farley’s lead turn as the doctor investigating these extraordinarily violent pregnancies. It was a rarity to see a strong Black lead in a low-budget Eighties horror film, and her performance delivers, just like the final show-stopping monster set piece. (AC)
08. Sime City (Gregory Lamberson, 1988)
This is the best Frank Henenlotter movie that Frank Henenlotter never made. After moving into a new apartment in the slums of NYC, Alex eats neon “Himalayan yogurt” with a skuzzoid neighbor and has sex with another skuzzoid neighbor. Therefore, Alex transforms into a pile of melting ooze with an insatiable urge for death and sex. Slime City is a lovely mix of Satanic mumbo-jumbo, incredible one-fingered synth solos, breathtaking no-fi effects, and punks with a flair for interpretive dance. Is the movie an allegory for STDs or just a regular ol’ explosion of neon slime? Who cares! No matter how you slice it, this is an unmissable chapter from the NYC underground. (JZ)
07. Street Trash (J. Michael Muro, 1987)
Street Trash is overstuffed with offensive language, racial slurs, homophobic insults, and misogynistic characters. It is in no way aligned with today’s sensibilities, or with any sensibility at all. The saving grace of this movie is the incredible practical effects created by Jennifer Aspinall. The explosive, body-dissolving horror drips in neon slime and gushes in all the colors of the rainbow. Faces melt, heads explode, and gaping wounds spout a fountain of Technicolor. It is rare to see a woman helm special effects on a film from the 1980s (or even today, for that matter), and these effects absolutely dazzle. It is no surprise that Aspinall went on to win a ton of statues, including an Emmy. We can’t excuse Street Trash or any other movie for their gross ignorance or problematic creators, but we can honor and respect the contributions of key artists that make the films sing. (AC)
06. Disembodied (William Kersten, 1998)
Meet Connie Sproutz. She’s your typical goth teen, only her face grows monstrous, penis-like deformities that ooze spores, which look like starfish made out of Play-Doh. She turns her victims into slime and eats them. Director William Kersten mixes the gritty darkness of David Cronenberg, the foreboding uneasiness of David Lynch, and the surreal production design of Tim Burton (when he was good). Disembodied is equal parts horror and experimental art, but it never feels pretentious. The set, costume, and props perfectly serve a cinematic acid trip. Describing Disembodied is like describing your acid trip to someone; words fail the actual experience. (AC)
05. Shivers (David Cronenberg, 1975)
A parasite breaks free and wreaks havoc in a luxury condo. Women and children get attacked while making a casserole or waiting in an elevator. Security officers get a kiss of death. Like zombies, there’s an undeniable hunger for flesh, but in a more carnal knowledge way. While The Fly or Videodrome are generally considered to be David Cronenberg’s finest (and they are), Shivers shows his path toward his most seminal works. He tries out a lot of ideas here—soap opera melodrama, surrealist cinematography, pearl-clutching exploitation—which make the film feel disjointed, though still unmistakably Cronenberg. It’s got well-executed body horror effects (pulsating beasties emerging from torsos), social commentary (modern life is a trap), and dime store poetic waxings (“Dying is an act of eroticism”). But Shivers also has elements that Cronenberg doesn’t return to, namely moments of humor. While we think of Cronenberg movies as being relentlessly bleak (because they are), Shivers is actually pretty funny at times. A History of Violence is not. (AC)
04. Premutos: The Fallen Angel (Olaf Ittenbach, 1997)
Premutos: The Fallen Angel is a film that spent its budget on raw beef and organ meats and gallons of homemade blood. This is a film that doesn’t fear explosives, firecrackers, or chainsaws. This is a film that doesn’t fear staining the carpet, the couch, or the walls. This is a film that read all the books and magazines about DIY special effects and executed every stunt perfectly on 16mm. However, it never feels like it’s grossing you out just for the sake of grossing you out. It’s not torture porn, and it’s not too emotionally abusive. It’s just good old-fashioned, juicy body horror with a lot of trauma to dicks, and there’s something refreshingly innocent about that. (AC)
03. Bad Taste (Peter Jackson, 1987)
There’s this thing that Boomers do where they emphasize—at length—how something was done before computers. Like, fine, we get it, you guys had it so hard. As irritating as that is, I understand the point. Once upon a time, in the days of yore, before Peter Jackson had a computer, he created a film stuffed with jaw-dropping, squishy, explosive practical effects that are still unmatched today. Bad Taste deploys a metric ton of goop and gore, and its incredible make-up effects are among the greatest of all time. It’s a genuine spectacle and a rip-roaring ride through hungry aliens, Bugs Bunny sight gags, monstrous transformations, and a punch bowl filled with vomit. After Jackson got a laptop, he was never the same again. (AC)
02. Basket Case (Frank Henenlotter, 1982)
Frank Henenlotter is a national treasure, and it’s all thanks to the gutter-trash symphony known as Basket Case. Stealthily filmed in the toilet bowls of Times Square and chock-full of demented fury, Henenlotter’s debut is a celebration of real-life NYC sleazers, stop-motion shocks, psychic vandalism, and the beautifully grotesque puppet monstrosity known as Belial. Basket Case is disgusting, hilarious, and over-the-top in every way possible—kind of like if Herschell Gordon Lewis directed Freaks on the set of Taxi Driver. I want to adopt Belial. (JZ)
01. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989)
Humanity will never reach these heights again. Tetsuo: The Iron Man isn’t just the greatest body horror film of all time—it’s one of the greatest films of all time, regardless of genre or budget. A creative partnership between director Shinya Tsukamoto and star/special effects wizard/force of nature Kei Fujiwara (one of the rare women creating D.I.Y. genre films in Japan during the 1980s and ’90s), this is an unhinged hot take on humankind’s ongoing battle with technology. Literally, as a guy mutates into a walking machine-man—with a penis drill—that terrorizes himself and everyone around him. Warping elements of early Cronenberg, Lynch, and Raimi into a cyberpunk cocktail, Tetsuo is an experimental tornado that’s fueled by techno-erotic adrenaline, wrought iron perversion, and a refreshing queer subtext: “Our love can destroy this whole fucking world.” (JZ)
