Arrow in the Head’s Top 10 Holy Sh!t Moments of 2015!

1. Bone Tomahawk – Preparing for Supper

Anyone who has seen BONE TOMAHAWK already knows what moment I’m talking about; chances are, you haven’t been able to rid yourself of the gruesome sight since you first laid eyes on it. But if there’s any doubt, we’re talking about the stunningly horrific murder toward the end of the film, when a band of barely human troglodytes scalp and split open a helpless deputy as they prepare to feast on him. It’s not just that it’s genuinely gross, although it’s certainly that; I haven’t felt that squeamish in a while. It’s the fact that the scene is given an extra layer of disturbing weight thanks to the deputy’s tearful confession to the sheriff (Kurt Russell) beforehand, followed by the latter’s attempt to offer his young comrade some comforting words as the kid is brutally butchered. Instant classic of a sequence, and an amazing capper to a great flick. (Eric W.)

2. The Green Inferno – Lars: It’s What’s for Dinner

In his competent return to the director’s chair, Eli Roth gave us no shortage of WTF moments in the jungle-bound cannibal flick GREEN INFERNO. For instance, there’s one scene where the so called leader of the American captives resorts to, as a means of relieving stress, full-on jerking off inside a makeshift prison-cage…for all to see…captors and fellow captives alike. WTF? However, the real scene worthy of WTF mention comes when Lars, the de facto stoner of the group, tries to make a daring escape with the natives are giddily high on weed, only to become gang-eaten by a horde of said hungry savages…his throat and intestines gorily torn apart and ravenously feasted upon right on site. The capper? A cute little native girl happily jaunting away with Lars’ ripped off lower leg in tow. Gnarly! (Jake Dee)

3. The Visit – Pop Pop Goes Poo Poo

This is quite literally a holy shit moment. You won’t see too many PG-13 entries on a list like this, I can assure you of that, but this moment in M. Night Shyamalan’s highly entertaining THE VISIT is so unexpected it demands to be included. After the “secret” of the devious grandparents at the center of the film has been revealed, it’s all-out crazy town, and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) has a very dirty surprise for young germophobe Tyler (Ed Oxenbould): a soiled diaper right in the face! Every single person in my theater went “Ewwwwww!” at the exact same time, leading to some startled retching sounds and shocked laughter.

4. Deathgasm – Dildos of Death

It’s exceptionally difficult to find the most WTF moment of DEATHGASM, a movie with more spraying blood and flesh-ripping than any other in recent memory – but forced to pick a moment from the rockin’ heavy metal horror-comedy, I’m going with the dildo-centric sequence: Our two heroes Brodie and Zakk find their backs up against the wall as they battle a couple of goo-covered demons (who also happen to be Brodie’s church-going aunt and uncle) and their only weapons are, well, a handful of vibrators and a big black dildo. Hey, you work with what you’ve got. Suffice to say, the resulting deaths are messy, wacky and extremely pleasurable. (Not in that way.)

A runner-up moment might be the one that comes soon after, when Brodie chainsaws his dickhead cousin’s face off, knowing full well he’s not a demon. Undeniably gnarly, dude. (Eric W.)

5. Goodnight Mommy – Open Wide, Mommy

GOODNIGHT MOMMY is another one of those movies where it’s not really possible to pinpoint one particular image that makes it effectively disturbing; rather, it’s the culmination of every damn disorienting scene that makes the experience so nightmarish. But since this list would seem lacking without the movie’s inclusion, I’m picking the very unnerving moment from the third act when, after the film’s delusional twins have tied up their mother and glued her lips shut, one of them attempts to free her mouth from its sticky predicament with a small pair of scissors. There’s a brief but undeniably wince-inducing moment when the snip goes awry, leaving the mother a bloody, anguished mess. It’s a quick bit, but it sure left a major impression on me.

Runner up: That dream sequence (?) where the boys’ lay one of their nasty beetles on mom’s face and it takes a stroll right into her open mouth. Blecch! (Eric W.)

6. Stung – Maggot Mess

So I’m on record as liking the unabashed B-level creature-feature STUNG more than most, even upping my review score one whole point for a single sequence that occurs in the back-half of the film. Have you ever seen the 1981 sci-fi horror joint GALAXY OF TERROR? Well, if you have, you’ll appreciate how much of a WTF moment occurs in STUNG when a giant maggot comes into the fold. Holy hell! The scene in which the upstairs of the secluded garden party mansion becomes a bile-ridden larval cocoon for a giant maggot to be born, with my man Clifton Collins repugnantly attached…viscous and sodden in goop…is absolutely one for the books. Cliff basically births the giant insect, nestles it, caresses it, then tries to feed the thing to our hero Matt O’Leary in order to morph him into equally icky alien hybrid. (Jake Dee)

7. Wyrmwood – Mad Doctor Dance

One of the most favorably reviewed films I had the pleasure to clock for AITH in 2015 was an Aussie zombie joint called WYRMWOOD, which you can now find streaming on Netflix. And to be honest, the wall-to-wall action is so damn relentless that the entire film could be construed as one giant WTF blitz. That said, there’s one recurring sequence in the film that to me stands out as the gnarliest. It involves the zombie-virus which gets spread in the film. See, the scourge is genetically engineered by a maniacal doctor who does work in a seedy, neon-blue-lit-mobile-home-laboratory, dressed like Heisenberg mid-cook, foully injecting a splayed wall of victims with the nasty aforementioned virus as experiment. Oh, and he does all this while dancing the night away to disco like he were Tony f*cking Manero. (Jake Dee)

8. We Are Still Here – Revenge of the Dagmars

For the majority of its running time, Ted Geoghegan’s WE ARE STILL HERE is a moody, subtle character drama about a couple attempting to get over their son’s death while also contending with the notion their new house might be haunted. But in the film’s last ten minutes, the insanity is turned up to 11 as the cottage’s spirits, the Dagmars, make their presence known in flesh-burning fashion, while some angry townsfolk get sucked into the house’s floorboards. The mayhem culminates with the gruesome but immensely satisfying death of the hateful David McCabe (Monte Markham), who gets his head cracked open but good!

9. The Human Centipede 3 – The Warden’s Wound

To be frank, the entirety of Dieter Laser’s turns as Bill Boss, the wicked Warden in HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3, equals one giant WTF moment. The dude’s a sweaty puddle of walking talking sleaze. Yet if we had to single out a WTF moment involving the man that makes the others pale in comparison, it’s the scene in which the Warden has a row with one of his inmates. The two tussle, and before you know it, The Warden gets stabbed in the kidney by the inmate’s knife, and proceeds to have his bloody puncture wound penetrated by the inmate’s phallus. For real. Dude gets f*cked in the stab wound! I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it. (Jake Dee)

10. Jurassic World – Pteranodon/Mosasaurus Slaughter

Who would have thought that the summer’s biggest blockbuster would contain one of the more brutal death sequences of the year? That is, the protracted demise of Zara (Lucy Griffiths), a minor character who is subjected to a veritable hell during her last moments on Earth: she’s snatched up by a pteranodon, dropped in the mosasaurus tank, dragged down as she struggles for air, grabbed again by the pteranodon before finally, mercifully, getting chomped on by the hungry aqua-monster. Even Wayne Knight had it better in JP1! Soon after the film was over, I assumed I was alone in thinking it was a bizarrely sadistic scene for a family-friendly action-adventure flick like this, but Birth.Movies.Death actually devoted an entire article to the dino-murder, proving I wasn’t the only one who found it was thoroughly mean-spirited. That said, no one’s complaining: it really livens up what is mostly a ho-hum 2nd act in a mostly ho-hum movie. (Eric W.)

Honorable Mention: Mad Max: Fury Road – All of It

This is cheating a bit, yes, but I simply couldn’t think of just one scene from George Miller’s brilliant opus to include on this list. So, myself and Jake Dee both agreed that the whole damn movie should count as one big Holy Shit! moment. From Max’s first encounter with the war boys all the way until Immortan Joe’s fateful face-rip, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is just a nonstop ass-kicking machine. Since it’s already well-known that this is the best film of the year (we gonna fight about it?), we’ll give some other flicks the spotlight on this list, but we’d be fools to leave it off completely. It’s the only time you’ll see FURY ROAD being given “honorable mention” status around these parts, you’d better believe. (Eric W.)