Movie lists suck, especially horror-themed lists.

Be it a well respected publication or some basement-dwelling nerd’s “podcast” (that word alone makes me run screaming in terror, tears in my eyes, vomit crusting around the sides of my mouth), nearly every list you find will be flooded with 1,000 well-worn subjects that you’ve already seen a million times. Yes, we’ve seen Jaws pop out of the water. Yes, we’ve seen Linda Blair vomit split-pea soup. Yes, we’ve seen Janet Leigh get knifed in the shower – and yes, we still pretend that she didn’t deserve it.

Let’s examine something slightly different this time.

This is a collection of films that don’t belong in a horror movie list. In fact, most of these films have nothing to do with horror whatsoever. Sure, some of them intentionally create uncomfortable situations, but for the most part they shouldn’t even be anywhere near the word “horror”. However, every single movie on this list has moments, even fleeting, where they’ve managed to give me the absolute goddamn heebie-jeebies.

So let’s celebrate those uncomfortable, stomach-churning moments. These aren’t ranked in any particular order, but if you have a fastidious need for organization, pretend this is a list that ranks things from “unpleasant” to “unpleasant,” or vice-versa.

Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
Starting off with the most well-known movie on the list, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure tells the story of a man-child and his love for a bicycle. When that bicycle is stolen, Pee wee sets off into the world, where he encounters scene after scene the studio deemed “wacky, fun adventure for the whole family,” but I deem “the possible point in time where I started to fear all of my surroundings.”

With its sickening, funhouse mirror visuals and intentional slides into sick imagery, this movie can be a horrific shocker when you see it as a child – and an even bigger shock as an adult when you see how it’s about a million times more mind-melting than you thought it was as a child. The whole package is an assault on the mind, from Tim Burton’s direction down to Danny Elfman’s intentionally ear-splitting score. Yes, most children’s programming is absolutely condescending, but that doesn’t mean you have to go off the deep end and create something that resembles a combination of a Sid and Marty Krofft production, a snuff film and your worst childhood nightmares.

DEFINING MOMENT OF TERROR:
The most amazing thing about video technology is that I no longer have to embarrass myself or the people around me when I clench my fists, bury my head into my pillow and cry like a four-year-old girl every time that goddamn Large Marge speech happens in the film. The more knowledgeable side of me wants to go, “Large Marge is one of the more distinct creations the Chiodo Brothers have ever worked on and I can sit here and appreciate this wonderful, pre-CGI work,” but by the time her speech ends with “AND SHE LOOKED JUST LIKE THIS,” I’ve already stuck my head under the blanket.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:
Even doing the screen captures for this review creeped me the hell out. Let’s move on.

Double Agent 73
The bizarrely endowed Chesty Morgan helps fight crime by rubbing out the mob one-by-one, taking pictures of them via a camera that was implanted in her breast by the government. But, oh no! If Chesty doesn’t get back to headquarters in time, her titty is set to self-destruct! What will Chesty Morgan’s breasts do?!

After watching Doris Wishman’s opus to criminally large breasts for the 5th or 6th time, I have come to a conclusion. And that conclusion is that homosexuality is not genetic. However, surprisingly, homosexuality also is not caused by broken homes, molestation, which gender you choose to play doctor with as a child, whether you drink Coke or Pepsi, or religious upbringing. I hold the firm belief that when the first theatrical showing of Double Agent 73 finished rolling off the screen, there had to be a single man in the audience who threw up his arms in sheer terror and said to the person sitting next to him, “Fuck it. I’m growing a moustache.”

And thus a new subculture was born.

I could watch the animal violence in Cannibal Holocaust on an endless loop with pins taped under my eyelids and I still wouldn’t blink. But sit me down in front of a movie starring Chesty Morgan and I’m ready to confess where I hid all that Nazi gold (under the floorboards in the closet, by the way). Equipped with acting talent that could easily be upstaged by a mannequin, tits the size of a young baby (and just as squeezable) and outfits so hideous it would make a straight man wince, Chesty is more damaging to the soul than your parents sitting you down to tell you they’re getting a divorce.

DEFINING MOMENT OF TERROR:
There is a point in this movie where Chesty Morgan punches a man out with her breast. No, she doesn’t smother him with her bosom, she actually picks up her breast and flings it at the man.

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
Just think, in the days before easily-accessible hardcore pornography, people actually masturbated to Chesty Morgan. And sure, I like a bulbous pair of breasts from time to time, but Chesty Morgan is like going to a restaurant and ordering one of those five-pound slabs of beef that you get for free if you eat it all in one sitting.

Showgirls
Nomi Malone (whore/crank head/stripper/testicle-kicker) finds herself in Las Vegas, where she quickly moves her way from low-rent stripper to a high-class hotel stripper in a story about backstabbing, dancing, backstabbing, chip-eating, fucking, Kyle MacLachlan’s hair and more backstabbing.

If you’re ready to ask me “What isn’t scary about Showgirls?” please go away. I have yet to find another movie as fully entertaining as this piece of crap. Sure, the general population’s opinion of the film is that every frame in it is packed with the desperation and dread horror movies wish they had, I find it to be a fun romp through Las Vegas, hosted by a psychotic woman whose only talent seems to be the ability to gyrate her pelvis in an extremely mechanical fashion and to recite lines with an aplomb that’s comparable to Chesty Morgan in the previous entry. Needless to say, this just might be my most watched film next to D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

DEFINING MOMENT OF TERROR:
Just like the saying goes: “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,” and Showgirls has one hell of a gouger when Molly, the only moral character in the film, is sexually assaulted by her musical hero, Andrew Carver, and a few of his henchmen in a genuinely uncomfortable scene that has no business in the film. How am I supposed to laugh in a hip and ironic fashion when the movie’s only nice character is presented to you with a face full of fist and an ass full of rape?
…the answer is “drunkenly,” by the way.

BONUS POINTS:
When Molly manages to hobble out into the party afterwards, she falls to the ground in a heap of pain and bodily fluid. Notice the odd, dark purple dripping down her leg – it’s as if she was raped so hard, even her blood got bruised.

Jam
Starting off as late-night radio programming (Blue Jam), Chris Morris welcomes you to every episode like a psychotic Rod Sterling with a combination of sketch comedy, ambient music and feelings of true unpleasantness that would make Ricky Gervais (The Office) run out of the room weeping. While not a film, this late night British sketch “comedy” show deserves the highest accolades for featuring some of the most bizarre, surreal and downright disgusting sketches I’ve ever seen. In fact, the series was considered so offensive that it ran commercial free – no advertisers wanted to be associated with the show.

Not only is the content easily able to put a few people off their lunches, a special note must be given to the way the show was filmed. Loaded with weird-ass special effects, including desynched audio/video, intentional blurring and distorting, and (my personal favorite) filming the sketch being played on a television, the show recreates what it feels like when you’re sick with the flu, hung-over after drinking an entire bottle of NyQuil, and have had your head stuck under a down comforter while sleeping for 18 hours straight. Also included in the DVD package (thankfully all region, but PAL formatted) is the re-edited, remixed, more spaced-out version, aired on late night television called Jaaaaam.

DEFINING MOMENT OF TERROR:
The sketch titled “Shredder Vengeance” on Episode 2 features Mark Heap as a vengeful ex-boyfriend who records a video tape “gift” for his girlfriend. The tape features Heap in a tuxedo jamming himself into a wood chipper with the spout pointed directly at his ex’s bedroom window. The camera moves over to the window, which features a woman screaming in terror as she gets a face-full of her boyfriend, who is gurgling “I’M COMING BACK” in between absolutely ugly sounds of Heap choking on his own blood while laughing. The only thing that might be scarier than the sketch itself is how much I identify with it.

DIALOGUE EXCERPT:
“When dancing, lost in techno trance… Arms flailing, gawky bears… Then find you snagged on frowns and slowly it dawns… You’re jazzing to the bleep tone of a life-support machine that marks the steady fading of your day-old baby daughter…” Lighten up kids, it’s a sketch comedy show!

The Apple
Alphie and Bibi are two lily-white cracker-spawn from Moose Jaw, Canada who make their way down to the States to star in a 1994 music competition. While the two are belting out a sappy love song (with a guitar that apparently has a drum set and a string quartet inside it, too), Mr. Boogalow is behind the scenes, orchestrating the whole event and making sure that his own protégé gets the reigning spot in a film that could easily be called George Orwell’s Disco ‘84.

What’s a list about unintentionally scary movie moments without a musical? It’s also very easy to see through; obviously I’m running out of steam, which is ridiculous seeing as how this article has only five entries. But don’t let this fact bring this essay to a grinding halt; The Apple is obscenely awful and is punctuated with more horrific moments than the previous movies combined, from the whole future angle (in the future, all of our drinking glasses will be triangular!) down to the music, the direction, the acting, the costuming. Everything. However, watching this film might be worth it for the insanely retarded ending, which features God coming down from the heavens in a flying Cadillac (I’m assuming it’s a Cadillac, since I know nothing about cars. Anything made before 1980 is a Cadillac to me) to take hippies not to heaven, but to another planet. This movie left me feeling so morose, I put Stop Making Sense into my DVD player right afterwards as a aural palette cleanser.

DEFINING MOMENT OF TERROR:
While it’s hard to pick out a single moment in a film so consistent in its terror, The Apple’s title musical number is particularly painful. The song makes its way through blatant reference to The Bible’s story of Adam and Eve, then stops being allegory and becomes adaptation. However, The Apple manages to one-up the Bible by featuring disco, deformed black men, vampires and Napoleon.

FUN FACT:
Renting this from Netflix, I looked at the back of the disc and noticed that it was sparkling clean and without any scratches, almost as if it had never been rented since the last time I rented this monstrosity.

So, Where Does This All Leave Us?

Well, if there’s anything this list serves as, it’s a warning to never let me write another article ever again. It also serves as required viewing for you. Yes, the movies on this list range from actually good (I shot tea out of my nose while watching Pee Wee’s Big Adventure) to the type of movie that’ll drive you to drink – but don’t let that stop you. All of these films have little moments, short bursts of sheer inane spectacle that make these films compulsively watchable.

Okay, I’m just bullshitting you. I just don’t want to be the only one who has seen The Apple more than once.

Thank you and goodnight!