Body horror uses the terror of mutation, body dysphoria, mutilation, and dismemberment to not only shock but also to tell us something about ourselves. Whether it be the current state of political affairs, societal limits on controlling humans' primal urges, and all things we lay to rest deep in our unconscious. The body horror film is elemental and deepens its terrors with practical effects, often putting digital technology to the side. Instead, it shows us man at its worst and rectifies a society's fear of itself.

David Cronenberg is a master of the genre, as is John Carpenter, having built a stellar filmography throughout the decades, sharpening their wits and the use of violence as technology grows. The two remain in the same voice but never repeat themselves. The 1980s are certainly the definitive era for the body horror genre, yet indie films and Hollywood still look to push the genre forward to this day. To celebrate the skin-crawling sub-genre of body horror, here are 15 of the best films.

15 Slime City (1988)

After moving into a dinghy apartment building in New York City, a young student named Alex meets his peculiar neighbors who offer him 'wine.' However, the substance, made by a cult, instead transforms him into a melting monster who begins preying on the other residents of the building. It becomes up to Alex's girlfriend Lori to stop the uncontrollable slimy killing machine.

Z-Grade Goopiness

There are a fair number of lower and micro-budget body horror films that emerged from the 80s that utilized fantastic effects to draw in audiences, such as Street Trash and Basket Case. However, one of the most over-the-top entries is the often-overlooked Slime City, which features a melting villain who breaks down his victims with an acidic substance oozing from his body. The mix of Alex's horror of seeing his body decay offset by his attacks on others gives so many gloriously goopy moments of body horror, with the final showdown between Alex and Lori being one of the most slime-filled finales ever committed to celluloid.

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Related: The Best Practical Effects in Body Horror Films

14 Society (1989)

Growing up in an affluent neighborhood in Beverly Hills, Bill Whitney starts to suspect that his parents are involved in a sinister secret society. His paranoia only grows as he starts to see visions of contorting bodies and witnessing odd ceremonies among the elite. Little does he know that there is a grand ceremony of unspoken perversion awaiting him to be brought into the fold of his family's legacy of debauchery and exploitation.

Keeping Body Horror in the Family

Brian Yuzna takes all the sheen of sun-soaked suburbia, 80s excess, and wealthy socialites and turns it into a perverse nightmare. Taking the paranoia we all have of secret societies, what the other side of the coin may look like, and the utter disdain some have for the better-off, instead, it's a body horror nightmare. As a young kid, Billy goes deeper into his parent's social life, attempting to create a life for himself after high school, and discovers something psychotic and horrifying. Yuzna offers up one of the most terrifying conclusions of the 80s and goes full body dysphoria. Society is a surreal and visceral experience.

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13 Matango (1963)

A man in a jail cell, the last survivor of his crew, relays his story as to why he has lost his mind and finds himself in his current predicament. A tale beyond reason, he tells of a remote island where he and his crew crashed, only to discover a weird sentiment mushroom that slowly turned his compatriots into mushroom people determined to transform every living creature into a fungal nightmare. For fans of Lovecraftian horror, Matango should be a must-watch movie as it is arguably the closest film ever to capture the same energy and themes of the master of metaphysical and cosmic horror.

Lovecraftian Horror

From the opening of a man confessing why he has gone mad to the otherworldly creatures of inexplicable origin that slowly take over the various crew members of an abandoned ship, it hits all the notes thematically and visually one would want. The movie may not have the same shocking effect as other body horror entries on this list, with the mushroom-infected crew members being somewhat campy in appearance. However, from a narrative standpoint, the movie is the perfect realization of the grand scale of horror that Lovecraft would summon in his literary works. Alternatively, for those who are squeamish but want to understand the genre better, Matango could be the perfect intro to the concepts of decay and transformation as the object of terror.

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12 Teeth (2007)

High schooler Dawn O'Keefe, is the picturehood of innocence, acting as a spokesperson for a Christian abstinence group and living true to her beliefs. This changes when a fellow student molests her, and she learns that she has the rare condition of 'vagina dentata,' which ensures not only that she can never have intercourse but that the results will always be deadly. As she begins to deal with the new info and the trauma of her assault, she begins to spiral into deadly and destructive behavior, using her newfound weapon as a means to exact revenge.

Coming of Age Tale with a Bite

Teeth may be less pronounced in the horror elements, with much of the film presented as a dark comedy meets coming-of-age drama. Still, the exploration of the bizarre condition and the way it changes Dawn's perception of herself and the way she acts toward others is perfectly apt for the body horror genre. Notably, the shock of first learning the condition and combining it with an already disturbing situation sets such an uneasy tone towards exploring self-discovery during a period that already comes with its natural sense of physical awkwardness.

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11 Infection (2004)

At a run-down hospital in the process of decommissioning, with only a few patients still in-house, a peculiar shipment arrives in the middle of the night in the form of a melting man who inexplicably clings to life despite his horrific affliction. This triggers a series of events that see the staff become infected by a disease that causes them to self-harm, as well as a potential threat from a supernatural entity possibly tied to the mysterious decaying patient.

Decaying of Both Body and Mind

Having moments of extreme body horror, like sticking hands into a boiling pot of used needles, Infection certainly knows how to disgust its audience with sensational imagery. In addition, the constant dripping presence of the oddly decaying body ensures that every moment of the movie makes one feel uncomfortable being in their skin.

However, where Masayuki Ochiais's J-Horror masterpiece excels is how it creates uncertainty around everything, with the blood portrayed as green subtly hinting that the mental decay of the staff may have already taken place before they even received the mysterious package. The movie leaves much open to the audience's interpretation, but what is undeniable is how well both supernatural and body horror mingle in this grimy gem. Infection is Currently Not Available for Rent or Stream

Related: The 20 Best Jump Scares in Horror History

10 Titane (2021)

Having been injured in a car accident as a child, Alexia developed an odd fetishization of automobiles. After an encounter with one leaves her pregnant, and she ends up committing a series of murders, she flees into hiding, where she poses as the son of a fire chief addicted to drugs. Their relationship takes bizarre turns as they both form a reliance on each other, leading up to the birth of her child.

I Sing the Body Mechanic

French filmmaker Julia Ducournau's debut film Raw announced a major talent to the world of cinema, and her follow-up, the Palme d’Or winning Titane, made clear she's just getting started. An evocative tale of body horror by way of fusing the body with heavy metal engineering, Ducournau sets out to shock but also soften the blow of the body terror with its huge heart.

Pushing her ability to show the malleability of the human flesh and how we relate to one another, Titane features two brilliantly empathetic and beautifully broken performances from Vincent Lindon and Agathe Rouselle. As the two become an odd pair after Agathe goes on the run for murder, the body becomes transgressed, repressed, and then freed.

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9 Re-Animator (1985)

Dr. Herbet West is sure he is on the brink of the most outstanding achievement in human history: the ability to reanimate the dead. Each experiment has varied results, often creating violent zombie creatures, so he looks for fresher specimens. His roommate, medical student Dand Cain, becomes an unlikely ally who soon gets dragged into the horrors of the undead coming back and seeking revenge on their creator.

Raising the Dead, for Science!

The mad scientist is the perfect vessel for body horror. Moving at a breakneck speed, Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator indulges all the 80s analog viscera to hilarious and grotesque ends. As a group of college students gets mixed up in experimental drugs that begin to reanimate dead tissue and bodies, the Frankenstein of it all comes in murderously explicit ways. Indulging in total primal disgust, the severed heads that talk and the naked bodies begin to mix for a deliriously entertaining divergent into body terror.

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8 Videodrome (1983)

Max Reen's (James Wood) life drastically changes when he comes across a rogue broadcast known as 'Videodrome.' Broadcasting with the promise of violence and erotica, the show begins to integrate into Reen's daily life, including taking his girlfriend and starting to cause him to hallucinate. The closer he gets to learning the truth about the program, the more his mind and body start to warp.

Body Horror Through the Airwaves

Sex and violence are always intrinsically linked in the works of Cronenberg. So, using his panache for body horror to literalize and warn against the terror of screens seemed like a natural world for the director to inhabit. Casting the fiery James Woods as the desperate TV producer to take the audience down the rabbit hole of taboos, secret television shows, and conspiracy broadcasts was a perfect choice. With some unforgettable analog effects, like the remote control arm, Cronenberg used horror to Trojan horse his political ideology, most effectually delivering another disgusting tale in Videodrome.

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7 Alien (1979)

When the crew of the commercial space tug Nostromo encounters a mysterious abandoned spaceship in an uncharted region, they answer what they believe to be a distress call. The crew soon learns that the distress call was a warning when they find a new alien species on the planet that uses humans and other species as their hosts to hatch their young.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream

In only his second film, Ridley Scott would prove to be a director of massive talent and show a passion for ingenuity that would only push the craft forward as well as influence every film to come after. Alien is not only a story that combines excellent character arcs, including the one of its lead, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), special effects, and cinematography, but the dread that hangs over every frame of the film throughout is unmatched, even today. Alien is an iconic film and one of the greatest in the sci-fi body horror genre.

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Related: The Best Alien Invasion Films from the '40s and '50s, Ranked

6 Altered States (1980)

Psycho-physiologist Edward Jessup begins a series of experiments using a mixture of drugs and sensory deprivation, which leads to him having visions that he believes to be 'genetic memories.' As Edward begins to amp up the intensity of his experiments, he finds that the visions he sees and body transformations are starting to take place outside the experiment. An amalgamation of ideas about birth, suffering, human consciousness, and life after death shuffled through the lens of psychedelics by way of the clichéd mad scientist, Altered States is a death-defying spectacle from British auteur, Ken Russell.

British Body Horror Classic

Based on Paddy Chayefsky's script, William Hurt is the scientist who discovers a mind-altering drug that could lead to new questions and answers about the human spirit and mind. The journey leads him to self-revelation and a mutated body. The genuine curiosity of the script gives Hurt the ability to create a human performance. Russell indulges those anxieties about life after death and being terrified of your birth to its grisly body horror extremes.

Watch Altered States on The Criterion Channel

5 Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

A couple end up accidentally running over a metal fetishist and bury the body. However, the spirit of the man ends up coming back to haunt the couple in the form of a metallic entity that transforms the bodies of the two into grotesque machines. As the two men come closer in their conflict, they begin to slowly merge into a single entity hell-bent on destroying the world. An unconventional revenge tale taken to its most disgusting and modifying endpoints, the experimental Japanese film is like the final 20 minutes of Akira stretched into a 65-minute sensory experience. Tetsuo: The Iron Man gets its moody visual ordeals from director Shinya Tsukamoto, who shot the film on 16mm emulsion to heighten the sense of surreal terror.

Together We Will Destroy This World

Tetsuo: the Iron Man is essential in understanding Japanese experimental film, with Tsukamoto creating a movie with the surrealistic edge of a Lynch film but enthusing a cyberpunk aesthetic. There would also be two sequels to the movie, with Tetsuo II: Body Hammer and Tetsuo: The Bullet Man, offering different takes on the horror of fusing of machine and body.

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4 The Fly (1986)

Jeff Goldblum stars as Dr. Seth Brundle, the scientist who pushes the human body to its limits for the sake of knowledge and his morbid curiosity. Dr. Brundle accidentally transfers genes to an insect that will mutate his body beyond repair. The fallout becomes catastrophic for his health and those who love him.

The Ultimate Science Experiment Gone Wrong

The Fly is a film so brutal and disgusting that it's nearly impossible to look away. It is so mesmerizingly audacious that one would likely want it stricken from their memory, but the experience will have so seeped into your bones that it’ll never leave. Cronenberg’s The Fly took body horror and animatronics to their extremes for the sake of human ambition. The Fly is a terrifyingly chilling film that will always be one of Cronenberg's best. The movie also marks one of, if not the best, career performances by the charismatic Jeff Goldblum as the scientist turned horrific bug hybrid.

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3 Helter Skelter (2012)

Arguably one of the best manga adaptations of all time, Mika Ninagawa takes the critique of the beauty and fashion industry from Kyoko Okazaki Helter Skelter and transforms it into a surreal mix of high fashion perfection and decay. The hottest model in Japan, Liliko, has seemingly reached the height of her stardom, worshiped by those around her and constantly in the public eye. Behind the scenes, the fashion model is slowly crumbling, both mentally and physically, becoming extremely jealous of any upstarts in the industry as well as having her body decay from the experimental cosmetic surgery that gained her stardom in the first place.

The Toll of Beauty and Popularity

Liliko's rapid decline, both physically and mentally, becomes quite the site to behold as a fashion shoot of picturesque beauty is contrasted by sharp anger and hidden blotches of rotting skin. Based on a book written by someone who started her career as a fashion illustrator, directed by the talented Mika Ninagawa, and starring a beautifully expressive Erika Sawajiri, the movie is made 100% from a female perspective, critiquing the fashion industry, consumerism, and touting the value of authenticity over vanity. This perspective makes it a worthy watch on the list, beyond the fact that the movie is a perfectly constructed nightmare drenched in glitter and gore.

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Related: Best Movies Set in the Fashion World, Ranked

2 Possessor (2020)

Tasya Vos is an assassin who uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people's bodies to carry out hits while framing others as killers. However, her most recent job sees her begin to lose control of her subject, and the two end up swapping back and forth, threatening both their body anatomy and mental stability.

Carrying on The Legacy of Making Audiances Squirm

Director Brandon Cronenberg, son of David Cronenberg, has certainly dedicated himself to carrying on his father's legacy of crafting unique visions of body horror. His second film, Possessor, is his best work to date, merging mental and physical chaos into two distinctly troubled characters through a surreal shared connection. The movie's final moments are utterly devastating; combine this with visions of bizarre body distortions, and the movie exists as one of the best modern examples of the body horror genre, being able to grow still and move forward in exciting directions.

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1 The Thing (1982)

Locking a crew of research scientists in the heart of the Arctic as an unknown alien presence infiltrates their grounds, imitating and copying any flesh it comes into contact with, John Carpenter created a pillar of the body horror genre. As Kurt Russell and Keith David navigate the crew's paranoia and their suspicion of who controls the power dynamics, The Thing slowly devolves into a body horror gore fest where no one is to be trusted.

Trust No One

King of the horror film in the 1980s, Carpenter’s The Thing is a feat of editing, practical effects, and his keen sense of creating an atmosphere of paranoia. While the movie was initially a flop on its theatrical release, it has since been recognized for the masterful feat of effects and storytelling that marks it as the best body horror movie ever made. Moreover, it has become a part of pop culture, with the movie influencing many other filmmakers, authors, and game designers with its masterful, nightmarish visions of mangled bodies and extreme paranoia.

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