10 Body Horror Scenes
The genital mutilation scenes in Antichrist are a perfect reminder that despite the oversaturation of Saw style torture porn, splatter core B-movies and Toxic Avenger style cartoonish deaths, onscreen violence still has the power to make you wince. Perhaps it's humankind's natural empathy for other humans that allows a male film critic to temporarily grow a mental clitoris when Charlotte Gainsbourg goes after it with some scissors. But this is the thinking man's violence; it's not a matter of special effects or what you see or don't see, but a certain idea that's so strong it elicits something like phantom limb pain in the viewer — that is, if you're not already averting your eyes.
So for your reading pleasure(?) The Quietus has collected 10 scenes of body-related violence so vivid, they'll make your toes curl.
Scanners
Cronenberg's great sci-fi innovation is that he imagines the effects of sci-fi concepts on the body. You'll never see a simple Star Trek 'beam me up' or a gentle metamorphoses — everything is physical, visceral and full of fluids. In the world of Scanners, telepathy is not about fingers pressed gingerly to temples and eyes that stare right through you; it's a painful and sometimes deadly process. The head exploding is not nearly as bad as the vein popping and brain wrinkling noises that preceed it.