5. Opera (1987)
Some scenes can overpower a film. Can anyone talk about The French Connection without mentioning the train chase? What about Psycho and the shower sequence? It’s not to say that the rest of the film is bad, just that it’s consumed by one of these singular moments. Hell, most flicks don’t come anywhere close to delivering a single memorable second, let alone a whole scene or a movie.
Dario Argento‘s Opera satisfies with its ocular showcase. Betty (Cristina Marsillach) is gagged and bound to a pillar, forced to witness her boyfriend’s slaughter. She can’t look away; a set of needles are strapped beneath her eyelids. As she twitches, the tiny points dig in. Argento’s extreme close-ups capture every millisecond of agony. It’s unbearable.
What occurs before and what occurs after is hard to recall. The violence inflicted upon our heroine is so primeval that it takes serious willpower to remaster your attention. You’re shook. That’s Opera. (Brad Gullickson)
4. The Beyond (1981)
Joe the Plumber (Giovanni De Nava) was a blue-collar, working-class kind of guy trying to make a living with his small business simply titled “Joe’s Plumbing.” He was just trying to do a job and make a buck, not get involved with the forces of Hell that were bubbling up underneath the old Victorian home that he was called to in rural Louisiana.
But you know what? Joe’s gotta pay the bills, put food on his table, and make rent, and let’s be real: who would expect to unearth the undead when checking out a routine flooding problem? Not Joe. But out of the crumbling walls comes a ghoulish hand that presses into his face, twisting its thumb as poor Joe’s eye comes plopping out of his head in a wonderfully gruesome moment from the king of eyeball horror, Lucio Fulci.
It’s so effective because while you expect the eye to be gouged, the only adjective that can describe what happens is that it was scooped out like it was… wait for it… eye scream. Get it? Because… ice cream, eye scream? Hey, Fulci would have appreciated that play on words! (Jacob Trussell)
3. New York Ripper (1982)
Any form of contact with the eyes is enough to freak me out. Someone putting in their contacts? Disgusting. Need to moisture the old peepers by applying a few drops of Visine? Uh yeah, no thank you. So as you can imagine, despite my love for him, Lucio Fulci has managed to get under my lids and fill me with anxiety and fear on more than a handful of occasions.
In his ultra sleazy 1982 film, The New York Ripper, one scene rocks me every time. The police frantically trying to track the Donald Duck killer is intercut with the notorious slasher taking a razor blade and slowly slicing it from the top of the forehead of his latest victim and right down the middle of her eye. It’s a squishy, goopy mess that even Lasik won’t be able to fix. Eye caramba! (Chris Coffel)
2. Hostel (2005)
The most disturbing element of this scene isn’t that a woman’s eye is hanging out of the socket, which leads to the film’s hero cutting it out with scissors. That’s gross for sure. But the real devastating part is the in-between moment when they’re both screaming and bracing for the snipping.
Eli Roth maximizes the discomfort here before unleashing the gross-out effect in full, gooey force. As icky as the eyeball horror is here, however, the practical effects are impressive, and that makes the scene almost beautiful. (Kieran Fisher)
1. Zombi 2 (1979)
It shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with Lucio Fulci‘s filmography to see that a whopping four of his movies have landed spots on this top ten list of eyeball carnage. The man loves nothing more than destroying human flesh and watching audiences cringe, and eyes are a favorite target for the man.
The later Fulci films above showcase eyes being sliced and gouged and clawed out, but it’s 1979’s Zombi 2 that got the bloody (eye)ball rolling. A woman barricades herself in a room to hide from the undead, but an arm busts through the door and takes hold of her hair, then slowly pulls her toward an exposed and jagged splinter of wood.
Fulci milks the sequence for every drop of sweaty suspense as the screaming woman’s face gets closer and closer — and one quick edit later we watch as the sharp wood pierces her soft eyeball, penetrates several inches deep, and then snaps off. It is simultaneously glorious and horrifying, and therefore it remains the very best scene of eyeball horror ever filmed. (Rob Hunter)
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Related Topics: 31 Days of Horror Lists, Horror, Lucio Fulci
