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. The man loves nothing more than destroying human flesh and watching audiences cringe, and eyes are a favorite target for the man. 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.

As icky as the eyeball horror is here, however, the practical effects are impressive, and that makes the scene almost beautiful.

But the real devastating part is the in-between moment when they’re both screaming and bracing for the snipping.Įli Roth maximizes the discomfort here before unleashing the gross-out effect in full, gooey force. 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.

It’s a squishy, goopy mess that even Lasik won’t be able to fix. The police frantically trying to track the Donald Duck killer is inter cut 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. In his ultra sleazy 1982 film, The New York Ripper, one scene rocks me every time. 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. Need to moisture the old peepers by applying a few drops of Visine? Uh yeah, no thank you. Someone putting in their contacts? Disgusting. New York Ripper (1982)Īny form of contact with the eyes is enough to freak me out. Get it? Because… ice cream, eye scream? Hey, Fulci would have appreciated that play on words! (Jacob Trussell) 3. 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. 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. 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.īut 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. The violence inflicted upon our heroine is so primeval that it takes serious willpower to remaster your attention. What occurs before and what occurs after is hard to recall.

Argento’s extreme close-ups capture every millisecond of agony. She can’t look away a set of needles are strapped beneath her eyelids. Betty (Cristina Marsillach) is gagged and bound to a pillar, forced to witness her boyfriend’s slaughter. Hell, most flicks don’t come anywhere close to delivering a single memorable second, let alone a whole scene or a movie.ĭario Argento‘s Opera satisfies with its ocular showcase. 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.

Eating eyeballs scene horror movie