Top 5 Tuesdays (T5T) Is Torture
Alas, the Superbowl was two days ago which signifies the official closure of football. So I'm depressed. The Pro Bowl doesn't count.
And I don't care for basketball which is the only thing on right now, so that doesn't help. And don't get me started on golf.
I'm a football and baseball guy, so until baseball gears up, there's this dead zone for me where I aimlessly flip through channels, watching nothing. And now ESPN and local sports radio serve no purpose for me. I am a man without a direction.
It's torture. Torture I say.
Which leads me to the subject of this new Top 5 Tuesday which is going to be about torture.
Give me your top 5 torture scenes in a movie.
Here are mine.
1. Marathon Man - Laurence Olivier digs away at Dustin Hoffman's mouth and asks over and over the infamous phrase "is it safe?" Kills me every time.
2. A Clockwork Orange - Man where do I begin? Take your pick. This movie seems to be filled with torture scenes, but I would have to say the scene where Malcolm McDowell and his droogs rape the woman in front of her husband. Unbelievable torture for the husband.
3. Reservoir Dogs - Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde) takes pure joy in torturing a police officer he has captured, and when I mean pure joy I actually mean cutting off the cop's ear.
4. Swimming With Sharks - Frank Whaley spends hours torturing his boss Kevin Spacey. It gets really dicey when he gives Spacey several paper cuts. Ouch.
5. The Deer Hunter - Robert Deniro and John Voight and Christopher Walken engage in a sadistic game of Russian Roulette where they have the pleasure of gambling with their own lives. If that wasn't torture enough, they get repeatedly slapped around by some Viet Cong man who continually yells "Di-di Mao".
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7 comments:
I would have to add a horror / thriller to the pick: Saw II.
I only watched Saw II and haven't seen the rest of the Saw series, and I'm not usually into horror flicks, but thought it would be a worthwhile addition.
There's a slow torture of a different kind experienced by Jack Lemmon throughout the entirety of Glengarry Glen Ross.
Both excellent examples. Forgot about Saw and I like non-literal example of torture suffered by Jack Lemmon.
First of all, on your #3: torture for the HUSBAND? Ahem. I think someone else is being tortured significantly more directly there.
Anyway, here are a few more I came up with:
* The Princess Bride - Westley being rendered "mostly dead" by The Machine.
* Pan's Labyrinth - Two excruciating torture scenes, one of which concludes with an extra-gruesome act of retribution by the torturee.
* (Not a movie but still burned into my brain) Last week's episode of Rome. Again, two horrid torture scenes.
Let's move on to a topic that won't give me nightmares while I try to think of comment fodder!
Misery- Kathy Bates and James Caan. Good movie, creepy and painful to watch, especially the ankle breaking.
Pans Labrynith-someone already put this (good call). I saw this last week and had no idea how intense some scenes would be.
The Vanishing: Not the greatest movie of all time but not bad. Kiefer sutherlands wife is kidnapped and the mystery is never solved. Years and years go by and it drives him crazy. The coffin scene always freaks me out too.
Well I would have picked the torture of Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork. Man, that film is BRUTAL.
Jane,
My bad on Clockwork Orange. Allow me to take my pig costume off... there. That scene is extreme torture for the wife. I was thinking that since the wife died and the husband had to live with it, it was extreme torture.
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