44 Body Horror Movies To Kill Your Appetite
Because nothing says "Thanksgiving" like being too grossed-out to eat. WARNING: Major gore ahead. Also, spoilers! Proceed at your own risk.
Body horror is defined as "a horror film genre in which the main feature is the graphically depicted destruction or degeneration of a human body or bodies." It is best enjoyed on an empty stomach. With that in mind, here are some of the finest, most cringe-inducing body horror films of all time — definitely not for the faint of heart.
1. Eraserhead (1977)

Directed by: David Lynch
Written by: David Lynch
What it's about: Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is abandoned by his girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) and left to care for their child, an incessantly crying infant that may not be human.
Key body horror moment: Spencer removes his child's swaddling and realizes it has no skin. Without anything to hold them in, the child's organs spill out, and Spencer cuts them apart with scissors.
2. Rabid (1977)

Directed by: David Cronenberg
Written by: David Cronenberg
What it's about: After a motorcycle accident, Rose (Marilyn Chambers) gets experimental skin grafting surgery. Soon she's hungering for human blood and turning all her victims into equally rabid zombies.
Key body horror moment: From the new orifice in Rose's armpit — which, it's worth noting, looks very much like a vagina — a phallic stinger emerges to drain blood from her victims.
6. Altered States (1980)

Directed by: Ken Russell
Written by: Paddy Chayefsky
What it's about: Professor Edward Jessup (William Hurt) is studying other states of consciousness when he begins to experiment with powerful hallucinogens that actually change his body.
Key body horror moment: As his hallucinations intensify, Edward eventually emerges from his isolation tank as a formless primordial mass with very few of his human characteristics intact.
7. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Directed by: John Landis
Written by: John Landis
What it's about: David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) are attacked by a werewolf while on vacation in London. Jack is killed and David begins to transform into the creature.
Key body horror moment: While the werewolf transformation itself is visceral and disturbing, there's also Jack's posthumous return to David as a decaying corpse with slash marks down his face.
10. The Thing (1982)

Directed by: John Carpenter
Written by: Bill Lancaster
What it's about: At an Antarctic research station, a parasitic alien preys on scientists, adopting their physical features and inspiring paranoia within the ranks.
Key body horror moment: Norris (Charles Hallahan) appears to suffer a heart attack, but when the group tries to help him, his body opens up and he transforms into a hideously mutated version of Norris.
16. From Beyond (1986)

Directed by: Stuart Gordon
Written by: Dennis Paoli
What it's about: Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) and his assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs), experiment with the Resonator, a machine that allows them to see into an alternate reality, but with serious consequences.
Key body horror moment: Though believed to be dead, Dr. Pretorius returns as a slimy, mutated version of himself. But when Dr. Crawford tries to touch him, Pretorius literally falls apart.
17. The Fly (1986)

Directed by: David Cronenberg
Written by: Charles Edward Pogue and David Cronenberg
What it's about: While experimenting with teleportation, scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) accidentally splices his DNA with a housefly's and slowly transforms into a hybrid creature.
Key body horror moment: There are plenty of upsetting scenes involving Brundle's devolution into the Brundlefly, but none more so than when he notices his fingernails are falling off.
20. The Blob (1988)

Directed by: Chuck Russell
Written by: Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont
What it's about: A meteorite crashes in the town of Arborville, bringing with it a sentient alien blob that absorbs and digests everything in its path.
Key body horror moment: The Blob latches itself onto a homeless man (Billy Beck), who then tries to cut his hand off. Shortly thereafter, the Blob eats through the man's lower half.
22. Society (1989)

Directed by: Brian Yuzna
Written by: Woody Keith and Rick Fry
What it's about: Popular rich kid Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock) doesn't feel like he fits in with his parents (Connie Danese and Charles Lucia) or their high-society lifestyle, and becomes more suspicious when he overhears what sounds like an orgy.
Key body horror moment: The rich members of society expose themselves as inhuman creatures, who merge their bodies together and feed off Billy's sister's ex-boyfriend, Blanchard (Tim Bartell), while he's still alive.
23. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Directed by: Shinya Tsukamoto
Written by: Shinya Tsukamoto
What it's about: After a businessman (Tomorowo Taguchi) and his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara) hit the Metal Fetishist (Shinya Tsukamoto) with the man's car, the man begins to turn into metal.
Key body horror moment: The businessman realizes that, along with the other changes to his body, his penis has been replaced by a power drill that impales his girlfriend.
29. May (2002)

Directed by: Lucky McKee
Written by: Lucky McKee
What it's about: Outcast May Canady (Angela Bettis) struggles to make real human connections while remaining oddly attached to her best friend Suzie, a doll in a glass case.
Key body horror moment: May, who has murdered several people, assembles them into a Frankenstein's creature named "Amy." To complete her new life-size doll, May gouges out her eye with scissors and gives it to Amy.
30. Taxidermia (2006)

Directed by: György Pálfi
Written by: György Pálfi, Zsófia Ruttkay, and Lajos Parti Nagy
What it's about: Balatony Lajaska (Marc Bischoff) practices taxidermy and lives under the oppressive rule of his obese father Balatony Kálmán (Gergely Trócsányi).
Key body horror moment: After stuffing his father and his cats, Lajaska steps into a surgical harness and begins to taxidermy himself while still alive. He injects himself with painkillers and preservatives, then removes his internal organs.
35. Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Written by: Kengo Kaji, Sayako Nakoshi, and Yoshihiro Nishimura
What it's about: In futuristic Japan, a virus turns humans into Engineers, who sprout mutations whenever they are injured. The corrupt Engineer Officers set about getting rid of anyone infected.
Key body horror moment: A young woman emerges whose entire lower half is an alligator's head — and the alligator quickly starts devouring a man's limbs.
37. The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)

Directed by: Tom Six
Written by: Tom Six
What it's about: Retired surgeon Dr. Joseph Heiter (Dieter Laser) kidnaps and performs gruesome experimental surgery on three victims to turn them into a human centipede, a crawling mass of people sewn mouth-to-anus.
Key body horror moment: It's almost too horrible to say. As Dr. Heiter intended, when the front of the human centipede shits, it's forced into the mouth of the woman behind him. (Sorry!)
38. Splice (2009)

Directed by: Vincenzo Natali
Written by: Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant, and Doug Taylor
What it's about: Genetic engineers Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) secretly create a human-animal hybrid named Dren that ages rapidly and grows increasingly violent.
Key body horror moment: Dren emerges from the grave where she's been buried, now transformed into a male with wings. He then proceeds to rape Elsa, previously his mother figure.
39. Black Swan (2010)

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Written by: Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, and John McLaughlin
What it's about: Ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) feels intensely competitive with rival dancer Lily (Mila Kunis) and begins experiencing violent and disturbing hallucinations.
Key body horror moment: Nina notices a hangnail and begins tugging at it, but when she pulls, she rips a large swath of skin from her finger.
42. American Mary (2012)

Directed by: The Soska Sisters
Written by: The Soska Sisters
What it's about: Medical student Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle) is drowning in bills, so she agrees to perform horrific and unethical body modification surgeries.
Key body horror moment: After she is raped by Dr. Grant (David Lovgren), Mary holds him captive and performs surgeries against his will, including splitting his tongue and suturing his mouth shut.
43. Under the Skin (2013)

Directed by: Jonathan Glazer
Written by: Walter Campbell and Jonathan Glazer
What it's about: An alien disguised as a woman (Scarlett Johansson) seduces men into an abyss where they are dissolved, leaving only their skin behind.
Key body horror moment: During a violent struggle at the end of the film, a man rips off the woman's skin revealing the alien body underneath.
44. Tusk (2014)

Directed by: Kevin Smith
Written by: Kevin Smith
What it's about: Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) is kidnapped by eccentric Howard Howe (Michael Parks), who inflicts his obsession with the walrus and hatred for mankind on his victim.
Key body horror moment: Howe completes his project — Wallace is sewn into his own walrus pelt, with tusks made out of the bones from his legs, which Howe had previously amputated.