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What is good taste? What is bad taste? Does it matter? Depends on the content of the word “taste.” Food has a taste, and it’s hard to imagine many people wanting to consume some kind of food that tastes bad, for hopefully obvious reasons. But taste, relating to fiction, is more about how wholesome or nasty something is, with bad-taste movies being potentially offensive and/or disturbing.
That can be the point, though, and something can be bad taste but with a purpose, and so then, the offensiveness is kind of mitigated. It’s all very subjective, admittedly, but the following movies arguably push things particularly far when it comes to bad taste, or otherwise mishandle delicate subject matter to the extent that they can be seen as offensive. There’s more in the former category than the latter (since most movies here are actually pretty good), but there might be some found in the latter category, just to keep things a little spicier and less predictable.
10
‘Love Exposure’ (2008)
Even without considering the runtime, Love Exposure is a lot to grapple with and comprehend. Then you do consider the runtime, and you see the whole thing goes for almost four hours, and it’s like… whew. The ambition can’t be faulted here, though, since this one’s an action movie, a coming-of-age film, a crime flick, and something of a twisted rom-com all wrapped up in one chaotic package.
And it goes on for so long, never really caring about how many taboo subjects touched upon might be too many. Love Exposure begins with its protagonist working as an upskirt photographer, and then it just gets wilder and more potentially offensive from there… to an extent that really has to be emphasized, because Love Exposure has plenty of time to get so much wilder, and it barely wastes a second ceaselessly doing so.
9
‘Happiness’ (1998)
There are a few movies that can’t be summarized without the plot summaries themselves feeling R-rated, and Happiness is one such film. So, it’s a bit like, “Just trust me, bro.” And that’s disappointing, as far as commentary goes, but the person typing these words right now is restricted to what he can say within an easily accessible article, and there are things that happen in Happiness that shouldn’t just be elaborated upon carelessly.
It’s a film about a collection of deeply troubled characters. Yeah, that can be said. But their troubles are really, really quite troubling, and Happiness approaches all those troubles – and explores them – in the most uncompromising of ways. Content-wise, it’s more what Happiness makes you hear and think about that makes it shocking, instead of showing you too many outright obscene sights, but this approach might make the whole thing more disturbing, the same way a certain kind of horror movie might be more effective and scary if it barely shows its villain or much by way of on-screen carnage.
8
‘Ichi the Killer’ (2001)
Takashi Miike has never been afraid to do pretty much whatever he wants, as a filmmaker, and you can see that with something like Ichi the Killer to a particularly noticeable extent. There are two rather disturbed individuals who cross paths in this movie, one being a sadomasochistic member of the yakuza, and the other being the titular Ichi, who is indeed a serial killer.
It’s probably best defined as a horror movie, but the yakuza angle also makes it an offbeat sort of gangster movie, and there’s a good deal of over-the-top (and exceedingly violent) action throughout, too.
You can probably guess where things might go, once they meet, and they do go there, and then Ichi the Killer makes them go further. It’s probably best defined as a horror movie, but the yakuza angle also makes it an offbeat sort of gangster movie, and there’s a good deal of over-the-top (and exceedingly violent) action throughout, too. It’s gonzo stuff, but worth checking out if your stomach’s strong and you don’t mind the odd bad-taste movie every now and then.
7
‘Midnight Express’ (1978)
Based on a very compelling book of the same name, Midnight Express is about the experiences of Billy Hayes after he’s caught trying to smuggle drugs out of Turkey, and is subsequently imprisoned. The real-life Billy Hayes co-wrote the source material, and said source material is generally more balanced and nuanced, finding a good deal of drama to the whole thing without going in some of the directions the movie did.
So… that movie. It’s still very effective, as a prison drama, and the core story that was compelling in the source material is still, in part, intact here. Yet some characters are dehumanized and made more brutal than they really needed to be, and the source material is proof of that, since it didn’t feel like it crossed any lines, in terms of depictions, but there was still tension and an appropriately dramatic feel to the whole thing. People do take offense with parts of Midnight Express, the movie, and you can certainly see why.
6
‘Pain & Gain’ (2013)
This might sound like an outrageous claim to make, but Pain & Gain feels like Michael Bay trying to make a Martin Scorsese movie. Okay, that’s actually not too outrageous. The outrageous part comes later, or now, when saying that he almost succeeds. Almost. This came out the same year as The Wolf of Wall Street, so maybe that makes it hard not to compare both it and Pain & Gain, in terms of being darkly comedic crime movies about real-life events.
Pain & Gain, though, mishandles things tonally, so while it’s entertaining, there’s also this kind of dark and uncomfortable feeling you get from watching it try to have so much fun (whereas The Wolf of Wall Street has a more intentional rug pull moment, so to speak, near the end… even if some people didn’t get it). There’s still one hell of a ride to be taken with Pain & Gain, and it’s aged well in the sense that it shows how, once upon a time, Dwayne Johnson did actually want to push himself, as an actor, but you are left with a bad taste in your mouth after the whole thing, even if you kind of had a good time. Whether making a movie with this kind of tone/attitude about so horrific a real-life event should’ve been allowed… like, it’s worth discussing and thinking about, truth be told.
5
‘Crank: High Voltage’ (2009)
The first Crank had a pretty great premise, and was already pretty in-your-face stylistically, and when it came to content. It was about a man who had to have adrenaline constantly surging through his body to stay alive, thanks to being poisoned, which necessitated him doing a whole bunch of reckless things while searching for an antidote to that poison.
Narratively, Crank: High Voltage sort of does the same thing, which is what you’d expect out of a sequel, but what you might not expect is how much more depraved it’s willing to get, topping the tastelessness of the first by many degrees. The ugliness here is kind of worth appreciating, because few other movies in history have been willing to be quite so profane and feel-bad throughout.
4
‘964 Pinocchio’ (1991)
You could make a pretty honest argument for the notion of 964 Pinocchio being the most chaotic movie ever made. It’s really quite depraved and horrific at just about every turn, being about a discarded cyborg who was once a sex slave, and he has to try and survive horrific conditions while those responsible for creating him try to track him down.
Laying it all out like that certainly makes 964 Pinocchio sound, to some extent, appropriately weird, but then stylistically and tonally, it’s really something else altogether. Few films will make you feel like you have to take a shower as soon as the credits start rolling to such a great extent, with this really being one of the most down and dirty (emphasis on the dirty) sci-fi/horror movies ever made.
3
‘Caligula’ (1979)
To some extent, you probably need a movie about Caligula to be in poor taste, and so on that front, Caligula (1979) is a success… kind of. At least if you take the original cut, there’s this weird tension between it being a boundary-pushing and intentionally disturbing epic and something that’s a good deal more obscene in other ways, and not particularly cinematic. An adult film, so to speak, in the classic sense of the term.
Is that in line, though, with the titular Emperor himself, and what he stood for? Or didn’t stand for? Should Caligula be as confronting and relentless as possible? These are questions worth grappling with, and maybe they help make the ever-controversial film worthy of being sought out and discussed (perhaps 2023’s The Ultimate Cut is better, in that regard, being the “right” sort of bad taste and obscene).
2
‘Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl’ (2009)
You kind of know what you’re getting into, when you sit down to watch a movie called Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, but emphasis on the “kind of.” The schlock of it all is the expected part, and Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl is incredibly schlocky, but alongside the schlock, you also get some of the most intentionally insensitive comedy found in any actual film of the past couple of decades.
If you’re in some kind of camp that can be made fun of, or ridiculed, no matter how distasteful it might be to ridicule you, then you’ll probably be personally offended, at some point, by Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl. It’s almost impressive just how ghastly the whole thing is and, at a point, the humor is so bad – and bad in taste – that it kind of wraps around and becomes potentially amusing again. Or, if the comedy is a no-go for you no matter what, then at least there’s still some schlocky action and horror scenes here you may get some enjoyment from.
1
‘Pink Flamingos’ (1972)
Apologies for censoring this a bit, but Pink Flamingos contains the line: “Kill everyone now! Condone first-degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat s**t! Filth is my politics! Filth is my life!” And that’s pretty much the perfect way to summarize the film, and demonstrate what it’s going for. It’s a line said by the main character, and she spends the movie competing with a couple of other people for the title of world’s filthiest person.
That’s what Pink Flamingos is. It’s a movie about people trying to be more disgusting than each other, and it’s still gross enough, when watched today, to feel worthy of the title of “world’s filthiest movie.” Okay, maybe not, but for 1972, what they show here is genuinely shocking. John Waters went on to make movies later in his career that were technically better than Pink Flamingos, but this one’s still considered his magnum opus, for better or worse; the most John Waters of the John Waters movies, and likely the most transgressive for its time, too.
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Jeremy Urquhart
Almontather Rassoul
