Aachi & Ssipak (2006)
Demented Korean Anime
South Korean anime that is set in a future world where people are obsessed with shit. This comes with a demented energy and a filthy-mindedness that is determined to outrage
Sexual Fetishism
This topics refers to alternate sexual practices (commonly referred to as philias) that are not covered elsewhere. For discussions of mainstream sexual practices see Sex in Fantastic Cinema and LGBT Themes in Fantastic Cinema. Some of the philias discussed here are so commonplace in their screen depictions that they have been split off as their own topics with the likes of BDSM in Fantastic Cinema and Films About Necrophilia. Films made with the intention of titillating are dealt with under Erotica and Pornography in Fantastic Cinema.
This covers everything from sexual fascination with surgery, cannibalism and bestiality to invented philias. This is simply a catalogue of the ways in which each of these practices is depicted in fantastic cinema and should not be construed as a criticism of anybody’s personal practices nor as matter support for those that are deemed illegal.
For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Sexual Fetishism in Fantastic Cinema.
Ab-Normal Beauty (2004)
Girl's Fetish with Death
Oxide Pang, one half of the Pang Brothers. goes solo to make a film about an obsessive girl who enjoys photographing death and her journey into a very disturbed mental space
The ABCs of Death (2012)
Horror Anthology
Unique anthology that offers 26 episodes from different directors, each ending with a death. The episodes vary wildly in quality but a sufficient number ignore all good taste and/or travel waaaay across taboo lines
The Acid House (1998)
Irvine Welsh Anthology/Bizarre Transformations
The success of Trainspotting gave birth to this anthology that adapts three Irvine Welsh stories, including episodes in which a man is transformed into a fly and a man swaps minds with a baby
American Fetish (2009)
Thriller Set in the World of Fetish
A modern noir-styled thriller about a man who descends into the underground world of fetish. This nether stirs a sufficiently torrid mix nor makes its plot very clear
American Mary (2012)
Underground World of Surgical Body Modification
Canada’s twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska’s second film is set in the dark underground of body modification,. Like an episode of tv’s Nip/Tuck with a Suicide Girls ethos. Not perfect but an impressive maturation
Attack of the Adult Babies (2017)
Gonzo Film
A heist film that ends up in a mansion filled with grown-men who have diaper fetishes. And then things get really bizarre. Some films are so wild and insane they attain cult status. And then there are the wannabes
Bad Guy (2001)
Sexual Humiliation and Degradation
Kim Ki-Duk film about the strangely tender relationship that grows between a mute thug and a woman he forces into prostitution
Basket Case 3 (1991)
Psychotic Siamese Twin/Gonzo Deformities
The third of Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case films but by this point the perverse wit of the original has become replaced by a cartoonish absurdity
Blue Velvet (1986)
Sadomasochism Thriller
One of the key David Lynch films in which cleancut college kid Kyle MacLachlan finds a severed human ear and is drawn into a dark underworld of S&M lorded over by a maniacally deranged Dennis Hopper
Boxing Helena (1993)
Sexual Obsession and Amputation
David Lynch’s daughter Jennifer directs a film about a surgeon who abducts a woman and amputates her limbs to make her love him. A critical bomb, it is a not uninteresting work about woman’s desire handled with more taste than you would think
Butt Boy (2019)
Man Causes Objects to Disappear Up His Ass
Every so often a film stops you dead in your tracks with its WTF premise. This is one such – a film about a man who develops a fetish for sticking objects up his ass and causes household objects, pets and children to disappear up there
Butterfly Kiss (1995)
Girl Lovers/Killers
An early Michael Winterbottom film. Far superior to the over-praised Heavenly Creatures, this has Saskia Reeves being drawn in by a crazed Amanda Plummer who gives the performance of a lifetime
Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)
Surreal Kinkiness
Cult Czech stop-motion animator, Jan Svankmajer makes an eccentrically surreal live-action film that focuses on a variety of different people who have strange fetishes
Crash (1996)
Sexual Fetishism with Car Crashes
David Cronenberg tackles J.G. Ballard’s controversial novel, creating a fascinatingly perverse work that ventures into a world where people become sexually aroused by car crashes
Crimes of the Future (1970)
Strange Future Mutations and Fetishes
The second film from David Cronenberg. Despite the SF title, this is more a work of arthouse surrealism where Cronenberg spends the film documenting strange behaviours in an hilarious deadpan tone that mimics a scientific paper
Crimes of the Future (2022)
Future Surgical Experiments
A 79 year-old David Cronenberg returns with one of his best films, a synthesis of his major themes in an extraordinary and perverse look at a future where surgery has become performance art. This site’s best film of 2022.
Dead or Alive (1999)
Gonzo Yakuza Film
A Yakuza film from Takashi Miike filled with ultra-violence and casual perversity before Miike goes nuts in a totally gonzo ending. Two unrelated sequels followed from Miike
Dead Ringers (1988)
Disturbed Twin Psychology
David Cronenberg’s absolute masterpiece of the perverse with Jeremy Irons giving a tour-de-force performance(s) as twin gynaecologists who descend into drug addiction, obsession and madness
Dressed to Kill (1980)
Psycho-Sexual Thriller
Brian De Palma’s homage to Psycho. With De Palma at absolute peak form, this is dazzlingly stylish in its directorial set-pieces and comes with an often outrageous sexual pathology
Eating Raoul (1982)
Killing Kinksters Black Comedy
Paul Bartel’s black comedy where he and Mary Woronov play a snobby couple who pose as kinksters to lure swingers and then kill them off. all to fund setting up an exclusive restaurant
8MM (1999)
Snuff Movie Thriller
This seeks to be another Se7en, adapting a script by Se7en writer Andrew Kevin Walker and employing the same visual style in the story of Nicolas Cage delving into a seedy underworld in search of a snuff movie.
Eternal (2004)
Elizabeth Bathory in the Present-Day/Erotic Horror
A film about Elizabeth Bathory living in the present day, this comes with the suggestion of erotic allure but disappointingly proves to be a pose without much substance
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)
Sex-Themed Skits/Genre Spoofs
Woody Allen film that takes the title of the best-selling sex manual and spins it out as the basis of a series of hilarious sex-themed skits. Contains the famous episode with the giant breast run amok
Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)
Psychic Link with a Serial Killer
Faye Dunaway is a fashion photographer who gains a psychic link into the mind of a killer. From a John Carpenter script but the thriller plotting is never up to the chic suggestiveness the film is given
Fascination (1979)
Erotic Horror/Blood-Drinking Lesbians
One of the films from cult French director Jean Rollin whose works always contained an arty mix of horror and erotica. This concerns mysterious blood-drinking rituals among a group of women at a chateau
Feed (2005)
Feeder Fetishism Psycho-Thriller
The one really good film from Brett Leonard, director of The Lawnmower Man, this delves into the fetish community of feederism and determines to push the material to something provocative
Frankenstein Unlimited (2009)
Anthology of Frankenstein Short Films
A series of short film interpretations of the Frankenstein story, with interpretations ranging from BDSM to kung fu and modern police procedural
Full Metal Yakuza (1997)
Yakuza Cyborg
An early work from Takashi Miike, an ultra-violent comic-book variant on RoboCop about a Yazkuza enforcer who is incarnated in a cyborg body and goes seeking revenge
German Angst (2015)
German Horror Anthology
Amid the 2010s spate of multi-director horror anthologies a la The ABCs of Death, V/H/S etc, this is a trio of tales from all German directors, the most well known of which is Jörg Buttgereit of Nekromantik infamy
Glen or Glenda? (1952)
Surreal Transvestitism "Documentary"/Classic Bad Movie
Classic film from Edward D. Wood Jr, an hilarious pseudo-documentary where Wood earnestly tries to make a case for transvestism. This has bad movie moments that are utterly surreal.
Good Boy (2022)
Man with a Furrie Companion/Imprisonment Thriller
A wonderfully disturbed film from Norway. A girl goes on a date with a man and discovers he has a roommate who wears a furrie suit and lives as a dog. And then things start to get really twisted
Gozu (2003)
Surreal Yakuza Film/Identity Exchange
The modern cinematic madman Takashi Miike makes a uniquely original work that starts out like a Yazkuza film, before taking a turn into the completely surreal and arriving at an admirably twisted ending
Gwendoline (1984)
Lost City Quest/Softcore Fetishism/Comic Strip Adaptation
From the director of Emmanuelle, this is an adaptation of an adult comic-book that replays the lost city adventure with the addition of a mind-boggling softcore fetishism
Hard Candy (2005)
Underage Girl Tortures Paedophile
Brilliantly nasty film where Ellen Page is a 14 year-old who is lured by a paedophile Patrick Wilson and promptly turns the tables, preparing to castrate him. Filled with razor sharp dialogue and career-best performances from Page and Wilson
Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)
Sadomasochistic Demon
Fifth and best of Hellraiser sequels after Clive Barker bowed out. Scott Derrickson made his directorial debut here and infuses the series with some of the wild imagery and perverse darkness that Barker gave the original
The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011)
Madman Surgically Connects Human Bodies
Sequel to the original that pushes into even more perverse territory. This throws some amusing spins on the original, creating a unique protagonist, while also contriving to exist inside an extremely disturbed headspace
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)
Mad Surgeon Connects Human Bodies
An astonishingly perverse work where a mad surgeon abducts three people intending to connect their bodies as a single digestive tract. This is a work that pushes itself into truly warped territory
In My Skin (2002)
Self-Mutilation Obsession
Fascinatingly perverse film directed and written by its star French actress Marina de Van who plays a woman who becomes obsessed with mutilating her own skin
Incense for the Damned (1969)
Psychological Vampirism
A striking variant on the vampire film full of rich metaphor. Set against the backdrop of Oxford university, this explains vampirism as a psychological condition brought on by sexual impotence and academic pressure
Karla (2006)
True-Life Serial Killers
Film based on true-life serial killing couple Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. This could have been another Monster but it feels like a film that played everything safe in terms of its content
The Killer Inside Me (2010)
Psycho Deputy
Disappointing adaptation of a classic noir novel where neither Michael Winterbottom nor a blank Casey Affleck do much to get inside the noirish mood or the troubled central character of a psychopathic sheriff’s deputy
L.A. Zombie (2010)
Gay Pornographic Zombie Film
Whether we asked for it or not, director Bruce LaBruce gives us the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film in which a zombie finds it can revive the dead by having sex with them
Lady Beware (1987)
Stalker
A tawdry erotic thriller where designer Diane Lane creates a series of sexually provocative window dressings only for her to then become targeted by a psycho stalker
Late Night Double Feature (2016)
Horror Anthology
In the same vein as Grindhouse, an anthology that consists of two longer stories set around the gimmick of a tv horror host playing a double-bill, along with several mocked-up parody trailers
Legend of the Overfiend (1989)
Anime/Teen Demon
A cult anime about a demon war on Earth and a half-demon child who has been born in the body of a teenager. This quite takes you aback with its extremes of violence and sexual fetishism
Love Me Deadly (1972)
Necrophilia
An obscure but fascinating 1970s film where Mary Wilcox is an heiress who has an obsession with necrophilia who is then drawn into the activities of a strange cult
Love Object (2003)
Man’s Twisted Relationship with a Sex Doll
This could be Lars and the Real Girl the horror version where a sex doll comes to life (maybe?) and makes Desmond Harrington’s life a misery. A film that becomes quite twisted
Malice@doll (2001)
Anime/Sex Robot Becomes Human
Perversely original anime about a sex robot in the aftermath of civilisation who is transformed into a human. Imagine Pinocchio by way of H.R. Giger
Marquis (1989)
Marquis De Sade Story/Obscene Puppet Show
Hilariously adult and filthy minded retelling of the Marquis de Sade story using puppets. Quills crossbred with Meet the Feebles if you like.
The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
Super-Villain
Boris Karloff plays the super-villain Fu Manchu, giving a performance of calculating evil in a film of great pulp thrillers
Matador (1986)
Sex and Death/Serial Killers/Black Comedy
Cheerfully outrageous early Pedro Almodovar black comedy where virginal Antonio Banderas confesses to a series of murders conducted by his death obsessed lawyer
Meet the Feebles (1990)
Obscene Puppet Show
Peter Jackson‘s second film, what might be called The Muppet Show by way of John Waters, an inspired work of puppet depravity that makes a beeline for bad taste
Michael (2011)
Paedophile and His Child Prisoner
Chilling portrait of a paedophile and the young boy he keeps locked in his cellar. The entire film is an astonishing exercise in calm and mannered understatement
Movie 43 (2013)
Anthology of Bad Taste Comedy Skits
An anthology of comedy skits that sets out to be in as bad taste as possible – you are left astounded how far a film has to go to offend in this post-South Park era. That and wondering if the producers had kidnapped some of the stars’ family members to force them to participate
Necromentia (2009)
Hallucinations, Fetish and Gateways to Hell
Drawing very clear influence from Clive Barker and Saw, this is a delve down into perverse fetish, gateways to Hell and bizarre hallucinations. After watching the film through twice, I still remain confused to what it was all about
Night Hair Child (1972)
Psychopathic Child
Quite a perversely charged film about a psychopathic child with voyeuristic tendencies
Night Terrors (1993)
Sado-Sexual Games/Marquis De Sade's Descendant
Another example of Tobe Hooper’s slight into mediocrity in the 1990s, an erotic thriller that features a madly overacting Robert Englund as the Marquis de Sade and an innocent being corrupted by his descendant in the modern day
The Pit & the Pendulum (2009)
Hypnotism Experiments/Killings
Another of David De Coteau’s cheap homoerotic horror films. This has almost no connection to Edgar Allan Poe’s story about a man tied up beneath a descending pendulum and is instead an absurd psycho-sexual film about a series of hypnotism murders in a big mansion
Princess (2006)
Animation/Anti-Porn Vigilante
Animated film from Denmark about a man who goes on an ultra-violent crusade against the porn industry over the loss of innocence of his young niece
Psyched By the 4D Witch (A Tale of Demonology) (1972)
Sex and Witchcraft
Fascinatingly bizarre psychotronic film about an innocent drawn into the secrets of sexual witchcraft. Bad filmmaking on almost every level
Re-Animator (1985)
Resurrection of the Dead/Splatter Black Comedy/H.P. Lovecraft Adaptation
This was one of the classic 1980s splatter films. Stuart Gordon throws most of H.P. Lovecraft’s tone out the window and goes for hilariously black comedy served up with outrageously over-the-top effects
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Gender-Bender Rock Musical/Frankenstein Spoof
The No 1 cult film of all time, more a phenomenon than a film, a demented glitter rock homage to mad science cinema and 50s sf films run through with celebration of a gender-bender joie de vivre
The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again (2016)
Gender-Bender Rock Musical/Frankenstein Spoof
Nothing indicates how miscalculated this remake is than the fact it has been placed in the hands of the director of the High School Musicals and sundry Disney Channel fodder
Rohtenburg (2006)
True-Life German Cannibal
Film based on true-life German cannibal Armin Meiwes who met a man online and by mutual agreement killed and ate his body
Saigon (1988)
Vietnam War Psycho-Thriller
Vietnam War film where the setting makes a unique and surprisingly effective backdrop for a modern film noir psycho-thriller
Salo or 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Sadism, Torture and Depravity
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s adaptation of the work by the Marquis de Sade is a catalogue of depravities and tortures and one of the most disturbing films ever made
A Serbian Film (2010)
Snuff Filmmaking
Possibly the most extreme film ever made, a venture into the underground of Serbain snuff filmmaking. A film that holds back from breaking no taboo and ventures into exceedingly disturbing places
Shivers (1975)
Sexual Fetishism Parasites
David Cronenberg’s first commercial release, a vivid work about parasites that turn the residents of an apartment building into sexual fetishists. Cronenberg has set out to shock while beneath that he creates fascinating metaphors about sex
The Shrouds (2024)
Grave Camera Technology
At age 81, David Cronenberg is still on great form with this perversely fascinating work about the development of a technology that places cameras inside graves to observe corpses as they decay
Singapore Sling (1990)
Torture and Perverse Goings-On
Completely demented Greek film about a mother and daughter imprisoning and torturing people in a big old house
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Mad Surgeon and His Woman Prisoner
Pedro Almodovar’s exquisitely lush homage to the mad surgeon fiilm Eyes Without a Face features a superb left field twist to become an extraordinary meditation on gender and identity
Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006)
Sadism and Torture
A hardcore and irredeemably nasty film, this has the aesthetic of a snuff movie and features lots of scenes of victims tortured and vomiting
Society (1989)
Secret Society of Shape Changers
The directorial debut for Brian Yuzna, this has a satiric and weirdly paranoid tone but what makes the film is its sensational display makeup effects involving a secret society of shapeshifting orgiasts
The Special (2020)
Man Becomes Sexually Obsessed with a Mysterious Box
Film about a man who develops an obsession with a mysterious black box that gives him the best sex of his life
Taxidermia (2006)
Tales of Gross-Out Surrealism
György Pálfi directs an anthology mad up of three stories where the emphasis is on dark, gross-out humour
10 Rillington Place (1971)
True-Life Serial Killer
One of the best true crime films, a chillingly good account of British serial killer Reginald Christie with an excellent Richard Attenborough in the role
Terror Firmer (1999)
Movie Set Killer/Bad Taste Troma Comedy
Troma film in which Lloyd Kaufman turns his own autobiography into a Troma film where the results emerge as something akin to Ed Wood as remade by John Waters
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
Man-Machine Fusion
Extraordinary directorial debut from Japan’s Shinya Tsukamoto, a frenetic, fetishistic and surreally deranged vision of man-machine fusion that feels like David Lynch having gone away and done a crash reading course of William Gibson
The Theatre Bizarre (2011)
Horror Anthology
A horror anthology featuring episodes from seven different directors. As with other anthologies, the episodes vary in quality, ranging between the so-so, the mostly quite good and one standout segment
Tightrope (1984)
S&M/Serial Killer Thriller
One of the darkest films Clint Eastwood ever made where he is a detective who becomes tempted by the world of BDSM during his pursuit of a serial killer
Tokyo Fist (1995)
Boxing, Body-Piercing and Masochism
Shinya Tsukamoto returns to the repressions of his earlier Tetsuo: The Iron Man in this frenetic, ultra-violent work about a downtrodden salaryman who reconnects with life by allowing himself to be beaten up in the boxing ring. This feels like Raging Bull remade by David Cronenberg
Trouble Every Day (2001)
Sex and Cannibalism
Acclaimed director Claire Denis makes a quite out there film in which people are obsessively driven to devour others during the act of sex
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Twin Peaks Prequel
David Lynch’s cinematic prequel to his cult tv series critically divides people. Charting the last days of the doomed prom queen Laura Palmer, Sheryl Lee gives a tour-de-force performance
Urotsukidoji II: Legend of the Demon Womb (1989)
Anime/Perverse Demon Wars
The first of two OVA sequels to the anime classic Legend of the Overfiend, this lacks the perverse imagery of the original
The Valley of the Rats (2016)
Giallo Homage in a Limousine
There is considerable conceptual ambition to this – a giallo homage, most of which takes place inside a limo. Charitably, you call it is a micro-budgeted collision between Cosmopolis and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, alas the film lets narrative fragment into incoherence in the latter half
Vampire (2011)
Serial Killer with a Blood-Drinking Fetish
Technically not a vampire film at all, rather about a kind and caring serial killer with a blood-drinking fetish who frequents suicide support boards looking for victims. A remarkable film, shot in a plain, unaffected manner and managing to discover an extraordinary intimacy between the characters
Vanishing Waves (2012)
Journey Into Dreamscapes
Acclaimed Lithuanian film involving a venture into a person’s dreamscape a la The Cell and Inception. Some nicely cool visuals, a strong character arc and some potentially edgy sexual content but the film still remains in the shadow of Inception without quite finding enough original ideas
Videodrome (1983)
Reality-Manipulating TV
Absolutely fascinating David Cronenberg film that swims with a heady mix of ideas that blur tv, reality and the human body
A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)
Erotica/Surreal Dreams and Hauntings
One of the films from cult director Jesus Franco, one effort among Franco’s mostly cheap output where his mix of softcore erotica and pretensions towards artiness were at their most inspired. On the other hand, the film is written with a randomness that makes it impossible to understand anything that is happening
Visitor Q (2001)
Catalogue of Perversions/Mysterious Visitor/Black Comedy
One of the key films in the cult of Takashi Miike that has been frequently banned for its taboo-defying outrages in which a mysterious visitor causes a family household to descend into perverse extremes
We Are the Flesh (2016)
Catalogue of Depravities
There are few films that you can accuse of crossing over taboo lines and keeping going without compromise. This Mexican film has been construed as a catalogue of depravities; on the other hand, the lack of even a nominal plot soon causes this to lapse into repetitive tedium
Wicked City (1987)
Anime/War with Demon Dimension
Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri about a war with a demon dimension that falls halfway between H.P. Lovecraft and a hard-boiled detective thriller and brims over wit fascinatingly pathological sexual imagery
Wild at Heart (1990)
Surreal Disturbed Road Movie
One of David Lynch’s finest films, with lovers Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern on the run in a road movie that travels through deranged places of the mind and explodes with crazy energy