History BodyHorror / Film

** His directorial debut, ''Film/{{Shivers}}'', is a cross between a ZombieApocalypse, PuppeteerParasite, and an STD pandemic. Cronenberg refers to this trope interchangeably as "Body Horror" and "Venereal Horror".

* ''WesternAnimation/GIJoe'' has a lot of this. We've got Cobra Commander being revealed [[spoiler:as an already somewhat disfigured snake person with multiple eyes (bonus points to the cartoon for hinting at it when Destro was taken aback when walking in on the Commander eating in one episode)]] and [[spoiler:mutated further, first bursting out of his uniform as his limbs start to bulge and fail, then into a large humanoid snake with vestigial arms, then into a human-sized snake]], a hidden civilization based on particularly nasty organic technology, and spores that look to rather painfully mutate all of humanity. There's also "Onccccce... wasssss a man..."

* The ''Franchise/{{Hellraiser}}'' Cenobites. Just because they get off on it, it doesn't mean it's any less body horror.

* ''Film/Vagabond1985'': Actually a very creepy version, since it's overtly realistic: a woman has fallen into depression and this appears to have physical ramifications on her body. Equally, she is unable to take complete care of herself and her physical deterioration has negative effects on her mindset. Eventually, she crumples into sleep in the woods... the final product was actually the film's opening scene, starting a "how we got here" plot, and it's a mangled, wasted, frozen and to some extent disturbed body.

* ''Film/{{District 9}}'': [[spoiler:After accidentally spraying himself with an alien substance,]] Wikus experiences increasingly disturbing kinds of this. First, he only experiences a nosebleed [[spoiler:but of ''black blood'']], which is immediately dwarfed by [[FinGore his fingernails]] [[spoiler:falling off]]. After vomiting [[spoiler:black goo]] and passing out at a party, he goes to a hospital, where a doctor removes the bandages on his arm [[spoiler:to discover that it has outright mutated into that of a prawn's]], and Wikus is ''absolutely terrified''. To make it worse, in reaction to what's happening to him and going slowly insane, Wikus decides to take matter in his own hands and [[spoiler:''chops off a finger of the new arm'', presumably with the intention of eventually removing all of it]]. Apparently, the pain makes him come back to his senses.

* Franchise/{{Godzilla}}:
%%** Godzilla from the ''[[Film/Godzilla1954 original film]]''

** The third film in the series, ‘Shiver! The Man Who Never Dies’, deserves a mention too - it takes everything up another notch, thanks to the protagonist finding out he can’t feel pain, then using his newfound ability to cut himself to pieces to get back at an old flame who abandoned him.

* Played for (dark) laughs in ''How to Get Ahead in Advertising'' (1989), in which the titular Head grows out of a stress-related boil on the protagonist's shoulder.
* ''Film/TheHumanCentipede''. How else do you explain [[spoiler:a MadScientist mutilating you and sewing your mouth to someone else's asshole? And sewing someone else to ''your own'' anus? And getting shit in your mouth.]]

* ''Franchise/IndianaJones''

* ''In My Skin'' (2002). It's about a woman who develops a fascination with self-mutilation after an accidental injury, which, ultimately, leads to self-cannibalism.

* ''Film/{{Junior}}''. Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger [[MisterSeahorse pregnant]]. By Danny [=DeVito=].

** Bruce's transformation in ''Film/{{The Incredible Hulk|2008}}'' is horrific. Looking closely at the scene in the university lab with the [[spoiler:induced transformation,]] it looks as if his bones start growing to Hulk-size before the rest of his tissues.

** ''Film/{{Doctor Strange|2016}}'' has a [[SarcasmMode lovely]] slo-mo shot of Stephen Strange's horrific car crash, and close-ups of his bloody and battered body as he's rushed to the hospital. But the real clincher comes when he wakes up with ''twelve metal bars'' embedded in his hands. Even after he's fully healed, his hands -- aside from the nerve damage causing them to shake uncontrollably -- sport nasty scars all over them in all of his subsequent appearances.

* Eleven
In the short movie 11, by Makopictures, the main character attempts to con a futuristic adults only hotel by skipping out without paying his bills. The company Pleasure Island Inc, secretly infect him with nanodrones that cause him to transform into a woman. Unlike a lot of gender based transformations, their are several exterior and interior shots of the body during the transformation, showing mass alterations, cellular mutations, biological breakdowns, including a shot of his heart pumping faster and faster as it attempts to deliver adrenaline and blood to counteract what's happening to the host. When the body horror aspect finishes, the film switches to mental horror as the host tries to fight off what's happening mentally, but eventually his male psyche dies leaving a female personality behind.

** In the short movie 11, by Makopictures, the main character attempts to con a futuristic adults only hotel by skipping out without paying his bills. The company Pleasure Island Inc, secretly infect him with nanodrones that cause him to transform into a woman. Unlike a lot of gender based transformations, their are several exterior and interior shots of the body during the transformation, showing mass alterations, cellular mutations, biological breakdowns, including a shot of his heart pumping faster and faster as it attempts to deliver adrenaline and blood to counteract what's happening to the host. When the body horror aspect finishes, the film switches to mental horror as the host tries to fight off what's happening mentally, but eventually his male psyche dies leaving a female personality behind.

* The original ''Film/RoboCop1987'' movie had [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjEdLuqK1RQ a scene]] where one of Clarence Boddicker's mooks, Emil, tries to run Murphy over with a truck and accidentally drives straight into a huge vat of [[HollywoodAcid Toxic Waste]]. He emerges from the deluge horribly melted and deformed, and is so biologically and chemically unstable that getting hit by a car pops him like a zit.
** Murphy's barbaric death at the hands of the gangers that necessitates his EmergencyTransformation into Robocop is worth a note. They use shotguns to blow his right hand off, then blast away the entire arm at the shoulder, leaving a shredded joint. Then they riddle him with buck, mutilating his body beyond any hope of normal recovery (and he ''survives this''). Then Boddicker finally finishes him off with a shot to the forehead that blows a huge chunk out of the back of his head, averting PrettyLittleHeadshots.

** And again to Officer Murphy in the [[Film/RoboCop2014 remake]]. In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXOhIJg4B7k one of the most effective scenes in the movie]], Murphy gets to see just how much of his original body is left. What he sees makes him want to kill himself, and only the wishes of wife and child get him to reconsider.

* ''Sssssss'' has a man slowly turning into a snake.

* ''Film/BlackFriday2021'': Infection by the alien [[TheVirus virus]] can start with things like the host breaking out in boils all over their body. In time, though, their teeth all grow [[ScaryTeeth sharper]], their noses disappear, and they turn into feral monsters.

* ''Film/TwentyOneJumpStreet'': [[BigBad Mr. Walters]] gets his [[GroinAttack dick shot off]] by Schmidt. In the [[Film/TwentyTwoJumpStreet sequel]], he gets a vagina transplant (not that he minds it).

* ''Anime/{{Biohunter}}'' wears BodyHorror as its hat, dealing with a virus that mutates its victims into ravenous monsters. The first scene in the anime features a sex scene in which a woman's breast ''grows teeth and eats a man's hand''. VaginaDentata is thankfully averted.

* ''Film/SweetHome'' has some prominent examples: [[spoiler:Taguchi, whose lower torso is melted off by Lady Mamiya's shadows; Yamamura, whose flesh melts off of his body after saving Emi from Mamiya's furnace before his skeleton crumbles into a pile; and Lady Mamiya, herself, whose body twists and mutates into a horrifically monstrous form during the climax.]]

* [[BigBad Mr. Walters]] from ''Film/TwentyOneJumpStreet'' gets his [[GroinAttack dick shot off]] by Schmidt. In the [[Film/TwentyTwoJumpStreet sequel]], he gets a vagina transplant (not that he minds it).

* The ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' films:
** The famous chestburster scene in the [[Film/{{Alien}} first film]] (parodied in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}''). The original concept of the Alien lifecycle (which appears in the Director's Cut of ''Alien'', but is non-canonical since it contradicts ''Film/{{Aliens}}'') involved capturing victims and turning them into new facehugger eggs.
** In ''Film/AlienResurrection'', Ripley's cloning process went wrong many times before, creating diseased and barely functioning human-alien hybrids. The opening title sequence shows some of them in extreme closeup.
** The 2012 prequel ''Film/{{Prometheus}}'' creates a whole new variety of body horror with Freudian symbolism: [[spoiler:The "Space Jockeys" from the original film created a black substance that causes severe mutations when ingested. One character starts to physically decay, his skin turning charred-black. Before that can happen, he has sex with his (infertile) girlfriend, who gives birth to a squid monster the following day. In the end of the movie, the squid monster captures the last remaining Space Jockey alive and uses its body to spawn something that looks like a more primitive version of the series' iconic monster.]]

* In ''Film/AlienAbduction2014'', the abductions of Jillian and Sean--the only two seen on-camera--are accompanied by the visible breaking of their spines and arms as they are levitated within a tractor beam.

* ''Bang Bang Baby'' has elements of this, as a chemical leak in the small town setting is said to cause mutations in humans and wildlife: The protagonist, a secretly-pregnant teenager, finds her unborn baby is actively running around in her stomach and its outline can be seen in her skin as it does. Her would-be suitor has a mouth-shaped abscess on his neck that talks (and ''sings'', since it's also a musical). Perhaps most disturbingly, her alcoholic father has a liquor bottle embedded in his chest, and attempts to cut his own stomach open to get it out until his daughter gets him to stop by convincing him he's imagining things.
* In ''Film/BansheeChapter'', James's clothes are located at the transmission site, where Anne and Thomas were attacked by deformed monsters. This gives a big clue as to what happens to those possessed by the transmission.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheBoxtrolls'', Snatcher's 'Cheese Fits' cause him to swell up horribly.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'': The longer Miguel stays in the Land of the Dead, the more his skeleton transformation takes effect. It's funny at first, but becomes rather disturbing when it spreads to his torso, as told by Ernesto's reaction. It's rather terrifying when it's nearly complete, just before Imelda and Héctor send him home with their blessing.
* Neil Jordan's ''Film/TheCompanyOfWolves'' had some fairly gruesome [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent Werewolf]] transformations, though the end results weren't monstrous.

* Dr. Jekyll's very painful transformation to Mr. Hyde in ''WesternAnimation/ThePagemaster'' traumatized many children who saw this film. If the creepy, dark visuals aren't enough to scare you out of your mind, we also hear Jekyll screaming in agony and gasping for breath during the change. And then there's his Mr. Hyde form, which is scarier than those all put together!

* In Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}}'' the scene where Pinocchio and Lampwick are transformed into donkeys is [[http://www.kindertrauma.com/?p=2401 especially shocking for its day and age]]. At least one analysis of Disney films revealed that Disney was specifically going for a horror film approach along the lines of Jekyll and Hyde.

* ''Film/{{Poltergeist|1982}}'' has a scene where a guy is in the bathroom washing his hands and he suddenly starts bleeding and has a horrific vision of his face peeling off. In the sequel, there's a sequence where another guy downs a bottle of tequila; upon swallowing the worm, he becomes a MeatPuppet for the BigBad. After he's been forced to abuse his family for a while, he then proceeds to vomit a large, tumorous worm-like THING that morphs into said big bad. Yeesh.

* ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'': Every single time a Cy-Bug eats since they become what they eat. Especially after eating King Candy during the climax. Now he truly looks like a freakish monster.

* ''Curse II: The Bite'' (an in-name-only sequel to ''Film/TheCurse'', a movie ''loosely'' based on Lovecraft's ''The Colour out of Space'') features a man bitten on the left hand by a snake, one implied to have been [[ILoveNuclearPower exposed to radioactive waste]]. At first, he just experiences some weakness and vomiting, but then his personality starts getting colder. When we see that his hand has mutated into a snake's head, and it kills two people (one by jamming itself down a police deputy's mouth & throat and tearing out his heart, the other by tearing a nurse's jaw off), he freaks out and chops it off. But it doesn't stop there -- another snake grows out of the stump and strangles a man with its super-long tongue (frog-snake?), then as he chases his girlfriend snakes begin ''bursting'' out of him. His left eye pops out, and snakes wriggle out of it as if it were some sort of egg. His tongue elongates and detaches, and wriggles after her. He vomits up three or four large snakes, before his mouth opens so wide his head splits in half and a giant snake (which appears to have his spinal column for a body) pops out and chases after the girl. Earlier, we see hints of the transformation trauma to come, in the form of a dog which had been bitten and mutated into a snake-dog hybrid.

** The scene where Bavmorda pulls a BalefulPolymorph to transform Airc's ''entire army'' into pigs is ''incredibly'' disturbing, especially because the visual effects and makeup used still hold up.