Painful Transformations in Live-Action Films.
- In Makodap's short film 11, the main character Peter Baxter attempts to flee from a luxury resort without paying his bill. He is tricked by the company and is painfully transformed into an attractive young woman. The painfulness of the transformation
is intense with Peter screaming in agony, as bones break and reform. The company intends to get their money somehow, and have plans for Peter, or Nikki as he will be known as. - The first time Dr. Curt Connors changes into the Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man, he is not having a good time.
- An American Werewolf in London popularized the idea of lycanthropic transformation as physically excruciating with its famous Transformation Sequence.
- In Beyond Sherwood Forest, Alina's transformation into a dragon is shown to cause her considerable pain.
- The first transformation sequence in The Company of Wolves, wherein a werewolf, having disappeared for several years, flies into a rage over being forgotten by his lover. He begins to tear his own face off before his flesh splits open by itself, revealing the intricate details of the human anatomy for a few moments before the muscles and bones begin to twist into the shape of a wolf's, the visceral display traumatizing the woman's children all the while. Then his former lover's husband returns to the house and beheads him. His head goes flying into a vat of milk, then resurfaces as a human head, his blood staining the milk pink. Delicious!
- A later transformation sequence is taken from folklore: A jilted witch curses her ex-lover's entire wedding party to become wolves until she changes them back. Considering that the wolf-forms erupt through the victims' mouths, and the sheer volume of screaming involved — yeah, not pleasant.
- In a variant from Creepshow, Jordy's gradual transformation into a mass of green filamentous space-vegetation isn't exactly painful, but it itches so badly that he can't resist immersing himself in water to relieve his discomfort, even knowing that this will only accelerate the process.
- Using the shape-shift drug polymorphine doesn't look like much fun if agent Lechias' face in Damnatus is anything to go by; not to mention that just to start the process you have to stab yourself in the stomach with a big friggin' needle.
- In Dog Soldiers, the transformation into a werewolf is apparently very painful, as the unfortunate lycanthrope-to-come begins screaming and grunting as they stagger around the room, tripping over random objects, as fur begins to grow and they generally display more wolf-like characteristics as the change continues, growling instead of crying for example.
- Vlad's first step to becoming a vampire after he drinks the Elder Vampire's blood in Dracula Untold? His body shuts down and dies.
- The Fly (1986):
- After a slow, humiliating and painful metamorphosis from a healthy man into a sickly decaying half-insect wretch, Jeff Goldblum's gruesome and heartbreaking final transformation into "Brundlefly" has his skin peel off in chunks, his joints crack audibly into reverse position, and his skull split open to reveal its new insect shape.
- In the sequel, his son Martin's transformation averts this. Most of the transformation takes place in a cocoon. Martin is then reborn as a powerful insectoid man-beast who takes bloody revenge on the company that treated him like a lab-rat his entire life.
- Ghost Rider (2007): Johnny Blaze's first transformation into the Ghost Rider has his skin burning and melting off. He goes beyond the point of screaming in pain and winds up laughing maniacally before the process finishes. Subsequent transformations are instantaneous and seemingly painless — unless the Ghost Rider just doesn't acknowledge pain.
- G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: Destro getting his metal face.
- Hellbound: Hellraiser II reveals that Cenobites are created from certain poor souls who solve the Lemarchand Configuration. Becoming one is as agonizing as it looks, largely because it involves your skin being split and metal inserted into your flesh. In the opening flashback Elliot Spencer's transformation into Pinhead has him screaming as the iconic pins are put in his skull. Much later in present day, Julia betrays Dr. Channard by feeding him to Leviathan, the Cenobites' master. Cue the doctor screaming as razor wire is wrapped around his head, weird fluid is shot into his veins, and some kind of weird tendril-like appendage fuses to his cranium.
- In Hocus Pocus, we don't actually see Thackeray Binks' transformation into a cat, but we can hear his body changing shape, as well as the poor guy screaming as it happens. It doesn't sound comfortable at all.
- Sebastian becoming invisible in Hollow Man, as well as making the previous test subject visible again.
- In Innerspace, Tuck uses a procedure on Jack to reshape his facial features to disguise him. He warns him beforehand that it will hurt, and it certainly does. (And hurts even worse when it wears off prematurely and his face snaps back to normal.)
- The poor title character of the dark and edgy Kamen Rider deconstruction film Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue suffers from this. Rather than simply having the "armor" appear over his body, Shin's body actually changes, distorts and morphs into the Shin Kamen Rider. This is only done twice in the film and is extremely painful for the guy (also destroying his clothing); specific super-creepy examples include his eyes turning bright red, his forehead splitting open four ways at once and then his antennae erupting out of it, and his jaw splitting in half. They had to tone the costume down a bit for his appearance in Kamen Rider Decade, and even then, he was still pretty scary looking.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hyde-to-Jekyll. Hyde is more than twice Jekyll's size, considerably bulkier in terms of muscle mass. Ouch. The transformation also seems to be physically exhausting, as Jekyll is shown red-faced, sweating, and panting the first time he changes back.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Captain America: The First Avenger, two of these occur.
- Firstly, Johann Schmidt: he is shown injecting himself with the unfinished Super Serum in a flashback; fire then burns around him and it cuts to his face clearly in pain and screaming, turning into the Red Skull.
- Secondly, Steve Rogers. During Project Rebirth, he has the serum and Vita-Rays pumped through his body — about half way through the procedure it becomes a lot more intense and he is heard screaming from within the pod. The scientists immediately get up to shut down the machine — but Steve yells at them to keep going despite the pain (becoming a freaking man mountain when it's done).
- The Incredible Hulk (2008) shows a different take on the classic Hulk-out; Here, Banner's transformation into The Hulk is massively unsynchronized, with body parts changing at different paces. In one scene, the bones in Bruce's shoulder grow faster than the rest, leaving his skin grotesquely distended for a brief moment.
- In The Avengers (2012), the Hulk's first transformation looks excruciating and takes a long time, because Banner is fighting it the whole time. The second time, he transforms intentionally and it only takes one smooth second, with no thrashing or screaming.
- In Werewolf by Night (2022), when the Bloodstone is used to force Jack's turn into werewolf form, the transformation is given a Shadow Discretion Shot as screaming and crunching limbs can be heard.
- In Captain America: The First Avenger, two of these occur.
- The Mask: The first time Stanley puts on the mask. All the times it occurs later it's off-screen, for a good reason. Though thankfully it’s a lot less painful coming off and even better The Mask is a genuinely insane but a sweet, kind hearted polite person who other than shoving exhaust pipes into the bottoms of the mechanics is pretty much harmless and wants fun most of the time. The Mask Pressbook has this to an extreme in their test images of Jim Carrey turning into the Mask. One of them looks like it was borrowed from The Howling or American Werewolf in London. There are pictures of that on Jim Carrey Online.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street:
- In A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge, Freddy takes over Jesse's body by messily transforming it into his own shape. This includes blades growing out of Jesse's fingers, his skin peeling off, and Freddy ripping open and bursting out of his chest. Jesse is howling in visible agony the entire time.
- In A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Freddy Krueger transforms Debbie into a cockroach by breaking off her arms and then forcing her to rip her face off to reveal the insect parts underneath.
- The Nutty Professor (1996): Sherman's transformation into Buddy Love is excruciating, and it causes him to pass out. It is deconstructed when Jason, Sherman's assistant, discovers that the weight loss formula that Love plans to ingest is lethal.
- In Oz the Great and Powerful, poor Theodora undergoes this when tricked into consuming a sort of Psycho Serum. It's both a case of physical and mental pain, and the final result is The Wicked Witch of the West.
- In Romasanta: The Werewolf Hunt, Romasanta's transformation from wolf to man is accompanied by the sound of snapping bones and howls of pain.
- Ron Howard wanted something like this originally for the bathtub scene in Splash where Madison the mermaid turns into her mermaid form in the bath, but he feared that it would ruin the appeal of the character. The part where her lower torso bubbles and turns scaly is a bit eerie, but Madison seems pretty relaxed about it.
- John Connor's transformation into the T-3000 in Terminator Genisys. The infection that transforms him is nanomachine-based, and introduced through his mouth when the T-5000 grabs him. The initial scene shows glowing matter penetrating into Connor's head from around his mouth. A later flashback shows him mid-transformation, his flesh and bone being gradually turned into machines, all while he writhes in agony and the nanomachines make sickening crunching and buzzing noises. For a split second, his entire head is shown beginning to be converted.
- In Troll (1986), when Torok injects Peter with his ring to turn him into one of his minions, he turns bright green with slime oozing from cuts on his body while screaming in agony the whole time, morphing into a cocoon which cracks open. Out pops a little monster with Peter's facial features and spider legs.
- The Underworld (2003) universe has a variation of this (implied in the films, outright stated in the Novelization of the first movie). The first transformation into a Lycan is extremely painful, but it becomes much less so over time, and each individual adapts. In Underworld: Awakening, Quint Lane has undergone experiments to transform him into a super-Lycan, but an apparent side effect of the treatments seems to be that unlike most other Lycans, he can't transform seamlessly; even simply morphing one hand into a Lycan claw has him visibly wincing and groaning in pain.
- Bavmorda's "You're all pigs!" spell in Willow cannot be described as pleasant. Every victim screams in pain and wriggles on the ground as they transform.
- In The Wolfman (2010), turning into a werewolf involves a lot of snapping bones and blood from the mouth.
