Plot: When his best friend and podcast co-host goes missing in the backwoods of Canada, a young guy joins forces with his friend’s girlfriend to search for him.

KBZ’s Take: We realize Tusk is a well-known film of the subgenre given it was directed by Kevin Smith. There are likely many filmgoers outside of this subgenre that have seen the film due to Smith’s involvement. But we felt a need to list the film as it’s the best Body Horror film of the 2010’s.

Like early 1970’s Body Horror films, Smith establishes a perfect blend of horror and comedy in Tusk. Though the film seems very lighthearted at first, it quickly descends down a much darker path. This is a similar balancing of tones that many of the ‘mad scientist’ films of the 70’s achieved and seems like a love letter from Smith to those films from an era of horror long gone.

As for the Body Horror, it’s unique, disturbing, gross, hilarious and unforgettable all at once. It’s the type of Body Horror you will never forget or ‘unsee’ as it’s that unique to the subgenre (or any subgenre for that matter). On the off chance you still have not had a chance to see Tusk, we highly recommend the film as it’s a perfect example of Body Horror Comedy done right.

Additional Lists: Top Body Horror Films You Haven’t Seen – 2010’s #1

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon

Plot: A Beverly Hills teen (Billy Warlock) discovers his parents are part of a gruesome orgy cult for the social elite.

KBZ’s Take: We’re going to start off by saying this film is not for everyone. Though it’s achieved cult status over the years, it’s one of the weirdest films you will ever see. This film is hard to describe, and we even have it in five different subgenres – Teen & College Comedy Films, Horror Comedies, Films About Cults and our Weird Films collection. But where it ultimately shines is within the Body Horror subgenre.

The Body Horror in this film is some of the most creative yet appalling of the subgenre. While the Body Horror is shocking at first, its effect is blunted somewhat by the satirical comedy throughout the film. Society’s visual Horror isn’t meant to scare as much as satirize the wealthy as a deranged cult.

It’s a film you won’t forget – especially the third act – and the less you know about the film going in, the better. But be warned, even hardened horror film veterans talk about how disturbing the third act of this film is.

Additional Lists: Top Films About Cults You Haven’t Seen 1970-1989 #4, Top Body Horror Films You Haven’t Seen – 1980’s #1

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon

Plot: Man starts to discover that his friends are acting strangely and discovers they’ve been taken over by alien entities.

KBZ’s Take: This film is on our list simply due to the number of films that have used the “Body Snatchers” theme as the basis for an Alien Invasion. While the 1978 version of Body Snatchers wasn’t the first, here is a list of all the films based on this concept and story: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), this film, Body Snatchers (1993), The Puppet Masters (1994), The Invasion (2007) and Assimilate (2019).

While the 1978 version is a bit dated with 1978’s San Francisco, it includes a good amount of Body Horror of the pod people assimilating humans. And those Body Horror sequences are some of the scariest of the decade (not just within this subgenre).

While younger viewers might watch the more recent Assimilate, we advise any film fan generation to check out this version first – it’s the scariest, has some truly disturbing scenes (you’ll never forget the homeless man and his dog), and has arguably one of the most horrific and bone chilling endings to any film you will see.

Additional Lists: Top Films About Alien Invasions You Haven’t Seen #1, Top Scariest Halloween Films For Adults You Haven’t Seen #7, Best Alien Invasion Films #2, Top Body Horror Films You Haven’t Seen – 1970’s #2

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon

Plot: A dedicated student at a medical college and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue when an odd new student arrives on campus.

KBZ’s Take: Stuart Gordon was one of the premier B-Horror directors from the 1980’s to the early 2000’s who specialized in H.P. Lovecraft inspired Cosmic Horror Films. Gordon had a significant run with Lovecraftian tales of body horror including Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986), Castle Freak (1995) and Dagon (2001). And though all these films contained varying amounts of body horror, Re-Animator stood and still stands head and shoulders (pun intended) above the rest with its impact on the subgenre.

Re-Animator features multiple classic scenes of body horror but none as unforgettable as Dr. Carl Hill’s (David Gale) reanimated decapitated head. For practical effects of the time (and for a low budget B-movie) they were surprisingly gory yet effective in bringing to life Herbert West’s (Jeffrey Combs) deranged story.

It’s a film that holds up surprisingly well almost 40 years later and is still one of the best films of the subgenre.

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon

Plot: During its return to the earth, commercial spaceship Nostromo intercepts a distress signal from a distant planet. When a three-member team of the crew discovers a chamber containing thousands of eggs on the planet, a creature inside one of the eggs attacks an explorer. The entire crew is unaware of the impending nightmare set to descend upon them when the alien parasite planted inside its unfortunate host is birthed.

KBZ’s Take: We couldn’t leave Alien off our list as it’s THE film that defined Space Horror as a subgenre. Alien was so popular at the time that it spawned numerous subpar knockoffs including Inseminoid (1981), Forbidden World (1982) and Creature (1985). None of those films could recreate the deep space horror that Ridley Scott so expertly crafted.

Though the film is mostly known for its gut-wrenching horror and infamous Xenomorph (The Alien), it also featured some surprisingly accurate details of space travel. The industrial design of the ship fits in with the film’s advancement of deep space mining as an industry, the hibernation pods would also make sense for years or decade-long space travel and the inclusion of dated (Mother) and advanced (Ash) artificial intelligence fits with a corporate controlled, yet commoditized, business.

As for horror, it redefined the entire subgenre with its claustrophobic suspense and novel use of the Ten Little Indians film trope. And it has arguably the most infamous scene of Body Horror during the ‘chest burster’ sequence. There’s no better Space Horror film than the one that inspired countless others and established the best sci-fi/horror franchise of all time.

Additional Lists: Best Space Horror #1, Best Films About Space #8, Best Future Noir Films #20

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon

Plot: A young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tortured her as a child leads her and her best friend, also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.

KBZ’s Take: As we noted above, Martyrs is the one exception to our list we’re making for ‘torture porn’ inclusion on our list. Our original writeup for the film is below.

Warning: this film is not for the faint of heart. As we mentioned in previous articles that list this film, this was probably the most extreme French horror film released in the 2000’s. It’s often in the Top 3 of any Most Disturbing Films of All Time lists and it’s often labeled as “torture porn”. The film has also spawned numerous debates about the ending if you can make it that far.

From a Cults subgenre perspective, it shows one of the more extreme and disturbing cults and their beliefs. From a Body Horror perspective, it’s known as one of the top films in the subgenre for a reason. The Body Horror is a result of the beliefs of the cult but that does not make it any easier to watch. This is one film we only recommend to true Horror fans as it firmly sits at a very extreme end of the Horror spectrum. We can say with 100% confidence that it’s a film you can never ‘unsee’ or will ever forget.

Also, if you do gather up the courage to watch this film, make sure you watch the original French film and not the horrible 2015 remake.

Additional Lists: Top Body Horror Films You Haven’t Seen – 2000’s #1, Top World Cinema Horror Films You Haven’t Seen #6, Top Films About Cults You Haven’t Seen 1990 – 2009 #2

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon

Plot: An unfaithful wife encounters the zombie of her dead lover while the demonic cenobites are pursuing him after he escaped their sadomasochistic underworld.

KBZ’s Take: Clive Barker and David Cronenberg often integrate similar sexual themes within the narratives of their Body Horror films. But that’s where the similarities between the two directors end. Barker’s Body Horror tends to fall more within the Splatter and Gore subgenre while Cronenberg (and his son Brandon Cronenberg) tend to focus on the Psychological Horror aspects of bodily transformations.

With Hellraiser, Barker established a franchise where the demonic cenobites are the literal definition of Body Horror. And with each subsequent installment of the Hellraiser franchise, there were often the increasingly creative body horror kills and demented cenobite designs.

And as we noted in our Best Recent Body Horror Films article, the latest Hellraiser (2022) reboot has gotten the franchise back on its feet after years of subpar films. But there’s no dispute that the original Hellraiser film will always be the classic film of the subgenre with its initial impact on Body Horror still felt 36 years later.

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon

Plot: Members of an American scientific research outpost in Antarctica find themselves battling a parasitic alien organism capable of perfectly imitating its victims. They soon discover that this task will be harder than they thought, as they don’t know which members of the team have already been assimilated and their paranoia threatens to tear them apart.

KBZ’s Take: One of our personal favorite films and a classic film of multiple subgenres – Cosmic Horror Films, Survival Horror Films, Horror Films About Monsters and Apocalypse Films. Even within the Alien Invasion subgenre, The Thing incorporates different aspects of classic subgenre films – the ‘body snatcher’ theme of not knowing who is human or the monster, the unrevealed intent and nature of the alien as it clones and kills humans and so on.

From a Body Horror perspective, it’s a classic of the subgenre with almost too many sequences to list here. If we had to pick just one sequence that cemented The Thing’s place in the Top 3 of the subgenre it would be the ‘Spider Head’ scene. It’s just as horrifying today as it was over 40 years ago.

The Thing is a film that wasn’t appreciated upon release. Over time it’s become a cult classic in multiple sci-fi and horror subgenres and is still considered one of the scariest films of all time.

Additional Lists: Best Alien Invasion Films #1

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon

Plot: Scanners are men and women born with incredible telepathic and telekinetic powers. There are many who exercise the benefits of their special gifts in a safe and judicious manner. However, there is a group of renegade scanners who plan to create a race that will rule the world.

KBZ’s Take: We mentioned David Cronenberg’s films would have an outsized presence on this list and the only difficulty was in ranking each film when looking at the subgenre as a whole. In our list for the Best Cronenberg Body Horror Films, we have Videodrome (1983) #1, The Fly (1986) #2 and Scanners (1981) #3. However, when we started preparing this list of all the best Body Horror films, we felt we had to move Videodrome back. It’s one of our personal favorite Body Horror films but for horror fans just getting into the subgenre, it’s probably best to start with Cronenberg’s more popular and mainstream entries.

As with most Cronenberg sci-fi films, there’s almost always a healthy dose of Body Horror. Scanners delivers on both fronts as one of the best Films About Psychic Powers and some of the most iconic Body Horror of the entire subgenre. There are so many classic Body Horror scenes from this film that it’s hard to choose just one. Note: graphic content in the previous links and not for the faint of heart.

Additional Lists: Best Cronenberg Body Horror Films #3

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon

Plot: When Seth Brundle makes a huge scientific and technological breakthrough in teleportation, he decides to test it on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a common housefly manages to get inside the device and the two become one.

KBZ’s Take: Cronenberg’s most mainstream and popular film, The Fly is considered a classic film within the entire horror genre. As a remake of the equally terrifying The Fly (1958), where the updated film differentiates itself from the original is with visual and disturbing Body Horror as Brundle’s condition deteriorates both mentally and physically.

If we had to recommend one film to new horror film fans who haven’t yet seen any Body Horror films, The Fly would be our #1 pick. Unlike some other films on our list, The Fly has a perfect balance of disturbing body horror and a well-developed story which makes it appealing to mainstream audiences. While the film doesn’t shy away from showing some of the most memorable sequences of the subgenre, they’re necessary to show within the context of the film.

The Body Horror subgenre has always had a faithful, yet small, fan base when compared to more popular horror subgenres. With The Fly’s appeal across multiple film genres and its role as a gateway into some of the subgenre’s best themes and lesser-known hidden gems, it’s our pick for the Best Body Horror Film of All Time.

Additional Lists: Best Cronenberg Body Horror Films #2

Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon