I have created a shortlist of the most savage beatings in cinema (not the most violent scenes, per se), thus finally shedding some light on the eight greatest movies of all time.

Here they are.

(Note: I didn’t include clips of these films, because many of them weren’t available, and you should probably see all these movies. They’re pretty interesting, if not good.)

Irreversible

There’s a whole lot of context to the wildly disturbing scene in this wildly disturbing movie that features a rape and beating scene that lasts for minutes with no cutaway, but even in context, this gets my vote for the most disturbing beating in film. The lack of editing here forces you to watch what’s going on, independent of the reactions of characters onscreen. You don’t get to hide from the brutality of it all.

FYI: The film is in French, which might actually be more painful than the violence depicted.

Fight Club

There are two scenes in this film that could easily make this list and one that would be on the fringe. The two that would be shoo-ins would be Tyler’s beating at the hands of Lou, the owner of the bar where Fight Club occurs, and the narrator’s pummeling of Angel, played by Jared Leto. The narrator’s fight with himself was also surprisingly graphic, though it was a little too funny to be savage.

I’m picking the beating of Jared Leto as the most gruesome, due to the length, the static camera, and, most importantly, the sounds. That wet meat sound that is prevalent in the scene adds a very real element that those kung-fu sound effects don’t lend to other scenes.

The Untouchables

If you want your beating to be viewed as “savage” or “violent,” use a baseball bat. Not a tire iron, or a golf club, but a baseball bat. While only two scenes on this list employ baseball bats, many of the also-rans that just missed the cut ratchet up the pain factor with bats. Namely: Casino, Inglorious Basterds, and A Bronx Tale.

The brutality of the scene in The Untouchables is partially a result of the context. Al Capone, played by Robert De Niro, is pacing around a banquet table, lecturing his criminal compatriots. He then proceeds, while all parties are dressed in tuxedos, to beat one of them to death.

I’m sure I’m leaving out some truly glorious dildos, so please call to my attention any omissions in the comments, you perverts.

Fight Club

This dildo definitely is a supporting player, as it’s just sort of there in Marla’s apartment, unacknowledged save for Brad Pitt half-heartedly tweaking it while standing idly in the apartment.

VALENTINES DAY BONUS DILDO REFERENCE!: We’ve also got this scene, in which the most awesome baggage rep for an airline ever explains why Edward Norton’s bag has been quarantined by the airlines. (Hint: It’s because of a dildo!)

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

Dildos rarely embody love and romance, as this scene from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels demonstrates. Here, a pornographer-cum-gangster named Hatchet Harry doesn’t get a satisfactory answer to his question, so he bludgeons to death the respondent with a 15-inch black dildo, as we are all inclined to do when we don’t get the answers we feel we are entitled to.

It’s the least romantic entry on this list, and this list isn’t exactly rife with romance.

This may come across as an implicit slam of the novels’ authors, seeing as how theei work has been eclipsed. Make no mistake, their work HAS been eclipsed, but I happen to view them as partial authors of a bigger story, one that couldn’t be told as well without the stirring visuals that a film production can provide. Though, the fact that I had read all of these books after seeing the movies surely taints that perception.

This list stems from consideration of the upcoming The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adaptation by David Fincher, who I find to be a director capable of owning his movies, whatever the source. While no one will ever argue that the book is an all-time great, Fincher always preserves the possibility that it could be the foundation for an all-time great film.

Fight Club

I’ve always felt if you’ve read one Chuck Palahniuk book, you’ve read them all. Perhaps I felt this way because I read about four over a two week span, getting all the details confused and conflated. Fight Club is hardly a distinct work in Palahniuk’s catalog, but it’s a testament to David Fincher and the cast to see just how insulated they make the nihilistic tale feel. Fincher has a way of making the unremarkable remarkable, as he recently did with The Social Network. Stories of internet startups aren’t supposed to be that captivating.

To see someone build on a writer’s irreverence and creativity, see Fight Club. To see them do nothing with it, watch Choke, a limp adaptation of a later Palahniuk work.

The Shining

Sure, Stephen King did a great job with this haunting tale, killing an entire forest of trees to craft the chilling story of a family in isolation, trying to save themselves. However, it’s Stanley Kubrick’s touch, his ability to use dialog as sparingly as it’s used in real life, to terrify us as much as the family in the Overlook hotel. I feel it no slight against Stephen King to say that it is much easier to describe the ominous hotel than it is to show us. Considering how many iconic images there are from the movie (from the reveal of Jack Torrance’s “novel” to his breaking through the door, to the elevator doors unleashing a sea of blood down the hallway), this great book was clearly turned into a legendary movie.

Hipsters have been around, both in film and in my life, for a long long time. Sure, they listened to different types of music, and wore different types of ugly clothes, but they were smug and underachieving well before Pitchfork came about and Pabst made a resurgence, popping up in newly gentrified neighborhoods the nation over.

Now hurry up and read this, otherwise you’ll be late for your The War on Drugs show at the public pool.

Troy Dyer – Reality Bites

This guy is just the worst. I would call him a hipster cliché, but he led the way by about 15 years or so. Troy Dyer. Yuck. He is a musician by night in a band called “Hey, That’s My Bike!” that plays Violent Femmes covers.

I have just proven that he’s a horrible hipster, but I’ll keep going. He’s resentful of damn near everything that doesn’t have to do with himself. He treats Ben Stiller’s character like total crap in that movie, even though Ben Stiller and Steve Zahn’s characters are the only ones I don’t want to whiz on by the end credits.

His greasy, slacker brand of nihilism is unconvincing and lame. The only character I dislike more in this film is Winona Ryder’s because she buys into it.

Steve Dunne – Singles

While this guy is probably the only “good guy” on this list, he’s got all the symptoms of a hipster. And I guess hipsters can be good people. I guess. From the Sub-Pop shirts to the concerts on school nights to his job trying to propagate mass transit in Seattle, (which, by the way, if you can’t sell Seattle on a green city-wide train, you should get out of the selling-people-stuff business), this guy bleeds hip. I’m willing to bet all my money that, though the movie doesn’t address it, he wasn’t born anywhere near Seattle, but rather moved there after he heard a Mudhoney album or something.

At least this guy has a fucking job. He’s not just some asshole writ—

Aw, man. I hurt my own feelings.

That’s why I think director David Fincher and NIN frontman Trent Reznor are onto something with their idea for turning Fight Club into a musical. After many years of joking about it to the press, then half-joking about it to the press, we understand that they’re now actively working on adapting the film for the stage. The timing is perfect. Yes, imagining Tyler Durden and crew prance-fighting like the Jets and the Sharks is ridiculous, but that’s obviously not what it would be like. If they allow the actors to really beat each other up on stage, every single night, they can easily beat Spider-Man. In Spider-Man, the injuries are accidents – if crazy injuries were real and guaranteed, you could sell tickets for $200 a pop. A few actors might die, but they’ll die doing what they love: getting punched in the teeth.

Broadway, watch your back. (/Film)

Also: Calvin, watch your back, too.

What if Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was insane, and Ferris was nothing more than a figment of his sick imagination? According to /Film, this question, known as the Ferris Bueller Fight Club Theory, has been plaguing the the Internet for over a year (I wouldn’t know, since I just got online for the first time in March).

But thanks to the fine people at Classy Hands, the question now has an answer. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ferris Club, a re-edit of FBDO in the style of Fight Club. It’s pretty spot on, except I didn’t catch any shots of Principal Rooney, as played by Jeffery Jones. He’s a sex offender, don’t ya know.

See Ferris Bueller channel Tyler Durden after the jump.