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.

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Vacation

Clark Griswold probably doesn’t get to do it with his wife that often – after all, they are married. So when the opportunity presents itself, Sparky doesn’t let the fact that they’re crammed in a tiny sleeping bag with a feral mutt at their feet stop him. The result is one of the funniest awkward sex scenes around, although they admittedly don’t get that far into the amorous process. Damn dog.

Pusher II

Tonny’s been in jail for a while, and it hasn’t exactly been good for his sex life. The possibly permanent brain damage he suffered at the hands of a friend he sent upriver isn’t helping either. That becomes painfully clear in this harrowing scene, in which Tonny struggles dutifully to get it up in front of two prostitutes. It’s a pretty tough scene to watch – in fact, “awkward” is probably an understatement.

Metropolis

Next time you want to complain about work, just remember how bad the “employees” in Fritz Lang’s science fiction classic Metropolis have it. They work like slaves in an underground civilization at the will of their wealthy overlords. The only entertainment they get is the occasional herky-jerky robot girl dance.

The Apartment

This movie will probably seem a bit truer to the real workplace experience than Metropolis. No robot girls here, just an environment in which getting ahead is more important than being a decent human being. In the case of CC Baxter, this means giving over the keys to his apartment to his bosses so they can use it to have sex with women who aren’t their wives. As if that wasn’t enough, Baxter’s in love with the elevator girl who’s in a toxic relationship with his horrible, sleazy (and married) boss. Bad work environment!

2001: A Space Odyssey

Traveling from Earth to the moon to various other points in space may be easy in 2001, but it’s still a pain in the ass. The toilet has a set of instructions with like 12 steps, and the “food” can all be drunk through a straw. Oh, and your boss is a homicidal computer with a creepy glowing red eye. Murdering your boss would be justified, in this case.

While many take pleasure in seeing giant corporations falter, Screen Junkies doesn’t fall into that camp. We wish Netflix and its shareholders nothing but a smooth rebound and return to financial stability and future growth. As such, we’ve laid out a strategy for the rental-by-mail/streaming company: diversification.

The company already has the infrastructure in place to ship and receive most anything, so why stop at DVDs? Here are 5 other things that Netflix should be renting in order to win back the hearts and minds of Americans.

Potpourri

Don’t kid yourself. Potpourri smells amazing. But, as a man I am never inclined to buy potpourri when I’m shopping because I don’t want to be the dude standing in the checkout line with a big basket of potpourri. Gross.

But what if you could have potpourri of your choosing sent to your house in a discreet brown bag that simply said “Pornography” on it in big block letters? Your life would probably change, right? Well, Netflix could make this life-changing dream a reality. When your potpourri scent begins to fade, just send it back and the next potpourri in your queue will be sent out upon receipt of the previous potpourri.

Sure, you couldn’t smell the potpourris to know which one you find most agreeable, but we’d have really descriptive names like “Blueberry.”

Who wouldn’t want their house to smell like blueberries?

What the f*ck is wrong with you that you don’t want your house smelling like f*cking blueberries?

Copies Of BitTorrent For Dummies

Just imagine how much money Netflix would make if they allowed people to check out and rent this book, which teaches even the least web-savvy individuals how to download movies and episodes, or even entire seasons of their favorite shows. ALL FOR FREE!

People will be climbing over one another to get on Netflix to rent this book to learn how they can enjoy thousands of movies, all without having to pay subscription fees to companies such as Netflix!

If Netflix wants to grow, they should find a way to capitalize on the skyrocketing popularity of torrent sites. It’s the wave of the future!

However, skinning fat girls doesn’t earn the title of “Creepiest Man in Film.” For that title, I propose these nine gentleman who make Buffalo Bill seem like a Girl Scout.

That was hyperbolic. Buffalo Bill is still a really bad guy.

9. Dr. Frederick Chilton – The Silence of the Lambs

We didn’t have to go very far from the benchmark to get one entry on this list. While Buffalo Bill is by no means a charmer, his crazy, flesh suit-wearing ways are a sublime delight when held up to the head of the psychiatric “hospital,” Dr. Chilton. His smugness and sleazy demeanor cause the viewer to half-expect hair gel to start oozing out of his pores.

Remarkably, Hannibal Lecter was able to look past all his shortcomings and “have him for dinner.”

Oh. I just got that. That’s funny.

8. Norman Bates – Psycho

The title of the film says it all. This guy wears one face to the world, and another one in the confines of the Bates Motel. Like Buffalo Bill, this dude is straight-up crazy. Beyond the standard killing (which wouldn’t get you on this list). In terms of creepy actions, this guy takes the cake with conversing and keeping his mother’s decomposing corpse as a companion.

7. Sean Nokes – Sleepers

While the above gentlemen are creepier on a social level, Sean Nokes (Kevin Bacon’s character from Sleepers) is creepier on more of a “molests little boys and tortures them” level, which is one hell of a level. With the other guards at the juvenile detention center, he raped many of the boys, apparently unrepentant years after the fact.

Coupled with his appearance (which can best be described as “greasy as shit”) when confronted by one of the grown-up boys, he’s working creepy on two very palatable levels. I hope he enjoyed his dinner that night. It was his last.

9 to 5

When the siren call of Dolly Parton’s chest lures Dabney Coleman to the jagged rocks of desire, he finds himself in a tough situation. Tired of his sexist and egotistical attitude, the secretary pool abducts him and holds him hostage. While in their capture, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Parton institute some new practices around the office that up productivity. Which really isn’t that easy with Parton’s chest hanging around.

F.I.S.T.

When jerk bosses are treating their workers poorly and garnishing wages, there’s only one man who can lead the Federation of Interstate Truckers and fight for what is good and just. And that man is Sly Stallone. He’s like Norma Rae, but instead of holding a sign, he holds a pipe. He also uses a different definition of the word “strike.”

Clerks

Kevin Smith‘s breakthrough film addressed the drudgery of working retail. Filmed for $19 in his home state of New Jersey, it didn’t win any awards for acting. However, it was well-received by critics and audiences all the same due to Smith’s strong dialogue and bizarre cast of characters.

This list is meant to focus on the other bad businesses that we’ve seen in film in the past 25 years or so. You won’t find Cyberdyne, Brown & Williamson, Zorg Industries, Weyland-Yutani, Umbrella Corp., Buy ‘N Large, and Rekall on this list. Those mega-corporations have had their day in the sun and have been done to death. Let’s examine some smaller and less obvious choices.

9. Cobra Kai Dojo – The Karate Kid

Most people think of Cobra Kai as just a collection of Aryan jerks that arbitrarily pick one kid and make his life hell. Which is true, they totally do that.

But bear in mind that Cobra Kai Dojo is also a business, presumably bankrolled by Sensei John Kreese (and possibly by his ponytailed billionaire friend in III). I mean, he’s not running a charity. So not only is someone teaching these kids to make Daniel-San’s life a living hell, but they’re getting paid to do it. Somehow, it seems much more sinister that someone was profiting financially from Daniel-San’s misery.

When Kreese went to the bank to get a small business loan do you think he listed as a bullet point in presented a flowchart that basically read “Just bully the hell out of a random 16 year-old kid =====> Financial Independence!”? I bet you do know.

This revelation also begs the question: Were Sensei Kreese’s motives strictly financial? This whole time, I thought he’d bee teaching his students to lash out at Daniel because of some misguided vendetta against weakness, or maybe some unresolved issues with his own step-dad, but what if he did this every year with a new class of students and a new victim?

It’s not altogether infeasible. And way more evil.

8. OCP (Omni Consumer Products) – RoboCop

As we kick this off, a note to those with the authority to offer government contracts to firms with Globo-, Cyber, or Omni in their name: Please don’t. It doesn’t end well. Go with firms with names like “Frank’s Security,” or “FamilyTime Cyborgs.”

Unfortunately, the fictitious civic leaders of Old Detroit in RoboCop predated this plea. No knowing any better, they outsourced their entire police force to OCP, a giant corporation that gets off to an ignominious start to the task at hand when their law enforcement robot prototype, ED-209, blasts the ever-loving shit out of one of their own board members during a conference room presentation. The project is tabled and they search for cyborgs on a smaller scale.

To make a short story long, OCP Senior President Dick Jones hires a criminal mastermind to kill a cop, thus providing a corpse for their newer cyborg prototype. Jones is one of those businessmen that only exists in the movies. Someone you could never believe anyone is that evil for any company.

Actually, Kurtwood Smith (the aforementioned mastermind) can sum this whole thing up was faster than I can.

Never mind that the plan is very circuitous and wildly impractical. If someone presented me on an investment opportunity that involved cleaning up Detroit, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It’s also, just sinister. I mean, Dick Jones was a bad guy, but he couldn’t have launched the whole “kill a cop to secure a corpse for the cyborg program” plan without at least some administrative help, which leads one to leads one to believe that this kind of action wasn’t out of the norm of OCP’s daily operations. Can we get a spin-off to see what other sinister projects they had going down?

7. Initech – Office Space

What’s not evil about Initech? They make their employees park miles away from the office, they ask employees to work weekends late on a Friday, and during office parties, there is often a paucity of cake. Is it as bad as Omni Consumer Products (above), who murdered for financial gain? Yes. Yes it is.

At least OCP didn’t take away Milton’s Swingline stapler.