Just as horror is not for everyone, the sub-genre of body horror is not for all horror fans. Body horror pushes the envelope and intentionally goes the extra mile to extract a visceral response from even the most hardened horror enthusiasts. The focus here is the grotesque and psychologically disturbing imagery with respect to body transformation, which can be done in an infinite number of imaginative and sickening ways through the use of elements such as genetic mutation, physical deformity, mutilation, disease, and invasion by alien organisms or parasites. 
My list of top body horror movies will surely exclude titles that some individuals will question, which is just a consequence of the subjective nature of these kinds of lists. However, none of the films below should be unfamiliar to true horror fans. In fact, I would go out on a limb and say that they are all loved or beloved by most.
What you won’t see below are films like The Human Centipede, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, The Ugly Stepsister, Society, and even Teeth and Tusk. Let’s face it; these movies deserve to be on a list all their own. That’s not to say I dislike these films. My picks are based on body horror films that I have enjoyed most, and have watched many times, and likely will again.
#10 The Blob. This 1988 remake of the classic that starred Steve McQueen thirty years previously combines several horror tropes to complement the gruesome body horror effects created by Tony Gardner. After an object falls from the sky and crashes near a small town, a jelly-like organism emerges and begins its reign of terror. The blob has plenty of teenagers around to devour, and there are some brutal killings, including the unexpected killing of a kid, which is still rare. The blob naturally gets trapped in the sewers where it belongs, and if ever there was a movie made for the drive-in, it’s The Blob. Streaming this film for the first time just won’t have the same effect as watching it under a blanket of stars sitting under a blanket in a car.
#9 Re-Animator. This 1985 film, based loosely on a H. P. Lovecraft tale, is about a med student who invents a compound that can reanimate dead tissue. The side effect that everyone who is brought back from the dead turns into a violent zombie is not a lesson that is ever learned, and that just makes this film all the more indulgent, and true horror fans can appreciate that. The body horror is often intentionally played for tongue-in-check laughs, but there are plenty of corpses lurking about, including one carrying around his own head. If you haven’t seen the “head scene” in this film, you’re in for a treat.
#8 Altered States. This 1980 film is certainly different in style and tone from the others on this list. Not only does it feature a serious actor in William Hurt, but it is also more cerebral in its approach to horror as it explores the various planes of human consciousness. However, the body horror is no less intense and visceral. Hurt plays a psychopathologist whose experiments on himself not only open up his mind, but they physically alter his body. He actually devolves, adapting gorilla-like traits, and it is disturbing to watch the character put himself through this for a purpose that may not seem to be apparent to the viewer. It makes you think about it, however, and that’s where the cerebral aspect comes into play. But the visuals is what puts this movie on my list.
#7 Slither. This 2006 movie was much more entertaining than I thought it would be, proving that you can’t judge a movie by its trailer. Once again, we have a meteorite that unleashes a parasite on an unsuspecting town and its population. Having a familiar character actor in Michael Rooker transforming into a lumpy, tentacled monster is just the start of what makes Slither so compelling to movie-goers hungry for some body horror and a lot of fun. There are thousands of leech-like parasites squirming around, sliding into their victims’ mouths and infecting them. They even explode out of one woman, who balloons to an exaggerated size. Unlike Altered States, this movie doesn’t take itself so seriously, but it’s an exhilarating thrill ride.
#6 Hellraiser. As producer and director, Clive Barker (one of my favorite authors going back to his early works including The Books of Blood) put his own personal stamp of body horror in this film adaptation of his novella, The Hellbound Heart.
“Pinhead,” a character with needles inserted into his head is just a small taste of what is to come in 1987’s Hellraiser, which begins with a hedonistic character opening a puzzle box that is supposed to open a doorway to a realm of extraordinary physical pleasure. If your pleasure is having hooked chains appear and rip you apart, then you got what you were promised from the “Cenobites,” sadomasochistic extra-dimensional beings who engage in psychosexual torture and treat punishment as euphoria.
#5 Cabin Fever. In Eli Roth’s 2002 directorial feature debut, he gives us his take on a viral outbreak that goes very wrong. The bodies of the infected play host to a disease that horribly mutates the flesh, turning a group of college students partying at a remote cabin into scabby, pulpy messes. The infected are so disgusting to look at that their friends don’t even want to help them, and with good reason. The virus needs to spread, and the infected spew blood everywhere, sparing no one from the sickness. Well, maybe one is sort of spared, but you’ll need to watch Cabin Fever all the way through to find out what happens to the last man standing.
#4 Videodrome. Canadien director David Cronenberg gave us this 1983 body horror film that starred James Woods and Debra Harry, the lead singer for the punk rock band Blondie. Unusual casting for an unusual movie involving snuff films and a mind-control conspiracy in which we see Woods suffer intense hallucinations that cause him to lose his grip on reality.
What’s fantasy and what’s reality may get confusing, but the nightmarish images and the body horror gets intense. Particularly unforgettable is when Woods inserts an old Betamax tape into a slit in his stomach, as if it’s a tape-player. You have to see it to believe it. It’s all a setup for the surreal ending to the movie where Woods’ hand becomes fused with a tissue-covered gun and bodies erupt into massive tumors and explode.
#3 The Autopsy of Jane Doe. This film is so creepy, your skin will feel the cold, refrigerated air of the morgue and erupt with goosebumps. Most horror films end with a dead body in mthe orgue, this one starts there and never lets you leave. The body horror is the corpse itself, transformed from a living, sensate being to a lifeless and nameless object, a dead thing. It could just as well have been a male corpse and called John Doe, and that’s just what the audience members do, placing themselves on that cold, stainless steel table.
This 2016 film combines the supernatural with elements of a mystery as a pathologist father and son team up to determine a cause of death, but what they find out turns out to be fatal to them both.
#2 John Carpenter’s The Thing. Back before CGI, horror went through some growing pains with the use of miniatures, green screens, mechanical puppets, and stop-motion photography. Along came special effects wizards such as Rick Baker, Tom Savini and Rob Bottin, whose visual effects in The Thing have stood the test of time. Almost a quarter of a century have done little to displace this film from among the best body horror films of all time.
As an extraterrestrial entity invades the bodies of a group of researchers in Antarctica, Bottin’s gives us body horror in a variety of hellish forms. One victim is transformed into a quivering mass of bubbling flesh while tied to a couch. Another victim has his arms amputated when a fellow researcher’s chest splits open and the teeth inside chew off his limbs. Perhaps the best physical effect is the severed head that sprouts spider legs and attempts to crawl away to safety.
The reaction you will have to this effect might be the same as one of the characters in the film: “You gotta be #@!*ing kidding.”
#1 The Fly. David Cronenberg proves why he is one of the masters of body horror with this 1986 remake of the 1958 classic horror film. Cronenberg gives the audience more than just a character who swaps out his head and hand with a common housefly. Instead, he goes deep, right down into the cellular level, combining the DNA of scientist Seth Brundle, famously played by Jeff Goldblum, with that of an insect. Goldbloom’s character body mutates before our eyes. He is crippled physically and he develops leaking pustules while pieces of him slough off before his transformation into Brundlefly is complete. Not only does Cronenberg combine a man and a fly, but a man/fly is then combined with a designer phone booth. That’s next-level body horror. And that’s why it’s numero uno on my list.
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