R-Rated Movies That Went Too Far

R-rated films are supposed to push your buttons. With the freedom to deliver a truckload of language, blood, nudity, and drug use, you can provide all kinds of provocative material. Sometimes, this results in movies like "Deadpool" or "The Matrix," where the ribald or violent material pleases moviegoers across the planet. Other R-rated titles are in the vein of "Sorry to Bother You" or "Revenge" and use the flexibility of an R-rating to tell boundary-pushing stories that speak to real-world injustices.

In some instances, though, certain R-rated movies use the creative freedom of this MPAA rating for less savory purposes. These are the films that go too far and use an R-rating for material that doesn't serve a purpose beyond a lackluster conception of what it means to be "edgy." Instead of utilizing adult topics for thoughtful storytelling, these movies get too transgressive and soar well beyond the barometer of good taste. As Uncle Ben once said, "With great power comes great responsibility," and the R-rated films below didn't use the power of their MPAA rating in a responsible manner.

This article discusses cinematic depictions of sexual violence. If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Released in 2011, "The Hangover Part II" drew some heavy criticism for going way too far in its attempts to be "funny." For example, many people were outraged when the character of Stu (Ed Helms) learns that he slept with a transgender woman. The depiction of this revelation as being "disgusting" was correctly labeled by many as an example of bro comedies using blatant transphobia as a substitute for actual comedy.

Garnering even more media attention at the time was a photo in the end credits. This image parodies an actual photo taken in the Vietnam War by photographer Eddie Adams of a South Vietnamese general executing an officer in the Viet Cong. This graphic image was a reflection of the horror at heart of the conflict ... and now, it was being repurposed for "The Hangover Part II" as a cheap gag. The moment was dubbed by critics like Roger Ebert as "a desecration of one of ... the most famous photos to come out of the Vietnam War." Here, a movie that was all about shock value crossed over from providing adult-skewing gags into outright disrespect.

Once upon a time, "Revenge of the Nerds" was seen as a film championing the downtrodden, a comedic form of voyeurism wherein the oppressed could live out their greatest fantasies. Flash-forward a couple of decades, and "Revenge of the Nerds" is now seen as trivializing rape culture. This is most apparent in an infamous sequence where the character of Lewis (Robert Carradine) pretends to be the jock Stan (Ted McGinley) so he can sleep with the quarterback's girlfriend, Betty (Julia Montgomery).

It's meant to be a cheer-worthy sequence in the movie itself, but it registers to any reasonable viewer as merely an endorsement of rape. Director Jeff Kanew himself has recently expressed regret over ever including the scene in the film. "I've heard [criticism] a lot this year because of the #MeToo movement — that's considered a form of rape because it's sex under false pretenses," Kanew told GQ in 2019. "At the time, it was considered sort of a switch ... It's not excusable. If it were my daughter, I probably wouldn't like it." The R-rated events of "Revenge of the Nerds" were intended to be seen as conventional escapism but it's more apparent than ever that the movie is more insidious than humorous.

Every generation gets their own take on the classic story "The Most Dangerous Game," and this generation's incarnation came with "The Hunt." This Craig Zobel film concerned a group of people who wake up and find out they're being hunted for sport, like any version of this tale does. The twist this time, though, was the story got filtered through the modern-day political zeitgeist, with the hunters being left-leaning "elites," while the victims were coded as conservatives. On paper, it's easy to see how the project received a green-light as something that, in the vein of "Team America: World Police," could generate political discourse while drumming up ticket sales from moviegoers who wanted to be part of the conversation and the dark humor. 

However, the marketing for "The Hunt" inspired a wave of unforeseen controversy, largely from right-leaning news organizations, and it even garnered an implied response from President Donald Trump, who accused Hollywood of merely trying to stir up violence. The cause of all the brouhaha was that many saw "The Hunt" as endorsing violence against conservatives, though this seemed to ignore how the conservative characters were the heroes of the movie. Still, the uproar over "The Hunt" had a sizeable impact and inspired the film to get delayed a whole six months. So, when it came time for this generation's "Most Dangerous Game," perhaps the filmmakers tried to push a few too many buttons.

Released in 2007, "The Hills Have Eyes 2" is the kind of schlocky horror B-movie that audiences tend to watch because it has tasteless material. Graphic violence, especially, is the forte of this subgenre. However, this particular horror sequel used its trashy sensibilities not to depict over-the-top violence but to continue a long tradition of using sexual assault in a throwaway manner. Specifically, "The Hills Have Eyes 2" centers much of its plot on the prospect of deformed mutants capturing human women for the purposes of forced breeding.

The movie's emphasis on this element is made apparent in an opening scene, one depicting an unnamed woman trapped in the mutants' base solely so she can breed children. Before she can establish even the barest personality, she's slaughtered after birthing a stillborn baby. Critics like Scott Tobias took "The Hills Have Eyes 2" to task for resorting to such a shallow depiction of sexual assault, as well as for not giving any of the women in the film even basic character development. It's an especially galling detail given that grindhouse movies like Abel Ferrer's "Ms. 45" have garnered praise for using grimy exploitation cinema to thoughtfully explore the perspective of a sexual assault survivor, which makes the treatment of sexual assault in "The Hills Have Eyes 2" all the more appalling.

Like many raunchy romantic comedies, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" is actually a sweet movie when you get right down to it — one about lifelong best friends who may actually have romantic feelings for one another. However, the fact that it had the word "porno" in its title meant the film already went way too far for many moviegoers. This was especially true in the movie's marketing, which kicked off with a poster that proved so suggestive that it ended up getting banned from being shown in movie theaters.

Afterwards, the feature encountered further trouble running TV ads and public billboards with its full title, resulting in it being given the generic moniker of "Zack and Miri" on many promotional materials. Sometimes, a movie that stirs up this much controversy can ride all the publicity to sizeable box office success. Unfortunately, none of these marketing troubles inspired much interest from moviegoers. Released at the very end of October 2008, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" ended up sinking without a trace at the box office. The Kevin Smith comedy, despite featuring raunchy scenes like Justin Long as an adult film star listing off the titles of movies he's appeared in, is ultimately a film that wants to tug at your heartstrings. Too bad its marketing garnered a reputation for being all the wrong kinds of boundary-pushing.

Few films of the 1990s were as controversial as "Natural Born Killers," the tale of murderous lovers Mickey and Mallory, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. Intended by writer/director Oliver Stone as a condemnation of the heavy presence of violence in the media, the general response to the movie is still divided today over whether or not the film achieved its intended goals. Critic Janet Maslin, for instance, observed that the movie seems to be more in love with graphic violence than critical of it. "While 'Natural Born Killers' affects occasional disgust at the lurid world of Mickey and Mallory, it more often seems enamored of their exhilarating freedom," Maslin observed.

Critics who interpreted the film as being more of a love letter to this kind of behavior saw "Natural Born Killers" as a lot of ultra-violent noise without much of a purpose. Similarly, much has been written about how the film's treatment of indigenous cultures is almost as stomach-churning as its most gruesome instance of violence. With this 1994 film, Stone meant to make something that inspired a reaction in people. He succeeded ... but unfortunately, it inspired a whole lot of critiques that Stone had made something as indulgent as the elements of society he intended to lambast.

The 2007 Uwe Boll movie "Postal" opens with a sequence depicting Flight 11 just moments before it hit the North Tower, beginning the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In this version of the event, the two hijackers piloting the plane decide, just before they reach their destination, to abort the mission ... only for the passengers to break into the cockpit and inadvertently cause the plane to crash into the tower.

A sequence like this was always meant to establish the tasteless — and, if the general critical reception is any indicator, humorless — aesthetic of the movie ahead. But the film's opening gag was way too provocative, to the point that one of its actors believe it cost the film its commercial potential. In the book "My Year of Flops" by Nathan Rabin, performer Dave Foley remarked, "I think that crashing a plane into the Twin Towers at the start of the film hurt it," adding the scene was the equivalent of "[shooting] yourself in the foot entirely." "Postal," like its video game source material, wanted to shock and offend, but it went above and beyond the call of duty in its opening sequence, which took things from vulgar comedy to just plain vulgar.

The history of American comedies is, unfortunately, absolutely littered with homophobic humor. And one of the very worst offenders is 2002's "Boat Trip." A Cuba Gooding Jr./Horatio Sanz vehicle, the story concerns two men who enlist in a singles cruise, only to discover it's exclusively for gay men. They then pose as gay while trying to get closer to women who work on the boat. One can predict just where the plot goes from here and, worse still, what kind of jokes are utilized.

The entire enterprise uses the freedom of an R-rated comedy to make tired jokes about straight men being terrified of the very presence of gay people and how "gross" the thought of two dudes kissing is. Critics savaged the film for its rampant homophobia, though many writers also slammed the movie for being too tedious to even be fascinatingly bigoted. Rita Kempley of The Washington Post, for example, remarked that the tired and familiar attempts at comedy were just as insulting as the rampant gay panic material, adding that, "It's time many of the movie's more offensive gags ... went back into the closet." 

Two decades after its release, "Boat Trip" has only gotten worse with age and now serves as an appalling reminder of what passed for mainstream comedy as late as the 2000s.

The anthology comedy "Movie 43" provides more stars than there are in the heavens across its various individual segments. It also provides more vulgarity than a bunch of middle school boys who just chugged eight Red Bulls after a night of scouring 4Chan. Whereas wall-to-wall crudeness in other comedies can help unearth some kind of deeper truth about humanity or simply provide two hours of escapism, "Movie 43" is now widely regarded as one of the worst comedies to ever hit theater screens. The participation of movie stars ranging from Hugh Jackman to Richard Gere to Emma Stone couldn't help elevate a film with a sense of comedy so immature that it would be an insult to sophomores to call it sophomoric. 

The only conversation drummed up by this box office dud was a handful of horrific moments that showed the film's desperation to wring yuks from moviegoers. "Movie 43" employed yellowface, incest, and a closing sequence largely focused on physical abuse being hurled at a character played by Elizabeth Banks. Without any sharp writing or clever uses of gross-out humor at its disposal, "Movie 43" just embraced the idea of overloading the viewer on "shocking" material. However, it also forgot that comedies actually need jokes in addition to all that shock value. Though the movie pushed the boundaries of what the R-rating would allow, "Movie 43" was hollow vulgarity to its very core.

R-rated comedies can sometimes draw flack for getting too racy with certain jokes, but "The Interview" inspired a whole other level of vitriol. The film about two goofballs getting pressed into assassinating Kim Jong-un drew negative responses from North Korea, especially a scene depicting the leader's gruesome death. In fact, the film was so controversial that it inspired a hack, apparently stemming from North Korea, that leaked countless pieces of sensitive information, ranging from private emails to copies of unreleased movies, all stemming from distributor Sony Picture. Things got even crazier when the hackers eventually graduated to threatening extreme violence against movie theaters that screened "The Interview."

The consequences of the film's provocative humor were swift. By mid-December, the movie's theatrical release was largely canned, but that wasn't the end of "The Interview." On the contrary, the movie continued to inspire widespread discussion on how to respond when violent threats are made against artists. In the years since its release, "Interview" actor and co-director Seth Rogen has been upfront on what a grueling experience it all was. "Truthfully, after 'The Interview,' [co-director Evan Goldberg and I] were a little traumatized, I think," Rogen said to CinemaBlend. Like many of Rogen's comedies, "The Interview" was something that could provoke laughs but was also meant to push buttons. However, nobody could've expected the outsized and unprecedented response its material received.

In his voyage up the river to find Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz, Martin Sheen's Captain Willard sees a wide array of horrific and unforgettable sights that lay the horrors of the Vietnam War bare. Unfortunately, viewers are also exposed to a terrible sight late in the film ... and not something brought to life through makeup effects or editing trickery. 

For a climactic scene involving a ritual performed by an Ifugao tribe, a water buffalo is killed on-screen. This was apparently a real-life practice that was already underway before cameras started rolling, with director Francis Ford Coppola filming the ritual as it occurred. While intended to be a visual parallel to Willard's plan to assassinate Kurtz with a machete, the sight of an animal killed on-screen is jarring enough to render that thematic undercurrent irrelevant.

Decades after the film's release, Coppola has stood by the scene, reaffirming that he was merely documenting reality itself. "I did not direct it or anything, that was the way they do it," Coppola said to USA Today. To prove his point, Coppola made sure to emphasize that he refused to have an extra water buffalo around to kill in case extra takes were needed. "I'm not going to kill an animal for a movie," Coppola reaffirmed. "I'm not going to kill anything for any reason." Despite Coppola's statements, this scene of animal cruelty stands out in "Apocalypse Now" as horrifying for all the wrong reasons.

A movie with a title like "I Spit on Your Grave" sets a certain tone for audiences before they even walk into the theater. The film debuted in 1978 with a poster that read, "This woman has just cut, chopped, broken, and burned five men beyond recognition ... but no jury in America would ever convict her." Aside from the dubious claim about juries, the sentence perfectly sums up the film's fascination with violence.

Unfortunately, violence is really the only thing the movie cares to show. The premise -– a woman seeks revenge on five men after they sexually assault her –- is less about setting up a story and more about giving an excuse for showing one horrifying scene after another. The assault that kicks off the movie's revenge plot takes up a gratuitous amount of screen time, and the brutal murders that follow it don't really offer any sense of catharsis.

Roger Ebert called the movie "a vile bag of garbage" and said, "Attending it was one of the most depressing experiences of my life." Shock factor can carry a movie pretty far, though. Decades after its release "I Spit on Your Grave" somehow spawned a 2010 remake and multiple sequels, each arguably as upsetting as the original. 

Do grocery store items dream of sex and racial stereotypes? "Sausage Party" says yes, yes they do. This 2016 comedy from the minds of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg begins with a premise reminiscent of "Toy Story." When the lights go out at a local grocer, the food items come alive. Most of them dream of one day being bought by a customer and taken to the Great Beyond, but they don't realize they're destined to be eaten alive.

Feature-length adult animation with an imaginative concept seems like a promising proposition. On release, the movie generated a ton of buzz, and its critical reception was overwhelmingly positive. Looking back now, it's hard to imagine how the film even earned a release, much less critical praise, considering how heavily it relies on being downright offensive for laughs.

The crude sexual humor is rampant (Rogen's hot dog character Frank desperately wants to be inside Kirsten Wiig's bun character Brenda), but that's to be expected. What's really jarring is just how many racial stereotypes were squeezed into the film. Scene after scene pairs Kareem Abdul Lavash with Sammy Bagel Jr. and forces them to play out one anti-Muslim or anti-Semitic trope after another. A sentient bottle of Native American liquor is given a cringe-worthy performance by Bill Hader. The movie's Twinkie character is gay. The list of groups used as punch lines goes on and on, but the movie, really, should not.

Darren Aronofsky has become synonymous with films that push boundaries. He isn't afraid to tell complicated stories or to present audiences with horrifying imagery that tries to make the reality of his characters really hit home. It's a filmmaking strategy that's definitely earned him success, but one that's also sure to turn away plenty of viewers.

"Requiem for a Dream" was Aronofsky's second film, and he had ambitious plans for it. The movie is an adaptation of a Hubert Selby Jr. novel, and the story centers on the lives of a group of addicts living in New York City. Sara becomes addicted to amphetamines while trying to lose weight for a potential television appearance, while her son Harry and his friends use and deal heroin.

The film uses split screen segments and other editing techniques to disorient audiences and put them in the mindset of the movie's fractured characters. The bizarre and rapid editing is enough to make someone feel a bit queasy in certain moments, but its the movie's depiction of needle injections, arm infections, violence, and sexual assault that really take things over the top. The original cut of the film was rated NC-17, but even though the R-rated version cut down on some of the sexual content, the rest is still graphic enough to sicken an unprepared viewer.

"Oldboy" is a 2003 South Korean film from director Park Chan-wook. Based on a manga of the same name, the movie follows a man named Oh Dae-su who is kidnapped and locked inside what amounts to a hotel room for 15 years. When he's suddenly released, Oh Dae-su desperately begins looking for the truth behind his imprisonment and plotting his revenge against the people who took him captive.

By any measure, "Oldboy" is a fantastic film. It delivers a noir-styled story with some truly memorable fight scenes and a plot that keeps you guessing right up to the very end. However, critical acclaim and popular reception aside, the movie still goes too far at least once. Some might find the big twist (which we won't spoil here) a bit on the gross side, but that's not the gross-out moment that puts "Oldboy" over the top.

The octopus eating scene takes place shortly after Oh Dae-su is released from his prison. He shows up at a sushi restaurant and demands to eat something that's still alive. He proceeds to chow down on an octopus, which lead actor Choi Min-sik really did. Creating the scene took three takes, and each time Min-sik, who was a practicing Buddhist at the time, crushed a live octopus between his teeth. Does the scene create a thematically resonant moment in the movie? Sure. Was it completely necessary? Almost definitely not.

Some movies have one scene, or even one character, that takes things too far. On the other hand, the very premise of 2009's "The Human Centipede" takes things so far it's a wonder that the movie ever got made. There's body horror, and then there's whatever Tom Six created with this monstrosity.

For anyone who's missed more than a decade's worth of jokes about the film, here's a basic breakdown of the plot. Dr. Josef Heiter is a retired surgeon-turned-psychopath who's become obsessed with using his medical skills to make obscene creatures. He kidnaps three tourists and sews them together in a line to form one continuous digestive tract. After that, Heiter spends the rest of the movie continuing to torment the three as he trains his "human centipede" as a pet. Eventually investigators stumble upon Heiter's home and a bloodbath brings the movie to its conclusion.

"The Human Centipede" is nauseating to even think about, and watching it is no better. As we've already seen with other movies on this list, though, nausea-inducing shocks can take a movie pretty far. The first sequel came out in 2011, and the second followed in 2015. All three are available as a single collection which, yes, Six calls "the movie centipede."

Horror movies often aim to make audiences uncomfortable, but it's a thin line between scaring an audience so badly they hide their eyes and showing them something so repulsive they're forced to look away from the screen. "Hostel: Part II" found the line, poked it, then jumped right to the other side.

The movie ran into problems well before it even made its way to theaters. The original theatrical poster had to be banned and replaced because it was too graphic. It simply featured a small bit of text overlaid on an image of cut up, bloody flesh. The replacement poster had a naked woman's body holding what is presumably its own severed head, so that one likely ran into issues at most theaters as well.

The story, such as it is, follows a group of art students on vacation who unwittingly get auctioned off to a secret ring of wealthy torture fanatics. Scene after scene of nudity and torture play out, including graphic depictions of scalping, multiple beheadings, and severed genitalia being fed to dogs. The movie was banned in Germany, and the Director's Cut still isn't available there. Though why anyone would want a more graphic version of the movie is a mystery anyway.

"Saw" took the world by storm in 2004. Horror fans were intrigued by the film's grotesque premise and delighted by its sudden twist ending. A lot of the magic has to do with James Wan's directing, which might be why there's little magic or substance to be found in the sequels.

When you start with a sadistic killer dishing out punishment via elaborate torture devices to anyone he deems deserving, it's hard to get much more disturbing. That didn't stop the "Saw" sequels from trying to up the ante, and even though the most squeamish of viewers stopped after the first film, "Saw III" is the one that finally took things too far.

There are, of course, all the nightmarish traps that fans had come to expect from the franchise. A woman is ripped apart after fishing a key out of acid and still failing to escape. Another is frozen to death, and a man is drowned in the ground up bodies of pigs. It's all nauseating stuff, but then the film goes on to include a surgery scene in which serial killer John Kramer has his skull drilled open to relieve pressure on his brain. The movie is just one miserable scene after another, presented with sloppy editing and a story that would send an audience right to sleep if the nightmarish images on the screen just stopped.

"Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star" really tries its hardest to turn the adult film industry into one interminable running joke, but it really should have channeled its efforts elsewhere. The film follows its titular character after he discovers that his parents used to be porn stars. Bucky takes their history as inspiration and sets off for Hollywood, determined to find his own way to break into the industry. It doesn't take long for Bucky to realize that his body doesn't exactly live up to adult film standards, but he finds his way to stardom despite anything that he's lacking.

There's less than nothing for an audience to grab onto in "Bucky Larson." Unless a theater full of people finds the very existence of porn hilarious, any showing of the movie will be dead silent. The problem with "Bucky Larson" might not be that it went too far with its lazy sex humor, but that it didn't go far enough with creating real characters or a story worth paying attention to. There's only so many small penis jokes someone can be expected to listen to, and "Bucky Larson" fills out more than a lifetime's quota.

A movie doesn't have to be gross or crude to go too far. Sometimes a film just finds a way to pour gas on a fire that really needs to die down. In 1991 Oliver Stone released his political thriller "JFK" starring Kevin Costner and Gary Oldman. The film begins with the investigation of Kennedy's assassination, which ends after Lee Harvery Oswald is killed. Years later, though, the investigation is reopened and a conspiracy tying the murder to members of the United States government itself is uncovered.

Conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination have been running rampant since 1963, and the most diehard believers didn't need Stone to step in and reaffirm their suspicions. He decided to do it anyway, and "JFK" glorifies the kind of thinking that keeps new conspiracy theories popping up online every day.

In case anyone thought that Stone had just made the poor decision to use real conspiracy theories as fodder for a big movie, he came back and released a documentary called "JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass" in 2021. It takes the same ideas at the heart of the original film's plot, but presents them as though they are definitive facts that Stone himself has uncovered.

As both a coming-of-age story and movie about dealing with trauma, "Hounddog" widely missed the mark. The movie is set in 1950s Alabama and follows 12-year-old Lewellen as she grows up with an alcoholic father and a deep passion for Elvis Presley music. The moves takes a hard left turn when Lewellen is raped and spirals into trauma-induced depression.

"Hounddog" tried to walk a thin line and ended up falling flat on its face. The decision to include an on-screen depiction of the sexual assault of Lewellen, played by a 12-year-old Dakota Fanning, deeply upset most viewers. Audiences who saw "Hounddog" at Sundance labeled it as "the Dakota Fanning rape movie," and the film's reputation never recovered.

Recovery was probably never in the cards for "Hounddog." In theory, the movie is sending a message about the damage caused by sexualizing a child, but it doesn't actually hold itself back from making Fanning's body the center of attention throughout the film. Overall it comes off as being more as salacious voyeurism than an honest exploration of how Lewellen overcomes her trauma.

"Wolf Creek" is the product of unchecked misogyny and a sickening fascination with violence. The movie positions itself as a typical slasher flick about three friends taking a trip through the Australian outback when their car breaks down in Wolf Creek Park. A man named Mick stumbles upon the group and offers to help before revealing himself to be a sadistic killer.

The trio of protagonists in "Wolf Creek" contains one man, but he's sidelined for almost the entirety of the movie until he escapes with his life at the end. Most of the screen time is dedicated to showing Mick torturing the two women in ways that the film seems to find entertaining. After an implied sexual assault, Mick severs limbs and spinal cords while stabbing and shooting to his heart's content.

The movie never lets up on showing women in horrendous pain and suffering. Roger Ebert rightfully called out the film for its misogyny, writing, "There is a role for violence in film, but what the hell is the purpose of this sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty?" Slashers have their place, but they don't have to be as openly hateful as this.