10 movies that will ruin your appetite
Even though it would be seriously frowned upon to bring an entire three-courser to the cinema and start munching away once the movie starts, dinner and movies go hand-in-hand.
People go out for a meal before or after catching a film, and they will regularly be struck with the existential first-world problem of sitting down with a steaming hot plate of fresh-cooked food before letting it cool by the time they’ve settled on a viewing choice. That is, of course, due to the abundance of content on offer at the push of a button.
There are few things worse than the instant evaporation of an appetite, something that can regularly be brought on by nothing more than a particularly unconscionable food-related scene unfolding right when the stomach is growling at its loudest.
Although it would be wise to avoid the following ten titles altogether if there’s edible produce involved in any way, shape, or form to prevent needless wastage, it can’t be argued that no matter how ravenous any viewer may be at any given moment, those feelings will instantly dissipate when these scenes unfold.
10 movie scenes that will ruin your appetite:
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003)
Peter Jackson‘s three-part epic might be one of the greatest achievements in modern cinema, but it could have really been done without the scene of Denethor eating that goddamned tomato.
For the most part, his feast looks suitably delicious and fit for the nobleman who oversees the sanctity of Gondor, but the way he goes about it gives the impression Denethor had never been tasked with feeding himself of his own accord before.
The mere mention of a tomato is guaranteed to invoke a reaction from any Lord of the Rings fan, and it’s impossible to erase the memories of the juice dribbling down his pathetic little chin as he chows down. If anyone was preparing to eat before this scene, it’s safe to say they ended up going hungry.
9. Gummo (Harmony Korine, 1997)
Harmony Korine set out the stall he would operate for his entire career by debuting with an experimental drama that’s often hard to watch and very unsettling to experience without resorting to grotesque imagery or vivid depictions of violence.
His feature-length debut Gummo boasts an extended sequence of a kid eating spaghetti in the bath, which in and of itself hardly sounds like something destined to turn the stomach. And yet, it’s so off-kilter and uneasy that it becomes truly harrowing stuff.
He sits in the bath, gets scrubbed down by his mother, munches on some pasta, gets a chocolate bar for afters, drops it into the water, retrieves it, and carries on about his business. That’s pretty much all there is to it from an aesthetic level, but it’s genuinely haunting for reasons nobody seems sure how to put a finger on.
8. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984)
Culturally insensitive it may be, but Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom nonetheless features one of the most infamous dining scenes in all of cinema, which is enough to stifle even the most aching pangs of hunger.
Eyeball soup and chilled monkey brains are the order of the day. While it’s the sort of thing Heston Blumenthal would cream his pants over with designs on introducing dry ice, dehydrators, and various other technical appliances into the equation, poor Willie Scott opts to faint on the spot.
It’s definitely not the best Indy flick, but it did instigate a cinematic sea change by way of the PG-13 rating’s introduction to underline its darker tendencies. So, in a way, Temple of Doom might be the most important example of on-screen cuisine there’s ever been. It’s still grisly, mind.
7. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (Stephen Hopkins, 1989)
Freddy Krueger made his name as the razor-fingered ghoul who’d enter the subconscious of his victims and murder them in increasingly preposterous circumstances, but none will put people off their dinner quicker than A Nightmare on Elm Street 5.
The striped jumper enthusiast with a predilection for murdering the younger generation knows how to manifest and weaponize somebody’s dreams against them, which he does with aplomb when he decides to give aspiring model Greta a taste of her own medicine.
Not only is she force-fed bits and pieces of a doll that look just like her, but Freddy eventually pulls the doll away to reveal Greta has actually been eating her own innards this whole time. It may not be played entirely seriously, but any piping hot plates of food sitting in front of the viewer went cold awfully quickly after witnessing self-cannibalisation.
6. Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982)
The carnivorous section of the population enjoys few things more than a perfectly-chargrilled steak, which is exactly why Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg‘s Poltergeist is an appetite ruiner of the highest order.
When a paranormal investigator trying to figure out what’s going bump in the night at the Freeling house gets a tad peckish, he decides that deep-throating a chicken drumstick and tossing a raw steak onto the kitchen counter will suffice.
The titular spectres disagree, though, with the slab of beef bubbling, turning itself inside out, and developing tumours right on the countertop, while the drumstick ends up crawling with maggots. Naturally, he decides the best course of action is to peel his own face off, but thankfully, it’s just a hallucination.
5. Braindead (Peter Jackson, 1992)
Anyone who first caught wind of Peter Jackson when he filmed the unfilmable and brought The Lord of the Rings trilogy to the screen would no doubt have been shocked to discover that in his younger days, he was great at churning out gnarly horrors on a shoestring budget.
In the early 1990s, if you’d told anyone willing to listen that the guy who helmed Braindead would go on to win an Academy Award for ‘Best Director’, there would have been some looks of genuine concern being cast around, and not just because this is the same chap who turned custard into something even more horrific than it usually is.
Serving bowls of the dairy dish to dignitaries, some additional seasoning is added by way of blood-soaked pus being deposited straight into the bowl, which snowballs into an ear plopping into the custard. The guests are suitably taken aback, and so is anyone who was contemplating a meal of their own.
4. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017)
It’s no surprise that Barry Keoghan was repeatedly cast as a self-proclaimed “little freak child-man” when he can do something as innocuous as eat spaghetti and turn it into some form of nightmarish performance art no other actor could possibly hope to accomplish.
In a white t-shirt, no less, Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdist psychological thriller finds Keoghan’s Martin doing terrible things, including trying to break up a marriage, hold children hostage, and demand revenge for the death of his father. Despite that, the most terrifying thing by far is the way he eats the spaghetti.
Slurping it with the zeal of a feral hog, the sauce is slathered all over his face, and he’s quite clearly putting far too much on a single fork to handle. Italian food is enjoyed globally, but it’s fair to decide enough’s enough after watching the star disgustingly hoover it up like his life depends on it.
3. Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)
Revenge thriller Oldboy is a traumatising watch from beginning to end, but Choi Min-sik gobbling down live octopi might be even queasier than the rug-pulling revelations that left jaws on the floor the world over by the end of the third act.
What makes it worse is that the actor is a vegetarian but took it upon himself to wrap his laughing gear around no less than four cephalopods in the name of his art, although he did at least say a prayer for each one of them before chowing down.
It’s bad enough watching it in isolation, but for what might just be the worst date night suggestion in recorded history, why not combine Oldboy with sushi and invite the siblings over for good measure so they can meet the new flame?
2. Tampopo (Juzo Itami, 1985)
The entire intention behind Tampopo is that it’s weird as fuck, something Juzo Itami masters through yet another example of the bespoke ‘ramen western‘ subgenre.
Broadly speaking, the film is about a woman who wants to learn how to make the best noodles she possibly can, but no food group is off-limits as the culinary quest begins.
There’s an oyster being licked out of a hand, an extended take of an entire ramen bowl being expertly devoured, and an egg yolk passing back and forth between the mouths of two randy bastards in a seriously strange bout of foreplay. Tampopo is a classic, but it does little for the ramen industry at large.
1. Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
Even though nobody had even coined the term yet, David Lynch arrived with his Lynchian vision fully constructed in his own mind, with Eraserhead one of the most staggering directorial debuts of all time.
Do not, under any circumstances, show it to friends and family on a Sunday when there’s a roast dinner on the cards, though, because there’s little chance anyone will be able to make it past the most uncomfortable footage of a cooked chicken ever committed to celluloid.
Man-made chickens are the hottest new culinary craze, but they tend to bleed when cut into. Oh, and they also twitch, convulse, and bubble. Why? Because it’s David Lynch, that’s why, and no further explanation will ever be needed.
