For whatever reason (oh yeah, everything is shitty and broken…) even our most potentially fun action movies have taken a turn for the dour and serious. Christopher Nolan’s Batman films are the obvious examples to point to here, but even more lighthearted fare like The Avengers and Star Trek had their fair share of brooding and pathos. Oftentimes this is exhibited most purely in the villains who are downcast, bitter people with some serious and sad personal issues.

That’s all well and good, and sure it probably makes for some deeper storytelling, but we’ve definitely drifted away from the time when people where about villainy for villainies sake. I miss vilains just being goofy motherfuckers with one or two weird visual signifiers, a collection of one liners, and a utterly over the-top hammy performance. Let’s take a look back at some of the best. Here’s the High Five.

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5. Bennett (Commando) // Vernon Wells

All you need to know about Vernon Well’s performance in the perennially underrated and bizarrely forgotten Commando can be captured in that nightmare inducing face you see above you. As the former partner turned nemesis of our hero, John Matrix, the chubby Aussie Bennett sneers his way through a quasi-paint-by-numbers villain role before exploding into sweaty, goofy, sad awesomeness for the climactic battle.

He also happens to have the best/worst villain outfit ever, some morose leather-daddy getup that includes a heather grey mesh tank top and caterpillar mustache. He’s basically the villain equivalent of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character from Boogie Nights, all pent up obsession with Matrix and knife penetration. Nullus. Mesh tank top.

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4. Dr. Emilio Lazardo (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension!) // John Lithgow

First off, kudos to John Lithgow for almost showing up twice on this list for his work as Qualen in Cliffhanger (another movie I love that people don’t talk about that often anymore). But even that helicopter-wearing baddie couldn’t stand up to the trans-dimensional Dr. Lizardo AKA Red Lectroid Lord John Worfin.

Did that not make any sense at all to you? Good, that means you can still have the immense pleasure of seeing Buckaroo Banzai for the first time in your life. You get to see Lithgow scuttle around making intense animal noises, say stuff like “Shut up John Bigbooty!” all in a vaguely placable accent and with a crazy poof of hair and… just watch the movie okay.

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3. Castor Troy (Face/Off) // Nicolas Cage/John Travolta

Protip: Take your face off. Replace it with another guys face. ????. Profit! At least I assume that’s how the pitch meeting went down for one of the best action movies of all time. John Woo got double the fun by allowing his magnetically evil Castor Troy character be played by not one but two Oscar caliber actors who also happen to be more or less insane.

You don’t get a whole lot of Cage’s Troy, but holy shit does he make the most of it, including a scene with a giant mustache, grabbing fistfulls of a choir girls butt, and getting his tongue sucked. There’s no way that Travolta could live up to that I mean ho- oh is he dancing around whilst disarming a bomb? Romancing his own teenage daughter? Trying to mutilate his own face with a piece of metal whilst simultaneously having a harpoon sticking out of his chest? Thanks guys!

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2. Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (The Fifth Element) // Gary Oldman

That name. That hair. That accent. That flavor saver. What’s not to love about Zorg? The best part about his campy goofiness is that it’s all intentional on his part, and is really his defining characteristic. He’s a man of precise appearances (what, you just think ‘do is like that when he rolls out of bed?) and perfection, who maintins his power by operating above everyone around him.

People are supposed to be afraid to question him because he is a consummate other, someone who’s actions are supposed to be unpredictable, straddling a line between silly and sinister. His motivations don’t really make sense (what’s he supposed to do after the purge of all humans anyway?) but it doesn’t matter. He’s just an evil sonofabitch with a world class wardrobe.

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1. Howard Payne (Speed) // Dennis Hopper

Full disclosure: the whole impetus for this High Five was the fact that Speed came on the TV last night and I ended up watching the whole thing, reliving how awesome it is and especially how goofily deranged Hopper’s 9-fingered performance is. Thank god for Jan De Bont they got Hopper for this role by the way. The character himself is actually written in a way you could see him bogged down by his past, bitter and sullen at the loss of his thumb or whatever.

But not in 90s era Hopper’s hands, who basically just plays him as a guy who likes to blow shit up, say “Jack” a lot, and make one of the best villain faces ever when a purple dyepak explodes out of a money bag into his face. Keanu tries to keep up charisma wise, but no one can hold a candle to Howard Payne. He is taller though.

I wonder how much Xanax has been consumed at Blizzard Entertainment HQ this week, as the Sauron eye of internet rage lands with fury on them for bungling the 12 years in the making launch of Diablo III. It really seems insane that you could fuck something like that up. Especially if you’re Blizzard, you really have nothing but the luxury of time. People were willing to wait outrageous, absurd amounts of time. The game was announced in 2008, but everyone knew Blizzard had been chugging away on it since like 2002. No secrets there, considering the gangbusters success of DII and LoD.

They must have known that there servers would crash, right? – Sidenote: let’s just take a moment to remember Hellgate: London for a second. Yikes. – That’s the real problem I can’t get over. If you’re so adamant about making your game online only, then you must (MUST!) know that your servers can handle it. Now the phrase “Error 37″ will be forever a blight on Blizzard’s record. At least they can rest knowing they weren’t the only ones to shit the bed immensely. As gaming was a business with no precedent, its business history is, in a word, laughable. Despite how it may seem now, gaming companies pretty much did everything they could to sabotage themselves, especially in older generations. Here are the High Five.

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5. Playstation 3 – Location: E3 2006

Knowing now how well this console ended up doing, it’s easy to remember how utterly disastrous its coming out party at E3 was. That video above is one of the most-cringe worthy things you will probably ever see, like a stand-up comic completely bombing, except this stand-up has hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. I bet you Kaz Hirai still has nightmares about this all the time. Hell, I feel like I have nightmares about it sometimes.

First of all: the console cost $599. Just the console! What in the fuck were they thinking?! Who wants to spend over $700, factoring in a game or two and maybe an extra controller, on a new gaming console. Who can? Especially when your launch titles are Riiiidge Racer and a Dynasty Warriors clone (ugh) with “realistic historical battles” that feature giant mutant crabs. Hirai sums it up best himself: “whoops.”

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4. Nokia N-Gage  - Location: Gamestops in Late 2003

Just look at that piece of shit right there. The N-Gage really illustrates how deeply some companies misunderstood gaming and especially game consumers, especially ones trying to break into the market defined by Nintendo, Sony, Atari (their story, by the way, is also loaded with idiocy. Fun fact: they had the original rights to distribute the Famicom AKA the Nintendo NES in North America and lost it over a petty dispute. LMAO). I’m not sure who exactly the target audience was supposed to be for the N-Gage, but it ended up being no one.

I’m going to hazard a guess that this is probably the lowest selling item on this entire list. What makes that even more embarrassing is the outrageously inflated sales numbers Nokia released after the launch, hoping to bolster sales, only to be forced to go back and reduce them by an entire order of magnitude. What they originally claimed to be 400,000 sales in the first two weeks ended up being just over 5,000. For reference, Hilary Duff released an album that same month that sold 2.5 Million copies. Nice.

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3. Duke Nukem Forever – Location: Gamer’s cherished memories in 2011

Duke Nukem Forever is a cautionary tale for the concept of vaporware. The sales numbers on this thing actually aren’t that disastrous, but the bloody massacre left in thousands of gamers’ nostalgia centers and the complete ruination of a treasured franchise is more than enough reason to warrant it a spot on this most auspicious of lists.

It’s hard to say how much of this is Gearbox’s fault, especially considering that they’re not bad developers. I suspect they tried to work with too much of the skeleton left over from 15 years of development instead of scrapping everything and doing it all themselves (which makes them lazy bastards btw) ending up with a game that took all of the worst parts from a whole lineage of gaming generations. Ya blew it!

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2. Sega Saturn – Location: E3 in 1995

So this is definitely the most purely dumb mistake on the list. When you really start to think about the ways that Sega sabotaged the launch of a perfectly good console, one that should have been able to compete with the Sony Playstation, and effectively sent their hardware division into a tailspin they would never recover from, the wrong turns are really staggering. The core issue though was their unabashed fear of Sony, a paranoia that allowed Sony to win without really doing anything. With rumors that the PS was going to be much more powerful than the Saturn (which ended up not being true), Sega decided to move up the launch of the console by 4 months, making a surprise announcement at E3 that the console was available that day.

The problem – and here’s where you facepalm – is that they didn’t tell anyone except for 4 small retailers. Not even – wait for it – the 3rd party developers. HOW DO YOU DO THAT?! Not only did it leave the Saturn with almost no launch titles, it severely damaged Sega’s reputation and relationships with hallmark developers. Later that day, Sony announced the price point for the PS would be $100 lower than Sega’s, and the rest, as they say, is history.

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1. Daikatana – Location: Gaming magazines in 1997

Just try to imagine flipping through your favorite gaming magazine and coming across this ad – arguably the worst ad of all time. No game title. No information about a game at all recently. Just two aggressive sentences that immediately ended the career of a gaming great. Suck it down. Whoever’s idea it was, the point is that John Romero signed off on this ad for Daikatana, the big tentpole title of his company Ion Storm. People were not pleased.

It’s weird to think about how different the gaming landscape could be had they just done an ad featuring a screenshot and a smiling Romero instead. Setting aside the question of whether his quieter, nerdier partner at id Software, John Carmack, was entirely responsible for that companies success, the fact is that between 1982 and 1997, when this ad came out, Romero was involved in a whopping 85 games including Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D. Since then, he has been involved in 10, including an N-Gage port of Red Faction. Bitch.

Let’s talk about home field advantage. What does that refer to? Well, it’s a heady mixture between familiarity with the facilities, proximity to your family, and the will of the crowd that gives one team the better chance of winning a sports game. Simple, logical, and seemingly very important. Wild things can happen when you enter the enemy arena.

But how come people never talk about home field advantage for the fans? Because for the players, they’re gaining an advantage in the “winning the sports game” department. If you’ve ever gone to a professional sports game in the wrong city with the wrong jersey, you’re aware that for fans the home field advantage is in the “getting back to your car without getting a bottle broken on your skull by a guy in face paint” department. Sports fans are either the best or worst people on the planet, depending on where you’re standing.

Fiercely loyal to a fault, they engage in antics humorous (making signs, the wave, throwing squid onto the ice, pranks, zentai suits) and, uhh, not so humorous (murder). Now, every city with a professional sports team has their fare share of intense fans. I’m sure there’s even one guy willing to throw a punch over the Charlotte Bobcats. Such is the nature of sport. But there are certain franchises that inspire a real pure sickness, a level of devotion that is almost certainly unhealthy but can’t be avoided, like Cola or Bad Girls Club. Here are the High Five.

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5. Vancouver Canucks (NHL)

First of all, and I’m just gonna say this now, I’m not including any soccer teams. I know, I know, they’re crazy and whatever but I don’t know about’em and this is America. No Galaxy or Red Bulls fan gives a fuck. Canucks fans on the other hand: they care. Enough to riot. I know what you’re saying: “Canucks? High Five? Whole Milk, aren’t you a Lakers fan and don’t they riot all the time, even when they win?” Which we do (a luxury the Canucks have never had the privilege of) but we’re LA. We riot about everything.

But a riot in Vancouver? Who the fuck saw that coming. It appears that Canada’s genial, Labatt chugging, hockey loving, odd accent having jolliness is just a thin mask over a core of petulant frustration as exhibited by looting, lighting cars on fire, and staging epic photographs of youth making out. How much blood do you think the Green Men spilt that fateful eve? Enough to sate their dark masters? Apparently not, as 2012 found Luongo’s 5-hole as open as ever (pause?).

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4. Chicago Cubs (MLB)

Part of me wants to give the Cubbies fans a break because they basically have every reason to be upset. They haven’t won the series since 1908, despite having one of the most devoted fan bases ever, and probably the signature field of the league. But then the 2003 playoffs happened. Steve Bartman happened. In case you forgot, the Cubs fans toppled a guy’s entire life like it was a Jenga stack then pissed on and covered in that weird neon green relish everyone from Chicago loves so much. A guy who, by the way, was a huge Cubs fan.

The Steve Bartman story (watch the excellent ESPN doc Catching Hell for more sadness) is, to put it simply, terrifying. Mob mentality kicked in big time after the meek Bartman accidentally stopped Moises Alou from catching a foul ball, which the Cubs latched on to as the one and only reason for their loss. He ended having to quit his job and basically sit in a Saddam Hussein esque spider hole for all eternity. With his Cubs radio and headphones. Because Cubs fans are crazy.

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3. Philadelphia Phillies (MLB)

Ugh. Just, ugh. Phillies fans. Sorry guys, but even you must realize, you are just the grimiest out there. Their entire fan base appears to be made up of early morning sports radio hosts, or the guy with sad eyes who still watches his high school football games on VHS, or someone who’s taken a brewery tour more than once. The worst part is they are very aware of this and very proud of it.

So they do stuff like boo opposing teams players who get injured on the field or buy out sections at their rivals home openers. They throw bottles and batteries onto the field. They had a courtroom in their stadium at one point. A few years ago, a Phillies fan gagged himself to puke on an 11 year old girl rooting for the other team. What? Who even thinks about that?

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2. Oakland Raiders (NFL)

What could be worse than Phillies fans? Well, y’know how the Philadelphia Phanatic is really annoying because he’s dressed in a ridiculous costume? Imagine if every Philly fan looked that ridiculous. Welcome to Oakland. Looking like the bastard child of Slipknot audience, a holding cell, and the line outside of a amusement park funnel cake stand, Raiders fans have such a reputation for stabbing people that it’s actually just become a joke.

Like “oh, going to a Raiders game in the Steve Young Jersey? Try not to get stabbed lololol” but then you actually get 3 inches of cold steel plunged into your abdomen by a guy with a spraypainted trash can lid lashed to his torso with bungie cords. That, my friends, is the darkest fate of all. Luckily, the Raiders were rewarded for all their booze and bloodshed with the boon that is a 61 million dollar JaMarcus Russell contract so… even stevens I guess?

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1. Boston In General (Everything. All activities)

If all these other groups are just excitable drunken townie types who, whilst scary, are the equivalent of a mindless mob, the Boston fan contingent is the fucking Illuminati in polo shirts and backwards caps. Christ, these guys are the bane of my existence. That’s the thing about Boston fans: they will haunt you. Wherever you go, there’s someone ready to talk about how Belichick is the best coach ever and the Sox are magical, and Ray Allen is black Jesus and… oh god it’s infuriating.

Perhaps the worst part is they are perennial winners in almost all pursuits and they will rub your face in it like you’re paying them for it. They’re loud and obnoxious at games, but they’re honestly probably worse out in the real world. With their smug looks and faux-weathered Sox cap. Boston fans man. Fucking Boston fans.

How do you make a character memorable? Sure, you could do the really hard stuff like developing their backstory, giving them a rich personal history and well developed, consistent motivation. Or you could just give them a really badass name like Snake , John Matrix, of Maximus. Better yet, you can just slap a fucking awesome tattoo on and BOOM, instant characterization.

It works on so many levels. First of all they just look cool. Even though it seems like everyone’s got one, in reality only 24% of American’s are tatted up, and I bet an overwhelming majority of the rest have at least considered it at one point, and are secretly jealous of some of their friends’ ink. Also, a tattoo displays a certain level of commitment, so for a character each tattoo can tell a little story without words. #tactics. Here are the High Five movie tats.

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Honorable Mention: Francis Dolarhyde’s Dragon – Manhunter (1986)

In case you had forgotten, Tom Noonan is one terrifying looking motherfucker. His performance as Francis Dolarhyde in the original Hannibal movie, Michael Mann’s Manhunter, is not to be missed, as he’s simultaneously kind of pitiable but also pure nightmare fuel. One of the scariest moments in the film is when he doffs his shirt, whilst (of course) wearing some pantyhose half over his face, to reveal the giant William Blake red dragon tattoo he has.

Excepppppt this was never in the movie! What the fuck, right? What happened is they shot all of these scenes twice, once with the dragon and once without, and for whatever reason they decided that it worked better with just Noonan’s pasty ass flesh. Must have been a bummer for Noonan, because I imagine this wasn’t exactly a short sit in the makeup chair.

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5. Marky Mark’s “Nicole 4 Eva” – Fear (1996)

Hey look, two William Peterson movies in a row! Bizarre! I’m not really sure why (well, yes I am: it’s awesome) but I really love Fear. I’m sure you may have noticed, I mention it on the Bloglin a disproportionately large amount. I’m particularly struck by the scene where Wahlberg’s character gives himself the world’s skeeziest/most intense stick & poke tattoo.

It’s just a really weird scene in general, but it also probably sums up his strange obsession better than anything else in the film. First of all, he does the whole thing whilst staring intensely at himself in a mirror, and then I just remember the cavalier way that he cracks open that Bic pen and smears the ink on like it’s fucking Coppertone. Plus, I mean, come on: “4 Eva.” All timer.

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4. Russian Mob Tattoos – Eastern Promises (2007)

These are arguably the best part of this movie. They’re certainly the most memorable. Well, these and that move where Viggo pokes himself in the neck all angry like. Still not really sure what that means. Seriously though, these are some of the most purely badass tattoos ever put to film. It makes it even cooler that they are all based off actual Russian mobsters.

Nothing like Eastern European gangsters to make you feel like a real pussy. Bonus points for the scene where they tattoo the stars onto his kneecaps so he can prove his devotion. I’m gonna go ahead and assume that hurt real, real bad. I got a hangnail once.

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3. Leonard Shelby’s Memories – Memento (2000)

Alright, so this is kind of going back on what I said in the beginning of this post, because these tattoos are actually the entirety of the character’s backstory (or so he thinks. 12 year old spoiler alert. Sorry.), and pretty much the only thing he knows in the whole wide world. It’s a brilliant little conceit really: Leonard is nothing more than the things on his body.

I find it humorous (in a good way) that Leonard would make sure that, in addition to being informative, the tattoos also looked really cool. Because why just have a stupid little list on your thigh when you can also have “FIND HIM AND KILL HIM” in giant Old English lettering at an angle across your chest. Bonus points for the mirror tattoos.

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2. The Big One – From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Now I know what you’re saying: really? It’s just a humongous tribal tattoo. What, do you miss the 90s or something? First of all, yes, and second of all if you’ve seen the movie (you have seen this movie right?) then you’ll know that the key to this tattoos awesomeness is the manner of its revelation. You see, we never get a real look at Clooney’s giant art until the very, very end.

The whole movie you see just the hints of it, poking up through his collar and then down by his wrist. But after I while you just sort of forget about that, especially since it’s Clooney and even when he’s saying “fuck” a lot and shooting vampire’s he still seems charming, dapper, and very classic movie star-esque. But then, just as shit wraps up, he doffs his blazer and you realize the entire left side of his body is completely covered in black flames. Possibly the best visual reveal in the whole movie. And that’s saying something.

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1. LOVE/HATE – The Night of The Hunter (1955)

I’m not sure there had been a really memorable movie tattoo before Robert Mitchum’s hand art in The Night of The Hunter, and I really don’t think there’s been any to surpass them in the 57 years since. They’re cool looking (who doesn’t like hand tats amirite? Y’know who? Communists), they mean something, and the fact that they’re on a preacher (preacher/serial killer, but who’s counting) makes them even more memorable.

Plus they contribute to the above image, one of the more iconic snapshots of 50s cinema that I can conjure up. So those are my High Five. There were some I left out (like Max Cady’s at the top of the post) but I wanna know what you’re favorites are.

As the musical side of our brand grows ever larger, we’ve had a lot of opportunities recently to look back at all of the projects we’ve already been a part of. It was in this recollection that we all collectively noticed: “holy shit, have we really done thirty three Keep Watch Mixes?” Started way back in 2008, this regularly released series of party mixes has been our most enduring ongoing project. Spanning literally dozens of artists and dance genres, the Keep Watch Mixes have been party fuel par excellence.

Obviously they’re all our babies and we love them all. We believe each and every one to be of truly premium quality, and still listen to each with frequency. But there have certainly been some which stick out as the most memorable of the bunch, and we’d like to give a shout out to five of those today. I wish we had an article series called The High Thirty Three. But, unfortunately, we don’t. This is the High Five.

Honorable Mentions: Jokers of The Scene - Keep Watch Vol. I & Teki Latex - Keep Watch Vol. II

I would be remiss not to include the two mixes that started the whole thing off right. After all, you’re only as good as your first step. I’m pretty sure that’s not a real saying, but for the sake of this discussion I’m going to stand by it. The first of the the first was a banger from Canadian duo Jokers of The Scene. This was back when the mixes were supposed to be tied to specific events, and theirs was to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of their club night Disorganize. Needless to say, it got the job done.

Often it can be hard to live up the the promise of a premiere, but Paris’ Teki Latex did all that and a bag o’ chips with Keep Watch Vol. II, delivering a truly deep mix that belied a skilled hand both at digging through the crate and managing the deck (in this case, the digital deck as KW Vol II was one of Teki’s first experimentations using Ableton Live). These two really got us out of the gate super strong.

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5. Trouble & Bass - Keep Watch Vol. VII

If there’s one thing that’s woven into our brand’s musical DNA as much as the Keep Watch Mixes, it’s our long standing and continually fruitful partnership with the Brooklyn based (zing!) Heavy Bass Champions of The World, the one and only Trouble & Bass crew. When we brought those two things together for the 7th edition of Keep Watch, some foundation shaking magic happened.

This mix is a fantastic summation of the supremely heavy bass sound that made T&B so renowned. Featuring appearances from the entirety of the crew, Keep Watch Vol. VII was a real “best of the best” as far as NY bass music in early 2009. Listening to it today… yeah, it seemed like a pretty damn good time.

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4. Congorock - Keep Watch Vol. IX

We had to include this one on the list, as when it came out it not only sounded great it also sounded so friggin’ new. At the time we wrote that “Congororck fuses together every conceivable genre in electronic music to create a sound all his own,” and little did we know that he would be one of the artists laying the groundwork for the EDM takeover that is still in full effect today.

Moving away from stratification and towards unity, this Keep Watch mix didn’t seem in the least bound in by genre, instead coming off as a joyous, delirious mish mash that you could never pin down. Even now it sounds like a whirlwind tour from dancefloor to dancefloor all over the world.

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3. Royal-T - Keep Watch Vol. XXXIII

Maybe it’s just because it’s still fresh in our mind, but I highly doubt it: Royal-T’s turn on the Keep Watch is a true grime masterpiece. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’ve been right obsessed with UK grime label Butterz lately (check out the t-shirt we made) and when an opportunity to do a KW with one of their artists arose, we were in like Flint.

The young Royal-T more than delivered, cooking up a pulse-pounding ride full to spilling with filthy riddims and massive grime tunes that still has our office going wild. Our Badman Shark has been quoted saying that 2012 is going to see a big resurgence in grime, and Royal-T will certainly be leading that charge.

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2. Skream - Keep Watch Vol. VI

I remember back before dubstep blew up, shockingly becoming one of the most popular musical genres in the world (that’s fair to say, right? Sorta?) I remember hearing Skream’s track “Midnight Request Line” and just basically having my mind blown. I wasn’t the most well versed in the UK electronic scene, and the dubstep I was familiar with was stuff like Burial, Kode9, and Pinch.

Skream’s stuff was just so heavy and dancy, but without sacrificing any of that grimy London mood of the Hyperdub artists. Listening to his Keep Watch mix makes me really nostalgic about a time when I was really getting into that kind of music and it all felt so new and cool, and as a result I just had to include Keep Watch Vol. VI on the list.

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1. Shiftee - Keep Watch Vol. XXIII

At the end of the day, a mix is not just a collection of tracks, but it’s the combination of those things into a larger singular unit. Shiftee’s turn on the decks had to number one just because of the immense skill this world champion DJ displayed putting this thing together. You can practically hear him panting in the background as his hands fly lightning fast from knob to slider to scratch.

In addition to the technical aspects, Shiftee was aces on the track selection, mixing of the moment hip hop with every kind of dance music under the sun and then chopping it all into an intoxicating mixture that hits as hard today as the day it dropped. Kudos to you Shiftee, and to all the artists who have contributed a Keep Watch mix. You all killed it!

What’re some of your favorites?

For a show that proudly proclaimed to be about nothing, there were certain things that popped up so many times and with such focus on Seinfeld that you could put together a pretty compelling argument that the show was about a lot of things. So today we’re gonna talk about Seinfeld: the show about candy. For something that sounds so specific and odd, if you take a second to think about it you’ll realize that this was not an easy High Five to put together.

I could have at least done a High Ten, especially since I’m including sweet treats in general. Why? Because I felt like getting down like that so back off. What’s the deal with Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer eating so much candy? And what’s the deal with sweets frequently being being important episode plot points? What’s the deal with airline food? Answer none of these questions and less as you check out my High Five!

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Honorable Mention: Snickers Bar – “The Pledge Drive”

The craze of eating your candy with a knife and fork (or M&Ms with a spoon) that takes New York in this episode, after starting with Elaine’s boss Mr. Pitt, is a great joke that touches on a lot of what Seinfeld is about. It’s right in the wheelhouse of strange cultural behaviors, and how quickly trends can alter the way people act.

Do we all secretly want to eat Snickers with cutlery and we’re just one person away from actually doing it? Or are we so weird that if we see someone doing it, no matter if we know them or not, we’re so embarrassed of not being “in on it” that we’ll fake it until we make it. Seinfeld: deep, man.

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5. Twix Bar – “The Dealership”

Twix figures into one of the best kinds of Seinfeld episodes, the ones that stick to one location. Seinfeld took the old concept of the bottle episode and made it into a true art form. Kramer actually goes on a little solo-adventure in this one, but the rest of the gang is cooped up in the titular dealership that Puddy works at. Craving a sweet treat, his blood sugar plummeting (a trope that will arise again and again in this list), George attempts to purchase a Twix from the vending machine.

A series of mishaps occurs, all stemming from a quietly nefarious mechanic who – after refusing to give George a crisp dollar – ends up (probably) stealing his hanging Twix. So many great moments arise: George facedown on the ground searching for change, the panic of your item getting caught on the spool, Georg’es accusation of the mechanic (“Twix is the only candy bar with the cookie crunch!”), the candy classification discussion with the other customers, and of course George’s Twix-test being foiled when everyone eats the candy bars. TTTWWWIIIXXX!!!

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4. Jujyfruit – “The Opposite”

It’s moments like Elaine’s encounter with Jujyfruits that most noticeably bear the mark of Larry David’s hand, and the cringe humor on display here will later be turned into an entire show with Curb Your Enthusiasm. The best thing about this humor is that it actually makes you question how you’d act in these situations. Elaine is going to a movie when she learns that her date has been hit by a car and is in the hospital (she’s informed, bizarrely, by an usher played by French Stewart).

She rushes to the hospital, but not before getting a box of Jujyfruits. I mean, she was already at the concession counter. The Jujyfruits actually factor in again later, in an even bigger way when they set off a Rube Goldberg series of events that result in the complete dissolution of Pendant Publishing. But I’m more endeared to her short argument with Jake in the hospital, and Elaine’s sheepish explanation to Jerry about why she can’t resist them: “Because they’re Jujyfruit and I like them.”

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3. Entenmann’s Cake – “The Frogger”

The Frogger is a really fantastic episode overall, so much so that I had actually forgotten that it was also the episode with Mr. Peterman’s cake. But yes, the episode is indeed so strong that it contains two all-timer plotlines (the other, of course, being George’s attempts to preserve his Frogger high score). But what we’re talking about is Elaine’s low afternoon blood sugar (told you!), a result of too many cake parties in a row at work, and her attempts to solve the problem after the cake parties peter out.

Raiding Peterman’s fridge, Elaine accidentally consumes a piece of royal wedding cake from the 30s worth tens of thousands. We’ve all been there, right guys? This one is so high on the list because it ends with both a killer written joke (Peterman appraising his cake to find that it’s been replaced with a $2.19 piece of Entenmann’s. I always found the specificity of that numer hilarious) and an even better visual one: the perfect surveillance footage of Elaine dancing joyously around Peterman’s office as she eats the grody confection.

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2. Bosco Chocolate Syrup – “The Secret Code”

Here’s the one that, more than any others, highlights the hilarity of how important candy and sweets are to these people. George’s ill-fated fiancee wants his PIN number so she can get out money on an errand, but George being George he refuses to tell her. In the midst of discussing this with the gang, Kramer decides he’s going to guess it, leading to a really bravura monologue where he bit-by-bit deconstructs Mr. Costanza’s psyche, correctly guessing that his passcode must have something to do with a chocolate syrup.

That’s what’s at the very core of George’s brain: Bosco chocolate syrup. Later he finds he’s so pent up about the whole thing that he has to reveal it to someone: choosing Peterman’s unconscious mother, who suddenly awakes screaming Bosco as her last word. Basically, after some more shenanigans, Peterman comes to believe that George killed his mother. Maybe with syrup. Delicious, delicious Bosco Syrup. Only on Seinfeld!

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1. Junior Mints - “The Junior Mint”

Not only is this the most memorable instance of candy in the show (I mean come on: you knew this was gonna be here, right?), it might be one of the most well known moments from the show period. It’s another case where the set-up is so simultaneously mundane and bizarre that it could only happen on Seinfeld: why would you ever bring chocolate covered mints into a surgery theater? Why would you be in a surgery theater anyway? Because you’re Cosmo Kramer and you can do whatever the fuck you want.

It’s the easiest one on this list to explain and also the purely funniest: Kramer drops a Junior Mint into a guy’s stomach. What more do you need, really? In many ways it’s the perfect summation of the blase and once-removed way in which the Seinfeld characters go through life, the root of the self-consciousness that makes them so damn funny. Fun fact: it was originally supposed to be a Lifesaver, but they didn’t want to get down like that. Sucks for them.

So those are mine: what are yours?

Humans love fun sized stuff. Sure, long and deep experiences can be rewarding, but let’s be honest: most of the time all we want is the smallest, most powerful and easily digestible nugget we can get our hands on. Especially when you’re young, and your attention span is shorter than the spit wad you can dangle out of your baby teethed mouth, things that clock in at 5 minutes are pushing it. I imagine it was this fact that contributed to the birth of the mini game. Mini games: because it’s not enough just to have one game, it has to be stuffed with other, smaller ones like a digital turducken.

I’m not exactly sure what the first mini game was. I imagine it was some variation of the Slot Machine Mini Game – a trope that survives to this day and provides you with points or lives, and can be seen in games from Super Mario Bros. 2, to Fallout: New Vegas and everything in between. One of the first big proponent franchises of mini games was Final Fantasy, which has included one or more mini games in every edition. Eventually, the love for these bite size entertainment flavor crystals grew so large that franchises sprung up entirely around them, including Mario Party and micro game filled Wario Ware. They may not get all the press, but I love mini games, and here are my High Five.

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Honorable Mention: ”Pump Up The Heads” – Simpson’s Arcade (1991) [Konami]

So what if it’s just a button mash? Sometimes that’s all you need for a mini game, and damn you if you think this isn’t worthy of at least an honorable mention. In a Simpsons game peppered with incredibly bizarre things, including many aspects that obviously have absolutely nothing to do with The Simpsons and sometimes directly contradict its canon, this little between level mini game might just be the strangest. First of all: a giant balloon in the shape of your character’s head?

Where the fuck did that come from? The whole concept of the head shaped hot air balloon (and why the villainous Smithers’ is shaped like Krusty) is never addressed and that’s okay. You blow it up by mashing alternating buttons, in mimicry of a pumping motion (mimicry, pace, and tempo are usually big in mini games). My favorite part though is what happens to the losers. After the winner’s balloon takes off, carrying them onto the next stage, the other balloons pop, leaving your sorry ass laying face down on the concrete, sweating, crying, and pounding the ground with your fists like a toddler. Why. Why.

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5. ”Tetra Master” – Final Fantasy IX (2000) [Square Soft]

The opposite end of the spectrum from Simpson’s Arcade’s balloon heads game, Tetra Master is a fully fledged table top card game/rpg buried in one of my favorite Final Fantasy installments, FFIX. The rules to this thing are not simple, nor are they ever presented in a cogent way to you in the game (kind of a hallmark of the Final Fantasy series) but damned if it isn’t addicting to collect the seriously huge number of cards and play NPC’s for their bounty.

This battle-card based game featured collectible cards for many of the game (and the series’) best monsters, locations, and vehicles. Feel free to spend hours scouring Gaia for rare cards like Chocobos, Cactuar, and Necron. Then get on that gridded battlefield and duke it the fuck out, complete with card battle animations like it’s goddamn Holochess. It may be hard as fuck to be an expert, but Tetra Master is super fun.

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4. ”Monkey Target” - Super Monkey Ball (2001) [Sega]

The whole Monkey Ball franchise could be argued as a mini game, but even it felt the pressure to include some extra goodies, and wouldn’t you know it one of the things ended up probably being more fun than the main game, especially when played with a friend. This round based target game involved rolling your monkey ball down a giant ramp, collecting bonus multipliers and power ups before rocketing out over a vast ocean.

At this point your monkey ball pops open like some badass plastic wings, allowing you to fly and float, fighting against the shifting wind patterns to land yourself one one of three targets, each further away and more dangerous to reach than the last, and each containing multiple concentric rings of increasing point values. The last round of this bad boy could be incredibly tense as you try one last ditch effort to make up lost ground, kamikaze-ing down from the sky praying you land on that bullseye. Monkey Target!

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3. ”Bombchu Bowling” – Legend of Zelda: OOT (1998) [Nintendo]

Man did I have a real hard time choosing my favorite from the Zelda franchise. Even choosing from the many included in Ocarina of Time – my favorite Zelda surprise surprise – was tough: there’s fishing, diving, deku seed shooting, and more. But when I really stopped to think about it, my fondest memories (and most precious rupees) were spent in Hyrule City frequenting the Bombchu Bowling alley. I will admit that much of this choice comes from personal affinity, but I do think it’s got some fun gameplay.

First of all, the disaffected teen chick behind the counter is totally crushable – for a little sprite – with her Williamsburg appropriate hairstyle and outfit, and something about the interior of the place and the music always gave off a not unpleasant dark carnival type of vibe. Then there’s the enjoyment of figuring out the physics of how the bombchus ride up and around the walls, chugging desperately towards the black victory circle (where you can win things like a piece of heart). Finally, arguably my favorite part, is the always funny revelation of the gigantic chicken behind the regular sized one when the second wall falls. Gets me every time.

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2. ”Bumper Balls” – Mario Party (1998) [Nintendo]

Even in a game which is comprised entirely of sweet sweet mini games, this hyper-competitive fun factory stands out as the shining star of the first installment of this surprisingly enduring game series. Bumper Balls has a simple premise with elegant and addictive execution, which is pretty much the name of the game when it comes to great mini games. If the image above doesn’t make you grin/your blood boil then I don’t know what the heck you were doing in early 1999. Probably hanging out with members of the opposite sex and playing sports.

Basically you and three friends (or three bots if you’re really, really sad) get plopped down on these balls like a circus elephant and try to be the last one standing (err… rolling) on one of 3 stages: ice, grass, or fire. The physics of the ball movement and the way they bump against the other balls just feels really right, and makes this a game that can actually be won by skill. Also, bumps would increase in power if passed through another player, and few things were more satisfying than sending one foe careening into another and seeing them both roll off the edge. I could definitely play Bumper Balls 4 Eva.

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1. “Beat Up the Car” – Street Fighter II (1991) [Capcom]

To me this is the classic be all end all for mini games. I could be convinced that other ones on this list certainly rival it in fun factor, but none even approaches its icon status. It takes a relatively simple button mash mechanic and transposes it into a fun, rewarding, and visually exciting and dynamic environment. That is to say, you use your big muscles and karate powers to beat a fucking car so badly that it bursts into flames while you flex and feel wicked awesome about yourself.

I’m also gonna go ahead and make the weird claim that they specific way that this car breaks down – from cracked windows to rolling tires to busted hood and finally flaming shell – have very strongly influenced the way that cars break in video games all the way up to today. Everyone remembers this mini game, much moreso than Street Fighter 2‘s barrel based diversions, and I’ll never get tired of roundhouse kicking that inanimate pile of steel into utter submission. For no reason at all.

I’ve been thinking about arcades a lot recently. Well, I think about arcades a lot most of the time. But especially the past month or so. I got really nostalgic (and relatively drunk) a few weeks ago and bought a bunch of my old favorite arcade title on XBLA. It was super fun, but I really felt like something was missing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But then it hit me, like a hollow point straight to the dome zone: I was missing the light gun games. A big part of the joy of arcade games is the feeling that they can only be played in the arcade, and true light gun classics are the epitome of this.

Sure, I guess you can buy some peripherals for your console, but especially with some specific titles (which I’ll get to) it’s just by no means going to recreate the fun, the heft, the immersion, the je ne sais quoi of the light gun experience. Those bad boys munched down many of my monies and hundreds of my hours, and I definitely would not have it any other way. They were epic, extended battles and stories the sunk their talons into your little Mountain Dew-ed brain because you were fucking playing them man. You were holding a gun and when you pointed it at a bad guy it went bang and his head popped off. Real talk: light guns are the shit. Here are the High Five.

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Honorable Mentions: Point Blank (1994) [Namco] & Silent Scope (1999) [Konami]

I wanted to start things off with two games that are non-traditional takes on what we consider to be light gun play. Also, yes, this High Five is going to have seven games on it because I was feeling saucy and by saucy I mean I was feeling irrationally bad about leaving games that I love off this list. The first is Point Blank, the candy colored goodness you see above. This game was a series of very brief shooting mini games that were sorta carnival like and generally gonzo. In my mind it’s a direct precursor the the Wario Ware series, which also holds a special place in my corazon.

The second is Silent Scope, a game that is incredibly badass in concept and yet leaves something to be desired in the execution (zing!) department. Nonetheless, the idea of having a giant sniper rifle with a little screen in the scope, and instead of mowing down enemy after enemy having to really take your time and line up one perfect shot from like a mile away: awesome. It’s pretty short, but the level where you try to get the guy running across the football field without hitting any bystanders still sticks very vividly in my mind.

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5. Virtua Cop 2 (1995) [Sega]

I can’t say the name of this game without imitating the announcer at the title screen. I played this game a ton (too much, perhaps) and it is probably the purest expression of a light gun game. You’re a cop, you have a gun, there’s a reticle onscreen and you shoot it at anonymous baddies (usually with sunglasses) and… yeah. There’s not much more than that, but the naivete of the whole operation is part of what endears me to it. Also the first light gun game I remember (I’m saying for me, I’m sure it isn’t actually the first) where you get to choose your own adventure.

There’s a part where you’re driving (the driving level in this game is actually super duper fun) and you come upon a fork in the road and you shoot the street sign for where you want to go. I dunno, I just always liked that. Despite the fact that it’s the opening “tamest” level, the signature level of this game for me is still the Jewelry Store shootout. There were bonuses and stuff hidden in vases and chandeliers which were everywhere in the level, so while you were gunnin’ down baddies your were also going after the wares like a armed bull in a china shop. Bad policing, fun gameplay.

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4. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) [Midway]

The first of two licensed titles on my list (foreshadowing!) T2 is one of the better movie games out there, and it also has one of the best guns. This bad boy didn’t detach from the machine, oh no, it was way too hefty for that. This fucker was locked down and brawny as fuck. I loved getting my pizza grease smeared fingers on this weapon to mow down Skynet’s finest. It also had an alternate fire (grenades? rockets?) that you could control with a button on the side, which I thought was really cool.

This game did a really great job of taking you through the movie scenes you wanted to play without being so beholden to the plot that they didn’t also inject totally new scenes to make the game way more badass. The climactic battle with the T-1000 (pictured above) was also epic as fuck, complete with liquid nitrogen dousing and splitting Rober Patrick in half like a piece of string cheese.

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3. Time Crisis 2 (1998) [Namco]

I imagine many of you (you all have strong opinions about light gun games like me, right?) thought this would be at the top of the list, and I will concede that it is pretty technically flawless. The seemingly simple addition of a pedal that crouches your character actually makes a world of difference in gameplay (not to mention the aggressive timeclock that put you in a – wait for it – crisis).

I remember having oodles of fun playing this game, but it never quite sucked me in like the top two did. Specific set pieces don’t necessarily stand out, but I do remember an overall really polished and professional experience, and also it was one of the few machines that didn’t seem like it was trying to eat your quarters like a hungry hungry hippo. You could get through this game on one credit if you really tried.

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2. House of the Dead 2 (1998) [Sega]

Suffer like G did? Perhaps my favorite gaming quote of all time, and a perfect example of why I love this game so much. Something about it got lost in translation in the best way, making for one of the inadvertently strange zombie tales ever. Seriously, this thing makes absolutely no sense, is constantly surprising, and achieves a bizarre tone between terror and comedy that could no way be created on purpose.

Though parts of it come off as accidental, House Of The Dead 2 really is the perfect storm of gameplay and design elements – from the zombie design (look at those fuckers!) to stage layout, varied boss fights, and cool skill challenges where you tried to save other pursued survivors. I also really liked those enemies with blade hands that crawled on the wall. And the flesh-eating frogs. Why were those things in a zombie game? Why not, it’s House of the Motherfucking Dead. I will also accept Typing of The Dead, by the way.

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1. Jurassic Park (1994) [Sega]

If you walk into an arcade and you see that InGen Jeep “cabinet” that you get to sit in while it bounces the fuck around, please drop everything you are doing (even if it’s your own children and it’s their birthday at Chuck E Cheese) and get in the damn truck. Prepare to have one of the most fun 60-80 minutes you’ve had in a while. I love this game so much. I love Jurassic Park, and this game honestly does such a good job of recreating the wonder that movie provides. Plus shooting.

Sure, there are the big awesome moments – emptying thousands of rounds into T. Rex’s face, jumping like a little girl when Raptors pop out of nowhere, trying not to get stomped out by lumbering brontosaurus – but some of my favorite moments are also, oddly, the quiet ones where you aren’t even shooting shit. Just sitting in that car (which, as a kid, felt really real) and waiting for that big, iconic wooden Jurassic Park gate to open… when I get rich I’m buying one of these.

The supervillain is just as integral to the superhero as their powers, their origin story: the supervillain completes them. This importance has long been reflected in the comic book consuming public’s obsession with them, leaving man of the top tier villains more popular even than their hero analogues. Because you don’t necessarily have to “like” them, writers often appear to feel much more freedom in the creation of their villains, leaving both the Marvel and DC universes with truly massive baddie rosters that cover a huge gamut.

It’s unfortunate, however, that for the most part discussion of these villains is limited to two categories: the a-listers and the z-listers. I’ve chosen to talk about DC today, by the way, because I just happen to like it more (whoops!) but you could easily do this with Marvel too. Anyway, as I was saying, people are always going to talk about The Joker and Lex Luthor and Sinestro and Darkseid and stuff. But once you get past the Rogue’s Gallery and everyone else’s 2-3 main villains, conversation usually goes right to people like Crazy Quilt, Clock King, Doctor Spectro, and – uhh – Kite Man.

But there’s a whole world of middleground villains that are totally awesome that never really get their due, and as such don’t get nearly enough appearances in their respective series’. It’s unfortunate, but understandable. But that doesn’t mean we can’t honor a couple of them right now by going through some of my favorite Second Tier DC Villains. Here are the high five…

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5. Bonecrusher – Created by Sam Hamm

Making only one appearance, in the exceptional Sam Hamm (Batman: The Movie) penned Batman: Blind Justice storyline, Bonecrusher is a masked villain (actually later revealed to be a mantle carried by multiple brainwashed people, so he’s essentially invincible. Nice) who uses the power of sound to literally turn his opponents bones to dust while they’re still in his body.

He looks really cool and evil, sort of like a cross between Bane, a Klan Member, but with little satellite dish looking things all over his body, and the fact that he’s multiple innocents controlled by someone else leads to some nice ethical quandaries for the Dark Knight. I’m a humongous fan of this Batman arc, and Bonecrusher just stuck with me. To avoid capture, the person controlling them has the Bonecrushers kill themselves when Batman closes in, which is pretty creepy, and the way he can just pulverize walls and people’s insides is super badass.

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4. Psycho Pirate – Created by Gardner Fox

The thing about Psycho Pirate is that he could so easily be one of those doofy characters I referred to before, with his kinda dumb name, weird harlequin costume and effete, theatrical mannerisms. But in reality, his power of emotional manipulation using the Medusa Mask is a surprisingly deep and interesting one, and his fancy lad persona ends up becoming incredibly unsettling once you see what he’s capable of.

I’m particularly fond of the Psycho Pirate’s role in the Crisis On Infinite Earths, where he is captured and becomes a sycophantic servant for the Anti-Monitor, who amplifies his powers so that he can make all the heroes on a bunch of earths start creating havoc. So yeah, the Psycho Pirate is kind of a badass. Except at the end of Crisis, he’s actually one of a few people who remembers everything about it, which I thought was cool. Also has one of the most gruesome deaths I’ve encountered in DC comics, when Black Adam literally pushes the Medusa Mask through his face.

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3. Deacon Blackfire – Created by Jim Starlin

This dude is a creepy motherfucker. He was the lead villain in the Batman story arc The Cult in the late eighties, and I guess people were really afraid of religious cults at the time, because the whole storyline really seems to be tapping into a zeitgeisty phobia. The white-ponytailed Blackfire basically amasses an army of brainwashed homeless people in the expansive sewers of Gotham (honestly, Batman has had so many adventures in those damn sewers…).

As I mentioned he’s a pretty bizarre dude, and may or may not have mythical powers and also, if I remember correctly, is implied to be like hundreds of years old. The Cult is a really great miniseries, and it’s bottle-episode-esque setting makes for an incredibly claustrophobic final issue, with Blackfire and his soldiers turning out to be an impressively difficult foe for the Bat. Also a cool fate: killed and potentially eaten by his former charges. Nice.

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2. Ranx the Sentient City – Created by Alan Moore

Leave it to Alan Moore to come up with something as weird as an entire living future city made of pure evil, and then have the balls to give it a Yellow Power Ring and make it a card carrying member of the Sinestro Corps. I mean come on: that’s pretty fucking awesome. Especially when he (it, I guess) actually has his own analogue enemy in the Green Lantern Corps., Mogo The Living Planet.

Man I really love comic books. Anyway, I really like Ranx because the concept of a single hero fighting against an entire living city makes for some really cool battles that are obviously not just “I punch you in the face really really hard, then you do the same, then we smash some buildings.” Unfortunately, as I’m now realizing about all of my picks, Ranx is also dead, having been dispatched by Lantern Sodam Yat. Son of a bitch…

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1. Floronic Man – Created by Gardner Fox

Jason Woodrue AKA The Floronic Man is totally the epitome of what I was talking about in the beginning of this post. He will never be a marquee supervillain, because he controls plants but isn’t a sex-bomb like Poison Ivy, but as Alan Moore displayed in his take on Woodrue in Swamp Thing, has the potential to be as good as it gets. Seriously, I’m sure you’ve all read it a bunch of times, but go back and read that arc again: it’s so, so fantastic.

He’s a mutated guy who can essentially converse with plants, but what’s cool is that he’s not always in full control of his powers. In fact, oftentimes the plants control him to a degree, and seeing them harmed can make him go a little… insane. When he is using his powers well, however, he does way more interesting shit than just grabbing you with vines or growing big venus fly traps or lame stuff like that. How about making all the plants on Earth overproduce oxygen to turn it into a gigantic bomb? Floronic Man. Know about him.

Today we’re here to talk about those particular movie scenes that, if you were watching them on your laptop, you would immediately slam its lid shut like a terrified clam were someone to enter the room. Then after they leave, you’ll eagerly pop it back open, returning to your own little fucked up secret world. These are scenes that you not only don’t want to explain the details of to people, but you especially don’t want to explain why you think they’re so great. I mean, what are you, a fuckin’ weirdo or something?

Of course not! Or, at least, everyone’s a little bit of a fuckin’ weirdo. But most of us never act out any of our more bizarre thoughts, because we have actors and directors to do it on camera for us. Society, people: it’s got nuances! You may not like them, but you gotta give some big ups to the artists who are willing to put their shit on the line to push the limits of what exactly entertains us. Needless to say, most of these videos are NSFW. Onwards and downwards my friends!

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5. Cruising – Interrogation Scene (1980) // Dir. William Friedkin

In this much maligned cult classic, Al Pacino plays a cop who must go undercover in NYC’s gay scene to catch a serial killer who’s victims he picks up at West Village leather bars. The scene comes when Pacino (still in disguise) gets a suspect brought in for interrogation, and despite the assumption that a police station would be a vaguely safe and normal place, it really is anything but. The scene is relatively tame until you get a true “WTF” moment when a gigantic black guy wearing nothing but a jock strap and cowboy hat comes in out of nowhere to slap the shit out of Pacino and the suspect.

It’s almost played for laughs until you start to think about the implications of why this would be happening. It is, of course, the actions of the police that make this scene so uncomfortable, and the idea that this is their tactic for intimidating a gay male suspect is just… weird. Then shit really kicks into next level uncomfortable when they force the suspect to masturbate in front of all of them to get a semen sample. It shouldn’t be higher than #5, but this scene from Cruising just really sticks in my mind as being so bizarre and weirdly terrifying.

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4. Bad Lieutenant – Warning (1992) // Dir. Abel Ferrara

A totally classic cringe-worthy (in a good way) performance in a totally classic movie, Harvey Keitel’s utterly unhinged titular Bad Lieutenant probably reaches his disgusting depths on what should be a routine traffic stop of two sisters. Part of what makes this scene both enjoyably and disturbing is its protracted length. Keitel just keeps going and going, and he’s so convincing that it makes the actresses seem like they’re not even in character and are just actually feeling really abused by Harvey. It definitely treads the “how much of this is happening?” line.

Ferrara is weird enough to… well let’s say I can’t imagine he ran the tightest set ever. This scene was admirably recreated by Nic Cage in Werner Herzog’s (superior. Sorry. Sorry!) remake, but this version of it is not as – uhhh – whimsical as Cage’s take, and is instead just aggressively uncomfortable. I couldn’t find a regular version that was embeddable (so you can watch it here) but I did find this totally wonderfully “Guile’s Theme” version of it. Enjoy!

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3. Wild at Heart – Fuck Me (1990) // Dir. David Lynch

Oh Willem, Willem, Willem: where the fuck did you find Bobby Peru my friend? This is not just a character, it’s some sort of demonic, disgusting entity that Dafoe summoned from the deepest darkest parts of the earth. His brief encounter with Lula in the hotel room is the absolute height of his sociopathic creepiness, and Laura Dern does some equally admirable work in this memorable scene from my favorite movie.

It’s a scene that constantly upends your expectations about what kind of fucked up it is, going from what seems like it will be a full on physical rape, to a complete mental dressing down, to some sort of terrible and momentary intimacy and finally, in the cruelest twist, it turns out it was basically the elongated set-up to what Peru considers a little joke. His manipulation of culpability in this scene is truly deplorable, but a marvelous piece of writing and acting.

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2. Gummo – Grandma (1997) // Dir. Harmony Korine

Solomon and Tummler’s trip inside of Jarrod’s house starts weird and only gets weirder. It’s one of those scenes that makes you anxious all of the way through, as having watched like an hour of the movie thus far, you know that truly anything can happen. The grandmother’s breathing machine just pumping away in the background gives the whole thing a nerve-wracking soundtrack, as does the hum of the projector as they watch the supremely unsettling videos of Jarrod in drag.

Then, of course, there’s the euthanasia of the grandma. I mean Jesus, they shoot her in the foot with a BB gun to try to wake her up, and that’s basically their justification for shutting off all her machines. I really could have included all of this movie (something about the chair wrestling scene makes me feel all gross too) but this part has to take the cake. Fuckin’ Harmony Korine. It starts an hour and two minutes into the above video which, hey, all of Gummo. Cool.

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1. Happiness – Father/Son Talk (1998) // Dir. Todd Solondz

Despite its complete lack of violence, nudity, or any sort of visual action really, this remains the ultimate “can never watch with parents or really talk about ever” scene in cinema. That’s half of why it’s on top of this list, the other half being that it’s also in the upper echelons of scenes ever put to film. It is, in my opinion, the finest thing Solondz has ever done, and I would be shocked if Dylan Baker ever did better acting than this. It’s nightmare-worthy disturbing, incredibly sad, and viciously honest.

I have to imagine that, despite this coming right at the end of the movie, a bunch of people probably walked out in this scene. Which I totally accept. But if you can stomach it, this scene, and Happiness in general, is grueling but affecting in a way that few other movies can match. Just try explaining this scene to someone and see how long it takes for them to give you a weird look or straight up stop you. But you can’t deny it’s great. So it rightfully earns the #1 spot. Click to image to link to the video.

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Obviously there are countless other disturbingly great scenes in the history of cinema (and let’s not forget television), and these are just my picks. What are yours?