James Gunn Shares List of Body Horror Films to Watch Before ‘Clayface’
By Dread Central
3 min readAhead of ‘Clayface’, James Gunn has shared a list of twelve body horror films he recommends watching beforehand.
Ahead of ‘Clayface’, James Gunn has shared a list of twelve body horror films he recommends watching beforehand.
Looking over this list, it’s nothing but banger after banger.
Of course, Cronenberg’s The Fly makes sense. Not only is it one of the greatest body horror/creature features ever made, but Clayface borrows heavily from the film’s basic premise of a man slowly transforming into a monster.
Something similar can be said for Ken Russell’s Altered States. The filmmaker’s trippy shocker also concerns a scientist becoming something else after an experiment goes wrong in what may be one of the weirder yet visually stunning movies on the list.
The Thing, The Blob, Basket Case and Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers all have some DNA in Clayface. Remember, this is a character who can not only take the form of other people and “hide” in their flesh, but he can also form his limbs into some gruesome instruments of horror (à la The Thing).
I’m most thrilled to see Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos on this list. Not because I think it’s the best of them, but because it doesn’t get nearly the same level of praise as the others…and it deserves it. The debut horror feature from the beloved filmmaker, it’s one of the more unique vampire films you’ll ever see, one that’s dripping in del Toro’s trademark dark fantasy atmosphere.
In Clayface, Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, whose rise from Gotham street kid to Hollywood leading man ends when a crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured. An experimental treatment restores his appearance but begins affecting his grip on reality, sending him down a destructive path of revenge.
James Watkins (Speak No Evil, The Woman in Black) directs from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, based on a story by Flanagan. Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice), Max Minghella (Spiral: From the Book of Saw), David Dencik, and Eddie Marsan also star.
As we previously reported, the MPA rated Clayface R for “strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use.”
Clayface oozes into theaters on October 23rd.