The Criterion Collection

It may be out of place chronologically, but this one has to take the top spot on this list. You can search far and wide, but you'll be hard-pressed to find more vicious backbiting than there is in this bitter tale of a film crew going to seed.

It's often said that the Sixties died at Altamont. Watching this film, it's pretty hard to disagree with that assessment.

A troubling true-crime story from America's past that could act as a wake-up call for anybody who claims they miss the "good old days."

Probably Peckinpah's most nihilistic work -- and that's saying something.

A two-fer from Morrissey, the dark prince of depravity.

A two-fer from Schroeder. The first is a fascinating portrait of a man who was clearly off his rocker and in a position where absolutely no one could tell him so. The second is a film that declines to judge its sadists and masochists, but still ventures into some pretty dark territory.

The story of a love affair that would be doomed even without the specter of Naziism hanging over the proceedings.

An unsettling depiction of a Germany that is just as haunted by its present as it is by its past.

This one takes a bit longer to reveal its seamy underbelly, but once it does there's no turning back.

In a way, it feels like this could have been a one-film list -- and this would have been that film.

A two-fer from Oshima, who knew how to put the "sadism" in sadomasochism.

Unsettling from the first wave to the last.

An apocalyptic vision of Britannia that amply illustrates why it no longer Rules as it once did.

Nazis again. I hate those guys.