When it comes to revenge fantasies, audiences
these days are likely to reference John Wick or Atomic Blond. But revenge cinema
has a rich history with some absolute classics that don’t get the recognition
they deserve. From 1980s exploitation to LSD-inspired madness, these are the
best revenge movies you've never seen. Ms. 45 is set in the sleazy streets of 1980s New York, a grimy city covered in garbage, where there's danger around every corner. That's especially true if you're a woman.
This town is just crawling with predators. During one horrific day, a mute seamstress named
Thana is violently assaulted on two occasions, once on the street and once in her apartment.
After that second assault, Thana snaps and morphs from quiet girl to murder machine.
With a .45 pistol in her hand, she trades her drab dresses for red lipstick and leather
pants and begins prowling through the city, hunting for evil men at night. Once
she draws them out, she strikes, and as the body count piles up, Thana discovers
that she really enjoys filling dudes with lead. After all, her name does come from
Thanatos, the Greek god of death. Directed by Abel Ferrara, Ms. 45
is full of unforgettable images, like a crazed killer dressed like a nun, kissing
her bullets with ruby red lips before loading them into her magazine. It's Death Wish meets Carrie,
and even though our leading lady barely makes a sound, when she picks up her pistol and steps
outside, she's an angel of vengeance who puts Charles Bronson to shame. Whether it's cabin-in-the-woods-style horror
or superhero blockbusters, Sam Raimi movies are always a blast. And that's just as true for The
Quick and the Dead. This 1995 Western finds Sharon Stone riding into town like a long-haired Clint
Eastwood, chomping down on a cigar and looking for the man who ruined her life. Known simply as The
Lady, this female gunslinger arrives at a hellish desert outpost known as Redemption. She’s hoping
to find the maniacal outlaw named John Herod, played with an impressive menace by Gene Hackman.
She plans on killing Herod in retaliation for her father's death years prior, and she plans
on doing it in the coolest way possible. See, Herod is the mayor of Redemption, and he's
hosting a tournament where the baddest desperadoes in the land will square off in the street and
find out who's the quickest draw. As you can guess by the title, whoever doesn't win ends up
dead. The Lady plans on joining the contest so she can put a bullet into Herod, fair and square.
But her revenge plan gets complicated as she runs across a host of colorful characters, each with
their own reason for joining this twisted contest. Russell Crowe plays a killer turned man of the
cloth who is forced to play Herod's game at the point of a gun. Leonardo DiCaprio steals every
scene he's in as the Kid, brash and cocky and looking to impress someone important. Keith David,
Lance Henriksen, and Tobin Bell fill out the rest of the cast, to say nothing of Raimi's presence
behind the camera. The Quick and the Dead bears his trademark humor and techniques, and it's
an over-the-top explosion of good Western fun. It's slick and pulpy, violent and goofy.
Basically, it’s everything you'd expect from the guy who made Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. If you only know Paddy Considine as one of the
Andys from Hot Fuzz, then you're in for a shock if you watch Dead Man's Shoes. Directed by Shane
Meadows, who co-wrote the script with Considine, this British thriller follows a soldier who's
returning home, only he isn't expecting a hero's welcome. Instead, he's come back to wreak
some unholy vengeance. Played by Considine, Richard is nothing but seething, chaotic rage,
all bottled up and ready to explode. And you know this guy has it out for somebody bad since his
first lines in the movie are shockingly brutal: "God will forgive them. He’ll forgive them, and
allow them into heaven. I can't live with that." Yeah, Richard is hardcore, and he's after some
small-time thugs who bullied and tortured his mentally disabled brother. Now that he's
back home, Richard begins taunting the men, breaking into their homes, standing over
them while they sleep, and freaking them out by donning the world's creepiest gas mask.
It's all horrific fun and terrifying games until people start losing their lives. Armed with
everything from an ax to drug-infused tea, Richard goes full-on slasher villain.
But this film has a depressing twist up its sleeve that turns Richard's revenge mission
into an odyssey of regret and self-loathing. If you want to see rage personified, then you
should definitely check out Dead Man's Shoes. Friedrich Nietzsche has a famous and often referenced quote:
"If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
Well, picture Nietzsche writing that line while holding a pen in one hand, a meat cleaver in the
other, and being absolutely drenched with gore, and that's the best way to describe I
Saw the Devil. Directed by Kim Ji-Woon, this 2010 torture-fest totally earns its
demonic title, and while it's a brilliant bit of filmmaking, it's absolute hell to watch.
The movie opens with a woman stranded on the side of the road, waiting for a tow truck, when
Kyung-Chul, played by Oldboy’s Choi Min-Sik, shows up. Unfortunately, Kyung-Chul is a serial
killer who takes great delight in dismembering his victims, so needless to say, things don't end well
for the poor woman. However, her fiancé Soo-Hyun, played by Lee Byung-Hun, happens to be a special
agent who's pretty good at dishing out pain. Driven by the hottest anger imaginable,
Soo-Hyun sets out after the serial killer and catches him quickly... only to let him go.
See, Soo-Hyun doesn't just want to kill Kyung-Chul. He wants to play with him, to draw out
the man's suffering. It's a game of cat and mouse, a game where a lot of bystanders get caught in the
crossfire. What we've got here are two absolute monsters, one driven by evil and one driven by
hatred, and pretty soon, it's hard to tell them apart. The action here is almost non-stop, with
insanely choreographed fight scenes and gross-out moments that put the Saw series to shame.
Don't eat anything before watching this movie, or you'll be seeing more than just the
devil. You might just see your lunch again. In most revenge movies, the hero is some sort of professional badass. The
Bride is an assassin, Maximus is a Roman general, and Hugh Glass is a liver-eating mountain man. But
what would happen if some ordinary, schlubby dude got a gun and tried to go all John Wick? Well,
that's the premise of Blue Ruin, a brutal thriller by director Jeremy Saulnier, and the answer
is pretty simple: it wouldn't end well at all. Played to dweebish perfection by Macon Blair, his
character, Dwight, has some serious issues. He's living in a beat-up old car, scrounging through
garbage cans, and breaking into empty homes so he can take showers. He's been homeless for a long
time, ever since his parents were killed. Their deaths have haunted him for years, and now their
killer has just been paroled. Dwight has been dreaming of revenge for a long, long time, and he
gets it within the first 20 minutes of the movie. It's sloppy, it's sickening, and it's totally
realistic. But once you start a family feud, the feuding doesn't stop until everybody is dead.
"Wade hurt my parents." "I don't think he did."
See, once Dwight gets his revenge, the family of the dead man comes calling, and
they're all armed with some serious hardware. Dwight wants to be Rambo, but he's just
an ordinary dude. He tries copying all those action hero cliches, like tending
his own wounds, but it rarely works. Dwight has no clue what he's doing, but with bad
guys closing in, he's forced to make a stand, no matter how foolish that might be. At
times hilarious and other times tragic, Blue Ruin subverts one action movie trope after
another and shows there's a really good reason that revenge is best left on the big screen. Directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, Nocturnal
Animals will leave you emotionally devastated, drained of life, and terrified of driving
at night. The story begins with Amy Adams playing the role of Susan Morrow, an incredibly
successful woman who runs an art gallery and absolutely hates her life. She feels like
a sellout, her husband is cheating on her, and everything seems to be falling apart.
That's when she receives a novel called Nocturnal Animals, written by her old ex, played
by Jake Gyllenhaal. The book is dedicated to Susan, but as she pores over the pages, she
quickly discovers that's not a compliment. As she reads this twisted book, we're treated to a
movie within a movie, where Jake Gyllenhaal shows up again, playing family man Tony Hastings. He's
driving across Texas with his wife and daughter, played by Isla Fisher and Ellie Bamber
respectively, when they're forced off the road by a gang of rednecks, led by a
villainous Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Honestly, this roadside confrontation is one of the
scariest moments ever made for a non-horror movie, and we're left with our jaws dropped in shock
when the creeps take off with Tony's family, leaving him screaming on the side of the road.
Eventually, Tony teams up with Michael Shannon's no-nonsense lawman, to hunt down
the thugs who attacked his family, but that's not the only revenge plot going on
in the film. As Susan gets deeper and deeper into the novel, we start learning more about her
relationship with the author, and we soon realize her literary ex might have a serious ax to grind.
The acting here is incredible all the way around, with Taylor-Johnson delivering a career-best
performance as the world's sleaziest thug. It's a cold and mean film that will leave you shaken by
the final frame, and in the end, you'll never want to take another road trip as long as you live. Shot on the indiest of indie budgets, Mohawk is an
action-horror hybrid that reminds us that American history is one big bloodbath. This 2017 flick
follows a trio of lovers, an Englishman, played by Eamon Farren, and two Mohawk Indians, played
by Kaniehtiio Horn and Justin Rain, as they find themselves on the run from a group of bloodthirsty
Americans. Tired of seeing his people scalped and killed, Rain’s character, Mohawk warrior Calvin,
attacks an American camp and leaves behind a bloody body count. Now the remaining troops
are out for blood, and their vicious commander, played by Ezra Buzzington, will stop at
nothing to get his piece of Manifest Destiny. With a bunch of vengeful Yankees on their
trail, our trio tries to vanish into the woods, pulling every trick out of the Mohawk playbook to
stay alive. The forest is vast and deep and will swallow you up, and the further the chase goes
into the woods, the more mystical the movie gets. Eventually, the power dynamics change, and
the focus on revenge shifts dramatically. The movie's last act goes straight into horror
territory, and that should be no surprise as the movie was directed by Ted Geoghegan, famous for
his film We Are Still Here, and co-written by horror author Grady Hendrix. The result is a film
that feels like The Ritual meets Rambo, complete with mutilation, decapitation, and a lot of bloody
explosions. It's proof that you don't need a big budget for big thrills, and it's a reminder that
America's past is full of death and destruction. Take Jodorowsky's craziest movie, Black Sabbath's most metal album, the scariest
cover of a Stephen King novel, then mix them all together with a dash of a hallucinogenic drug.
Throw it in the fires of hell for a few minutes, and when it's done cooking, you'll get
Mandy, one of the wildest revenge movies ever made. Set in 1983, this trippy gorefest
finds Nicolas Cage at his absolute Cage-iest, slamming vodka, snorting cocaine, and forging
his own ax to fight a gang of Cenobite bikers. And oh yeah, we've got a Cheddar Goblin.
Directed by Panos Cosmatos, Mandy starts as a gorgeous, lyrical love poem. We watch as
Cage's lumberjack Red Miller and his artist wife, the hauntingly beautiful Mandy, as
portrayed by Andrea Riseborough, spend their days alone in the woods. They've
carved out a little paradise for themselves, where they can watch silly sci-fi movies, talk
about astronomy, and gaze at one another after the sun sets. Unfortunately, Mandy catches the
eye of a crazed folk singer-turned-cult leader, played by Linus Roache, who desperately wants
her to join his freaky family. When she turns him down... Well, this is a revenge story, after all.
And that's when the movie shifts gears, with Red summoning the power of every crazy
character that Nicolas Cage has ever played. Armed with a crossbow, he goes toe-to-toe with
the cult and a gang of demon bikers. There's an epic chainsaw battle, plenty of decapitations,
and in between all the bloodshed, we've got psychedelic imagery galore. With Johan Johansson's
brilliant score driving the movie forward, Cage is an absolute beast, fighting demons and hunting
hippies in the most heavy metal movie ever made. The only out-and-out genre film from Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar,
2011's The Skin I Live In has more twists than a pretzel and more stomach-sinking body
horror than any other entry on this list. Loosely based on French author
Thierry Jonquet's novel Tarantula, the film centers on a brilliant but cruel plastic
surgeon named Robert Ledgard, portrayed through a captivating performance by long-time
Almodóvar collaborator, Antonio Banderas. Consumed by the prospect of creating synthetic,
burn-resistant skin, Dr. Ledgard is convinced he's on the verge of a breakthrough thanks to his human
guinea pig, a volatile bandaged patient played by Elena Anaya , who Ledgard is holding captive
in his secluded estate for mysterious reasons. Merging Almodóvar's unmistakably vibrant sense
of camp with the skin-crawling genre stylings of David Cronenberg, Georges Franju, and Lucio
Fulci, The Skin I Live In premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated
for the Palme d'Or. The details of Dr. Ledgard's vendetta, and the lengths he's willing to go to
see it through, are haunting and unforgettable. Part Hitchcockian identity-thriller, part
melodrama, part macabre Old Hollywood-throwback, The Skin I Live In is, in Almodóvar's own words,
"a horror story without screams or frights." An idiosyncratic entry both
within Almodóvar's filmography and within the revenge genre more broadly, The
Skin I Live In is uncomfortable, unpredictable, and an unforgettable viewing experience. For many moviegoers, 1974's Death Wish is the
ultimate revenge movie. But here's a little secret: Death Sentence is way better. And you
don't have to take our word for it, even though we really do think it's a massively underrated
action movie. Brian Garfield, the author of the novel that inspired Death Wish, called Death
Sentence a, quote, "stunningly good movie" about "the stupidity of vengeful vigilantism." And
at the center of this bullet-riddled film, there's Kevin Bacon, giving one of his all-time best
performances as a family man turned psycho killer. Directed by James Wan, Death
Sentence finds Bacon as Nick Hume, a loving husband and good father whose life is
ripped apart when gangsters brutally kill his son. Realizing the justice system will let him down,
Nick foolishly takes the law into his own hands, sparking a war between this middle-class
dad and some pistol-packing drug dealers. Things spiral out of control fast, giving
us some incredibly tense action scenes, like a desperate foot chase up a parking garage
or the final shootout in the blood-red church. And the performances here are all scary good,
especially with John Goodman chewing up the scenery as a foul-mouthed arms dealer.
"Kill the little piss pants. See if it makes a damn day's difference to me.
Dad to dad: Don't tell me about it." But the real highlight here is Bacon, morphing
from mild-mannered businessman into an absolute animal. After a series of horrible decisions, he's
got nothing left to lose, and while these bad guys definitely deserve a load of buckshot to the face,
Death Sentence is a harsh reminder of what would actually happen if you turned vigilante:
You'd lose everything dear to you, including your soul. Thanks to the genre-fluid genius of Brian De
Palma, we're thrilled to include the greatest revenge-fueled rock-opera-farce-horror-comedy
ever made. Okay, the only one ever made! Released in 1974, Phantom of the Paradise is a
joyfully bonkers mashup of three classic spooky tales of obsession and violent comeuppance:
Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian
Gray, and the legend of Faust. The film itself centers on a talented, if woefully
naïve, songwriter named Winslow Leach, played by William Finley, who's duped into selling his
life's work — a cantata based on the Faust myth — to a devilish music producer named Swan, played by
Paul Williams. Horribly disfigured in his attempts to regain control of his music, Leach dons a
menacing, masked persona in an attempt to sabotage Swan's glorious new concert hall, the Paradise.
When Phantom of the Paradise premiered, it bombed pretty much everywhere. But a passionate
fandom ensured that Phantom of the Paradise survived and thrived, going from B-movie flop
to a riotous cult classic. It has everything: music, murder, a character named Beef. And
for such an acrid satire of the predatory, soul-stealing nature of the music industry,
Phantom of the Paradise is overflowing with back-to-back bangers. Unabashedly strange and
infectiously maniacal, self-destructive revenge quests are rarely this fun. One of the most visually striking and
atmospheric Westerns ever produced, 1968's The Great Silence is an icy tale of the
tragic limits of eye-for-an-eye frontier justice. Directed and co-written by Sergio Corbucci,
Sergio Leone's only real competition in the realm of Spaghetti Westerns, The Great Silence
is a bleak and strikingly beautiful examination of the twisted morality of bounty law and contract
killers that define the mythos of the Wild West. Set in a snow-swept mountain range as unforgiving
as the bloodthirsty bounty hunters that stalk its valleys in search of profit, the film follows
Jean-Louis Trintignant. He portrays a mute gunslinger nicknamed Silence. He’s a gun
for hire whose vocal cords were slashed in childhood by the mercenary miscreants who
killed his parents. Pitted against the sadistic and gloriously campy bounty hunter known as
"Loco", played appropriately mad by Klaus Kinski, Silence attempts to defend those on the receiving
end of a justice system that favors deep pockets. One of the great revisionist Westerns, The Great
Silence is a pessimistic and scathing tale of the moral ambiguities of the Wild West and the
never-ending bloodshed of revenge killings. Unforgiving and shockingly unsentimental, it
boasts one of the bleakest endings in genre film. Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz is Jen, a bubbly, uncomplicated girl who tags along with
her very wealthy and very married boyfriend, Richard, played by Kevin Janssens. They’re off
for a romantic getaway in the desert before his annual hunting trip. But after Richard's
buddies show up early, tensions rise, and one of his friends sexually assaults Jen.
When Jen refuses to go quietly in the aftermath, Richard chases her off of a cliff. But Jen doesn't
die. Not only that, she fights back. Soon enough, Richard's casual hunting trip with the
boys takes a decidedly murderous turn. Coralie Fargeat's feature film debut hits
the ground running and never looks back. Filmed in a joyfully garish and pointedly
self-aware parody of the male gaze, Revenge takes the misogyny-tinged, I Spit On Your
Grave style revenge offerings that came before it and flips them on their head. We feel
surprised by what Jen is capable of, in part because we're so used to seeing
women like Jen underestimated in genre films. Decked out in hot pink, a lollypop dangling
from her glossy lips, she's the last person you'd expect to self-cauterize a wound with a
beer can while tripping on peyote in a cave. And yet, there she is, outsmarting and
outlasting her would-be killers with the ferocity of a seasoned survivalist. Setting
its tactical sight clearly on male entitlement, Revenge is a brutal, blunt, and decidedly bloody
amalgamation of feminism and exploitation cinema. Set in medieval Sweden, two devout Christians, Töre, played by Max von Sydow,
and Märeta, brought to life by Birgitta Valberg, send their virginal daughter, Karin, played by
Birgitta Pettersson, and their pregnant servant, Inger, played by Gunnel Lindblom, to
deliver candles to a far-flung church. While they make their way through a foreboding
forest, the pair are surprised by a band of roving goat herders, who assault and kill
Karin while Ingeri remains hidden. Later, the three killers seek refuge at Töre and Märeta's
farmhouse, unwittingly finding asylum in the home of their victim's parents. Overwhelmed with grief
and a desire for retribution fitting of the crime, Töre plots his revenge.
Melding exploitation cinema and medieval symbolism, The Virgin Spring
is cruel, slow-burning, and subtly horrific. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign
Language Film, it’s one of the few films Ingmar Bergman directed but did not write. And
yet, Bergman's career-defining austerity and spiritual critique have arguably never been
more visceral. A guttural fable of "a world teetering between paganism and Christianity,"
Bergman's guilt-soaked parable is a gorgeous rendering of truly hideous subject matter.
The plot of The Virgin Spring would go on to form the basis of Wes Craven's infamous
1972 film The Last House on the Left, which, as author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas notes,
suggests that rape-revenge films indeed possess, quote, "a relatively auspicious heritage". Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's triumphant return
to form offers a boldly subversive take on a well-worn revenge formula. When video game company
CEO Michèle, brought to life by Isabelle Huppert, is assaulted in her home, she refuses to let
the incident shake her carefully crafted life. Determined to uncover the identity of her
unknown attacker, Michèle returns to business as usual while coaxing her assailant
into a sinister game of cat and mouse, manipulating the violent desires of her attacker.
Premiering in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and ending in
a seven-minute standing ovation, even with such high-risk material, Elle has enjoyed widespread
critical acclaim, with pointed, and deserving, praise for Huppert's performance. Heralded by
Variety as a possible career high for Verhoeven, Elle is a knowingly incendiary and twisted tale
that's certainly not for the faint of heart. In the late 19th century, a dying imprisoned woman gives birth to a baby
girl, naming her Yuki after the delicate snow falling outside, beyond their barred window.
Before she dies, she utters her final wish: "You will carry on my vendetta. My poor child."
Her mother's wrath made flesh, Yuki, portrayed by a lethal Meiko Kaji, sharpens herself
into the perfect weapon. What follows is a bittersweet bloodbath of jaw-dropping violence
and spectacular swordplay, a frigid tragedy of intergenerational fury dripping in style.
Based on Kazuo Koike and Kazuo Kamimura's manga series of the same name, Toshiya Fujita's
elegant and über-influential genre masterpiece is one of the cornerstones of Asian action
cinema. Lady Snowblood is a revenge-riddled must for international genre fans.
Directed by Mike Hodges, I'll Sleep When I'm
Dead is a haunting thriller about a gangster who's returned to his old stomping grounds and
finds his world has fallen apart. Clive Owen plays Will Graham, a mob boss who left the London
underworld and has spent the last few years living in the wilderness. Hounded by guilt and regret,
he's completely cut himself off from the world, but you can't ghost your friends and
family and expect everything to be okay. That's a lesson Will learns the hard way
when he discovers his little brother, Davey, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, has killed
himself. Wanting answers for Davey's death, Will returns to the life he left behind and learns
there's some sick stuff going down in old London town. Davey's death might have something to do
with an evil power player named Boad, portrayed by the always brilliant Malcolm McDowell. Will's
return ignites a turf war, an old romance, and feelings of guilt for leaving his brother behind.
One of the finest British gangster movies, this picture creeps along at a steady pace, slowly
winding its way through dark London neighborhoods. It's neo-noir at its most brooding,
and Clive Owen is brilliant here, so quiet and so intense, brimming with anger
and struggling with grief "for a life wasted," both his brother's and his own. And as the
movie moves toward the final act of revenge, we're reminded that every decision comes
with a cost, and you're always going to pay, no matter how far you run or how long you hide.
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