50 Greatest WTF Movies
Weird wonders to warp your mind
Barton Fink (1991)
The WTF Movie: The Coen brothers tackle Hollywood in the story of Fink (John Turturro), a playwright who inadvertently enlists the help of madman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) to write his wrestling movie screenplay.
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: Goodman flips out in a burning hotel corridor, screaming, "I'll show you the life of the mind."
The Holy Mountain (1973)
The WTF Movie: Alejandro Jodorowsky dropped acid and fed magic mushrooms to his cast to better capture the trance-like spirituality of his movie about a sacred journey.
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: The trip up the mountain is delayed by a visit to the Pantheon Bar - a party in a cemetery.
The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (1919)
The WTF Movie: The original mindfuck movie, as mad Dr Caligari uses a sleep-walking patient as a murderer against a backdrop of crazily skewed sets and camera angles.
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: The original mindfuck twist ending, as it's revealed that hero Francis is a mental patient under the real Caligari's care.
Possession (1981)
The WTF Movie: Once-banned "video nasty," in which Sam Neill discovers his wife Isabelle Adjani is cheating on him with the product of her miscarriage - a monstrous, tentacled creature.
Sign up for the Total Film Newsletter
Bringing all the latest movie news, features, and reviews to your inbox
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: Adjani has an emotional breakdown as she miscarries in a subway tunnel - a scene so raw and uncomfortable it comes as little surprise that the actress attempted suicide soon after.
Persona (1966)
The WTF Movie: Ingmar Bergman's psychodrama about a mute actress whose personality begins to merge with her nurse is the result of the director's bedside hallucinations while recovering from pneumonia.
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: The opening sequence - a disturbing montage of surreal imagery of sex and violence.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
The WTF Movie: A Japanese businessman is transformed into a cyborg by a sleazy Metal Fetishist in Shinya Tsukamoto's cyberpunk-flavoured live-action manga.
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: The man discovers his penis has turned into a power drill.
Inland Empire (2006)
The WTF Movie: Actress Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) discovers that her latest movie is plagued by a Polish curse. Meanwhile, a family of rabbits goes about its business. Yes, it's another David Lynch film.
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: Dern's features distort into a bug-eyed, grinning monstrosity.
Brazil (1985)
The WTF Movie: Terry Gilliam married his visual imagination to politics to create a vivid Orwellian nightmare about the perils of bureaucracy.
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: Jonathan Pryce dreams himself into becoming a winged avenger doing battle with a giant samurai warrior.
Enter The Void (2009)
The WTF Movie: An out-of-body experience from Gaspar Noe, as a dead drug dealer floats above the streets of Tokyo watching his sister having sex.
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: The vagina's point-of-view shot, as a penis ejaculates into the camera.
Performance (1970)
The WTF Movie: Delayed for two years while the studio execs got their head around it, Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell joined forces to chart the symbiotic descent in drug-filled madness of a gangster (James Fox) and a rock star (Mick Jagger, aptly cast).
Drop Your Popcorn Moment: Fox freaks out under the influence of psychotropic drugs.