I understand there are plenty of movies out there that cover uncomfortable subjects but explore them in an intellectually stimulating manner. I put movies like Fargo or Rob Roy in that category, which offer a story gripping enough to warrant varying kinds of discomfort, therefore watching them with the parents is not unheard of. However, there are some films out there that more or less base their visuals and/or stories on pushing the boundaries of what will make the audience pull at their shirt collars, squirm in their seats, or gag in disgust. Those kinds of movies no one dares to watch with their parents as they acknowledge that some worldviews are outgoing in their fucked up nature. If you think one sex scene in a romance film forces a fast-forwarding, these films deserve to be totally turned off when your mother walks in the room. Because I had too many that I did not want to leave out, this is the top 15 movies I will never watch with my parents.

15) Clerks: I am about to say something controversial. I did not care for this movie. I found it slowly paced, whiny, and filled with humor more focused on dirty words than the situation prompting them. So it is likely that I will never watch this movie again period given how insufferable I found it to be. But even if I liked the film, even if I found it as hilarious as the rest of the fan base does, you still would have to pay a large sum of cash to convince me to watch this with my parents. Given the fact that one of the main characters spends a good minute naming various pornos he would like to rent, another few of the main characters spend all of their time high as kites, and another one of the main characters has sex with a corpse, it would have to be a large sum of cash indeed.

14) Moulin Rouge!: I first saw this movie when I was in the eighth grade. I remember thinking to myself "If prostitution were like this, I would want to do that for a job!". Therefore, I'm not sure I blame my parents for being angry when they found out my friend had brought the film over to my house for us to watch. At the very least, the lead prostitute dies in the end so I guess that's why I managed to not become a whore...? Anyway, Moulin Rouge! takes inspiration from classic love stories such as Romeo and Juliet, La bohème, La traviata, Tosca etc., all of which alone are quite tame by today's standards in terms of content portrayal. However, Moulin Rouge! puts their content in today's standards, where back when the classics were new, the writing was just vague enough that the audience would have to piece things together before laughing at the joke. Today, that kind of content is thrown in the face of the audience, to the point of spoon-feeding the environment and the struggles our main characters suffer from their situation. So with the explicit nature of topic exposure, even a PG-13 exposure, I still would be uncomfortable at best watching a film that puts prostitution in an animated light.

13) The Rocky Horror Picture Show: By today's standards, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is relatively tame. Yet somehow, the idea of watching Tim Curry in corset and netted tights ascend toward Don Giovanni quantities in sexual conquests does not appeal to me as a movie to watch with the family. Somehow, I cannot quite name why. Oh, except maybe it is the fact that Dr. Frankenfurter (Curry) and the lead couple have silhouetted sex onscreen, or the fact that the doctor is building a man specifically for his pleasure, or the fact that two of the leads are siblings while romantically involved with each other, or the fact that there is a song about a woman breaking her inner sexual barriers, the list goes on. I love this film so much that I made a conscious effort to the stage musical when I was younger. But that does not mean I will ever allow myself to watch it with my parents, not as long as they are under the delusion that I know nothing about subjects such as these.

12) The Lobster: There is a punishment in this film called "The Red Kiss" which refers to the act of having one's lips cut off. Later on in The Lobster, the audience learns of another punishment named "The Red Intercourse"; given what we know about "The Red Kiss", the writers of this film did not (nor did they need to) spell out what this punishment entails. The film's basic premise is a social commentary on the seriousness people take in finding a significant other. In a dystopian future, our lead character David goes to a retreat for single people; there, he and the rest of the attendees are required by law to find a life partner or they will be turned into the animal of their choice. When he runs away from the retreat, he joins a group of "Loners" who set up strict rules on the opposite side of the spectrum hence the need for the "Red" punishments I mentioned earlier. Not only does this film pose a problem to watch with my parents for the allusions to sexual violence, but I already get asked by distant relatives and parental friends why I am not married or when I am going to have kids. If I were to watch this with my parents, something tells me that they would develop an irrational fear that I will never find a life partner lest I should fall into painful danger. I don't need that on my shoulders in addition to my mother wincing and squinching at John C. Reilly having his hand forced into a heated toaster...

11) Fifty Shades of Gray: Unless you have been living under a rock for the last five years, you have heard of this series. The feminist movement has shamed its degradation to women, the BDSM community has shamed its fictitious portrayal of the lifestyle, and the movie critics have shamed its dullness backed up by poor writing. Basically, this movie fails on all fronts so I will never watch it again, once was more than enough. But you, faithful reader, know the main reason I will never watch this with my parents; the ten minutes of actual sex scenes in the movie and the fact that this at least acknowledges that BDSM exists. It's bad enough to watch something like the staircase rape scene from A History of Violence with my folks, but to acknowledge that there are kinks out there far beyond even the standard concept of fornication? I'm going to put this Bag of Nope in the trash.

10) South Park Bigger, Longer, Uncut: The cinematic adaptation of the hit TV series, South Park, taught me my new favorite curse word. For the sake of in case my boss sees this, let's just say the curse word has to do with the donkeys and diet trends... Any-hoozle, I love this movie but I am not about to discuss it with my folks. This film was meant to be every definition of the word "offensive" and I know my mother especially never would have approved had I asked her to watch it while I was in high school. It's vulgar in terms of language particularly with the scatological references, explicit in the sexuality, and has a character who is under the assumption that the Emancipation Proclamation is a hip hop song. If the film comes up in future conversations with my parents, I may at most tell them that I watched it. But never on my life will I ever watch it in their presence.

9) Teeth: If you possess a penis, I would suggest you stop reading now. Have you stopped? Good. Teeth is about a teenage girl who finds out, after getting raped by one of her peers, that she is inflicted by a mythical condition known as vagina dentata (the latter word being Latin for "teeth"). At first, the teeth act as a defense mechanism for sexual assault, but then the lead character gets on the strategically offensive side using her, um..."gift" as a weapon. The film opens with a hint that an eight year-old has violated his step-sister, that same eight year-old boy grows up to be a reprehensible deviant with a fear of vaginal penetration, then the lead female with the dentata gets raped on two occasions resulting in spilled blood, then she goes out and uses her condition as a tactic for revenge. I am a woman, you would think that I would go the route of The View and praise this movie as a cautionary tale against sexual assault, but it made me afraid of my own vagina for a week, to the point where I could not even clean it properly (you say that's too much information, I say you're probably right and I apologize). My point is, no matter how you look at this film, this is one that I am sure every audience member can agree has no place for parents as viewers.

8) The Evil Dead: My mom is already not a fan of horror movies, and I myself just recently started to become more open to them. But even if my mother was a fan of horror movies, The Evil Dead would still never end up on our Watch Together movie list. Mostly for the constant gore throughout as it is quite elaborate and bloody and my mother in particular gets quite queasy. But the one defining moment that sent my decision over the edge? I can narrow that down in two words. Tree rape. This scene does not last that long, and it is only in the film for the shock value (which to its credit, apparently has a lasting impression on evolving movie audiences), but I do not need to watch a human rape scene with my mother, let alone one that involves supposedly inanimate plant life. No thank you, Evil Dead, I am not watching you with my parents any time soon.

7) Silent Hill: While my primary reason to never watch Silent Hill again is because I do not think the movie is particularly thrilling, I would still opt out of watching it with my folks even if I liked the movie. The Pyramid Heads would freak out my mom, my dad would either find it silly or boring or gratuitous, all three of us would yell at the protagonist for presuming she knows how child psychology works, and my mother, who could not handle watching Alex DeLarge's eyes get clamped open, would be traumatized at the ending scene with the barbed wire (and I don't blame her one bit. Want to end teenage pregnancy? Show girls that scene and tell them sex feels like that). All in all, it's a gore-fest that pretends it is more deep and horrifying than it actually is, which is saying a lot coming from the girl who thought the Satanic references in Bedazzled were too intense.

6) The House of 1000 Corpses: This is a B-horror film made by Rob Zombie. It is, of course, about a group of youngins' in the mid-1970's who are on a road trip. They decide to see a roadside attraction in the form of a museum centered around a Dr. Mengele wannabe by the nickname of Dr. Satan. While you do not see Dr. Satan until the last frame of the movie, the overall experience in this museum is quite violent and graphic. This is an exploitation film, pure and simple. I think that is all the explanation my one or two readers need in order to figure out right away that there are bloody boobs all over the place in this film. It is meant to be a mindless gore fest where the filmmakers knew it would break no grounds, therefore they went all out. If you require further detail, read the Parental Advisory section of this film's IMDB page and weep.

5) Se7en:I was 16 when I first watched this movie by myself in our house's basement. After I told my parents I had watched it they threw it in the trash. Literally threw it in the trash even though to this day they have never seen it. Because, and I quote, "I don't want my daughter watching porn". Oh, parental figures of mine, porn is tame compared to this movie (not that I would know anything about porn of course...). The most pornographic scene in the movie is a man verbally describing the brutal thing he was forced to do to a prostitute, and there are far worse things in the film to traumatize me. The first victim was murdered in order to represent Gluttony or how another person almost died to represent Sloth name just a few examples. My parents thought it was limited to images of naked breasts being thrown around? HA! I laugh at their naivety and cower at Kevin Spacey possibly putting my head in a cardboard box...

4) Zack and Miri Make a Porno: I made the mistake of watching up until the end of the high school reunion scene with my dad once. I found this movie hilarious, and felt like maybe my dad would find it funny too. It did not occur to me that this movie is about sex, a subject which I was not supposed to reveal I was interested in to any adult especially my parents. Oh, that was an awkward awkward AWKWARD first third of a movie. To this day, I want to bang my temple against the nearest brick wall and curse myself for lack of thinking. If you have never seen the movie, I'm sure you can pick up on what it is about. A couple of best friends, Zack and Miri are broke as fuck, therefore they decide that they may as well fuck on camera to make money. It's a more elaborate plot than that, but that's the basic idea. I am like most people who do not want her parents to know that she has a history of sexual activity, and being enthusiastic about a film such as Zack and Miri does not help with hiding that fact of my life. I repeat, what the hell was I thinking?

3) A Clockwork Orange: I have written about my experience watching this film before, so I will try not to elaborate too much. This film attempts to put the "con" in "conformity" through the eyes of England's most brutal sadist, Alex DeLarge (played by Malcolm McDowell). The scene that most movie buffs will argue ruined the song "Singin' in the Rain" for them is in the beginning of the movie; Alex and his three "droogs" go to a writer's house then, as giddily as schoolchildren, proceed to rape his wife while forcing the writer to watch. Director Stanley Kubrick engulfs us in Alex's cruel joy, making us hate him and passionately love hating him. Parents, try as they might, want their kids to never grow up and experience the hardships of the world. To watch A Clockwork Orange with them acknowledges that you have officially entered the world of adulthood, recognizing that there are evil people out there who want to hurt you in ways your folks could never even conjure up in their worst nightmares. This film acts as a terrifying reminder of that for parents, and an uncomfortable experience for their sons and daughters.  

2) Audition: My mother is incredibly squeamish and my father can handle violence in film if it is limited to being essential to the plot. My sister and I used to rent gory zombie movies all the time when we were in high school because the gore was most of the fun right there. It was always beautifully fake and we embraced our constant awareness of the fact that the blood was corn syrup and so on. We had fun with it because it was practically a challenge to us to see how far the filmmakers would go in retrieving their hard R's, and it was rare that a film could get us to squirm. Audition, the Japanese horror film about a man who dates a younger mysterious woman, caused me to squirm. It caused me to recoil. When a disembodied tongue came out of nowhere in our protagonist's search for his girlfriend, even I shuttered. It is not simply the violence though; what sets this film apart from others in the horror genre is how easily this could happen to anyone. How we all date and gain trust in the person we are dating enough to fall into a trap if they decide to set one up for us. That thought horrifies me even as I write this, and for all these reasons and more, I will never watch this movie again especially with my parents.

1) Hobo with a Shotgun: Oh yes, this film is everything the title promises and more. Our lead character, the Hobo, wants to get back on his feet by starting a lawn mowing business. All he needs to start is a $50 lawnmower in a local pawnshop. The problem? That pawnshop happens to be in a town so rundown, licentious, twisted, and filled with evil that even Satan would take one look at it and shiver with fear. The pique of evil in this movie involves one of the lead gang members who runs the town setting fire to a school bus full of kids to the track of "Burn Baby Burn" by The Trammps. The rest of the film was clearly exploitative of the filmmakers to see what content they could get away with, sometimes with how gory their violence can be, sometimes with how sexually depraved it can be, and sometimes with just how weird it can be starting with one scene decorated with moving tentacles in the background of a villain's lair. I mean, what was that? Anyway, I encourage you to read the Parents Guide section on IMDB for this film, but take note that this deserves a rating all its own outside of anything an R or NC-17 can cover.