This is the 1st post in a series covering the most outrageous moments in underground film history. You can follow the entire series here.

Film: Un Chien Andalou
Director: Luis Bunuel
Year: 1929

Co-scenarists Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali were the very first torture porn artistes when, all the way back in 1929, they filmed a woman getting her eyeball sliced open in their surrealist masterpiece Un Chien Andalou. This one sequence is still one of the most iconic — and disgusting — in all of film history.

To achieve the effect, Bunuel had a real eyeball sliced open. Not the woman’s, of course, but that of a dead calf. And knowing how the effect was achieved doesn’t make watching the inner eye goo that comes spilling out any less revolting.

The rest of the film offers more bizarre sequences designed by the two Spanish troublemakers, including dead donkeys being dragged through the streets, a hand covered in crawling ants and a man wearing a nun’s habit riding a bicycle. But, still, nothing tops that oozing eyeball goop.

Bunuel and Dali had hoped that a public screening of their film would cause a riot in Paris and that the Champs-Elysee would run red with blood, but, instead, the two disappointingly found appreciative audiences who approved of this work of film art. Un Chien Andalou has since become one of the most famous avant-garde films of all time.

The film is available on DVD: Amazon