The Thirteen Most Shocking Acts in Edward Lee’s ‘The Bighead’

Written by: Matthew J. Barbour

Jack Ketchum dubbed it “splatterspunk” and for good reason. The Bighead is arguably the most gruesome and sexually explicit horror novel ever written. Now, nearly two decades old, it remains an unwavering testament to Lee’s status as the premiere writer within the extreme horror subgenre.

To review such a book would be meaningless. To fans of the subgenre, it is quintessential reading. Those with a more nuanced flare towards psychological horror should avoid it at all costs. The Bighead offers up scene after scene of vomit and cringe worthy debauchery. Here are this reviewer’s top thirteen most shocking acts depicted in the novel.

1. A man performs intercourse using an elderly woman’s colostomy hole for a vagina.

 

2. Man has anal sex with a prostitute. Prostitute has a bowel movement during intercourse. Man forces prostitute to eat her excrement. Then, he forces her to eat the excrement of his friend.

 

3. Dream sequence in which a nun ties up a priest. She then proceeds to urinate into his anal cavity.

 

4. Mutant rapes pregnant woman. Pregnant woman goes into labor and delivers a baby during the rape. Mutant eats baby.

 

5. Father rapes underage daughter and then son. Mutant sodomizes father and eats his brains.

 

6. Another dream sequence, this time a nun urinates into a priest’s urethra and fills his bladder with her fluids.

 

7. Yet another dream sequence in which the priest is fisted by one nun while another performs fellatio. Afterwards, one of the nuns urinates in the priest’s mouth.

 

8. Two men capture another man, hog tie him, and put a piece of cloth they used to wipe their rectums in his mouth as a ball gag. They proceed to carve out his eyes with a buck knife and cut off all his fingers and toes with shears. Then they tie a rope to his penis and throw him off a cliff causing his genitals to tear away from the body as he plummets to his death below.

 

9. Woman takes lighter to her clitoris and breasts as a means of self-inflicted torture.

 

10. Man kills a woman by cutting off her head. He then proceeds to have intercourse using the neck as a vagina. Afterwards, he urinates into the mouth of the severed head.

 

11. Woman bashes newborn’s skull with a skillet until it is nothing more than a bloody smear.

 

12. Coke whore forces a priest to lick and suckle on her anus. He swallows bits of waste from inside her rectum. Then she proceeds to perform the same task on the priest. Both are hit in the head with a tire iron by two other assailants. One of the assailants sodomizes the corpse of the coke whore.

 

13. Mutant puts hand up man’s rectum, grabs his spine, and pulls the man’s spine out of his anus.

 

Have I missed a scene you find particularly cringe worthy or just something inexcusably offensive? Smoking Jesus? The giant vagina? or perhaps you just can’t get over the spaceship? Take the time to let us know in the comments section. Never read it? Perhaps, it is time to see if you can stomach what many believe is the most repugnant thing ever written.