Testicles may pack the sexual gunpowder, but as these movies prove, they´re also the quickest way for enemies to reduce us to tears.
8. Goldfinger- Goldfinger knows how to hit James Bond where it truly hurts. Splayed out on a metal table, 007 watches helplessly as a red laser inches toward his reason for living. Thinking it's just a bluff, Bond smugly asks, "Do you expect me to talk?" When Goldfinger utters his famous retort, Connery busts an "oh, fuck" face that wouldn't be topped until he was told he'd have to do a second Highlander film.
8. True Romance- Yes, he deserves it, but that doesn't make watching dreadlocked pimp Drexl get his nuts splattered point-blank with a handgun any easier. All he does is take his eyes off of prone lover boy Clarence Worley for one second, and BLAMMO! Instant sex change. At least Clarence has the common decency to put him out of his misery. Guess it was "white boy day" after all, eh, Drexl?
7. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang- Robert Downey Jr. has undoubtedly treated his body like Chuck Yeager treats a jet, but even at his highest, he was still lucid enough to not even think of attaching electrodes to his twins. For a torture scene in Bang Bang, Downey's petty-crook-turned-actor feels the same as when you touch your tongue to a nine-volt battery, only magnified by a million. And on your nuts.
6. Hard Candy- Man, talk about a moral conundrum. On one hand, there's no way we're sympathizing with a pervy photographer who uses chat rooms and awkward come-ons to lure young girls back to his place. On the other, our inherent maleness can't help but feel bad when we see some dude tied to a kitchen table getting surgically de-penised. Actress Ellen Page, by the way, continued her practice of encouraging men to never have sex by starring in X-Men 3.
5. Planet Terror- Apparently, all those months on the set of Lost so warped Naveen Andrews that when his character here was described as a "creepy British scientist with a fetish for keeping men's balls in a jar" he said, "Where do I sign?" One flash of that shark-like ball-slicing knife of his, and our sack crawled halfway up our esophagus. Sadly, it stayed there during most of Death Proof, too, just to be sure.
4. Hostel: Part II- Consider this a spoiler warning if you haven't seen Hostel: Part II (and judging by its opening weekend, you haven't). In order to get out of her "predicament" (read: being sold for torture by Euro trash), intrepid American Lauren German holds a guy's penis hostage by knifepoint. She then proves she wasn't bluffing, and feeds the still-wriggling trouser snake to a pack of dogs. Snausages!
3. Casino Royale- What is it with James Bond movies and cock punishment? Lasers, knotted rope, casting Grace Jones… It doesn't end. Casino Royale proved just how gritty it was going to get when villain Le Chiffre plays a little tetherball with Daniel Craig's 006-and-a-half (we're guessing) using a length of rope and an old wicker chair. The fact that Bond still sasses back to Le Chiffre proves how tough he is. The fact that we wept like a recent widow proves we're pussies.
2. Sin City- Sure the girl from Hard Candy takes her time on her would-be rapist, but nothing beats the no-nonsense approach of grizzled cop Hartigan—he puts a rapist out of business permanently by tearing off his nuts with his bare hands. Whether or not he was picturing Ashton Kutcher during the scene is something only Bruce Willis knows, and he's not talking.
1. There's Something About Mary- "How the hell did you get the beans above the frank?" Ah, prom night. Most people point to the "semen hair gel" scene as being the funniest in Mary, but we see that scene as sweet reassurance that Ben Stiller's previous zipper trauma, luckily, didn't cause any permanent damage. While not nearly as graphic as some of the other examples here, this one gets the nod because we all know we're one unsteady hand slip away from doing this to ourselves every single day.
9. The Serpent and the Rainbow- Bill Pullman taught us the most basic of lessons: When looking for a "zombie drug" in Haiti, never let a voodoo practitioner with a large spike near your balls. It's a disaster waiting to happen.