Film

Ratboy

Sondra Locke stars in Clint Eastwood's audacious 1986 oddity: a dark comedy about a struggling woman who discovers a rat-boy and tries to exploit him for fame and money. It's unclassifiable, grotesque, and deadpan in a way that predates indie cinema. For those who love cinema that swings for the fences and doesn't care if it strikes out.

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The Elephant Man1980

David Lynch's masterpiece about human dignity and spectacle, where society's hunger to gawk at difference becomes the real horror. Shares Ratboy's empathy for the exploited outsider.

But Black and white, deliberately paced, and genuinely sad in ways that don't offer easy comfort.

The Elephant Man poster

Freaks1932

Tod Browning's carnival horror film that treats its 'freaks' with startling humanity while the 'normal' people reveal their cruelty. The spiritual ancestor of everything Eastwood attempts here.

But Very old, very strange, and contains genuinely uncomfortable moments that no amount of context makes easy to watch.

Freaks poster

Punch-Drunk Love2002

Paul Thomas Anderson's beautiful, unhinged romance about an eccentric man society finds grotesque. Shares Ratboy's tone: comedy and pathos and ugliness existing simultaneously without resolution.

But Adam Sandler's character is deliberately irritating; the film makes no effort to sand down his rough edges for your comfort.

Punch-Drunk Love poster

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Sunset Boulevard1950

Both are about fame as a con game and the people left behind when the con collapses. Eastwood had seen how Hollywood worked; this is his answer to Wilder.

Billy Wilder's savage portrait of Hollywood eating its own, where fame is a delusion and exploitation is the industry's honest face. Ratboy is Sunset Boulevard filtered through punk—the same bones, decades later.

But A bleak film about bleak people; there's no redemption, and it doesn't pretend there is.

Sunset Boulevard poster
More like this (8)

Welcome to the Dollhouse1996

Todd Solondz's unflinching look at a girl treated as a freak by everyone around her. Like Ratboy, it's blackly funny and genuinely dark without ever becoming a feel-good story.

But Deliberately ugly in look and tone; some sexual content involving minors that exists to make you uncomfortable, not titillate.

Welcome to the Dollhouse poster

Pink Flamingos1972

John Waters' transgressive masterpiece where depravity and sincerity coexist. It shares Ratboy's refusal to apologize for being weird, and its confidence in that weirdness as the point.

But Contains actual shock content designed to offend; it's confrontational cinema, not entertainment, and viewers either surrender to that or they don't.

Pink Flamingos poster

Happiness1998

Todd Solondz again, but this time a full ensemble of grotesques navigating suburban life. Has Ratboy's refusal to separate comedy from tragedy, beauty from ugliness.

But Deals with pedophilia, suicide, and sexual dysfunction in ways that don't soften the material; some find it profound, others exploitative.

Happiness poster

Bad Lieutenant1992

Abel Ferrara's portrait of a cop in free fall, starring Harvey Keitel in a performance of total commitment to moral collapse. Tone-deaf to audience comfort, like Ratboy.

But Genuinely difficult to watch—full nudity, drug use, sexual desperation, and a refusal to make the protagonist sympathetic in conventional ways.

Bad Lieutenant poster

Videodrome1983

Cronenberg's nightmare about media consumption that treats body horror as both the medium and the message. Shares Ratboy's sense that what you're watching shouldn't quite work but does.

But Deliberately nauseating, deliberately confusing, and deliberately unresolved—some find it brilliant, others just unpleasant.

Videodrome poster

The Room2003

Tommy Wiseau's accidental masterpiece of sincerity colliding with incompetence. Like Ratboy, it's a film so odd that it becomes oddly moving, watched by people who can't quite explain why.

But Technically inept in ways that actively frustrate some viewers; loving it requires accepting its failures as part of its appeal.

The Room poster

Eraserhead1977

Both films ask: what if we treated the grotesque with complete seriousness? What if weird became the default and we never explained it?

David Lynch's monochrome nightmare where normal life becomes surrealism. It has Ratboy's confidence that discomfort and artistry are compatible, that ugliness can be beautiful.

But Willfully inaccessible, slow, and designed to alienate rather than invite. Some call it a masterpiece; others call it pretentious noise.

Eraserhead poster

The Passion of Joan of Arc1928

Both films believe that the person society rejects is the person most worth watching. Ratboy is the inverse: the rejected one tries to exploit back, and the film loves her for the attempt anyway.

Dreyer's silent film of Renée Jeanne Falconetti's face as she's martyred. It has nothing to do with Ratboy's plot, but everything to do with its moral core: a society punishing someone for being different, and finding grace in that punishment.

But Silent, slow, devotional in tone—requires patience and sympathy from the viewer before the film has earned either.

The Passion of Joan of Arc poster

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