My editor and I have assembled a montage chronicling movie scenes in which one character digs his or her thumbs into the eyes of another.

I’ve completed four years of undergraduate studies with honors, and can honestly say I’ve never been more proud to put my name on a project. The blue ribbon for dedication, however, goes to my editor, who steadfastly maintained that we would only include eye-gouging that specifically used the thumb. This disqualified dozens of wonderfully gory films (including Hostel, Demolition Man, and both volumes of Kill Bill), but ultimately made for a better (and more disturbing) cinematic history. It’s important to have standards.

I of course love all our eye-gouging scenes in their own ways (they’re like my children, really), but my personal favorite has to be Marked For Death. While the rest of the eye-gougings are done by or on monsters, androids, or other fantastical characters, Marked For Death’s is done by none other than Steven Segal on a petty criminal. And though you can’t tell from the short clip above, gouging his opponent’s eyes out isn’t even close to Segal’s finishing move; he then throws him through a wall, breaks the blinded man’s back over his knee, and tosses him down an elevator shaft onto a rusty spike.