LOTT D Roundtable: Torture Porn in Horror Today
Published May 19, 2008
From where I sit, the main threat of torture porn seems to be that it can lead to me getting locked out of my apartment, or throwing loud hissy fits post-Hostel. For the betterment of my personal universe, I'm staging a personal boycott of torture porn. There's just too much interesting splatter out there for me to trouble myself with.
What Vince Liaguno from Slasher Speak thinks...
You know you’re getting older when you find yourself saying things like “Remember those great old slasher films?” I find myself saying that more and more as horror cinema takes its latest turn into what many regard as “torture cinema.” Films like Wolf Creek, High Tension, Turistas, the Saw and Hostel films, and The Devil's Rejects have ushered in a whole new era of slasher film, one steeped in meaningless depravity. Much of the classic slasher formula remains intact in these new films, albeit buried beneath buckets of blood, guts, and gore. There is aggressive sadism behind the carnage in these new films that makes them more visceral than their predecessors and, ultimately, more unnerving on a very real, very primal level. Some would argue that killing is killing and that there’s no difference between Jason Voorhees slaughtering nubile co-eds in the Friday the 13th film series and the wealthy businessmen paying to torture and slaughter nubile coeds in Hostel: Part II. But a closer look at these films shows that there are indeed key differences.
In the classic slasher films of the '80s, there was a gleeful abandon of credibility as virtually indestructible supernatural killers like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger sliced and diced their way across the screen. Their motivation was simple: revenge. There was a cause and effect to their actions, much in the same way those making social commentary in these films saw a cause and effect relationship between promiscuity and drug use and the moral decline of the day. Audiences could watch in relative comfort, knowing that those guilty in some way were receiving comeuppance for their sins. There was a sense of detachment in that knowledge. In the worlds of Eli Roth and Rob Zombie and Greg McLean, the social commentary is still there (but the thinking is more global as in anti-American sentiment abroad versus domestic mores) but the motivation behind the carnage is blurred, making the experience that much more unsettling and effective on a whole new level. Whereas the classic slasher film wrapped up the experience in a tidy bow, the new torture films present audiences with the idea that bad things happen for no good reason. Some people are just plain nuts – and they look just like you and me. Talk about inducing paranoia.
Devin Gordon, in an April 2006 Newsweek article, writes that “it’s practically cliché that you can tease out a generation’s subconscious fears just by watching its horror movies”, and a film like Hostel certainly seemed to strike a nerve when it arrived at the local multiplex just as we were inundated with reports of sadistic prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. That abuse was made all the more horrific because it wasn’t enacted by some covert team of government interrogators trying to extrapolate plots of mass destruction from would-be terrorists but rather by the cherub-faced everyday young men and women we sent off to fight a war, the same ones for whom we tied yellow ribbons around trees in gestures of support. There was an air of incomprehensibility to the news, one that unsettled and discomfited and reminded us all that good people do really bad things. Roth reflected that in his film with the story of American youth abducted, tortured, and killed at the hands of everyday businessmen who just so happened to have the inclination and money to buy victims.
Founder of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers (LOTT D), expiring writer, and valet to Zombos, the noted B-movie horror actor (to his remaining and decaying fans, at least). Blogging all the horror, all the time.
- LOTT D Roundtable: Torture Porn in Horror Today
- Published: May 19, 2008
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Video
- Writer: ILoz Zoc
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The bathtub scene in Scarface is gut-wrenching because it touches reality. It gave me nightmares afterwards. I'll say that I find torture porn that comes too close to actuality very disturbing. The more fantastic, or ludicrous the depiction, the less it bothers me mentally. But the "real" or more plausible depictions are not to my tastes or nerves.
What also bothers me is the commercialism of it. Saw has become an annual event, and audience pandering keeps increasing the sadistic bloodletting to meet expectations.
But it is so damn effective for a horror film, isn't it? I mean, it churns our stomachs while delivering a WTF "I'm glad that's not me" feeling. Like that roller coaster ride that keeps adding more and more visceral twists and turns to overcome our sensory-saturation by upping the shocks.
Tough call here, but I certainly don't want the horror genre get mired in it just for commercial reasons. I'll take a good old scarefest like The Uninvited over Hostel any day. But will the audience?
being a writer of torture porn with " Snuff." I find it is the most disturbing of the genre, because it can really happen. I sometimes wonder if people who look down on it are really scared by it.
I wrote thisin an article here a while ago, but it applies and is exactly what I was going to say.
I understand this move towards showing gore in movies today and it actually has everything to do with the war in Iraq, to be honest. If one looks at the history of horror movies one cannot help but notice that it always reflects the political atmosphere. The '50s gave us stories of people being controlled by evil aliens at the same time we were afraid of people secretly being communists and invasions from outer space while we feared another global war. Movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Blob played perfectly on those fears.
The '60s saw a rise in the gore and torture films such as Bloodfeast just as Vietnam was getting more and more unpopular. In fact, the gore and torture only increased as the decade wore on. The '70s saw us no longer having faith in our government so naturally the Devil became a major villain with religion no longer being able to protect us in such classics as The Exorcist and The Omen and the '80s saw the birth of the personable killer because the '80s were all about style over substance.
It really is no surprise to me that in the days of Abu Ghraib we are seeing a return to the torture/gore movies. I just wish they would do original stories like Hostel and Saw and leave our classics alone -- no matter how non-classic they may be.
Hey Eric,
I can say that watching torture porn too close to reality scares me quite a bit. Being helpless as anything can be done to you is about as terrifying as you can get.
As silly a film as 1970's THE WIZARD OF GORE is, the antagonist, Montag the Magnificent, rants on and on about participants coming forward to his on-stage nightmares for the sake of satisfying their fellow humans' lust for blood. Despite the horrendous acting, the message was clear: director HG Lewis was continuing to make these films because there was a DESIRE to see them. Of course, I'm sure he didn't think his first effort, 1963's BLOOD FEAST, would snowball to the point it has today, but suffice it to say there will always be fans of "extreme" horror who simply want to SEE this kind of material, regardless of plot or film quality. Surely people aren't sitting through pointless filmfare such as the mainstream Hostel films, to the underground 'guinea pig' series for their artistic value.
While I personally don't care for horror this graphic (unless it enhances the story, such as with Jack Ketchum's 'The Girl Next Door' or is done slapstick-style as in 'Dead Alive'), perhaps the demand for these things speaks of our inherited-depraved nature . . . or just our obscure curiosity.
Nick, I think it's our inherited depraved nature. When torture porn becomes absurdist, it loses its terrifying effect and moves into disgusto territory. Disgusto sells, too. Bottom line; if there's a payin' audience, it will be done.
Back in the 80s I remember watching a few examples of the semi-illicit genre known as the 'video nasty'.
Looking back, the gory 'delights' on view then seem positively tame compared to some of the stuff that's now on offer in your friendly neighborhood movie theater.
Fascinating discussion. I found especially insightful the distinctions of fear, specifically "aversive fear" as the main driver for these films. I just reviewed _The Strangers_ for Down in the Cellar, and though it did not have the gorey excesses of some of its recent ilk, I gave it a low rating because of the protagonists. They were blank ciphers who seemed to be there just to be terrorized. The film's approach was naturalistic, yet the leads were as one-dimensional as any teen fodder at Camp Crystal Lake.
I was more impressed by _Vacancy_, which featured protagonists who reacted with the fight rather than flight response, and showed themselves to be resourceful and self-reliant in harrowing circumstances. This made me identify with, and consequently root for, them more.
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Interesting coincidence. The featured headline on my Yahoo home page says "Most violent game ever?" referring to the new Gears of War video game in which, evidently, one can chainsaw an opponent in half from the crotch up, and then use one half of the corpse as a "meat shield" to absorb enemy fire.
Well, Iloc, I read the entire article, and I came away feeling like only the surface had been scratched. I'm not a movie egghead like you and the LOTT D. I have no deep thoughts to offer, I certainly couldn't find anything with which to disagree. Chords were struck by the Purcell article concerning the topic of separating fantasy and reality. A nice clashing of the two appears in Pan's Labyrinth, in which torture figures a bit too prominently. Who wouldn't agree that the horrors of the real world far exceed anything a fictional movie can bring? Maybe that's one reason I prefer my horror movies to feature supernatural phenomena --- ghosties. Give me a good haunted house story any time and keep the silly Jasons and Michaels and Freddies.
I'm reminded of the Hellraiser series, which depicts torture by demons from Hell, who inflict torture because ... well ... that's their job. There was a definite shock response there, but I could "accept" it, because, after all, that's what Hell is all about, right?
I found Saw, Hostel, and Irreversible to be rather dismal exercises. As disturbing as the rape scene was, I was just as grossed out by the head bludgeoning sequence (with a fire extinguisher?). They aren't "scary." I'm too old, I guess, to get a thrill out of gratuitous violence. Oddly enough, I enjoyed Wolf Creek, maybe just because I find Australia to be fascinating.
The Audition also features unnecessary torture. I'm pretty sure that seeing needles stuck into the face of a bound man and having his feet cut off didn't add a lot to the story.
Zombie movies ... I wouldn't classify them as torture porn. That's just the undead doing their undead thing. And the Rob Zombie movies are so far over the top that their impact is minor, along the lines of the mass dismemberment fight sequence in Kill Bill, Vol. 1. It's all in fun, in other words.
The bathtub scene in Scarface where Pacino's partner in crime gets his arm chain sawed off is far more disturbing than anything I've seen in a horror movie.
All in all, I would have to agree with a few of the contributors that the envelope-pushing gutfest sequences are given more and more attention by the producers in order to cover up the fact that the stories aren't really very compelling. And strangely enough, people will pay to see it. I know I have. But that'll do it for me.
What do YOU have to say about it?
And what did you think of The Blair Witch Project?