Horror Porn Is… A Response To 9/11!!!
Dallas/Ft Worh Star-telegram’s Christopher Kelly makes the argument for Horror Porn here… you see, the adults just don’t get it!
It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragically deluded.
Teenagers have been consuming massive amounts of crap forever… and adults have always winced.
Comparing Wolf Creek to Hitchcock… or Eli Roth to someone who can direct?!?!? Come on!!!
Horror films, like most of cinema, is cyclical. Scream marked the end of slasher horror in 1996. In a few years, someone will come up with an all-out satire of Saw and the others. And horror will be dead. And five or six years later, it will come back again. And so on and so on and so on.
The current trend is similar to tattoos… faster pussycat, kill, kill. How can you rebel against a generation that grew up smoking pot and getting laid? Tattoos, random oral sex, and more realistic movies about killing people.
For me, Roger Ebert has been the front man for “the adults,” which is to say, if its the emotionless cartoon violence of Tarantino and Rodriguez, great…if it is really disturbing, piss on it and set it on fire.
Me? I am okay with the cartoon stuff or with the realistic stuff. It’s about how the experience connects with me. There has to be a reason why some people connect so well with Eli Roth. To me, he is an aesthetic con artist who is not as clever, funny, or dark as he and his followers claim. Hostel was not crap because it was too tough… but because it wasn’t tough at all.
And throwing 9/11 into it? The horror of 9/11 is how short our memories are in this country, not how it is manifesting in our culture. New Yorkers do still live with that experience. For the rest of the country, it has already been reduced to jingoism. We are affected by the roll-off. Airports aren
It took an appallingly short time for 9/11 to be turned into a cheap brand name. This is the result of both the strength and the shallowness of American culture today. Maybe we bounced back quickly, or maybe we just didn’t care in the first place.
I thought Scream brought back slasher horror, what with the I Know What You Did Last Summers and all that followed.
I saw something similar in the LA Times a few months back about how Saw and such films were depicting torture fantasies, etc. because that was what was in the news and because terrorism has basically seeped into our collective fears and those films are cathartic. It also connected it to depictions of torture on TV such as 24 and Lost.
It’s sort of like how people try to read all the horror/sci-fi stuff from the 50s as thinly-veiled Cold War allegories. Difference is Thing From Another World and The Day the Earth Stood Still are actually great movies too.
Are you saying a lot of them _weren’t_ Cold War allegories?
This is an interesting article, but kind of sloppily written and conceived. It’s too bad that they didn’t do their research to the point of finding out that Wolf Creek is not in fact based on any true story. (And that they have fallen for the delusion that Wolf Creek is anything other than mediocre).
That said, I absolutely agree that Hostel is a sort of Abu-Ghraib-in-reverse fantasy and that Final Destination 3 is very entertaining and speaks to young peoples’ sense of the meaning of life (or lack thereof) in an interesting way.
Poland, you’re so good about connecting these social dots most of the time, but as I’ve said over and over again, you really have a blind spot for this genre.
Good point about Ebert. Lord knows, the rich man doesn’t want to be disturbed, at least outside the parameters of what he thinks is hip and stylish.
That’s a good post DP, but i feel i must defend Wolf Creek, which is nowhere near as tacky and exploitative as the other movies in this genre you group it with, and has garnered some really strong reviews overseas. Assured direction and use of place, that i kid you not has reminded more than a few critics of early Peter Weir, striking cinematography, a sensible slow-burn first half that ups the dread factor, and a villain that’s actually a really daring and original acting performance. Wolf Creek really belongs more in the same genre as Open Water (another movie that put hi-def video photography to good use), where we see how a carefree vacation slowly and implacably turns into hell, turning the screws gradually on the audience rather than grossing them out, and where the most frigtening thing on display is being isolated and at the mercy of nature.
Hmmm, I thought Open Water was all concept and no execution…unlikeable characters and a complete lack of visual imagination (about 50% of the movie seemed to consist of the same shot of bobbing bickering heads).
The docu American Nightmare is becoming the hitching post for all the revisionism of 70’s horror. Almost a decade ago, I had a chance to ask Craven directly about Last House and at the time, he had no idea how it came to be a poli-commentary film. He said he did it because he had to one-up the competitive grind market. Another great example is how the remake of Hills has revised everyone’s opinion of the original. Instead of it being what it was, the Donner Party meets Greek Mythology, it’s become some representation of the meltdown of the nuclear family in the 70’s. Or in this article, a “Post-Watergate” claptrap.
This is film theory run amuck. Just as in literature, Humanism has been discarded so people who critique/comment can try and outdo each other with a level of insight no one else has. Totally self-serving, written to justify his love of gore-porn as highbrow.
As for Hostle – Eli was brainstorming the idea with QT while watching War Of The Gargantuas in 35MM. I guess for some people, that could be their idea of pondering the meaning of Abu Ghraib…
J-Mc… Reverse Overanalysis.
Hostel is a reverse Abu Ghraib fantasy?
College boys go looking for pussy and find nasty foreigners who like to torture and kill them?
Uh, what does that have to do with Abu Ghraib, other than that both involve torture?
Really, by your standard, Lawrence of Arabia is a reversed allegory about the west’s recent influence in the Middle East, with Lawrence as the Osama bin Laden character, teaching the arabs to fight for themselves and not their colonizers. Reach!
All three final destinations have been low rent versions of 10 Little Indians with a comic book twist. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing socially significant either.
hey jeffmcm – no offense but you seem to enjoy ribbing Dave when he’s wrong so come take your medicine. WOLF CREEK was based on a true story. As much as FLIGHT 93 is based on a true story. Heard of the Falconio case? Wonder why a court tried to get an injunction on the films release in Australia? Heard of Ivan Milat my friend?
Also I love the horror genre but sometimes a duck is a duck. Comparing HOSTEL to Abu Ghraib is like saying Jason Vorhees is a reverse Jesus Christ. Bottom line is sometimes tits and ass with claret thrown around is exactly that. The academics can get another paper out of it if they want to waste time and money but the rest of us know exactly where the filmmakers minds were.. in the gutter.
Yay, you’re both kind of wrong!
According to Wikipedia:
Wolf Creek was marketed as being “based on true events”. Although the producers have not disclosed which incidents inspired the film, some media sources have speculated that it may have been based on the backpacker murders of 1989-92, the Peter Falconio disappearance of 2001, and/or the 1992-99 Snowtown murders. The similarities of the film with the Falconio case led the defence team of the man charged (later convicted) with his murder, Bradley John Murdoch, to obtain a court order preventing Wolf Creek’s release in the Northern Territory during the trial (the film was released instead in January 2006). The film’s director and writer has stated that Wolf Creek is not based on any single event.
Hi, Australian here. Wolf Creek was indeed marketed as “Based on True Events” but as James said Greg McLean (writer/director of Wolf Creek) has said that he merely used the events of the Peter Falconio case and the Ivan Milat murders as a jumping off base. There is no way to know what actually happened to Peter Falconio (his body has never been found) or to any of the victims of Ivan Milat (apart from what their mutilated bodies show).
While the article has some lax points, I think overall it’s pretty good. He completely overstates Final Destination 3 (how is that anything other than just watching young pretty people die in funny ways?) but the contributions by Wes Craven are spot on. I don’t exactly think movies like Saw and Hostel are allegories to 9/11 or anything like that but is it so hard fetched to see there is something going on behind the scenes of a movie like Hostel.
And as Dr Wally said, it’s unfair to say Wolf Creek was outright bad. If you were at all a fan of the genre then you’d see what Greg McLean was doing. Yes, the film was essentially a cheap springboard film to show off McLean’s (quite obvious) talents so he could get financing for a bigger film (the currently filming “Rogue”), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t accomplished.
THat a two-act film can go such polar-opposite extremes (first act all big smiles and “aww, aren’t they fun kids?” and the second act being “holyjesusfuckinghell!!!”) and still succeed says something. That the film was the highest grossing Australian film of the year says something. That the Australian Film Institute nominated it for multiple awards including Best Director says something. That critics were actually enthusiastic about it says something.
It’s all well and good to call it “horror porn” but you obviously just didn’t like it and can’t see past that. It’s odd that you would like something such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre 03, yet not even consider that Wolf Creek is a well-made piece of shlock horror.
Also, The writer wasn’t comparing Wolf Creek to Hitchcock, he was merely saying that Hitchcock would appreciate what McLean was doing (that is up for dispute though).
Thanks, J.L.
And thanks, D.P., for applying your catch phrase of the year to me. Joking aside, I think the gore is preventing you from actually watching the content of these films and to scoff as no other genre lets you get away with.
The Final Destinations are about fate and God with ‘Death’ substituted for terminology’s sake. It ain’t Bergman, but it’s not completely void of content either.
If you can’t see reflections of Abu Ghraib in Hostel, I’m not sure what to say because it seems pretty blatantly obvious. Maybe Roth didn’t mean it consciously, but so what? Subtext doesn’t have to be intentional to be present. It’s a movie that puts you-the-American in the position of being a torture victim, for no crime or reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s sad to see intelligent people trashing the very notion of analysis. I guess only films with Spielberg or Wachowski in the credits need apply.
Jeff…
This is just the way it goes with horror films. The genre has always been treated with contempt by most critics, even supposedly “hip” ones. Yet, oddly, I find that most horror has a point of view in a way that mainstream crap rarely does.
And I’m not going to rail on David about this anymore. I think the “torture porn” thing is greatly exaggerated, especially in regards to HOSTEL, which has a lot less torture than that TEXAS CHAINSAW remake that he loved so much. It’s just a giant blind spot in his writing that you have to accept is there.
Yeah, I know. Debased genre, critical blind spot and all. It just means that as long as he’s going to rag on horror whenever he feels like it, I’ll have to rag on him for whatever he’s overrating (I’m sorry, Reverse Overanalyzing) at any given moment.
By the way, Drew…how the hell do you have so much time to watch as many DVDs and write as much as you do when you have AN INFANT? Get some sleep, man!
Stephen King’s dissection of the allegorical impact of 50’s – 70’s horror films in his book ‘Danse Macabre’ is well worth the read. King understands that any themes or allegories present in those movies were not intentional, and were generally the product of social fears and anxieties that existed on a mostly subconscious level. Things have not changed in this regard, which is what I think Chris Kelly was trying to say, although he turned it into a generational thing. If anything, younger people are more willing to explore those fears and anxieties, but let’s not give too much credit to guys like Roth and Aja, who are also trying to make flicks that are commercial enough to allow them to make more flicks.
Libertarian website LewRockwell.com has an article today on “Torture and Entertainment”. It brings up what jeffmcm is talking about.
Agreed, Grrbear. Roth wants to make prankish Tarantino-esque movies and Aja’s movie was striking by being very impersonal.
Ever since Tarantino opened the door for geek directors, all we’ve been getting is recycled shit. Every now and then there’s an anomaly, a Zack Snyder, a Nolan, a Romanek, but let’s not kid ourselves here… the well is running dry.
There is no greater example of this than the complete lack of urgency that marks most films of the neo-horror genre.
This is actually where I think Poland is more correct: recycled crap has always existed. Troma was around long before Tarantino. But as far as I’m concerned it’s the studios’ desire to produce remake after remake that is more at fault here.
The worst movie I’ve seen this year was the When a Stranger Calls remake, which still grossed $48m.
Though I love the genre, I despise most “horror-porn” or “neo-horror” or whatever the hell you want to call it. Movies like Saw, Saw II, Hostel and The Devil’s Rejects are vile, worthless garbage that are completely enamored with what the filmmaker’s insist is edginess and no-holds-barred psychological horror. They tell anyone who will listen that their film is disturbing and terrifying and vomit-inducing. It’s good PR, but a total load of shit. Excessive gore replaces tension, ADD editing and directing replaces decent storytelling and most of the effort goes toward coming up with cool kills. I do think that Aja and McLean show a lot of promise behind the camera and I hope they manage to find stories that match their directing abilities.
I agree that there’s a lot of hyperbole in these films, and that the Saw movies are pretty hollow, but I suspect Aja is just going to be another slick Luc Besson protege/emigre. He hasn’t suggested that he actually has a voice, just command of craft.
You’re probably right about Aja jeff, which is unfortunate. Hills Have Eyes definitely didn’t feel like a step forward for him. I am really excited to see Neil Marshall’s next, The Descent, which has been getting ridiculously rave reviews for a while now. I enjoyed Dog Soldiers. It’s hardly original, but I thought Marshall delivered a lot of bang for the buck and displayed some talent behind the camera.
HHE was a step forward from High Tension in that it wasn’t boring and ridiculously plotted.
Are you going to see Slither jeff?
You bet. It looks funny and weird and I like Michael Rooker and Elizabeth Banks.
I notice on IMDB that Rob Zombie has a cameo…beware!
Stay Alive, on the other hand, I feel comfortable in skipping.
Stella – THE DESCENT, though not a perfect film by any means – is easily the most entertaining and engrossing horror movie to hit screens last year. It shames junk like SAW2, HOSTEL and practically every english speaking horror film for the past decade except for SESSION 9. I thought DOG SOLDIERS pretty inane so the leap Marshall has made in his followup is nothing short of phenomenal. Then again, I thought JEEPERS CREEPERS 2 was one of the most underrated horror pics of the past 5yrs.
I’m glad to hear you liked Jeepers Creepers 2, good stuff in there although some of Salva’s choices are a little unsettling.
On the other hand, I thought Session 9 was a snoozer and looked like it was made by somebody who had no idea what the film was really supposed to be about.
A few months back, I brought up this very topic and no one was interested in discussing it. Bastards.
It strikes me as very naive to say that the recent emphasis on torture is coincidental. I don’t find it a stretch to link Hostel to Abu Ghraib, especially considering that many of those imprisoned were reportedly picked up during random sweeps.
But the most disturbing question of all is: why did Jeff see When a Stranger Calls?
I don’t know what’s the deal with DP and Hostel. I mean, if he didn’t like it why he still continues to talk it down? Is he jellous at Roth’s success?
For me Hostel was fucking brilliant. The problem is that is was too smart and clever for mainstream audiences and Tarantino named was attached to it. Audiences were expecting another self-pleasing rump like Kill Bill. They found something else, something that has haunted for days now: one of the most schocking films of the decade for sure.
Hostel too smart for mainstream audiences?
God are we in trouble–that made me instantly think mainstream audiences must be on the calibre of the charming backwoodsmen in Deliverance “squeal like a pig” . yup. We shore do have smart audiences in this country.
Hey I know alot of audiences that would pay good money for a “self-pleasing rump” Mr Benton. I would say Kill Bill and Hostel were both undercooked rump and not worth the price of a ticket.
Horror porn is the worst thing ever happen to horror. It’s completely pointless and not scary or entertaining.
At least the expolitation filmmakers like Russ Meyer were good at what they did and FUNNY.
“I thought JEEPERS CREEPERS 2 was one of the most underrated horror pics of the past 5yrs.”
Jeepers Creepers 2 was disappointing. I mean, what was with all that plot and gore when the director clearly wanted to make a gay porn film! The rest just got in the way.
Just one quick note: ‘horror porn’, which I don’t even like as a term, is not a modern invention. It dates back to Herschel Gordon Lewis and Blood Feast in 1963.
That’s all.
it’s not a modern invention Jeff, but it is an unappetizing snack that is now being sold as the main dish.
and now it’s even being used to promote scare tactic politics.
Are you talking about 24, which, although I’ve never seen it, I understand has a lot of politically-oriented torture?
I thought people were upset with most of these movies because they weren’t political enough.
Speaking of Herschell Gordon Lewis, I watched 2001 Maniacs this weekend. Didn’t care for Jeepers Creepers 2 at all. No suspense, no gore, obnoxiously annoying characters and boring as hell. Hostel smart and clever? Now I’ve heard it all. I wasn’t expecting anything remotely similar to Kill Bill and doubt that anyone was. Why would they?
I sustain it. Hostel was smart and clever. It has been a while since somebody dared to combine sex + violence in the way Roth put it in the film. It is unsettling in deed. The last time a film haunted me this much was Dumon’t masterpiece Twentynine Palms.
Much of the violence of the film is not explicit. It is the moral violence that scares me the most. I don’t know why everybody keeps calling it horror porn when the torture scenes are anything but porny: they are straight and to the point.
Bruno, you’re right in how Hostle is not horror-porn by its defintion, but as this thread shows, the meaning is in flux.
Gore-Porn was coined by horror fans for paint-by-the-numbers slasher flicks. Like a standard porn, the entire production culminated around the money shots, which is the kill in slasher movies. Everything else was superfluous.
Now the term is being used to emphasize the “graphic” in pornographic. From this perspective, Hostle is Gore-Porn because it was produced and marketed solely for its graphic exploitation.
The original meaning was not as derogatory as the second is certainly meant to be. I think the second meaning will replace the first because it has that shocking sound alt-critics and wannabe film elites love to throw out. Once the NYT or some other loser mainstream outfit uses it, game over.
As for Blood Feast – the vast majority of the killings are done off-screen, so it’s not GP by the first definition. You see only the aftermath, which in a porno context defeats the purpose.
You can argue that it fits the second definition because it was produced and marketed for its graphic nature, but porn in ’63 had no equivalent sex film. It wouldn’t for about another decade. So how could BF be an equivalent of porn, if porn wasn’t even what it was to become? Also, BF is always credited as the father of the Gore film, which is not an interchangable term with horror. It can’t be the father of both terms, (Gore and Gore-Porn), when the second wouldn’t even exist without the first.
You could make an easier argument that porn followed the exploitation of the grindhouse starting with B-F. Last House on The Left and Deep Throat in ’72. TCM, Black Christmas and Behind The Green Door in ’74. Halloween and Debbie Does Dallas in ’78.
Also, you couldn’t apply GP to anything before the birth of the slasher film in ’78 because the term was coined as a reference to derivitive slasher films. IMO, Friday the 13th and Mainiac in 1980 look to be the starting point. It depends on Black Christmas and Halloween.
After just watching Lucky McGee’s ‘Sick Girl’ episode of Masters of Horror, I think it is safe to say that I have seen enough episodes to call the series a noble failure.
With the exception of Carpenter’s and Coscarelli’s epsiodes, most veered into the camp and kitch realm. Some had good but flawed moments (Gordon’s and Argento’s, but the Landis, Dante and McGee (is he a master of anything?)episodes were not worthy of the title.
Miike’s episode will most likely redeem a lot when it is seen, but if they are going to continue the series, they should not give the director’s carte blanche and vet the scripts so that no one attempts comedy or kitch.
Any director that wants to should not get the job.
The best thing about the series so far is the slick opening title sequence that is more distubing than anything they have shown so far.
Hooper’s episode was alright.
As for the new horror porn, sadly that seems to be more an invention for the AICN type crowd. I also find it ironic that many of the best horror films come form director’s who are not telling ‘horror’ stories but just stories.
Friedkin and Kubrick are not considered horror director’s but thier contributions to the genre will be widely remembered long after people like Eli Roth (unless he improves) have long been forgotten.
I thought ‘horror porn’ was a term invented by people who don’t like the genre like Dave Poland?
Blood Feast is as porny as it gets, even if it’s only rudementarily, because the sole purpose of that movie’s existence is to show the human body in distress for (very) cheap thrills. By definition, pornography of any kind (sexual, or emotional porn like Crash) is a movie that gives you exactly what you want to see and satisfies your urges, as opposed to art, which challenges and questions. I don’t think there’s any difference between a gore film and a gore porn film; the latter is just an epithet.
I meant horror porn as content…not the term.
Pornography goes beyond satisfying your urges…pornogaphy (violent or sexual) is about exploitation…not just satisfying one’s urges.
What if one’s urge is to be challenged?
I think the question of ‘what is art’ is very complex and certainly consists of the things you said, but can also go beyond. Art can also be about form, structure, craft and can also illicit moods of anger, shock, inspiration or enlightenment. It can challenge you to look at dark places or light places.
I also think art has to stand the test of time. One of the problems with ‘modern definitons of art’ is that we do not allow ourselves to let things take the test of time.
Everyone wants to be an artist now…betterfastermoremore!
But no one wants to practice the craft. Most modern art…is not.
The only Masters of Horror I have seen thus far are Cigarette Burns, Dreams in the Witch-House and Deer Woman, or whatever the hell that one is called. None of them did much for me. Gordon’s is fairly dull and what you’d expect from him. CB has its moments but Norman Reedus is just painfully awful. Watching him speak was a highly unpleasant experience. The deer one was terrible. Definitely a disappointment so far.
Nicol, when you say “exploitation” are you talking about the production side? In terms of the cast, or in terms of subject matter? I don’t know if this term is right. because I’m not sure how you’re using it.
If one’s ‘urge is to be challenged’ then you’re going to seek out art-porn. I recommend Matthew Barney.
Form, structure, and craft are all important but also need to feed into overall content. A Michael Bay film is well-crafted but nobody should confuse it for art.
Nicol – You’re pretty spot-on about Masters of Horror. The buggest flaw is that the majority of people involved really don’t have a grasp on the one-hour model, especially for today’s audience. I could go on and on, but the first episode had the best execution of material.
G-P first surfaced in the late 90’s as a bootleggers term. With the success of theatrical horror, it’s making it’s way to the pop lexicon.
Giallo is not an epithet, nor is dai kaijyu or cyberpunk for sci-fi. They are distinct genres or sub-genres. G-P was the same, but anytime some cinelitist has the excuse to sound kewl by using the word porn, they will.
As for Blood Feast, it doesn’t fit this defintion of pornography because it was the first to do what it did. It couldn’t satisfy an non-existent urge, nor give people what they wanted when they had never seen it before. It even pre-dated true hardcore porn.
Re: Blood Feast, if it didn’t “satisfy an non-existent urge” how did it make so much money/spawn so many imitators? The answer is the oldest way to make profit: by tapping into an undeveloped market.