The appeal of Torture-Porn and Popcorn?
- Thread starter TheMasterOfOrion
- Start date
I don't know... but I'm guessing if you did it wasn't during a murder scene?
I guess there will always be a market for junk. Saw VI and Rob Zombies Halloween 4 will be on Blu Ray next week
What has that got to do with what I said?
I've waited weeks for an opportunity to post this.
When Reservoir Dogs (1992) came out the scene where Mr. Blonde cuts off LAPD Officer Marvin Nash's ear to the Stealers Wheel's song "STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU" it was a memorable (controversial) moment that was talked about (and still is). Mr. Blonde is psychotic and that scene illustrates it.
I believe the 'torture porn' genre takes this type of violence and builds a plot around it. There is a certain element of society that likes bullfights, wrestling, ultimate fighting, and 2000+ years ago fighting til death at the Colliseum. This type of violence in a feature film is just over the top.
I personally am not interested in the Saw series or Hostel type films and wish they would get a NC-17 rating as surely they do not need to be rated R by the MPAA.
According to IMDB here are the MPAA ratings and what for:
Saw (2004)
Rated R for strong grisly violence and language. (edited for re-rating; originally NC-17)
Hostel (2005)
Rated R for brutal scenes of torture and violence, strong sexual content, language and drug use.
Saw II (2005)
Rated R for grisly violence and gore, terror, language and drug content.
Saw III (2006)
Rated R for strong grisly violence and gore, sequences of terror and torture, nudity and language.
Hostel: Part II (2007)
That about sums it up and it should have gotten a NC-17 rating. (I have not seen the film.)
Saw IV (2007)
Rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture throughout, and for language.
[of course though the director's cut on the DVD is unrated]
Saw V (2008)
Rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, language and brief nudity.
Saw VI (2009)
Rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, and language.
"brutal", "grisly", "sadistic" should not be description of mainstream films. They should be NC-17 rated films.
Horror films are truly a psychological film that should thrill you. Hitchcock was a master and great films of the genre like Psycho, The Exorcist, Alien (1979), The Thing (1982) and others are thrillers that scare you. Their use of sound adds to tension. Music & sound effects are best used in the horror genre. Also surround sound adds to the atmosphere created for a horror film.
Films like Resident Evil (2002) & Thir13en Ghosts (2001) really show what surround sound can do to build tension.
Sadly only action films with layers of sound effects for bullets & explosions get recognized by the AMPAS for Academy Award nominations.
The horror genre has sub-genres and sadly 'torture-porn' falls into this sub-genre.
It's the zeitgeist. From nuBSG and NuTrek and nuMarvel to The Sheild and Rescue Me and Dexter to Saw and Hostel and Torture Porn in general, the current audience is entertained by misery and gore and corruption.
I would like to propose that comparing anything to Christians being fed to the lions should be the new Godwin's Law.
I didn't really care for any of the Saw or Hostel movies or any of their imitators, but let's get real. Movies featuring torture scenes have been around a long time. Gore films have been around a long time. If you don't believe me then please google the name Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Trying to make some blanket statement about society based on a few cheap exploitation films is just plain tired.
Also, you don't actually believe that The Exorcist, Alien, and the '80s version of The Thing are movies that only contained psychological scares and no gore... do you?
You cannot seriously be lumping the first half of that sentence in with the last half, can you? We've been over this.
But then I forget that you change your mind on any of this. Silly me. Silly, silly me.
I like the way you say the current audience like it's some monolithic thing with no varying taste. Hell even a single person has varying taste.
I like everything from Doctor Who to BSG, Pushing Daises to Dexter, Sarah Jane Adventures to Wire in the Blood. Or films, Saw to Airplane, Up to The Descent...
People like escapism but they like to see realistic or even sadistic, I don't think that's a bad thing.
Sure, but what used to be a marginalized fringe element has become mainstream. I wouldn't be surprised to see I Spit On Your Grave to become a series on Showtime.
Why would I change my mind? This is pretty basic stuff. There is a cultural Zeitgeist. Just as Lee & Kirby's FF, TOS and 2001 all arose from the 60s Zeitgeist, so do all those examples arise from the current Dark Age.
Of course there's a spectrum and exceptions, but the audience is a pretty monolithic thing, especially in these Mass Marketing days. How could there be fads and fashions if it wasn't? There are always overwhelming trends in culture, and the current overwhelming trend is a love for darkness, corruption and stupidity.
I really don't see what crass, undemanding films like Saw or Hostel have in common with sophisticated shows like Shield or Dexter. I think you're jumping to conclusions when you lump all these things together.
I agree, but I think even Saw differentiates itself from some of the others too, not just being the start of the trend but by attempting to flesh out its plot more and make it more complicated than just the blood and guts, even though that is the main part of it.
Well, I passionately hate Saw, and it's alleged "story" even more than everything else about it, but even I have to admit it's a well done movie for its audience.
A lot of people think Cannibal Holocaust was actually very prescient in its idea that reality film would go to extraordinary lengths to create the "reality" it wished to present on screen. This was over 30 years ago, but had a director scripting what was supposed to be a documentary.
Gore films aren't really my cup of tea, but they are simply an extension of the roller coaster experience. People's desire to leave the boundaries of their normal world and experience the unusual, the forbidden, the macabre, but from a safe vantage point.
You also have to take the good with the bad. if we want to say that Saving Private Ryan was an achievement because finally war was not presented to us as clean and sanitized and blood free we have to take that in out horror films as well. Today when some lady gets stabbed to death in the shower we see everything mostly just because today we can see it. Nobody is there to say "no you can't show that, we won't let you.
I dislike the way they've continued the series after 3, but they were all right until that point.
I felt the writers were justifying Jigsaw's actions and almost tried to make him look like the hero, which pissed me off.
I don't know, I don't think he's ever been a "hero" but they do have the whole everyone is corrupt thing going on.
All I want to know is: for a guy who's supposed to be dying of cancer he seems to have a lot of spare energy. What with all the kidnapping of people and running from cops. Not to mention doing torture chamber construction projects it would take Local 242 a year to complete. They should have hired this guy to build the new World Trade Center. He gets more done in a week than I've done in my entire life.
