Want to Know What I Thought of The Human Centipede II?

If the answer to the question posed by this post's title is "Yes," then I suggest you head over to KT Grant's excellent blog, Babbling About Books and More, where I've reviewed the controversial sequel by Tom Six. I reviewed the original one there last year, and so I was more than happy to oblige Ms. Grant with a follow-up review of the second one, especially after having interviewed Six and his star Laurence Harvey a few weeks back. Here's a sample:

A year and a half ago, I spoke out as a defender of a film I thought was being unfairly judged right out of the gate. That film was Tom Six’s The Human Centipede, and it was alternately being bashed by the mainstream for being too revolting, and by the hardcore horror freaks for being not revolting enough. The movie that I saw was a slick, well-made psychological horror flick being wrongly marketed as a gross-out piece of torture porn. I felt those dismissing it as too over-the-top simply hadn’t seen the picture, and was saddened by those who only seemed to be upset about not seeing enough ass-to-mouth contact.

For the rest of the review, check out Babbling About Books.

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Tuesday Too Scared to Watch It Twice: Week Four

Here we are at last, after more than a month of cowardly musings... The final installment of Tuesday Too Scared. And to commemorate the occasion, Missy Yearian of Chickapin Parish and myself have something special for you.

You see, this time, we've both chosen the same exact film to discuss. That's right, one movie that neither one of us ever has any desire to see again--albeit for different, and equally fascinating reasons. One film that has galvanized us both, for this, the last Tuesday Too Scared. So sit back and enjoy as we cringe in pain at the work of Eli Roth...

Hostel (2005)

Watching Hostel was one of those watershed moments for me. One of those, "OK, am I getting too old for this shit?" kind of moments. I had long considered myself something of a gorehound. It was never my favorite kind of horror, but I took pride as a young horrorphile in seeking out the most depraved and nasty flicks I could get my grimy hands on. I didn't realize how much I had changed, until the day I got those hands on Eli Roth's Hostel.

It had been lent to me by a guy at work. You know the situation: "Hey, man. You like horror, right? OK, well, you should check this out!" So I did. As I look back on it now, that was a mistake. Because seeing Hostel was an experience that taught me that my tastes had changed, and even led me to slightly rethink what being a horror fan even meant for me.

Simply put, Hostel is an ugly film. A cynical, brutish movie that is depressing at its core. There is no entertainment value to be had, and it leaves the viewer with the urge to take a shower of Joan Crawford proportions. The plot is non-existent, and once we get past the boring and utterly odious "frat boys on vacation in Eastern Europe" portion, we get to something far more odious.

This film is the very definition of torture porn, containing scene after scene of unrelenting graphic violence put on display for no other reason than to shock and titillate. To some, that may be the clarion call to horror nirvana, but I have to say, it isn't for me. It certainly isn't now, and I'm not sure it ever was to this degree. This is a film that wallows in the very worst of human nature, and does so for no other reason than to get a few kicks.

I can remember sitting there thinking, "Why the hell am I even watching this?" And this is coming from someone who would jump at an opportunity to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Zombi 2 or Dead Alive back in the day. Reveled in them. But this? No thanks. Am I too old? I don't care. Too real, too cynical, and not fun, entertaining or even thought-provoking in the slightest.

Call me a horror prude. Call me a stick in the mud. Call me out of touch. But I plan to never go near Hostel again, as it represents for me the very worst and lowest common denominator of what this great genre has to offer.

And now, Missy chimes in as well...

I’m still not sure why I ever saw Hostel. It’s the very definition of torture porn, and I am ten thousand percent sure that there was never any chance I would like it, but I rented it and watched it in a dormer room in Southern Illinois. Mayhaps it’s that very Pokemon approach I take to horror movies: “Gotta see ‘em all.”

By now, it’s likely we’ve all seen this or at least know the story. A couple of incredibly irritating and offensive young Americans end up at a hostel in Eastern Europe where they think they will be able to bed many adventurous young women. (Though, I am relatively sure that any woman who sleeps with either of these jerkos should be kicked out of the women’s club forever and always.) Instead they become the victims of torture and abuse in macabre house of horrors.

When B-Sol and I were debating films to write about for this series, we both touched on the same theme in Hostel that makes it so hard to stomach. This is, without a doubt, the most hateful film I have ever seen. Even before the boys end up in the torture chamber, the movie is filled with hate. Primarily, our American tourists hate women. A more sexist mindset would suggest they love women, but they have no interest in women as individual people with identities all their own. They see women as tools designed only for their own pleasure, and within twenty minutes, I was sure I was going to hate this movie.

In addition to the hatred displayed by our protagonists, hatred is heaped upon them as well. As they become the victims of extremely brutal violence, each boy is made the object of Ameriphobic hatred. (I think I just made that word up.) It’s even stated that Americans fetch more money because everyone wants to torture an American. And really, who can blame them? If we are how this film represents us, I can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t choose us for the torture and maiming.

Ultimately what makes it such a horrible movie is the level of unbelievability. I mean, okay, so the woman’s face is all mangled, and her eyeball is hanging out. What do you do? You certainly don’t cut her eyeball off! This is just another moment wherein you are supposed to ingest male mutilation of the female body. And while I can watch a Friday the 13th movie with the best of them, I cannot intake this much hatred. There is wanton glee and disregard for the destruction of the female person and the female form.

As I am sure some of you will argue, there is also a great deal of abuse heaped on the male form. Yes, this is true. But none of it is with such disregard for the human being. The males at least have character and identity. The women exist purely as tools, and as a result of this, I cannot stomach ever seeing it again. The film has ruined me in a number of ways, but the one I am most grateful for? I now hate Eli Roth. I consider that a blessing.

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21st Century Terrors, Part 6: 2005

The first decade of the new century was half over, and right in the heart of it, horror hounds were being treated to arguably the greatest bumper crop of gruesome greatness since the heyday of the 1980s. There can be no doubt about it--a golden age was upon us. It was the year we got a new subgenre with a naughty sounding name, Rob Zombie got serious, some English broads went down a well, and even good old Uncle George had to get into the act. This was 2005.

The previous year had given some indications of where we were headed. For example, viewers who went to the movies to see Saw were given just a taste of the sickness and depravity that would come to full bloom this year, when Eli Roth, late of the offbeat horror comedy Cabin Fever, would turn out a film that would divide fans, start a new movement, and definitely get everyone talking.

Hostel was a film that literally pushed the boundary of what fans would consider to be entertainment. Revolving around a series of torture-filled set pieces, it drew the nickname of "torture porn"--a name derived from accusations that it sought primarily to titillate through the depiction of gratuitous scenes of methodical violence. Some would find it distasteful; others believed it gave the genre a much-needed visceral shot in the arm.

Whatever the case, Hostel was a touchstone, the kind of movie that sets the tone for much of what came after it. And we're still feeling the aftereffects of it to this day, for better or worse.

As much as the movies of the '70s and '80s pushed the envelope for violence in film, and the '90s reigned things in a bit, by this point in the new decade, the pendulum had swung completely back the other way. Thanks to Hostel and others, we were now seeing films arguably more graphic than just about anything we had witnessed before. Another filmmaker at the forefront of this movement was Rob Zombie.

If his previous House of 1,000 Corpses had caught some flak for being campy and cheesy, Mr. Zombie remedied the situation with a much bleaker, more serious sequel in The Devil's Rejects. The Firefly family, with Sid Haig's Capt. Spaulding at the lead, was more iconic than ever, and horror fans by and large embraced this film with open arms.

Zombie's grindhouse aesthetic and appreciation for the grittiness of '70s horror brought to the genre what guys like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were doing with more mainstream cinema. As a result, The Devil's Rejects would become one of the most popular horror films of the decade with actual horror fans, as opposed to the mainstream audience that was eating up confections of a very different variety.

Those confections consisted of the near-endless stream of remakes Hollywood was (and is) churning out with breakneck speed. This might very well have been the year we all stood back for a second and said to ourselves, "Damn, there sure are a lot of remakes coming out!" We got House of Wax, in which Vincent Price was replaced with Paris Hilton; The Amityville Horror, which proved just as mediocre as its originator; The Fog, starring Superboy...

And in case you were looking more for sequels rather than remakes, we also got the disappointing The Ring Two, and the vastly more disappointing back-to-back direct-to-SyFy Channel atrocities, Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis, and Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. The less said, the better. Peter Coyote, how could you? To think, I trusted you in E.T.

But sequels weren't by definition a bad thing, and in fact, 2005 gave us two very interesting ones in particular, which continued two venerable horror franchises. One of these was Dominion: Prequel to Exorcist, the original Paul Schrader version of the film that had been released the previous year as The Exorcist: The Beginning (directed by Renny Harlin). The result was flawed yet provocative, and definitely more daring than the previous studio-approved version.

The other long-awaited sequel was something that had previously seemed as if it would never happen: George Romero got back in the saddle and made another zombie movie, his first in 20 years. With the zombie movie craze raging for a few years, everyone was wondering if the man who invented the whole movement would ever get his chance to do what he does best once more. And thanks to Universal, he did.

Land of the Dead was the most mainstream of Romero's efforts, with actual marketable movie stars (namely john Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper and an almost-famous Simon Baker); it was also the first to be released with an MPAA rating, and the first to use CGI effects. It was definitely a new era, but fans were delirious with joy that their hero would finally be getting the opportunity to pick up where he left off with Day of the Dead in 1985.

In the end, there were folks who thought Uncle George lost his touch a bit, and that the years had put some ring rust on the old master. Just as the original Return of the Living Dead, a zombie comedy, had overshadowed Day of the Dead, many felt that Shaun of the Dead had overshadowed Land of the Dead and made it feel a bit obsolete.

Nevertheless, I think history will look kindly on Land of the Dead, just as it did on Day of the Dead eventually. It was a welcome return for one of horror's most beloved directors, exploring the territory he first pioneered. And in a project that had been high on everyone's ultimate fantasy lists for many years.

But if original concepts were still what you craved, then English director Neil Marshall, who had previously turned heads in 2oo2 with Dog Soldiers, really gave you something to write home about with the film that many consider to be the finest horror film of the contemporary era--including the amalgamation of horror bloggers who voted it the number-one horror movie of the past 20 years, right here in The Vault of Horror. I'm talking about The Descent.

Whether or not it's the very best is, of course, open to debate, but there can be no question that The Descent is one of the most highly regarded horror films of the past decade. Original, powerful, and downright terrifying, it is a 21st century horror film that will undoubtedly be added to the "canon" of classics moving forward into the future. Not to mention the fact that it's all-female cast of protagonists in and of itself makes the film highly intriguing, and one-of-a-kind.

There's a reason why horror fans have generally preferred the past decade to the one which came before it, and a glance through the body of material released in 2005 helps crystallize that perception. Thanks to the likes of Marshall, Zombie, Roth, Romero and many others, it was a banner year for the genre.

Also from 2005:

• An American Haunting
• Boogeyman
• Constantine
• Dark Water
• The Exorcism of Emily Rose
• Feast
• The Gravedancers
• Santa's Slay
• The Skeleton Key
• 2001 Maniacs
• White Noise

Part 1: 2000
Part 2: 2001
Part 3: 2002
Part 4: 2003
Part 5: 2004

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Eli Roth Opts Out of Hostel 3

I'm not at all a fan of the Hostel films, but someone out there obviously supported them, so this news will no doubt be of interest to some of you out there. Shock Till You Drop is reporting that Eli Roth, the Splat Pack auteur who gave us Cabin Fever and both Hostel flicks, will have nothing to do with the upcoming direct-to-DVD Hostel 3.

Said Roth to STYD:

“I’m just not involved in any way. I just said, ‘I put everything in my life for three years into these movies. I’ve said everything I have to say with it. I feel very lucky I got to make them and the fans responded the way they did, and if you guys want to continue it, great, go ahead.'”

This would be a similar move to what Roth did with Cabin Fever 2, the follow-up to the film that first put him on the horror map in 2002. The director--soon to be seen in front of the camera in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds--will instead be working on Endangered Species and Thanksgiving (an expansion of his hilarious Grindhouse faux trailer) as his next two projects.

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Deadgirl: This Year's "Inside"?

I had the privilege last week of interviewing Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, directors of next month's shocking new addition to the horror landscape, Deadgirl. In that interview, they provided me some insight into the making of this truly challenging and daring film. If you haven't heard it, I encourage you to do so.

Deadgirl is the kind of a film that might make you angry while watching it, but only because it asks questions you're not comfortable being asked. At the heart of the picture is the ethical conundrum: How far would you go if you knew there would be no consequences?

The central conceit of the film revolves around Rickie and JT, two high school misfits who stumble upon a strange, silent girl strapped to a table in the bowels of an abandoned mental asylum. Once they discover that she apparently can't be killed, and also that no one else knows she's there, things start to get hairy. One of the two, JT, descends into a pit of moral relativism, turning the captive female into his own personal sex slave, while Rickie attempts to balance his friendship with said JT and his own sense of right and wrong.

In the beginning, I'll admit, the movie made me a bit angry. I sat there watching it, thinking, is this really these guys' opinion of the human race? Who would really do something like this, torture someone for no reason, and seemingly normal, everyday teenagers, to boot? But after sad and careful consideration, I had to admit that, yes, humans do have this capacity in them. Anyone who doesn't agree need only watch the six o'clock news for a few minutes. This is reality, folks. Happens every day.

The movie is anchored by two fine performances from Shiloh Fernandez as Rickie and Noah Segan (of the upcoming Cabin Fever 2) as JT. Segan in particular is impressive, effecting the moral transformation from angsty teen outcast to sadistic, depraved monster with convincing skill. The friendship between the two boys is very important to the film, and although it starts off a bit slow in establishing this friendship, I urge you to stick with it.

Written by prolific horror scribe Trent Haaga (Jessicka Rabid, Citizen Toxie), the film comes across as part grueling horror, part adolescent coming-of-age story. It's certainly not your typical horror flick, and in many ways reminded me of another, similarly envelope-pushing, unorthodox horror film, Inside. Like that film, this one plays with our sense of morality, asks uncomfortable questions, and assaults our senses with brutal imagery and ideas.

Also like Inside, Deadgirl doesn't revel in shock for shock's sake. Unlike much of what is called "torture porn", it has something to say, and everything we see, as disgusting and painful as it may be, serves an artistic purpose. Like Inside, I wouldn't even classify this as exploitation cinema. This is a very serious film, with a serious message.

And I warn you, this really is quite the uncompromising piece of cinema. Characters make decisions that will leave you reeling--even characters you like. And not to spoil anything, but the ending left me feeling brutalized (in a good way), questioning everything I had seen before. It's the ultimate capper to a movie that isn't afraid to make daring statements and tell us things we don't want to hear. It's bleak, tragic, and unfortunately, completely believable, and represents a stunning end to the film's central character arc.

Gorgeous model Jenny Spain plays the titular "dead girl"--a mysterious creature whose bizarre affliction we never really come to understand. Her silent performance is enigmatic and gripping--at times she's a victim, at others, a monster. It's an interesting twist on the whole, "creepy, strangely beautiful, silent female" trope that seems to be so popular in horror these days.

Another element which strengthens the film is the fine, haunting score by Joseph Bauer, which resonates throughout every scene. It reminded me very much of the excellent score for Let the Right One In, in that it's not what one would expect from a movie of this kind, and adds another layer of depth with its rich beauty. I'll be keeping an ear out for future Bauer scores.

After turning a lot of heads at film festivals this year, Deadgirl (which was completed last year), will finally be getting its theatrical release next month. For those who are constantly on the hunt for new, groundbreaking, original horror, I urge you to seek out the closest theater near you that'll be showing it. Worst case scenario, snatch up the DVD when it comes out. Taste in films is always subjective, but from my point of view as a horror fan, this is the kind of movie I tend to gravitate toward--an intelligent film free of so many of the ills plaguing the horror scene today.

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The VOH Roundtable: Does Horror Ever Go Too Far?

This week in the Vault of Horror Roundtable, we three blowhards answer the touchy question, do horror movies ever go too far? I'm really proud of the variety of responses we've got this time around, so let's jump right in...

B-Sol
This is a very tough question for me to pose, because in my estimation, the answer has changed over time. If someone had asked me 10 or 15 years ago if horror movies ever go too far, I would have definitely said absolutely not. Bring on the gore, the sicker the better! I reveled in it, and look, I'll be honest, to a certain degree, I still do.

And yet, I think some things have changed for me and the way I watch horror movies over the years. Some will no doubt accuse me of going soft because of this. Be that as it may, in recent years I have found I have a much harder time watching certain things than I ever used to. Maybe it's the changes wrought on my psyche by bringing children into the world, or just the accumulated effects of being a grown-up and dealing with the daily horrors of the actual world we live in on a mature level.

Whatever the case, I truly believe that in the past few years, I have found my limit. And that happens to be what is now commonly referred to as "torture porn". Now that term is often used unfairly and inaccurately, so allow me to specify. I think it's probably safe to refer to Hostel that way, since that's basically the flick that the term was invented for. And that's specifically the movie which, after watching a copy of it lent to me by a coworker who heard I liked horror movies, taught me that I do indeed have a limit.

My main problem with Hostel was that I found it to be a movie created for the sole purpose of showing me graphic depictions of dramatized torture. The plot was paper thin, as were the characters, and it was quite obvious that Eli Roth's goal was to titillate through violence, without even the flimsiest of dramatic justifications. Now slasher movies, in their day, were accused of showing contempt for their characters--but that's nothing compared to the way a movie like Hostel invites us to take a sick kind of pleasure out of watching people be mutilated and killed.

I found the movie to be the complete antithesis of entertainment, and could not imagine wanting to ever see it again. Now, don't get me wrong, I believe that not all works of art are required to be entertaining. Watching Schindler's List, for example, is not something I would ever describe as entertaining, but that movie serves a purpose, has something to say, and isn't all about pruriently depicting scenes of concentration camp brutality.

I was shaken up by watching Hostel, and not in the good way I expect great horror films to shake me up. In a disgusted, "what has the genre come to" sort of way. And following Hostel, I came to find the same type of thing popping up in other movies. Saw III, for example, gave me a lot of trouble watching it in a movie theater when it first came out. The original Saw was a clever, original, suspenseful film, that wasn't at all about sadism and gore. But this third installment abandoned all that in favor of following in the footsteps of Hostel, and I found myself depressed by the result. I remember thinking, "Why am I sitting here watching this? What is there that's entertaining or interesting about this?"

One last example I'd like to point out is The Strangers. This was a movie I enjoyed, but there was a bit at the end that really bothered me. It's the scene in which the couple is finally killed. I felt dirty watching this scene, and the simple reason was that I found it to be shot the way it was and included for a sad, sadistic, and anti-dramatic purpose. There was so suspense or narrative function to it at all. We knew there was no chance they could ever escape, and in the end what we are afraid is going to happen is exactly what does. It was drawn out, cruel, and demonstrated a kind of sick glee in forcing us to sit and watch two characters slowly tortured and killed. Honestly, it was repellent.

And so, after all, it seems that B-Sol, the shameless horror fanatic, does indeed have his limits. I will admit that the passage of years has had something to do with it. Extreme, prolonged and utterly gratuitous violence no longer does it for me like it used to. Ah, to be young again...

BJ-C
When B-Sol asked me "When do Horror Films Go Too Far?" I kept racking my big ol' brain trying to pinpoint an example to rant about for being disgusting, inhumane, disgusting, or emotionally scarring. You know what? I couldn't think of a damn thing. Sure there are topics that upset me like killing children, graphic rape scenes, or eye mutilation, but I in no way would ever claim that exploiting these said actions is going "too far". Torture Porn, Animal Cruelty, Rape Revenge, or Home Invasion Films tend to be the ones that get the most slack for going "too far". My argument is however, who are we to judge? I personally can stomach just about anything, but my Mormon friend (that is one of 17 children) can barely handle Shaun of the Dead.

As a theatre major, I have been trained to see things from all angles. The thing I love the most about cinema, theatre, and the performing arts in general; is that they are all open to interpretation. Everything artistic is always in a matter of perspective. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, doesn't that mean repulsiveness should be as well? Da Vinci even said that "an extremely ugly person is just as unique and special as an extremely beautiful person". Although it is off-putting and sometimes uncomfortable to see these "too far" horror films, I feel that it is just as impressive and draws me in just as much as a beautiful and moving film.

I feel that it also goes along with the saying of "there's no such thing as bad publicity". Just recently, the film Anti-Christ has been getting a lot of shit for having genital mutilation, and unnecessary sex/violence. However, is there any other film at that festival that was getting as much news as Anti-Christ. The answer is no. Human beings retain memory that consist mostly of two options. Extremely wonderful things like a wedding day or a birth of a child or absolutely heart wrenching things like a family death or a traumatic experience. For us to claim that horror films can go "too far" is denying the human psyche to have a contrast to the more "acceptable film".

I had written on Day of the Woman as a hot topic if rape was ever acceptable in horror films. As much as it makes me sound like a cruel and unusual person, I came to the conclusion that Yes. It is acceptable. We cannot sugar coat reality when we put it into a film. Most people are under the impression that performing arts must be "entertaining" however, that was in 1950, and we are long from that. Films and plays have begun to completely say "fuck the audience, i'm going to write what i want to write" and i must say i find that incredibly inspiring. As much as we may not like to hear it, the world is a disgusting, cruel, brutal, and terrifying place. This isn't to say that I don't believe there is hope, but I'm not going to lie and say we live in a peaceful environment. Art is imitating life after all and why should we put a barrier on what is acceptable? Look at the evening news...no one talks about a dog who saved Billy from the well or barn fire, we talk about gang shootings, wars, and the tragic tale of Caylee Anthony. How can we have no problem spreading these stories like herpes on our nightly news, but we can't have a child being murdered in a film? That sounds not only hypocritical, but boarderline unconstitutional.

The same could be said for the Animal massacres in Cannibal Holocaust. However, as much as I personally cannot agree with killing animals for the sole purpose of "entertainment", the film was killing the animals to make a point. I can understand along side the creative minds behind the animal killings, however I can not personally justify the actions. I am however only a 19 year old girl, so I have no room to tell anyone how to make a film. Which is like most audience members. It doesn't matter how many films I've seen, how many reviews I've written, or how much research I have done...the films I see are not MINE and the only people who have the true liberty of critisizing or measuring a piece of work, is the creator. You know "God is the only one who can judge me?" Well that's because he is the creator. So who are we to judge other's creations?

Again, I'm about to sound like a heartless bastard, but I LIKE when films push the envelope for me. It sort of pimp smacks you in the face and shoves a hell of a lot of reality down your throat, which to be honest, is something I think we need from time to time. So many people live in this fairytale fantasy land where everything is wonderful and squeaky clean. Which I will firmly say is the single strongest reason why the Twatlight series has such a following. Teenage girls don't WANT fanged, bloodied, nocturnal boyfriends. They want ones that sparkle in the sunshine...so in that sense, I guess I can finally understand why the hell people missed their classes the day after the film came out on DVD. I will however say, I was NOT one of those people. Same thing with the PETA videos. They know exactly how to push the button and make you so incredibly disgusted, you don't want to ever eat meat again. It's a tactic, and it works.

So to put it simply, I don't think films can EVER go too far. Art is meant to be a perspective and what bothers you, may fill others with delight. My whole thing is that if its going to bother you, then don't watch it. No one is forcing you to sit through something, you have the ability to either leave a theatre, or eject your DVD. We as mere audience members however, cannot put a scale in which to measure the fucked-up-ness of a film. Is it mildly fucked up to say that some people get off at seeing torture porn? Mildly. But hey, diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.

RayRay
My first reaction to the question of whether a horror movie can go too far was "of course." There have been horror movies that have gone too far and disturbed me. One right off the top of my head was Se7en, with it seemingly never ending mortification of human flesh.

But now I have been asked to think about it and give real examples.

The horror genre, be it by film or novel, is wholly wrapped up in giving us terrible visions of what we would we never normally see. We vicariously experience many things, be they monsters, or ghosts, or killers, or natural events. Part of the point is to shock us.

To that end horror movies have shown us terrible, terrible things: graphic gore, child death, violent rape, intense cruelty, advanced decomposition.

So, even when it is most disturbing, an argument can be made that, in the name of art and terror, that a horror movie cannot go too far. But we all know that isn't true.

So now it becomes my task to figure out a movie has gone too far.

Typically, extreme violence and the resultant gore are the major culprits of going too far. There was an article in the New York Times asking this same question. It was in 1982, and was in response to the gore and slime of John Carpenter's The Thing. Carpenter had just appeared on David Letterman's show, and had showed the clip of the dog-thing. Back then The Thing was widely panned, and the amount of gore, etc., was the cited reason. Yet the massive cult following indicates that The Thing, now hailed as one of the best horror movies of all time, did not go too far

Movies like Cannibal Apocalypse [which truthfully I have yet to see, but am familiar with many of its images], Last House on the Left, and the recent House of a Thousand Corpses all are incredibly violent, sadistic, gory, and while pushing every envelope I can think of, did not go too far. In fact, all three are classic horror movies in their own right.

At the same time, movies like the Hostel series and Turistas, and other so called 'torture porn' I can consider having gone too far. Why? I suppose this has something to d with my distaste of the unnecessary cruelty embodied by such films. "Unnecessary cruelty? But that's what those movies are about!" some might retort. Yes, and that is all they are about. One might even then question me about the difference between House of a Thousand Corpses and Hostel. And I would say that the difference lies in the stresses the director one puts on what we see.

In House of a Thousand Corpses, the director created characters to identify with and against that had substance, and in one or two, they were more than a little campy. The violence was a means to an end, as well as a symptom of some greater sickness in those characters. There was more to the movie than just violating the human form.

In Hostel violence was the goal. While the premise wasn't terrible, the story never carried further than the murder of tourists. When you think about it, the most clever thing about Hostel is the director makes you into one of the purveyors of snuff, because the big payoff is all about watching what's going to happen to that Asian girl. In Turistas the payoff was watching a dissection of a girl. Is it the violence and the guts, though? No. Rather, it is the lack of story to contextualize the violence.

And when you consider that Se7en has some scenes, and puts some truly terrible ideas in one's head to replace what was not graphically depicted, I can conclude that going too far is not about the blood and guts, and therefore violence. Even such things, like violent rape, as in The Hills Have Eyes, or child death, like Pet Semetary or Jaws, are not verboten, so long as the underling storyline supports the relating of these acts or events.

Even mass death is not, in itself, going too far, though film makers might fear it. In the 80's we were treated to docudramas like the unforgettable The Day After and the even more compelling BBC production, Threads [shout-out to my girl BJ-C for reminding me of Threads]. To those of us who have grown up after the threat of nuclear annihilation is no longer an ever present threat to civilized existence, both films depict, at times graphically, the run up, actual event of, and aftermath of a full scale nuclear exchange. The Day After was so graphic [for a TV production] that there were warnings before and during its broadcast, and was even credited by Ronald Reagan in altering his thinking about nuclear weapons. Yet there are tales, as always, about the even more terrible and disturbing scenes left on the cutting room floor.

Threads was an even more graphic telling of a nuclear exchange, often using stock war photos of masses of strewn bodies from the Second World War and other conflicts to bolster the charred corpses actually used on its sets. Yet, considering the purpose and the topic, there is no limit to how much gore a director might use.

And let's be honest: the most terrible thing I can see in a movie is nothing when compared the the very real events of the tribal war between the Hutus and Tutsis, the mass rape and genocide in Darfur, and all other genocides. Even much smaller tragedies, like the euphemistically termed mass suicide at Jonestown is a more terrifying, and was more graphically disturbing to me when, as a young boy, I saw the news footage of all those bodies from the air, than anything I can imagine reproduced by special effects on film. Even "just" wars leave charred bodies in unnumbered piles.

Therefore, I will conclude my meandering with this result: yes, a horror movie goes too far when it seeks to do nothing but to shock without trying to do anything more. If the movie is but violence for violence sake, without story or context, then it is probably going too far. If that's what you want to see, go rent Faces of Death or surf the web for photos of the Holocaust. But if the writer and director give the audience a story, a reason, a cause, a lesson, anything other than rote brutality, then the sky just might be the limit.

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Want to Know What Scares Me? (Part the 2nd)

As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by total exhaustion and gainful employment, I got exposed to a lot of frightening stuff on TV as a kid that helped pave the way for my lifetime horror obsession. Why TV, you ask? Mainly because I was too young to be taken to see horror movies in the theater. But since daytime TV in those days was fairly polluted with old horror flicks, that didn't mean I never saw theatrical films, too.

Case in point: The Changeling. No, not the admittedly excellent, if overlong Angelina Jolie Oscar bait. I'm talking about the George C. Scott classic that I still consider among the finest ghost stories ever filmed, perhaps second only to The Haunting. I caught this one as a wee lad, all alone in my grandparents' living room, while the rest of the family argued downstairs in that uniquely Italian-American way.

Can you say nightmares? And lingering trauma? The image of the little boy being drowned in the bathtub was burned into my consciousness, and I could not approach a full tub, or even a toilet bowl, without first checking for a submerged face after that.

But there was a big difference between the relatively tame movies shown on afternoon syndicated TV and the kinds of movies my parents loved going to the theater to see, and renting to watch on that newfangled contraption we hooked up to our TV in the mid 1980s. See, I grew up during a golden age of gore cinema, when video store shelves were stocked to overflowing with forbidden fruit. No, I'm not talking about that section behind the beaded curtain (although that held a taboo appeal, as well). I'm talking about the horror section, filled with box covers which on their own were enough to shock me.

My parents were big horror nuts, but knew enough not to let me watch with them. They knew I wasn't ready yet. But that didn't stop me from being fascinated to listen to the terrifying sound effects coming from the living room downstairs as I tried to sleep, accompanied occasionally by a startled yelp from my mom. Or from listening in as they would gleefully describe their favorites to friends and family, movies like The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The first time they ever tried to initiate me was far from a success, but it is what officially kicked off my love of horror nonetheless, and sums up in a nutshell my relationship with it. That was the time they cautiously relented and allowed me and my younger sister (!), after prolonged begging, to watch The Exorcist with them. As I look back now, they were clearly teaching me a lesson...

I'm proud to say I held together pretty well. That is, until the moment when Regan turns on her caregivers, her eyes rolled up into her head, a subhuman voice emanating from her lips. In a scene my father likes to describe as reminiscent of a terrified Oliver Hardy, my sister and I simultaneously lept from the couch, wailing with fright as we scrambled upstairs and into our beds.

Yet despite my dismay, I kept thinking back to what I had seen, more intrigued than ever. This was a step beyond anything I had ever seen on Channel 9. This was fear in its purest, distilled form. And despite my dread, I couldn't help wanting more. And it has been the same ever since.

As I got older, I got a little more freedom in my viewing choices, and so began seeking out the kinds of movies I was never allowed to see before. Thanks to home video, I got a crash course in my preteens and early teens in the modern classics of the genre. The first one to enthrall my imagination, as I've discussed at length before, was The Return of the Living Dead.

But that movie was only a prelude to the one I'd discover at the age of 15, and which would fill me with a kind of visceral horror that's been unequaled since. It was a lazy afternoon in November 1990, and like the geeky third wheel I was, I sat bored on the couch in the den of my friend's girlfriend's house, my pal and his gal off in another room. Needless to say, I was bummed, and in my search for something to watch, I came across a VHS tape on the shelf marked "Dawn of the Dead".

I popped it in, and after about ten minutes, I was way too distracted to continue feeling sorry for myself. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. That would kick off a completely irrational fear of zombies that would last for more years than I can admit without being a bit embarrassed.

I don't need a degree in psychology to realize that my bone-chilling phobia of the fictional undead was directly connected to a deep-seated fear of death I had been living with ever since first fully grasping the concept of my own mortality. Romero's zombie concept seemed tailor-made to keep me awake at night: Here was death itself, personified in the actual bodies of the dead refusing to politely disappear. And not only were they right in your face, but they also wanted to eat you. Could it get any worse?

The fact that I understood logically that zombies did not exist was little consolation. They were a reminder of the inevitability of death, which was enough. Not to mention they were also the source of years of nightmares, which unbelievably enough, persisted stubbornly into my adult years. Yet true to form, I remained morbidly fascinated, seeking out the most gut-wrenching zombie fare I could find (hence my Fulci obsession). There was a time when viewing such films was a truly upsetting experience, but one which I nonetheless compelled myself to endure.

But I got over my zombiephobia. I think having kids played a big part. You don't realize how much it changes you until it happens, and one of the biggest symptoms of maturity is the relinquishing of silly childhood hangups. The fictional fears that consume the self-centered years of youth suddenly dissipate when you're faced with the real fears and concerns of grown-up life. I mean, who has time to be worried about zombies and vampires when you're busy worrying about feeding a family, paying a mortgage, and the very real horrors that inspire parents to protect their children at all costs?

And so, my attitude toward horror movies has actually taken a dramatic shift in recent years. The outlandish, supernatural horror that once sent me into cold sweats I now find harmless fun. I see the humor in such movies that my unironic teenage mind never grasped. Rather, it's the more plausible, realistic stuff that freaks me out these days. Maybe because I'm more aware of the real horrors the world contains, I find myself strongly put off by movies most would describe as "torture porn".

Sometimes, while watching movies like Hostel and the like, I find myself wondering if I'm losing my edge and turning into an old fogey. Because I just don't have the stomach for it anymore. Even a well-made film like Inside, for example, will leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. Part of it is wondering what goes on in peoples' minds that even leads them to come up with such stories and scenarios. But the more honest part of me also is repulsed by my own desire to watch it in the first place.

And so, the bizarre, inexplicable lifelong fixation on the limits of my own fear continues-- transformed, but ever present...

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What Goes Bump In the Night…….? Chapter II

(We join our regularly scheduled blog post, already in progress.)

While still young, I did succumb to more than one “devil movie.” The two most famous were of course The Exorcist and The Omen. While The Exorcist was one thing all to itself, The Omen was rather the flagship to a genre of ‘70s devil movies. While The Omen was creepy, mostly because of that chubby little kid, there was one titled Devil Dog, Hound of Hell. Now this sounds stupid, like a Drake’s cake gone wrong. But to the ten year old me who decided to watch it on either the “Five Star Movie” or “Drive in Movie” on channel 5 one Saturday afternoon, it was a little more than that.

Now that lousy movie “Devil Dog…” was one of those poorly shot, poorly produced, poorly scripted ‘70s horror endeavors where the film is so bad that it is dark during the day time. And I think it was this poor film quality coupled with a fairly decent devil story. Now, why were devil stories so effective? I think it can be summed up in that a) the devil (or Devil), is all consuming evil, way more evil than just a zombie or slasher, and b) the devil always came in the package you were least expecting: a little girl, a little boy, or, in this case, a little puppy. It is the destruction and the perversion of the innocent into something diabolical that really makes devil movies, and their related genre scary. The same effect can be applied to other stories of a similar vein, like Children of the Corn, and for its part, Pet Semetary’s Gage.

I won’t say much about The Exorcist, as it is like a 5 tool player in baseball (it scares for average, scares for power, etc…), except that a) some of the really scary parts are when you just see the shadows of the demons, and b) when Regan bends over backwards to scuttle down the stairs – whoa, that’s a bad 3 seconds of film. Why? Because it is friggin’ weird, and weird is scary.


A few weeks back B-Sol was good enough to do a post on Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, and in particular, the Hell portion of the triptych. The thing is, while the Hell portion is obviously terrifying, the other two panels, one of Eden, and the other of Earth, are both so weird (and ahead of their time, for purposes of fantasy and science fiction), that they border on the scary. Scary in the sense of making no sense, the horror of a topsy-turvey world. In the Eden Panel, there are the naked Adam and Eve with a clothed Jesus (ok, nothing weird yet), but the surroundings are filled with never-before-seen animals, and a really strange castle in the center. The middle portion of Earth is even worse, with a multitude of nude figures with an enormous amount of oversized birds, fruit, strange vehicles, and in the far background, even stranger creatures and weirder architecture. And the Hell portion is, well, Hell. What is all the fuss? Well, what I am saying is that the weird can be scary, and this triptych is friggin’ weird.

A recent example as to the frightening nature of the weird is the video from The Ring. There really isn’t anything scary about it. But it is shot in that off-color, with strange set pieces (ladder against a wall, centipede running through a living room, the silhouette of the tree), weird sounds, and doesn’t make much sense. But there is a malevolence running through it that is expressed via its strangeness, which fills one with unease. Unease is the first level of fear.

Mr. Hungus cited David Lynch’s Lost Highway as an example of unnerving cinema. I agree, and put forth that another Lynch classic, Blue Velvet, while also not a horror movie by any stretch, is also disturbing as the characters are nearly alien in their various versions of madness. It has always turned my insides how the characters seem to choose to follow the wrong path at every turn, how it almost doesn’t make sense.

Weird first scared me when I saw the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine. While the Beatles are about the least scary rock band in history, Yellow Submarine, with the Blue Meanies, can scare any little kid. Why? In part because the story is really weird, with really strange creatures, and makes little sense, and also because the Blue Meanies are really weird as well, and in addition, they are cruel for cruelty’s sake. Now, I don’t think Yellow Submarine is scary as an adult, it does bring me to my next observation – cruelty is scary.

Cruelty has a tremendous effect on me. That otherwise normal human beings are capable of the most inhuman acts is the terrifying part of being human. Not to wax political, but we in America are often given to the illusion that all we have wrought is good because we are good, and only the bad people have done awful things. Things that the Communists did in Russia, China, or Cambodia. Things that the Nazis did in Germany, Austria, or Poland. Or the Japanese did in the Pacific.

What is lost in this worldview is that the awful occurrences did not happen outside the purview of good people, but rather despite them, or with their assistance. Horrible human acts by otherwise normal people are not impossible. Cruelty has, more often than not, been the norm. And it percolates just below the surface of all of us. All it might take is one act, or one person, one event to bring it all up, and terrible deeds will come to pass.

Torture porn, a genre of which I am not a great fan, attempts to use cruelty for this sake, to get at us under our skins. Like in Hostel, where there is systematic kidnapping/torture/murder, the scary thing isn’t the torture itself, but that people want to torture, to maim, to kill, and even videotape it, like in Vacancy. It is scary because we are all, in the right time and place, capable of some very awful things.

For instance, the most horrible scene of cruelty in the classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes not when Leatherface is chasing anyone with his saw, but when he suddenly appears from a corridor, smashes a fellow human on the head with a mallet, and then, while the body is violently twitching, drags it inside, and then slams the door closed. It is the casual nature of the act which reinforces the cruelty. On the other hand, over time, other slashers, like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, are rendered less scary in that they only do what they do but for no other reason than that’s what they do. They do not do it out of any cruelty – they are essentially knife/axe/machete wielding zombie automatons.

Sometimes annihilation comes from large groups. Being faced with the overwhelming force of a community bent on my own destruction, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, is a form of group cruelty, in that it seeks the end of my person, if not my torture. The scary aspect isn’t that they are alien plants, but that it is everyone but me. Body Snatchers is about being the last free thinking man amongst the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, or the Khmer Rouge.

The Shining is a similar dynamic, but instead of human cruelty, or reeducation via seedpod, the overwhelming forces arrayed against the Torrance family is that of ghosts through the transmitter of a sentient building, the Overlook Hotel. But that malevolence is something more seething than apparent, and only is truly manifested in the third act of the film. But it is its cruel nature, wanting sacrifices of blood, that makes the Overlook such a scary hotel.

In that vein, I think we begin to return to the unseen. I wrote my first post about The Thing by John Carpenter, and state unequivocally that it was the scariest horror movie of all time. I think that the horror from this movie is that, like Body Snatchers, the monster lurks within, with other factors elevating the terror. This is no longer an anti Communist, anti-intellectual screed (as was its titular predecessor, as well as Body Snatchers). Rather, the fright is of the psychological nature, when the civilization of the men involved breaks down (fear of madness), when they realize they no longer know each other, or truly know themselves. What could be more frightening than not knowing if you continued to be you? Couple this with the thought that if in fact you are you, at best one of your colleagues is harboring a very slimy and malevolent monster under his skin. The isolation of each character, from himself, from his friends, and from the rest of the world, is total. Personally, I think I would have flipped my lid like the character Windows, and beat a hasty trail right to the arsenal (I often think how the shotgun would vitiate most horror movies plots, but probably not The Thing).

Well, that’s about it for now, gentle reader. As Mr. Hungus asked: What scares you?

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Inside: Challenging the Definition of Entertainment

It's tough to put into words the combination of reactions that came to me after experiencing the French horror/thriller Inside (a.k.a. À l'intérieur). The tale of a nine-months-pregnant widow being mercilessly tortured and stalked by a crazed woman out to literally steal the baby from her womb, it's certainly not an easy watch.

Directed by Alexandro Bustillo and Julien Maury (recently booted from the Hellraiser remake), Inside is the kind of movie that makes you question why you wanted to see it in the first place. It would be easy to dismiss it as just another depressing and sadistic piece of torture porn, but that's not really what it is. I wouldn't categorize it with garbage like Hostel and Saw III, which truly earn their pornography tag by making titillation through explicit violence their primary goal.

That's not what Inside is all about. It is disturbingly graphic, and shatters horror film taboos left and right, but I can honestly say that many of the depictions of violence were not gratuitous, in that they served a story and a theme that was every bit as unsettling, if not moreso. They are not there for their own sake.

Inside is a very well-made movie, with excellent photography by Laurent Barès, a riveting score by François Eudes (sound designer for the Hills Have Eyes remake), and a constantly building and expertly constructed aura of suspense. It's two main leads, newcomer Alysson Paradis as victim Sarah and tenured French leading lady Béatrice Dalle as the nameless antagonist, both turn in powerful performaces in roles quite rare for films of this kind.

All this quality was enough to distract me from the overall unsavoriness of the movie itself, as well as from some its noteable flaws. There are several gaping holes in logic and lapses in believability. There's also the problem of a paper-thin plot that is supported mainly by the constant influx of fresh victims, much like the classic slasher movie formula. And then there's the sporadic CGI, which, while ambitious, is enough to take you out of the movie in parts.

But as my wife so succinctly said to me as the credits rolled, "There are a lot of people who wouldn't be able to watch this movie." As a parent and someone who has vicariously experienced pregnancy, I perceived that the difficulty I had with it might not be as strong for someone who had not experienced those things. Conversely, for many women of a particularly sensitive nature, I could see this picture provoking nothing but disgust and contempt.

After seeing Inside, I found myself doing what I usually do after seeing a movie that has disturbed me--watching the special features, almost as a way of proving to myself on a subconscious level that it never really happened, that these people are just actors and everyone is fine. And as good a movie as it is, I really question its rewatchability. I, for one, cannot imagine subjecting myself to it again.

Complex reactions for a thematically complex film. At its heart, Inside is a movie about loss and what it can do to us, what we allow it to do to us. It's not fun, and I don't know if I would even use the word "enjoyable". But it is very intriguing, and well worth a look.

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Black House Brings the Scares, K-Horror Style

"I never knew insurance could kill people."

So says Jun-oh, the main character of Black House, the newest South Korean horror film to gain an American DVD release. And neither did I, until I saw this movie. It's unfortunate that those without an understanding of a film's original language can never fully assess its dialogue. But clumsy translations aside, Black House--a.k.a. Geomeun Jip--is a well-made and enjoyable hybrid of psychological thriller and slasher flick.

For those who care about this sort of thing, this review will contain some big-time spoilers, but there's just no way for me to do the movie justice without them. That said, this is an intelligent horror movie that deals primarily with the issues of psychopaths living in our midst every day, and how they coexist--or fail to do so--with the rest of society.

The central conflict is between the antagonist Yi-Hwa, a cold-blooded killer who remorsely maims and slaughters her own husbands and children for insurance money, and the aforementioned Jun-oh, a protagonist so deeply empathetic that he cannot even bring himself to kill Yi-Hwa, even when directly threatened by her. This clash of a pure psychopath and the most humane of heroes is particularly interesting, especially in their final confrontation--a very clever take on the classic slasher movie ending in which the killer inflicts her final wound to the hero by destroying herself despite his efforts to prevent it.

The revelation of Yi-Hwa as the murderer is one of the film's major twists, as we are initially led to believe it is her obviously odd husband who is masterminding the insurance crimes. A female movie slasher is an extremely rare thing, and the beautiful Seon Yu plays Yi-Hwa in chillingly effective fashion. Jeong-min Hwang also acquits himself well as the hapless yet good-hearted insurance agent Jun-oh.

First-time director Terra Shin does a solid job of building tension during the picture's well-paced and suspense-driven first half. This only adds to the payoff later, when the movie takes a turn into Saw-like "torture porn" territory. (We even get a particularly hard-to-watch car-key-to-the-eye-socket shot. After Hostel and now this, I'm beginning to think that young one-eyed Asian women are becoming a new horror staple.) And as with most films of this type, it is all extremely well photographed.

But Black House is a bit more intelligent than its American counterparts. Not content to shock us with non-stop violence wrapped in the feeblest of social messages, the movie attempts to deal more deeply with some morality concerns. If psychopaths are afflicted with mental illness, does that absolve them of blame? Do they deserve pity, or does pitying them simply make us easier prey? Is murder ever justified? The movie ventures into the kind of moral territory most slashers never do.

The movie is based on a novel by Japanese writer Yusuke Kishi, which was previously adapted in Japan into the 1999 film Kuroi Ei. I haven't seen that, so I can't compare the two (anyone who has is welcome to.) I'm not sure, therefore, whether to blame some of the movie's hard-to-ignore plot holes on the book or the screenplay (wouldn't a red flag be raised if Yi-Hwa has a history of cashing in on the loss of her spouses?)

There's also a certain amount of predictability at work--the second you see how happy Jun-oh and his girlfriend are, you just know she's going to be put in some serious danger before the film is out. But I'm not one to quibble too much about predictability. Someone once said that all the great ideas are already taken, and it's true--there are no new plot devices. Rather, what matters is how the plot devices are executed, and in Black House they are, by and large, done quite well.

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Gore Goes Mainstream: A History of Horror Movies, Part 7

It's ironic that the horror genre would be so quiet at the turn of the 21st century. Ironic, because in the years that followed--the final years of this seven-part history of horror--we have seen scary movies hold mainstream America fascinated to a degree greater than anything witnessed before, or at the very least since the heyday of Universal 75 years ago.

Whereas in the past, horror was treated as the forgotten stepchild of the movie biz, the sordid secret kept hidden away and relegated to midnight showings and niche subcultures, these days it's all around us, accepted like never before by a culture which has perhaps become too cynical and overexposed to real-life horrors to truly be shocked any longer. More on that later.

In recent years, the last true example of cinematic dread we've seen has been the surge of unnerving films that have come out of the Far East. In the Western world, the trend became to remake these films for American audiences, starting with The Ring in 2002. By far the most effective of the bunch, it was followed by the likes of The Grudge (2004), and more recently Shutter and The Eye.

Much of what became hip for the genre this decade has had to with a nostalgia for the films of a generation past. In part, this can be pointed to for the dramatic resurgence of the zombie subgenre--it can also be attributed to the success of videogames like Resident Evil. It was that game that kicked off the undead renaissance with a film adaptation in 2002. That same year saw the release of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, which introduced us to the concept of "fast-moving zombies."

It might not be an exaggeration to say that the past half-decade has seen more flesh-eater flicks than at any point previous. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead got a surprisingly high quality 2004 remake; Romero himself finally got to continue his saga with 2005's Land of the Dead; and Edgar Wright brought us the ingenious Shaun of the Dead (2004), the finest horror comedy this side of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

The other face of this nostalgia was a throwback to the gritty, over-the-top exploitation horror of the 1970s. After more than a decade of restraining itself, Hollywood was starting to let its hair down again. The result is epitomized by the work of rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie, whose House of 1,000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005) exemplify a return to the early work of Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven.

But the logical extension of this would turn out to be a development that has been troubling to some old-school fans, yet exhilirating to a whole new generation just now embracing the genre. It should be said that the major difference between the exploitation flicks of then and now is that now they enjoy the mainstream spotlight. Filmmakers who grew up on this form of entertainment have helped bring it to the fore like never before. And as a result, a natural evolutionary step has occurred.

In direct contrast to the previous decade, in which some of the most bloodless horror films of the modern era were released, the past few years have born witness to an almost unprecedented amount of gore. And this time, it's not hidden away in a rundown grindhouse theater, playing to an isolated subculture of aficionados, or relegated to a few racks in the back of your local video store. This time it's front and center, and right in everybody's face.

Although the first Saw film, released in 2004, was actually quite psychological and contained little graphic violence, it has become the most recognizable touchstone of what is now usually referred to as torture porn, a subgenre of horror that focuses on depicting bodily trauma in unflinching detail. In the later Saw pictures, and even moreso in a movie much more typical of the category, Eli Roth's Hostel (2005), some might even argue that the depiction of torture takes precedence over character and plot.

Never before have movies containing such images played to such a wide audience. They are a part of our pop culture in a way that their predecessors were not, at least in their own time. The reasons for this have been debated endlessly by social commentators both professional and amateur. Are we desensitized as a society? Or worse, have we grown to enjoy such macabre displays, like Romans at a gladiatorial event? Some have argued these points, while others simply say that horror filmmakers are only looking for new ways to disturb us, for new ground to cover.

If it is just all about exploring new territory, that's at least more admirable than the latest trend that has all but taken over the production of horror movies as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century: remakes.

Too timid to try anything original, the majority of those willing to back horror flicks these days are looking to cash in on bankable properties; proven titles that are almost guaranteed to bring in a buck, if only on name recognition alone. The 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre kicked it off for all intents and purposes, and it has only grown more commonplace in the past five years. We've seen Zombie redo Halloween (2007), plus slavish rehashes of classics like House of Wax (2005), The Amityville Horror (2005), The Omen (2006), The Wicker Man (2006), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), When a Stranger Calls (2006), The Hitcher (2007) and many others, with decidedly mixed results.

In the year 2008, horror fans have a veritable legion of upcoming horror redo's to look forward to: Prom Night, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Rosemary's Baby, Hellraiser, Sleepaway Camp, etc., etc. Perhaps it's a commentary on the state of the genre that it seems to be torn between groping to depict more and more horrifying images, and endlessly trying to recreate that which worked in the past.

So where do we go from here? Maybe overseas, where films like the excellent [REC] threaten to steal away America's dominance of the genre. Or maybe the upcoming Wolf Man and the rebirth of Hammer Films signify a return of the classic monsters. Then again, it's most likely a heretofore unseen new development as unimaginable as the likes of Psycho or Night of the Living Dead would've been to pre-1960s audiences.

If it survives this latest cannibalistic phase, the horror film genre can survive anything, and it will almost certainly continue to thrive. From Count Orlock and Erik the Phantom, to Dracula and Frankenstein, to the Gill-Man and Norman Bates, to Leatherface and Jason, to Jigsaw and Captain Spaulding, the cinema of fear has firmly held our imagination in its icy clutches for a hundred years. Ironically, for as long as there exists real horror in this world, we'll always seek the escape of its morbid, yet safely unreal on-screen counterpart.

Other major releases:

• The Others (2000)
• Final Destination (2000)
• Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
• Wrong Turn (2003)
• The Descent (2005)
• Silent Hill (2006)
• Fido (2007)
• Hatchet (2007)
• 28 Weeks Later (2007)
• Diary of the Dead (2008)

Part 1: The Silent Dead

Part 2: Gods & Monsters

Part 3: It Came from Hollywood

Part 4: The Times, They Are a-Changin'

Part 5: Blood and Guts

Part 6: From Post-Mortem to Postmodern

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