Torture porn is a really interesting subdivision/spin off from Horror as a genre: I’m not sure what it says about the state of the world, really, except that perhaps censorship has devolved to a point where Id based fantasies have got a free reign. And maybe it reflects something of the horror of 6 billion human minds sharing a scarily small and resource depleted space, and people living without sense of identity, competing for the right to self. It strikes me as claustrophobia gone mad.
Your list is really good: Repulsion’s a brilliant film, and Eyes Without A Face is equally terrifying. You’re right about the first Texas Chainsaw as well: it’s the portrayal of the cannibal backwater redneck inbreds that chills, not the massacre itself. And I love Evil Dead 2. Bruce Campbell is excellent (“Give me back my hand!”).
Horror’s different to disturbia (which is more of a psych thing, and often about realism) – there’s a sick, sometimes slapstick comedy element comes in to play (as it does in real life when we are faced with the unspeakable) when the pitch hits maximum. So I don’t think the post is invalid.
I’d add The Thing (John Carpenter) because it was the first real horror film I saw: I love the doppelganger element, and I think the ending avoids all cliches (monster isn’t actually dead, rises for a final bite, etc) and leaves you with a really bleak and hopeless question.
Hey Akira, I completely agree with you that there a lot of really artistic and well-made horror films, that are not trying to get the auidences through showing hot girls/guys being tortured, lot of blood, cheap scares or special effects. In addition to the movies that you guys mentioned, some other films that I think that belongs to this list are:
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Probably, my all-time favorite Horror Film.
Fists in The Pocket, which I think is one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen.
Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” which masterfully disturb the auidences through the psychological tension and atmosphere, rather than blood and supernatural forces…
“Misery” with Kathy Bates.
Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom
And, most recently “Let The Right One In,” which one the Best Narrative Award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, I believe one of the
I agree with you Toby that the current subdivision of horror reveals something interesting about censorship and the current tastes of society. I always found the audience anticipating these films far more disturbing than the films themselves because it always was strange to me that people are paying admission to watch people killed in the most graphic and realistic ways possible. But the genre is cyclical, so this is similar to the slasher craze of the 80s, I just hope the next cycle isn’t snuff films.
I agree with you on The Thing, the combination of arctic claustrophobia and paranoia was a great representation of Carpenter’s skills. That scene where Russell tests the blood of his comrades still scares the hell out of me.
Halim, I would like to see Fists in the Pocket, and I’ve heard great things about Let The Right One In, however it may be a while before I see that one because I rely on Netflix for a large majority of the movies I watch.
“I just hope the next cycle isn’t snuff films.”
Me too. That’s a scary thought. It’s quite possible.
It’s an odd thing you mentioning the slasher craze: all those B-movie early VHS and BetaMax video releases: I remember (vaguely, I was very young) the British tabloids at the time screaming blue murder about films like “I spit on your grave” and “The Hills Have Eyes.” The 80s were a time of massive social division and sheer materialistic greed, not entirely dissimilar to the decade in which we live now: the value is all in the $ sign, the label, the brand. People seek celebrity for no reason, for no purpose, with no intent. It’s all about power over the next human being, fear of the other, the outskirts where the disaffected lie in wait, and breathing a sigh of relief that it isn’t you who’s suffering. I think this is a huge reason that TP has (re)emerged in this cycle. It’s all a bloody mirror.
What do you think about the whole pastiche/homage genre thing with films like Scary Movie and Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc.? There’s a knowingness to these films that seems bizarre to me: they still operate as horror flics, but they feel like they’ve been filtered through the mind of Jaques Tati.
The homage movies I sometimes really enjoy – such as Shaun of the Dead and Slither – however these homages can often replace originality within the genre. I think that most horror movies of today are homages to the works of Romero or Carpenter, and the knowingness has become a staple in some sub-sections of the genre, a recent example is Haneke’s Funny Games remake where the killers ask the audience what should be done to the victims, almost reveling in the idea of the audience as the assailant. I do find the horror genre interesting for employing such methods, and the tongue-in-cheek wit can work well as satire. But I fear that such self-referencing will make the audience complacent in these practices and it will become too common a tactic of horror filmmakers, making the genre a sort of joke.
Haha. Tati doing horror. Films like Scary Movie have more in common with Mel Brooks than any true horror film. As to the pastiches, they come off to me as postmodernist commentaries on the genre.
The Shining is the best mainstream horror film ever made, because it is still scary after years of jokes and ripoffs. The only thing I’ve seen from Asian horror, which has exploded in the past decade, is Audition, and that was creepy but not “terrifying.” Funny Games is a cross-polination between the Saw subgenre and the postmodernist subgenre – and it works, because the smugness of the villains (or are they villains in Haneke’s eyes?) makes us hate them all the more.
Didn’t torture porn really take off after 9/11? I’m sure there’s a connection there, between a jaded, nervous population and a genre that was going to make death and torture into an escapist entertainment. And of course it’s eerie to think of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib operating while people in this country lined up to see the Saw and Hostel franchises.
i really love horror movies, but it’s so hard to find good ones. i can’t even think of any good horror movies past the 80s
suspiria’s the best
Johnny, you need to see “Audition”-Takashi Miike (2002)
How about Carnival of Souls; I love the scenes shot at Saltair and also the organ music.
The first time I saw the 1997 Funny Games I really almost threw up. LOVE Eyes Without A Face. The Shining is obviously…. The Shining. Also, I’m sure Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer was a hallmark viewing for many of the posters here.
For a great, unpretentious and readable bit of theory, check out Cynthia Freeland’s stuff on horror. Her short essay “Realist Horror” is a gem. I’ll see if I can dig out some of her other essays I would recommend.
Can’t handle “torture porn” or sit through a Hostile movie myself, even though I’ve dived into I’ve endured Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit on Your Grave et al… I still thing CH is a bit of crap though. Would love to post more about favorites and such, but I’ve got to catch the last showing of Wendy & Lucy!
mulholland drive gets in my head and haunts my dreams for days
Justin-Torture horror was plentiful in the 70’s-mainly from Europe-The Ilsa series for one. Also U.S. films like Last House on the Left. I actually liked the Hostel films and the first Saw but have never gotten into the Italian Cannibal films from the 70’s.
That’s true Steve, but the Ilsa she-wolf movies weren’t really mainstream, they were sort of Times Square fare and considered pretty hardcore. I think they got x-ratings. The mainstreaming of torture, or torture as porn, I feel is a more recent phenomenom. But I could be wrong. Last House on the Left didn’t really scare me all that much, it was unpleasant at times but not hair-raising.
Blood and Black Lace
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Whip and the Body
Black Sunday
5 Dolls for an August Moon
Dead of Night (1945)
Spider Baby
The Tenant
Switchblade Sisters
Brides of Blood
Salo
Eraserhead
The Gore Gore Girls
Color Me Blood Red
Bloodsucking Freaks
Taste of Blood
Seven Blood Stained Orchids
Cannibal Ferox
Almost Human
Nightmare City
Syndicate Sadists
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Suspiria
The Cat O’Nine Tails
The Hatchet Murders
Tenebre
terrific Zombie films
Carnival of Souls
Zombie II: The Dead are Among Us
White Zombie
Bowery at Midnight
Voodoo Dawn
Undead
Cemetery Man
I Walked with a Zombie
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
The Dead Next Door
Return of the Living Dead
Hell of the Living Dead
Pet Cematary
Robot Monster
The Night of the Living dead
The Lorelei’s Grasp
Tomb of the Blind Dead
Eraserhead
The Sorcerers
I’d recommend Dead and Buried—which also happens to be the one time I think studio meddling actually made for a better movie.
Inland Empire remains the single most frightening experience that I’ve had this decade, yet I couldn’t look away. It may be one of my all-time favorites, I hope never to understand it.
Zulawski’s Possession is a truly weird, fucked up movie that might not be classically horror, but illicts terror in me for sure.
i’ve seen audition, it was pretty good. i like the fact that the majority of the movie is a romantic drama, then turns horror at the very end. i would have liked it even if the end was in the same vein as the rest of the movie
Jasmin- Possession is a tough one to handle.
>>it’s eerie to think of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib operating while people in this country lined up to see the Saw and Hostel franchises<<
Indeed it is. It also suggests -given the SAW and HOSTEL films have been pretty successful – a possible reason why there wasn’t more public outcry from the US public about our torturing of prisoners.
One thing also to consider is that given the trauma of 9/11, and the horrific images that we saw in the wake of that—as well as horrific images of the war that continue to come—the bar for what counts as “shocking” was raised much higher. This isn’t just gore but general feelings of anxiety and fear.
These movies went (and continue to go) to an extreme in order to offer intense experiences that went beyond what the news was offering. This would explain the developments in the 1970s horror as well. In other words, film isn’t only escapist but it is the production of emotion—simulated and contained. So with horror, one can feel scared and repulsed but otherwise no marks are left and no one is really hurt. When the horror one sees on daily news makes that banal, the movies have to do more to make it over the top. Of course, this isn’t the only factor, but it is a big one.
I love Funny Games
The Devils
I Drink Your Blood
Eden Lake (U.S readers of this site- rent this film- it’s a masterpiece.)
Bay of Blood
Don’t Torture A Duckling
The Candy Snatchers
Maniac
The Exorcist III (truly underrated)
Dawn of the Dead
Mother’s Day
Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer
Witchfinder General a.k.a The Conquered Worm
Possession I couldn’t stand! So overwrought and badly paced…for me, anyway.
But in the category of “Bloody Good”:
The Howling (great extras on the special edition DVD, btw. highly recommended) – Dante
American Werewolf in London – Landis
The Thing – Carpenter
You can’t go wrong with those three, I figure. Classics 80’s horror.
I do like the Blade films. The first two, anyway. Great combo of action and horror.
And a guilty admission: I recently saw My Bloody Valentine 3D. Not great like some of the others I’ve listed, but it could be classified as “Bloody Good 3D!”
>>One thing also to consider is that given the trauma of 9/11, and the horrific images that we saw in the wake of that—as well as horrific images of the war that continue to come—the bar for what counts as “shocking” was raised much higher. This isn’t just gore but general feelings of anxiety and fear.
These movies went (and continue to go) to an extreme in order to offer intense experiences that went beyond what the news was offering. This would explain the developments in the 1970s horror as well. In other words, film isn’t only escapist but it is the production of emotion—simulated and contained. So with horror, one can feel scared and repulsed but otherwise no marks are left and no one is really hurt. When the horror one sees on daily news makes that banal, the movies have to do more to make it over the top. Of course, this isn’t the only factor, but it is a big one.<<
All very true. Hell, we saw people jumping out of window a hundred stories up on 9-11 … and footage of the Vietnam war in the 1970s, the other great period of increasingly explicit gore.
But it isn’t the gore that bothers me so much in horror movies, so long as the gore isn’t the only point … as in the FRIDAY THE 13TH type films that just became an increasing bore.
But when I saw HOSTEL, the emphasis was on people screaming and begging for their lives for excruciatingly protracted scenes. What you could see didn’t seem all that explicit – the torture scenes seemed pretty murky to the extend I wasn’t always sure what body parts were being excised. It’s was the emphasis that disturbed me.
There’s a good documentary on 70s horror called American Nightmare that ties what’s going on in films by Carpenter and Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven and Romero with the social and political upheavals of the late 60s and into 70s. For instance connecting Tom Savini’s make-up brilliance with the time he served in Viet Nam as a military photographer filming combat. I believe that the doc on Val Lewton made the connection between post WW II anxieties and the success of those films (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie) as well. So there are definitely cycles.
Akira Kar-Wai
I always thought of the horror genre as one of the most unqiue genres in film. It may have been pigeon-holed into the likes of torture porn and slasher films recently, but I think a great horror film can be without monsters or tons and tons of gore. Just a few that come to mind are:
Repulsion (a low-budget showcase of the descent of a woman into madness)
Cronenberg’s early films (Dead Ringers for example, two twins sharing their sexual endeavors is just creepy)
Memento (I always thought of this as horror, I mean just imagine not having the ability to make new memories, you could wake up when your 80, still believing yourself to be 30, look in the mirror and have a nervous breakdown)
Suspiria (for the more artistic horror aficionado, gorgeously gory visuals)
Evil Dead 2 (forget about the gore and B-movie effects, the real frights for me come from Bruce Campbell slowly losing his mind in that cabin)
The Descent (yes it has monsters in it, but I’ve heard many convincing arguments that these were all the hallucinations of a depressed, mad woman)
The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (despite its reputation, there is very little gore and it really is a portrait of a family of psychotics more than anything else)
No Country for Old Men (the theme of society as an immoral wasteland ruled by evil deeds is as depressing as it is scary)
Closet Land (Alan Rickman as the sadistic interrogator is brilliant)
I’m Not Scared (I highly recommend this for the world it paints and the performance of the lead, who is a child)
Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju’s film is as creepy as anything else that has been put on film, it is one of the best you’ll find in horror)
This thread – now that I think of it – is kinda a rip-off of the Disturbing Movies thread, which I apologize for. Anyway, what are some movies that you think represent the horror genre a whole lot better than the current atmosphere of gore over story?