At least I hope so. While I wait for people to answer my questions I figure I'll take a minute to talk about a thing or two.
As those that know me will know, I love movies. Movies are second only to books for me as far as entertainment goes. I see a lot of movies and I do mean a lot. It will also surprise no one (as I will often rant about my feelings concerning genre snobs and their ilk) that I also love horror cinema. I don't say that with a disclaimer attached. I love horror cinema. Not all of it of course because just like everything else, most of it is bad and just like everything else it goes in cycles and follows trends. These cycles and trends are often not my cup of Mexican beer.
The high points make me all manner of happy (the "Golden Age" of the 30's, the rise of Hammer Studios, the ridiculously intelligent things like Psycho and The Haunting from the 60's, the very very beginning of the slasher craze) while the low makes me sad for the genre (the slide into total camp of the forties which while entertaining in itself was shameful considering, the middle and end of the slasher craze, the remake boom, the Japanese remake boom, and everything from the current "torture porn" thing with the sole exception of the first Saw). I could write pages and pages about this but no one would care so I won't.
Anyway, I'm hoping that with the obvious death of the torture porn thing (I don't know who made that name up but that's what all the reviewers call it so, whatever) the next wave will be started next Friday, continued the Friday after that and picked up on for a while.
Rob Zombie please save me from bad horror films.
His remake of Halloween opens this weekend. Normally I would be screaming for his head on a platter but he's Rob Zombie. I've read lots of interviews and he has a real respect for and deep knowledge of horror cinema. He actually called John Carpenter before signing on for this and Carpenter told him to make it his own. My hope is that he will fire on all cylinders and blow me away.
The week after, a movie called Hatchet opens up. It calls itself old school American horror. Please don't let me down. If both of these movies take off it could mean a rebirth of good horror movies after a pretty vicious dry spell. Even if you don't care (very likely) keep your fingers crossed for my sake. The hard part about liking all genres is that you have more things to suffer through when the cycles and trends go south.
Let us pray that Brother Zombie will deliver us to evil. Amen.
Oh and in other geek news, Matt Wagner has a new Grendel series starting in November. Just typing it makes me sexually aroused. Also I have a sentence for you:
Warren Ellis has a new series out called Doktor Sleepless: Future Science Jesus.
If that sentence doesn't do it for you then you may already be dead.
6 comments:
You don't consider Blood Sucking Freaks to be good torture porn? :(
I know you're only using it because it's the tag chosen by the media, but "torture porn" is such a stupid name.
It's no different to the similar name that some douchebag came up with for violent videogames (can't remember it now, of course, but it was about as creative... probably "gameporn")
Snuff, which doesn't actually exist, is the only real torture porn. Maybe I'm completely desensitized from freely surfing the net (almost definitely the case) but even the most gruesome, pointless violence on screen doesn't strike me as sickening or there solely for itself... it strikes me as a shitty movie that probably did try to have a plot but they sucked too much to make it worthwhile.
Especially the mainstream movies that get tagged like that, I'm thinking Hostel here... the plot was pretty obvious and horrible, so it was branded by reactionary critics as torture porn but really... come on. It had a nice amount of T'n'A and the killings were a bit too lo-fi to really feel uncomfortably real.
Bah!
Get me started on what they call horror. Go ahead.
I consider Blood Sucking Freaks to be a classic actually. When I mention "torture porn" I refer ONLY to the movement that has come about these last few years and NOT things like Cannibal Holocaust or I Spit on Your Grave or Troma films etc.
Damo, I actually think of it more as squirm horror. They aren't trying to scare me so much as they are trying to make me aggressively uncomfortable. They don't do it but they try like hell.
*gets Taco started*
I'm glad someone else besides me doesn't like "torture porn" or whatever they call it. It actually does disturb me when I see it, but I think not in the way that they intend. I'm disturbed that we're so de-sensitized as a culture that someone actually sat around and thought up all these disgusting things to do to people and made bank on it. I mean, I can think up lots of sick things a person can do, but why put that garbage (because that's what it is) into our collective unconscious? Don't we have enough shit (MTV) in there that now the last thing we need is a maladjusted teenager breaking into his school with a machine gun, kidnapping his secret crush, and strapping a reverse bear trap thingy to her jaw because she won't go out with him? It's just... I dunno.
I think normally I wouldn't care one way or the other, it's just that I had this friend who liked all the Saws and Hostels and what have you, but she DIDN'T like the Exorcist when she saw it.
...
I'm sorry, WHAT? You DON'T like the exorcist? (quoth I)
Nope, she didn't like it. She was even a die-hard Catholic, you would think demonic possession would be high on her list of fears. But nope. Nothing. She didn't think it was "scary" enough.
She was a complete product of today's media culture, in more ways than just that one. It saddens me.
Doesn't like Exorcist... *grumble*
That makes no sense as The Exorcist is the most terrifying movie ever made. Clearly you should never speak to that person again.
Post a Comment