Dirty Horror

[lazario]

First of all, when I say "dirty," I'm not talking about "brutal" or anything of the kind. That's something altogether different. This is about styles of horror that are dirty.


When it comes to something sexually dirty, a different style all its' own, we as horror fans need to realize that when you combine sex with violence at the same time, you're making a statement. And- it was already done in Wes Craven's non-gothic but very dirty, low budget, very intellectual and psychological and outstanding film - The Last House on the Left.

After that film, there is no more need to combine sex with violence. Some of the Friday the 13th films did it and that series is a thing unto itself (Part 2 - the couple speared in bed while having sex, The Final Chapter - the man harpooned in the groin). But films like I Spit on Your Grave, The New York Ripper, The Prowler, the Italian Cannibal films, The Devil's Rejects, and the new French wave of horror films that aim/LINK violence and killers killing people toward sex and sexuality - are not necessary and are in fact pointless. We don't need them, and if their only redeeming value is to be "dirty" and "brutal" and "sick" - that's not good for the horror genre. The horror genre is about doing something artfully for a reason. A reason better than those. It needs a point. Now especially since so many fans have been insulting horror by defending these movies.

These movies are just ripping off Last House on the Left because it bothered people. That's not good enough. There has to be more of a reason.

[piggsy]

Ever seen Chaos? It's an unoffical remake of LHOTL. Unlike the Wes Craven's version, the bad guy wins.

[shunty]

those films mentioned vary in quality. the devil's rejects for instance is just a rip-off of LHOTL. some of the 'French' horror movies of this decade are far from that though.

[lazario]

Well I meant that no matter how hard they try, there's no way in hell they're ever going to capture the power of Craven's early films. They were superior "grindhouse" or "exploitation" films because they were actually saying something and were more than just grittiness and cutting people up for no reason.

Horror today has completely lost all purpose. I don't know what's worse. The remakes that are just clueless or the French horror that tries to make up for it's uselessness by adding sexual violence and perversion.

[malbowski13]

I disagree. I think that horror has been on an upward swing since the early 2000's.Other than a few direct to dvd titles, the 90's were pretty lame.

As I am a fan of I Spit on Your Grave, I have to ask Laz: What is the big statement that LHOTL delivers? Seems like your basic exploitation film to me.

[tsmooth31]

^^ it was just a basic exploitation movie, but since he liked it its something much more ( in his own demented head)

as for sexual violence type of movies i like them because i like a good revenge movie and most of these types of movies result in a revenge movie

[shunty]

i liked the LHOTL because it was so much deeper than I Spit On Your Grave. The characters that commited the crime were cruel but weren't devoid of their own human emotions. Also, the music and how everything unfolds is just so perfect in the movie. It was also the first of its kind and spoke for the changing era of movies in the 70s.

[lazario]

Aug 24, 2008 22:37:41 GMT -5 tsmooth31 said:

^^ it was just a basic exploitation movie, but since he liked it its something much more (in his own demented head)

Spoken by the Most Ignorant Horror Fan on the Internet. Yeah, you're full of shit, you've clearly always been, and nobody with a brain is listening to you anyway. Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Evil Dead are masterpieces, Saw is shit and The Blob Remake is a ripoff.

Sorry, Mal - Spit is Shit. Last House on the Left is not. Watch the movies again. You'll understand.

[malbowski13]

I remember them both being pretty good but I will rewatch...

[tsmooth31]

spit wasnt bad but it was a bit of a dissapointment, last house i saw so long ago i dont really even remember it, but i think i do rememeber thinking/hoping it would be better then it was

[lazario]

Aug 25, 2008 17:08:50 GMT -5 @malbowski13 said:

I remember them both being pretty good but I will rewatch...

You should definitely rewatch. Because Last House on the Left has a point and actually knew what it should show people. And had an actual message about society.

I Spit on Your Grave came over 6 years later and decided to just copy what it thought Last House was about, rape, which it (LHotL) wasn't about, and make a whole movie about that. And call it horror. But it's not. It's rape. And showing it for as long as the movie did is hateful and stupid. It was a PETTY, superficial tale of revenge with no substance, that showed a rape for no good reason. Women don't need to be raped to have a reason to kill men in movies, nor to prove that men are responsible for the worlds' greatest horrors. But the director thinks women being killers is offensive, so he thinks it's not offensive to have her viciously raped and beaten for 10-20 minute sessions!! That's completely idiotic thinking for a filmmaker. The guy clearly wanted to show a rape like he did, although she was violated more than once onscreen, because he thought that was entertaining to people and he has a problem with women. Which is also why the men she kills don't spend 10-20 minutes dying onscreen. The death scenes are all short and her rape is long. Which shows you which act the director thinks is more entertaining to watch.

That alone proves Spit is a shit movie.

[malbowski13]

I think that he showed a long rape scene so the viewer would be a lot more "affected". Rubbing it in your face, so to speak.

[lazario]

Well, I'll tell you how it affected viewers. The accounts of what happened in the movie theaters that showed I Spit on Your Grave are well-known and oft-recorded by film historians, critics, and the few intelligent horror enthusiasts who for whatever reason attented the showings:

Men cheered the rape scenes, called the victim Jennifer Hills a "bitch" and a "cunt" (while she was being raped), after her rape it's been recalled that several men said "the bitch got what she deserved," the female members of the audience ignored the male comments, until she started murdering the men, in which a few women shouted, "cut him up, sister!"

I'll tell you how it affected the audience, by bringing out the woman-hater in men and the man-hater in women. It didn't address ANY real issues. And since the movie is more rape than revenge, without the woman doing anything bad at all- a large portion of the men in the audience screamed hateful things to her, cheered her rape, and made satisfied comments afterward. No one was horrified by watching this movie. Don't kid yourself.

[tsmooth31]

the more brutal the rape the better, rape is such a disgusting crime so i wanna really feel for the women and really get satisfaction when she gets down to business and slaughters the scumbags

[lazario]

She didn't need to be brutally raped to slaughter those guys. They were evil, hateful idiots from the beginning. She taught them the same lesson no matter what they did to her.

And if you need to see women raped to "feel" for them, you might be even more fucked up than I thought.

[tsmooth31]

i dont need them to be, but in that type of movie it helps, a revenge movie is pointless if the victim doesnt have a good motive for revenge, which is why rape and the death of a family member work the best for revenge movies

[lazario]

How many horror movies have you seen that you would call "revenge movies"?

[tsmooth31]

i dunno, alot of revenge movies arent horror though, like death sentence, that was a great revenge movie, but it wasnt horror

[malbowski13]

I'd rather have a negative reaction than none at all, if I was the filmmaker. He got his point across, right or wrong.

[lazario]

Aug 28, 2008 18:04:58 GMT -5 tsmooth31 said:

i dunno, alot of revenge movies arent horror though, like death sentence, that was a great revenge movie, but it wasnt horror

That might have been my point too. I don't know. At least you have differentiated between revenge and horror.

But the movie still is shit. Revenge is not for movies. And maybe you like it in movies so much because you're not trying to make things in your real life any better. You definitely seem to have a strong urge to lash out at other people. But you should probably see that minorities are not the bad ones. And that maybe people want revenge against people like you too. But they wouldn't try to get it in stupid movies that think a split second of revenge is worth an hour of torture. That's crazy talk.

Aug 28, 2008 22:47:45 GMT -5 @malbowski13 said:

I'd rather have a negative reaction than none at all, if I was the filmmaker. He got his point across, right or wrong.

He got his point across?

Hmmm... Maybe some people are really easy to get a reaction out of, though. It certainly isn't hard to bring out the hateful pig in a viewer. As Spit proved.