I saw on the web that quentin tarantino is doing a track with eli and some other guy. Anyone plan on listening
Already heard it twice. It’s awesome. For about ten or fifteen minutes towards the end they’re only talking about Kill Bill.
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Already heard it twice. It’s awesome. For about ten or fifteen minutes towards the end they’re only talking about Kill Bill.
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Wasn’t too crazy about the movie, but sounds like another purchase based on the commentary alone!
Has anyone seen this movie? I’ve never seen, but I don’t want to buy it or rent it unless it’s good, I just don’t feel like watching people being tortured for 90 minutes.
A friend of mine said that "it’s very cool movie and it’s so scary!"
nah, whatever. i’ don’t want to watch it
I cant say Im a big fan of the Hostel films. I love certain gore movies but the whole torture porn subgenre isnt my thing. To me its almost seems like a shortcut for people who cant make suspenseful films, they just use torture as the main attraction.
i am not a big fan of hostel either but i bought the dvd of the 1st one and really enjoyed the commentary with QT even if half of it is just “Eli you are such a great writer, you did so well with this scene” “well, thanks quentin/boaz/scott”. I will probably end up buying hostel 2 as well…
The whole “torture porn” moniker makes me laugh. It actually severely irritates me. Because it doesn’t exist. It was made up by a critic, Dave Poland I think, and it stuck. I don’t know a single person who gets off sexually watching the torture scenes in a Hostel movie or a Saw movie. I always found them disturbing and they’re meant to be disturbing. This is just an old argument like when the slasher films were popular in the 80s, when people objected to the content because they were afraid it would give people ideas and go out and imitate what they saw in the movie. (I always thought it was funny that the people that objected to it were never the ones who got those ideas to imitate what was up on the screen, it was always those “other” people.) To that argument, what I say is, if those movies scared you into believing someone might do that, to you or to others, then the movie WORKED. It’s supposed to frighten you. It’s a fuckin’ horror movie. If I’m watching a horror movie in the theater and if there isn’t some point in the watching of it that I’m not afraid someone in the theater is going to grab me from behind and shoot me in the head or stab me from behind, then the movie doesn’t work.
I’ve been watching horror movies since I was 4 years old. If anything I should be part of the demographic that should create psychos, if you believe all this bullshit, and I’m not. I’d much rather know how the effects were achieved. I think Dave Poland is confusing interest in how it was done with some kind of sexual gratification.
This is exactly the kind of backlash that wound up creating the video nasty era. Hey, and I’m all for it. It keeps knowledge of these movies alive. It creates more exploitative hype than the original marketing teams could even have dreamed. So many people balk at the marketing for these films, that when they exit the theater, they claim they’re disappointed, that the movies aren’t delivering on their marketing. But this is how exploitation films are marketed. It’s how they always have been. It’s how they always will be. In the 30s and 40s you had films advertised as being, “THE MOST HORRIFYING FILM THRILLER OF OUR AGE!” Were they? Were they really? That’s when studios adopted the vaudeville, P.T. Barnum hucksterstyle of advertising. You think that just disappeared? It just evolved.
Im just not into those certain kinds of movies. Regardless of the torture porn label. If you like them, more power to ya. I dont believe that most people get off to torture movies, but its one of those kinds of things you either are into or youre not. I love a good horror movie but watching people getting tortured and thats it just isnt enough for me as a longtime horror fan. It just doesnt do it for me. I need more than that I guess.
Just because I dont like films such as Hostel and Saw doesnt mean you are anti-horror movies either. I just dont happen to like those specific films. So what? I have that right. I happen to love Fulci’s zombie movies those have lots of great gore in them. Im just not into movies that are about torturing people. Im not even scared of them, I’m just not interested in them story/plotwise. I think theyre kinda stupid actually. Thats just my personal opinion.
Im not really a fan of Eli Roth either. I kinda liked Cabin Fever, but Im just not down with the Hostel movies.
Sorry QT!! 
I understand that, Putney, and I have no qualms with that. (I will say I am surprised though, because they’re all heavily steeped in influence from the exploitation films from the 70s, i.e., the grindhouse films, and that’s your genre of high regard.) I’m just gettin’ into a rant, I guess, because I’m sick of that label. You didn’t create that label, it’s not your fault. But it is part of the culture now and that in itself infuriates me. Before that moniker I’d hear people bashing Hostel (the first one) because it was like a porno, but more so pertaining to the first half of the film, the Amsterdam part and the sex scene with the girls in the hostel. And that always confused me. My generation, back in the 80s, if you were to tell any of us there was a movie with sex and nudity, we were right there with bated breath ready to watch it. I’m talking about all the horror movies and the teen sex comedies. Today it’s just so different. I hear guys close to twenty arguing why they should watch Hostel, it’s just like watching a porno. Well, what the fuck’s wrong with a porno? Shouldn’t they be watching pornos at that age? And, having said that, how is Hostel like a porno? Where’s the cum shot? Where’s the penetration? I just don’t get these people. And then when I voice this, they say, "Oh, well, I guess you’re right."
What gets me is when people are singling out the Saw films and the Hostel films, I wonder why no one ever seems to bring up the films that involved torture before them. I don’t necessarily mean just movie fans, I mean the media especially. They’re not the first films to involve torture scenes. I just saw Red Dragon again after a long while, and you have that scene where Phillip Seymour Hoffman is stuck naked to a chair with some kind of liquid polymer or glue. Nobody singled that scene out back then, and that wasn’t too fuckin’ long ago. I watched that and it disturbed me no less than any scene in a Hostel movie or a Saw movie. And then what happens? He’s burned alive and rolled into a parking garage, just like in Manhunter before it. Having said that I doubt this is nothing any different than the films in the 70s got. Last House on the Left, Texas Chain Massacre, Friday the 13th, Mark of the Devil, Zombie.
They’re all in very good company, if you ask me.
Putney: That’s cool that you kinda like Cabin Fever. It’s actually in vogue right now to bash that flick. I’m in total geek love with Cabin Fever, and I’ll stand up for it till the day I die. I love Hostel for its ode to Japanese horror films and gothic horror films and sexploitation films, and I love Hostel: Part II for its ode to the Italian horror film. I think its interesting as hell that right now, the only country that’s releasing films heavily steeped in the Italian style of horror films today is the United States. High Tension is the exception, unless you wanna call (at least the first) Saw an Australian horror film in the giallo style because James Wan and Leigh Whannel are Australian. The films were produced here though.
To be clear, Im not against the films and Im not for censoring them in any way. I shouldnt have used the “torture porn” label, because its actually not really a good way to describe them. Im just speaking as a longtime horror film watcher (the first horror movie I ever saw was Poltergeist). Films like Hostel and Saw just dont draw my interest as a horror fan. I really dont like the majority of modern horror to be honest. Its not just Hostel. Im picky I guess.
I havent seen Hostel II yet but Im guessing it has torture in it!
High Tension: Loved it up until that psychological twist showed up. Although I guess you could say it was always in there from the beginning, but for a first time watcher, I really didnt pick it up until later on. I was just let down by it. If it had stayed a regular slasher/stalker film I wouldve loved it. I dont like that Lynchian logic shit in my horror movies!!
Right on, Putney, right on. I saw my first horror movie when I was 4, but I’d be damned to know what the first one was. It’s all mashed together for me. Humongous, The Beast Within, Friday the 13th, The Exorcist… every one of my birthdays before I moved out of Long Island I had Friday the 13th marathons and my mother had to clear it with the parents of the other kids that it was all right before they came over.
When I was five I was so gung ho into writing a novel that would brdge the events of Exorcist with Exorcist 2. I had my trusty Fisher Price typewriter and I got to work on it. Hell if I know where it is now.
Horror films are a dime a dozen these days and it’s tough to pick the gems from the trash. But there’s enough coming out in the modern horror wave that is as good if not better than what came in the 70s and 80s.
Putney: High Tension was a Italian horror movie lover’s dream, as far as I’m concerned. Gianetto De Rossi is a fuckin’ genius. God I squirmed during the mother’s murder, and it was great. The whole movie is Cecile De France sitting in that room trying to convince herself she had nothing to do with the murders. When her attempt to distance herself from the murders fails, she starts over. That’s why in the beginning of the movie she says, “I was dreaming. I was chasing me. It was me chasing me.” Slasher films devote themselves very highly to Freudian impulses.
Id say about 50% of the movies I watched in the 80s were horror. That was really my first foray into movie geekdom, renting every horror film I could get my hands on in my local video store. From Friday The 13th to Faces of Death to Evil Dead 1 and 2.
Im just not too crazy about most of the modern stuff. Ah well.
I love a lot of the modern stuff because a lot of it is very giallo inspired. I can’t get over how the Italian film industry is barely alive right now, especially the Italian horror film industry, except for Argento, really, and the American horror films are picking up the Italian horror movie slack. I’m amazed.
Real quick, here’s what I hate right now with a passion:
Anything from Platinum Dunes (although I am a Michael Bay fan… I put that out there… fuck, I’m gonna get lynched… I hate the movies he produces and doesn’t direct. Ew.)
Anything from Ghost House Pictures. Anything Raimi produces and doesn’t direct, at least out of Ghost House… pathetic.
Anything from Dark Castle. Does that go without saying?
I love classic giallo cinema. Its one of my most fave genres actually. I just watched the latest DVD release of The Psychic last night. Great one from Fulci!
I have a tough time watching horror movies that look like MTV videos. Stuff from Bay’s Platinum Feces, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. I dont know I just cant get into most of whats coming out these days. It always lets me down in some way or another.
I got the Masters of Horror boxset a month ago, those were fun. I had a couple I really liked like Landis’ Deer Woman, Cohen’s Pick Me Up, Argento’s Jennifer and Takashi Miike’s Imprint.
As popular as Lionsgate is right now, they’re still maintaining a very underground sensibility and I appreciate that. Platinum Dunes is Michael Bay’s little pet project to give his music video director buddies some work. When they start making original films we’ll see how good they are. The Texas Chainsaw remake and its prequel infuriated me.
Dude, is it just me or did The Psychic release come totally out of the blue? When I heard about it it was already coming out the next day. Fuck, I gotta get that.
Well, The Psychic was out on DVD from a company called Alfa Digital. I got my first copy from Xploited Cinema last year. But this one from Severin Films I wasnt expecting cuz they mostly specialize in erotic films. Speaking of that I just got their new Emanuelle Box set and another Fulci sex comedy called The Eroticist too. Im going to watch them over the next few days.
Yeah, I need to pick up The Eroticist too. If you’re a fan of Aldo Lado’s Night Train Murders, there’s a whole sequence in Hostel: Part II devoted to it. You should check it out. Ruggero Deodato, Edwige Fenech and Luc Merenda have cameos. It’s awesome.
I love Edwidge Fenech. I’ll have to watch it just to see her!
I think torture porn means that it’s basically the torture version of regular porn. I mean, what is porn? It’s lots of fucking and tiny bits of story to call it a “movie”. What are the Saw movies (at least the sequels)? Lots of torture and some “story”.
The first half of both Hostel has no torture, it is all a buildup, so I don’t know if I want to call that “torture porn”. I like the second Hostel film. I might not buy it, but it wasn’t bad. God knows I’ve seen much worse in the genre.
Anyways, the scariest part in Hostel 2 was before Heather M. was tortured. The actual torture was disgusting too, but before anything happened, I was really grossed out. Just the thought of what was going to happen was frightening.