Hey, I made a scary movie a few years ago!
insert shameless plug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te1Rl2oVwME
(edit: that's painful to watch now, so many mistakes...)
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Hey, I made a scary movie a few years ago!
insert shameless plug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te1Rl2oVwME
(edit: that's painful to watch now, so many mistakes...)
Did you read the book? Oh my God, the pedophile shit was difficult to read! Yet, somehow through all that bullshit and pain, the concept of a child vampire, innocence and a eternal youth, it ends on an uplifting note. I guess because the two characters run off together. It really was a good book, I just never can recommend it to anyone because of those few chapters.
Not a movie but I'm a fan of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Have to read them again. Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of my favorites too.
Actually, Simone87, even film critics are divided on films that can educated and that glorifies bad things such as torture or rape. Salo, for example is a film in which educates the viewers on the horrors of Italian fascism while being highlight violence against children during that time. However, everyone in the film was over the age of 18 and had sign a 2 year gag order. The director had actually seen many of his friends as a teenage get sexual abuse during WWII by fascist and it had a profound effect on him. Many of the sexual abuse scenes were shot first and he talked this his actors beforehand. There is the making of Salo in which all of the actors work with each other to create such nasty scenes. Now the level of sexual violence is like that because it happen to his friends. There are moments in which warm your heart as well because many of the victims find love during the torture. The black slave girl and the solider fall in love because he saves her from being beaten. But this also one of the grossest movies of all time because of the over the top violence and sexual abuse. Salo's director, Pasolini, was murdered by a male hustler right after the film. But many believe it was due to creating this film and not back down from bullying by the government of the film. Many in Italy wanted the film burned but he just did not back down. So the director died believe because of this film. A lot of the films spoken of are both films for shock value and art films for the most part. The animals deaths happen over 30-40 years ago by Italian filmmakers and other European filmmakers. No children are actually hurt during the making of the films discuss because either they are adults playing teens or it happens off camera. But films like Salo still are gross yet they are art films.
im still kind of cynical when it comes to the motives of most directors/writers, as i don't feel that something needs to be graphically shown to help the viewers get the picture, and i feel most of them use sex, rape, torture, violence, sadism, beastiality for shock value to get people talking and in an uproar.take psycho for instance. amazing old movie, where not much blood and guts are shown yet we all get what happened..it was suspenseful and i feel that what you don't show can be much more powerful and classy than what you do show, get into people's imaginations. but i digress. i absolutely love movies like silence of the lambs and hannibal , i felt that was done in a very classy way with lots of character development and just enough blood and guts to make a point and still be realistic.
Sansonnet, H.P Lovecraft is well-known racist xenophobic anti-semite and sexist who wrote about great horrors. However, I never could get into him because he created a poem entitled" The creation of N-words" in which black people are creation of some Aryan gods. Now, I believe that he was a well-known racist that many people just did not want to accept that many of his horror novels are based on non-European and non-Anglo Saxon people are beasts. Bram Stoker also was an racist and well-known Irish nationalist who enjoy going to the brothels. Dracula is about xenophobia and hidden homosexual overtones under the outline of gothic horror.Stoker believe that East Europeans such as Romanian were all bisexual.He looked down of everyone who was not from the British Isles. But Stoker and Lovecraft are men of their times. I read all of his works knowing full well that Stoker would used the n-word over 10,000 times in some of his books. However, both Dracula and Lair of the White Worm are some of the best horror novels ever. But Stoker's works are not disturbing outside of the racism, xenophobia, and sexist words. While Lovecraft's work is disturbing because you can tell that a lot of his personal feelings went to his literature. But their stories are still some amazing work :)
I believe that is up to director and writer to show whatever is in their heads. It not about being classy sometimes because I enjoy watching the brutality of man. I rather see people trying to say that bad things happen in graphic ways than non-graphic way. I have always been jaded...so things like Cannibal Holocaust nor Salo will effect me the same way as a lot of people. I understood that Salo was about showing the horrors during WWII. Just like I understood Cannibal Holocaust was made for money:) Since I was a film student.....I look at every film in much of different light as well.Sure, Psycho is great but I believe in pushing taste as well and thank God there are tons of Italian and Japanese film makers willing to do that during 1950s to 1980s. Much like in life...film does not need to have tons of character development in order to become art. I believe in art for art sake for sometimes. I believe that sex, rape, torture, violence, sadism and even beastiality should be talked about both in subtle detail and graphic detail. But this could be due to my upbring where nothing was off limits and nothing was shy away from. We just have different taste in films :) Plus Psycho was not the best Hitchcock film....I believe I always thought Frenzy(1972) was :)
I don't think horror needs to have a "plot point". Everyone has a morbid curiosity with death. You watch it to feel disturbed, shocked, scared etc. That is the point in watching the genre, really. You don't watch horror to feel genuinely happy. I like watching the genre - just the idea of watching a realistic version of something that I won't (hopefully) ever see in real life is really interesting to me.
Faux-snuff films like the August Underground series is bashed for not having a typical plot. Just a handheld video camera and a group of 20-something budding amateur serial killers documenting their kills. And it's looks and feels VERY realistic.
"It's just senseless, horrific, graphic violence with rape, torture, murder, etc" Well, yeah. It's made to show violence as it really is, a horrible senseless act. It's art. Does it have a typical hollywood plot point? No. But it is still telling a story - even a snippet - through the eyes of someone else - someone I will never be able to understand or empathize with, but I like seeing what makes them tick, why they do it, etc. And that's what makes those kinds of films fascinating IMO.
Movies like Saw or Hostel have earned a lot of praise, and are pretty popular for mainstream horror. It has captivity, mutilation, skinning, torture etc. But it's all shown as a glamorized act. So in a way people who watch these films are just as "sick" as someone who would sit through something like August Underground - except they watch violence that seems nice. They're not really much more violent than movies like Hostel but it's shown in a way that's much more realistic and that's what causes problems for some people.
Hollywood can glamorize anything - rape, child beatings, animals dying, or murder, which is SO glamorized in hollywood films. Films like Precious, An American Crime, I Am Legend (The part where he kills the dog) for example. Do you feel "OK" with it? No. But you'll gloss over it or shrug it off and continue watching because it's "part of the film".
In those films I've never heard of someone getting up and leaving the theater or accusing someone else of being "disgusting" or "sick in the head / something is WRONG with you!" or "going to hell" because they sat through it. But rape, torture, child abuse, a dog being killed was some of the content in those films.
My point is that people can enjoy watching anything as long as they can feel comfortably detached from it.
Something I really hate to see people do and want to point out - I don't think it's fair to judge or demonize someone who has a tolerance level for something else that you, yourself cannot handle. I am not a sick, disgusting, or a "damned to hell" person because I watch horror films. We all watch films knowing they are fake. You watch Titanic, but obviously duh, those people didn't die in the film. I watch something like August Underground - obviously those people didn't die either. It's all fake.
Re: being comfortably detached. Yes, I'll watch some pretty gruesome films, but knowing that is it 100% fake is what makes me want to watch it. That's MY "line in the sand" so to speak.
The horror genre isn't a gateway to becoming a serial killer or an obsession for wanting to watch the real thing, just like video games aren't the core problem of children who go off to shoot up their high schools - those people already have some fucked up inner demons for going down that path waaaay before they are exposed to "bad" content.
I agree. People feel the need to only show "sex, rape, torture, violence, etc etc" to a wide audience under the guise of a noble cause. Something to justify, glamorize and excuse what they're watching and dull it down so it's not that terrible. It's an excuse to themselves, "I'm not a horrible person because this has a point to it and I can justify it to make it seem sane, which makes x and x OK to watch."
"I like violence, but only if it's classy." Violence is the furthest thing from classy - it's raw, horrific and senseless. We happily keep coddling violence - yet coming back to blame it for being romanticized when people commit actual crimes. It's funny how blind people just choose to be and how they want to remain in safe 'la-la land' about such a terrible subject matter.
The truth is that a lot of people can't or don't want to acknowledge that people are terrible and do terrible terrible things for no reason. Real killers aren't like Jigsaw, and don't pull random people off the street and try to teach them the error of their wrongs with a bear trap on a timer. Serial killers kill simply because they enjoy it, it doesn't need to be justified with a revenge story. And gritty, raw horror is an expressive way to show the truth of that.
Yes, I read the book after seeing the movie. Also enjoyed Lindqvist's Handling the Undead.
I also go back to read and watch Stephen King's stuff. I read Thinner back in the mid-80s, and ditto Christine, Cujo, Carrie, Salem's Lot, etc. Still enjoying reading them, though the movies were hit or miss - Christine and Carrie I liked because the casting was so good.
I never read got into Night Flyer as a story, but I loved the sheer camp of the movie, which was excellent.
Before I had my son my tolerance for horror or violence was higher. My friend made me watch Irreversible and the movie is so violent. It had a good plot but after the rape scene I literally threw up. I wish I hadn't watched it and I constantly think of that scene. Another one was pan's labyrinth the scene where they kill the dad's son in front of him, made me puke. I am also curious about how these people's minds work but I would rather not see it, I can't handle it. Sometimes I click on links with disturbing titles then regret it. I also threw up during Prisoners and it didn't have too much blood. I think I mostly threw up thinking humanity can be so disgusting and evil. I threw up feeling the pain and agony and grief and fear of a parent. I have decided that although it may be interesting I simply cannot watch it anymore. I love animals and children and just life in general.
^ same here. i was into those movies at like 17 when i hadn't really experienced anything but once i actually got a taste of real violence and grew older and had a kid, it just seems disgusting to me now.so i wouldn't call people sick or evil for watching those at all. but i ABSOLUTELY hold to my previous sentiment that a movie can depict violence in order to educate and show the viewer the senseless and revolting things that humans have done to other humans ( like schindlers list, saving private ryan, 12 years a slave, other war and holocaust movies) or delve into the minds of sadistic killers. or they can glamorize the crap out of it and make it seem cool and avant-garde and modern ( people still think that their generation invented sex and violence for some reason) and almost desensitize people to it with shit like hostel. the world is a violent place, its all around us and i just see nothing artistic or cool about it. if grown ass people want to watch it, i have no problems with that.
but i kinda look at it like watching porn. people watch it to get horny, not because its "artistic".
and when i said that about plot, character, etc i was talking about scary movies in general. but i guess horror movies aren't really classified as scary, its just the yuck factor that draws people.
I'm so glad this thread was made. I love horror and fucked up movies. Now I know what I want fir Christmas. :-D
I totally agree with that. I'm disgusted by movies that try to make things like violence and rape classy and artistic. Violence and rape are not pretty, that's reality. Recently I had a friend bitching on facebook about the rape scene in Cannibal Holocaust. She said it was too disturbing and violent. I was all, WTF do you think rape is? Do you think it's rainbows and fucking butterflies? That's called realism. People should see rape as disturbing, violent and horrific. Not like some pseudo romantic bullshit that so many movies portray it as.
We had a thread a few years ago of the most disturbing movies. I watched almost ever one on the list. I think I watched 3 films by gaspar noe and didn't like any of them. The filming style. Didn't see the big deal with hat movie. I do love Korean horror films and old 70's films and there were a few on the list I enjoyed bt irreversible wasn't one of them.