The Story Behind Torture Porn

Saw & more, just in time for Halloween…

BY James White Oct 30th 2009 10:10AMFILED UNDER: Features

User Comments (3)

• << previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• next >>

As autumn's dark nights close upon us, our thoughts turn to the perfect scary movie to amp up the chills.

For the past few years, the Saw films have become a Hollywood Halloween tradition, pumping out sequel after sequel, with low budgets equaling big profits.

We thought we'd take a look back into both the recent and distant history of a genre that has become known as "torture porn."

With the most recent entry into the Saw series being soundly beaten at the box office by the torture-free Paranormal Activity, is the genre on its last legs?

Let's start at the very beginning...

WARNING! Blood and guts lurk beyond!



1. The Ancestry Of Agony

Torture Porn films as we know them today share a common ancestor in the splatter/slasher genre, one that has its roots in such mists-of-time shock horror as French Grand Guignol theatre, which delighted in realistic scenes of blood and murder

Here in the UK, we were a little more buttoned down, so when the tradition made the leap across the Channel in 1908, British audiences were treated to more of a gothic tone with the gore played down so as to avoid shocking sensitive types.

In the cinema, meanwhile, the early inklings of what would become the bloodiest genre can be traced to DW Griffith, who included violent touches in 1916's Intolerance, with two beheadings and a spear slowly driven into a soldier's abdomen. Ouch…

Soon after, however, the Production Code - which regulated what could be shown on screen in the interests of decency - largely censored the gore from Hollywood's output.

But the blood came welling back in the 1950s and '60s, as Alfred Hitchcock brought murder back to the mainstream with Psycho and Hammer Films ramped up the horror aspects.

Across the world, audiences were rediscovering the fear, with Nobuo Nakagawa's 1960 horror Jigoku, which took a trip to the Buddhist underworld for scenes of flaying and dismemberment and films such as 1959's Eyes Without A Face (thanks, France) and 1960's Black Sunday (cheers, Italy).

What would become known as splatter films took off around the same time, with low-budget horror huckster Herschell Gordon Lewis responding to Hollywood's muscling in on his nudity niche with explicit gore. 1963 saw him make Blood Feast (above), widely considered the first true splatter release. Made for $24,500, it has since gone on to take in an estimated $7 million.

George A Romero aimed to take things even further mainstream with Night Of The Living Dead in 1968, and followed it up with Dawn Of The Dead, which became even more popular.

The scythe swung back the other way in the 1980s as the US ratings board and the UK's Video Recordings Act began to clamp down on "video nasties" such as I Spit On Your Grave and The Evil Dead. And 1980's Cannibal Holocaust led the way for mockumentary-style horror blended with the gore-tastic side.

But early in the '00s, a whole new sub-genre was born. And while it wouldn't earn its actual name until a couple of films later, it can be traced back to a little project called Saw…

Next: A Saw Point

• << previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• next >>

PrintTags:Daily Briefing