4. A Genre Defined: Hostel

Saw might have launched torture porn on to the world, but it was Eli Roth's 2005 film Hostel that inspired New York Magazine writer David Edelstein to famously coin the monicker. He based it on the fact that in hacker/slasher films and the likes of Hostel, squirts of blood are treated with the same fetishism as the money shot in porn.

And Roth's film certainly combined sex and death, with Hostel focused on a group of horny American tourists lured to what turns out to be a terrifying abattoir where people are tortured by those who pay for the, er, pleasure.

For Roth, the opportunity presented itself once he'd proved himself with Cabin Fever. "After that, I found myself in this great position where a lot of doors that had previously been closed opened. It's like you are on the outside, then all of the sudden, all the studios want to make movies with you.

"I started taking meetings and a lot of projects got sent to me to see if I wanted to direct them. They were just so bad, that you couldn't believe someone was actually going to go ahead and make the film…"

"So when the film came out, a lot of the do it yourself directors like Peter Jackson, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino who did it own their own were all so supportive and kept saying, just do another one.

"And I thought.... do I really want to follow a low budget horror film with another low budget horror film? Then I saw Saw and thought, why the f**k not? What, seven hundred or nine hundred grand in eighteen days?

"It was a f*****g fun movie, and here I am waiting for these studio movies, so I just said f**k it, I'm tired of this....I'm tired of waiting.

"I wasn't sure what to do so I asked Guillermo Del Toro, and he said whatever gives you the biggest boner man, 'cause you can't work without a boner man, you gotta  wake up with a rager.... you have got to have such a boner! And that's when I said, he's right! It's as simple as that.

"Then I asked Quentin Tarantino. I said I'm not sure what to do next. I mean, I could do this $35 million film or this $10 million film and he was like, what are the ideas, what are you thinking about?

"I pitched the idea and he said that is the scariest f*****g idea I have ever heard! That is so disturbing that someone would want to go into a room and kill somebody for the thrill of it! Like it was a sexual act... You've gotta write that, this could be your Takashi Miike film!"

Inspired a website link he'd been sent by Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool and bolstered by the frothing support of his filmmaking peers, Roth scraped up the money to make his film.

While he relishes the gory ride he takes audiences on, even Roth admits that his films are about more than just the horror.

"I don't want to like cram morality down anyone's throat, but that's what definitely influenced the story. You just see these guys and the way they talk about hookers and girls.

"I've also noticed a trend in pornography lately, where there are all these humiliation sites... all about tricking out girls.

"And you like know it's fake, but there is still someone at home getting off on humiliating girls. Sex is not enough anymore, and there are like fifteen exploitation websites that have all just popped up, and I think that guys think that about Eastern Europe and that the girls are gonna f**k them just because they are American."

Hostel found the typically split reviews but also the success that had helped Saw. Made for $4.8 million, it ended up with around $80 million and begat Hostel: Part II, which arrived in 2007.

Sadly for Roth, the follow-up, which focused on a group of girls getting suckered and slaughtered in a similar situation, didn't perform nearly as well. Despite a $10 million budget, the film leaked online before release and in any case, no one seemed as enthusiastic about the second run-around. 

Hostel: Part II made $35 million on release. The tide was slowly turning against the torture…

Next: The Captivity Controversy And More