Torture Porn Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If it's Halloween, it must be Saw. And it is. So it must be. Cinematical attended a press junket this week for Saw IV. It consisted of three interviews, with reporters from various outlets throwing out questions. The first was with Jigsaw himself, Tobin Bell (phoning in because he lives in Malibu, so wish him and his family well). The second was with Lyriq Bent (Rigg), Scott Patterson (Agent Strahm), and franchise producer Mark Burg. The third was with Costas Mandylor (Hoffman), Betsy Russell (Jill -- Mrs. Jigsaw), and franchise producer Oren Koules. Lionsgate hadn't screened the movie for critics (or even the actors!) as of this junket, as the representatives are extremely secretive about its plot, particularly a final twist. All we know is, despite having seemingly died at the end of Saw III, Jigsaw is back. Oh yes, and we know that there will be blood. Lotsa blood. We discussed what makes the franchise so popular, the phrase "torture porn," and the future of the Saw series.

Can you tell us what attracted you to the role yet again?

Tobin Bell: He's a big character. There could be nothing better for an actor than to have an opportunity to play a role where the character is sort of a multi-faceted guy. I mean, he is a scientist and a very well read guy and a man of conviction and passionate about what he does. There is something Shakespearean about him in a way. And there is a lot more story to be told. I feel like the Saw story doesn't play out in a linear way. It doesn't happen in sequence, necessarily. Whenever you have the opportunity to develop a guy like this, it's a blessing. It's what actors become actors for.

It's interesting to hear you talk about the thought process that goes into creating his back-story. Because if you ask an audience after they see a Saw film, they were there for the gore. They want to see someone's guts spill out on the floor. Are you rationalizing the character for yourself? Or do you really care about the characters in these films?

TB: I think that anybody who goes to one of these films wants to care about the characters. I think you can accomplish the same thing in the horror genre that you can accomplish in any other genre, whether it's a period piece, or a romantic comedy. I think there is an opportunity in a drama of any kind for the viewer to get involved with the characters. If you sell out completely on that, and I think that is what the horror genre has done for many years, people will not think of it very highly as a genre. Many genre films of the fifties and sixties were interested in the special effects, or interested in the scare factor, or the sci-fi factor. Jacob's Ladder is a very smart, well-crafted script. It is very scary. The Dead Zone with Christopher Walken. On its face, you have a man that looks at things and lights them on fire with his eyes. Look at the film. Christopher Walken draws you in. He makes you care about him. That's what makes the film work.

Is it just me, or is arguing about 'torture porn' sooo 2006? But, it's not like horror director Eli Roth has ever been one to back away from a fight. Deadline Hollywood Daily tells us about a new post on Roth's personal MySpace page in response to Entertainment Weekly film critic Lisa Schwartzbaum's take on the 'torture porn' genre. Back in July, she had written a film commentary titled 'What I Hate' and as it turns out, the lady hates 'torture porn' -- which is a term that is still not readily accepted in a lot of horror fan circles. You can read Schwartzbaum's entire editorial here, but here are some of the highlights: "It's quite simple: I hate these movies. I won't see these movies" and as if that wasn't inflammatory enough, she went on to say, "I'm not impressed with the ''quality'' of the gore or the ''wit'' of the film making. I'm not enjoyably scared; I'm horrified, and not in the way horror fans get off on, groaning and screaming with pack-mentality excitement. Instead, my horror is one of disturbance and anger: Who makes this vile crap?"

Well, Roth is someone who makes 'this vile crap', and he wasn't exactly thrilled with Schwartzbaum's take on his work. Some of Roth's response: "There is no such thing as "torture porn." It's a made up term, made up by people who don't understand these movies, who are afraid to even watch them, and who feel some bizarre sense of moral obligation to warn the public about them, despite the fact they don't watch them and never would," Then there are people like myself who grew up watching slasher flicks and just don't get what all the fuss is about. Roth will be keeping it relatively PG when he shoots his episode of Heroes: Origins this year. Of course, if you can't wait for the 'goo', Roth is still wrapping up Cabin Fever 2 (which he's producing), and there's still the possibility his big-screen version of Stephen King's Cell will hit theaters at some point in the next five years. Roth wound up his rant with instructions to Schwartzbaum to find a new line of work if she is willing to dismiss films without actually sitting down and watching them. So, as much as I might not personally be a fan of Roth, the man does have a point; don't you think?

While I wouldn't say Gorgon Video's Faces of Death series evokes a sense of nostalgia in me, it does make me think of those big honking clam shell boxes with the FOD logo lurking in the corner of the horror section. I'm sure if VHS horror movies were sentient, the FOD tapes would be the mongrel children of the lot, being feared and derided by the others. Either that or I've had way too much coffee and I'm over thinking this. Anyway, as Scott Weinberg posted last October, Faces of Death -- the video series that purported to show actual scenes of death and dismemberment but were in reality more fake than fact -- is getting a remake. Rotten Tomatoes has just posted an update on the project, with the news coming directly from producer Rick Bennatar.

"We've got a story, we've got a director, we've got a writer, J.T. Petty, who did a couple of indie films," said Benattar. "He's coming in and he wrote a script. We're sort of taking a look at in the world of Saw and Hostel, who are the people who actually go watch these movies? So we've tied that in with Faces of Death. We have a narrative story which the original never had, and we also nod for the 'fans.' I use that word loosely. Guys like me who watched it as a kid, who snuck away to go watch these things. We have a few nods to those original films."

So I guess the big news here is that the movie eschews the documentary style of the original for a traditional narrative -- which I saw as a given -- and the fact that the project is still alive. Writer director J.T. Petty (check out Scott's interview with J.T. here) was also behind the documentary S&Man, which I'm still dying to see. With Hostel: Part II and Captivity tanking at the box office, I suspect the new Faces of Death may be arriving at the torture porn party just as everyone else is packing up their knives and fetish gear.

Oftentimes Hollywood's lack of originality leads to overexposed trends. Remember when every action movie seemed to be easily defined as 'Die Hard on a ...'? Remember when disaster movies were all the rage? And then twenty years later when they were all the rage again? Remember when there were like a hundred body-swapping comedies? Well, there appear to be fewer trends these days, or maybe it's just that Hollywood turns trends into full-blown practices, as in the case of sequels, comic book movies and fantasy films based on literary franchises. Nowadays even a promised trend, like the one involving religious Passion of the Christ copycats, isn't necessarily going to happen. But despite there being so few here-today-gone-tomorrow film fads, there's at least seven bad ideas currently in vogue in Tinsel Town, and all of them need to disappear soon, lest they too become permanent.

1. Torture Porn

I'm going to start with an easy, surely obvious one. Torture porn is the latest trend in horror, a genre that changes its predominant style every few years, and it may be the most despised -- at least by us non-horror junkies. I miss the days when a friend, an actual junkie, could drag me to a harmless scary movie that provided a few screams, a few laughs and afterward, at the most, a few silly nightmares. Now, with each new horror movie there's promise of a seriously depressing experience. After watching The Hills Have Eyes, I realized I hadn't been frightened at all. Instead I wanted to cry my heart out. I haven't been to a horror flick since, and my friend is going solo. Sure, I hear that Eli Roth's movies are a lot more enjoyable than watching a young woman raped while watching her father burned alive and her mother raped and then shot in the head, but I just haven't been in the mood to find out.

Apparently the torture porn trend is already on its way out. Hostel II performed poorly at the box office and Captivity may have peaked too soon, reaching maximum tastelessness before even opening in theaters. So what will be next? I'm rather looking forward to when slasher movies are in fashion again, when I can delight in seeing sinful human beings killed off quickly and deservedly by an implausible maniac. Which brings me to the next trend ...

Whenever a new horror cycle spins 'round, there'll be a newspaper reporter ready to ask Stephen King what he thinks of the "new" sub-genre. Plus if the mega-popular novelist has a new movie adaptation (like 1408) just ready to hit the market, well, that's what they called serendipity. But Marc Olsen of the L.A. Times is to be commended for asking the man just a few simple questions and leaving things simple.

For example, did you know that Mr. King has no real problem with "torture porn"? True. And he also seems to be a really big fan of Eli Roth's Hostel Part II: "There's something going on in "Hostel II" that isn't torture porn, there's really something going on there that's interesting on an artistic basis. Sure it makes you uncomfortable, but good art should make you uncomfortable." But when asked about "crossing the line," King makes a strange statement about a film he doesn't seem to have seen yet: "I'm very uneasy about this film coming out with Elisha Cuthbert, Captivity." The novelist doesn't elaborate much on why he has a problem with this specific movie but adds "It makes me feel creepy just to think about it. It's almost like exploiting murder for the sake of murder."

For more on how that specifically differs from what's on display in Hostel 2 (and I would agree it does), you can check the full interview. But there is one more little tidbit that's worth mentioning. It's been well-documented that Stephen King is not a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, so when Olsen asks about what makes a "bad" Stephen King movie, here's what the author had to say: "I don't like movies that are cold. I don't like movies that approach it like an exercise. A movie, for instance, where say Jack Nicholson and his wife are trapped in a hotel and you don't feel any love between them, you don't feel any caring, it just becomes sort of an exercise. And that bothers me."

Someday I'd love to interview Mr. King and run down all of the movies, one at a time. I'd get a kick out of hearing his thoughts on The Mangler, Pet Sematary 2 ... or his own Maximum Overdrive.