Throughout the ’60s and ’70s were screened all manner of horrifying motion pictures promising the lurid and graphic depictions of violence, torture and rape. If they got ratings at all they were rated X. Patrons were lured into the theaters with salacious posters and provocative titles.
At first the movies themselves were merely pale facsimiles of the mayhem and debauchery boasted about in the advertising, but as time wore on audiences began to see through those old ploys and movie makers realized they had to pony up and start delivering the goods. Soon this “theater of cruelty” escalated to the point where the “snuff films” were born, movies where an actor was actually tortured and killed on screen. There has never been an authenticated case of a true “snuff film” but just the possibility that it might be true was enough to entice now-jaded audiences.
Quentin Tarantino, a lifelong and unapologetic fan of such gruesome cinematic fare, has decided to put his name on the recent Eli Roth film Hostel in a bid to lure modern day customers who may be put off by the promise of extreme, graphic violence but who responded so enthusiastically to the more “playful” violence of Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill.
Movie violence is a lot different today than it was in the ’60s. Admittedly there have been great strides in the creation of realistic gore effects. Also the sheer volume of violent action scenes within a movie has escalated. Still, something has been lost in recent times. Characters used to be hurt by the violence. It used to have an impact beyond the mere entertainment value. Nowadays the typical reaction to screen violence is not “Oh, how awful!” but “Oh, how amusing!”
Last House on the Left, an early low budget Wes Craven film from 1970 was nauseatingly graphic for its time… and even today it’s stark presentation and documentary-like ambiance make the violence done to the characters feel like it’s real… like it hurts. That is something missing from Craven’s later Nightmare on Elm Street and “Scream” movies… the violence is set up like the punch line to a joke rather than a true act of horror. Even in the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” there was a palpable sense of dread, a stark realism (perhaps due to the fact that the leads were played by unfamiliar faces) that transcended anything seen in the increasingly camp sequels, remakes and rip-offs.
“I Spit on Your Grave”, another 70s exploitation classic, concerns the heroine’s sadistic beating and rape at the hands of a bunch of backwoods psychopaths… an act shown in unflinching detail. The lead actress is so convincing that one could be forgiven for thinking that possibly the filmmakers really did take some woman out in the woods and abuse her. Apparently the leads in the so-called “snuff films” that came out in the ’70s were considerably less convincing. But the point remains: was it truly necessary to show the agonizing pain and humiliation of rape in such detail? The recent French film “Irreversible” came upon the same criticism. Where is the line between art and exploitation?
Does depicting such scenes in such excruciating detail demean the actors and exploit the audience? Is it simply shock for the sake of entertainment? Or is it something more… is a deeper understanding and empathy created in the audience that would have had a lesser impact by glossing over the brutality? For the heroine of “I Spit on Your Grave” to be justified in her later violent actions against her attackers it was probably essential to depict the full extent of the horror she experienced.
Her own bloody acts of vengeance have their own visceral power and I’m sure many a male viewer was forced to turn his head in anguish at one man’s comeuppance via a sharp instrument taken to the genitals. As cruel as these acts seem on film, the effect on the audience is generally a heightened empathy for the victim’s plight as opposed to a vicarious identification with the perpetrators and their heinous acts.
Hostel tries hard to summon up the creepiness of those old grindhouse classics but comes up just a bit short. The movie hits is peak during a mid-movie torture sequence that evokes an almost unbearable feeling of helplessness in the audience. The scene is flawed only by the drawn out delivery of the torturer who seems to have stepped out of an Indiana Jones movie. His dispassionate disposition recalls Laurence Olivier’s role of torturer in Marathon Man.
This is unfortunate. This sequence is set up so well that no one watching it should be thinking of other movies. Entertaining though the villain’s speech may be, it works against the harsh reality of the situation. Another movie brought to mind by the torture scenes in Hostel is Takashi Miike’s far superior “Audition.” Are the filmmakers familiar with Miike’s work? Well, they give him a small cameo a little more than halfway into the film… so you be the judge.
The film rapidly declines in effectiveness from the halfway point. A second torture victim is secured and faced with the prospect of a long and painful ordeal. A slip on the part of his torturer (literally) gives him his freedom and the stark realism of the first two-thirds of the movies gives way to typical Hollywood shenanigans. An “ugly American” villain shows up but his venal racism and misogyny are too cartoonish and overblown to be believed. Not that there aren’t people like that in the world, they just tend to keep their cards a little closer to their vest.
The other more believable villains are dispatched much too easily, set up like pins in a bowling alley (in one instance, almost literally) and you can practically see the writer/director checking them off his to-do list. It all becomes very desperate, much like the conclusion of the American remake of the Dutch suspense classic The Vanishing.
The finale ties everything up much too neatly in a nice red bow so that everyone can go home feeling good. This film may take place in Europe but there is no doubt that it was produced in America… the audience must be given a reason to cheer as they leave the theater… even at the expense of logic and realism.
I am not saying that the movie had to end on a “downer” to be effective and I agree with the decision to provide some sort of cathartic release for the audience at the end. I think, however, that there could have been a little more thoughtfulness or meditation (like, for instance, at the conclusion of the aforementioned “Audition”) and less bland heroics.
