TORTURE CLASSICS!!

A Brief Review of Film Cruelty

Torture is definitely really, really, really bad, and not only that, it’s morally wrong. Got it? Ok, now that that’s settled, let’s dive in…

Ever more gruesome torture and torture devices have been popularized (fetishized?) in sadistic modern horror movies such as Wolf Creek, Hills Have Eyes, Hostel and the Saw films. Maybe the teen film-going audience resonates with the post 9/11 feeling of helplessness imbued in these films victims; they helped all of the above films except the indie import Wolf Creek open to weekends of $15 million or more. These brutal modern “Torture porn” films seem a direct descendant of the violent 70s disillusioned social commentaries like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Last House On The Left.
But tellingly, we also see (some of) the victims in these modern films surviving, and even turning the tables on their captors again and again, notably in The Devil’s Rejects and Hostel. Whether that tells of a powerless audience’s desire for power in a corrupt and frightening world, or their desire for revenge upon “the other”, or something else entirely, well, that’s something that is best left up to you, dear reader, and your therapist. But in the context of current events, it’s easy to theorize the teen audience for whom these films are meant feels polarized into choosing a victim role, like the poor servicemen getting bombed in Iran or the hostages getting their heads cut off by terrorists on TV, or on the other hand playing the victimizer, like the over reaction of Marines in Haditha and the shame of our own government’s torture exploits at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Or maybe I’m just full of shit.
These realistic modern films eschew the wink wink playfulness of films a few years earlier, like the Scream films. Eli Roth, writer of Hostel, has said, “Self-referential, ironic humor ran its course.” Unfortunately, it seems social commentary did, also. The filmic “art brut” of recent years is not made by Uncle George Romero or John Carpenter or someone else who could imbue a story with a deeper meaning or awareness. Without that or a sense of humor, there seems to be nothing beyond the meanness, no moral authority, metaphors or greater insight; the kind of naked cruelty that only goes so far before you need a story or some characters or somesuch.
There is a rich cinematic history of exploiting our uneasy fascination with torture. The films of Cecil B. Demille proved that if you wrapped your story in historic trappings, you could get away with more sex and violence. DeMille’s films are full of torture, from Joan of Arc to the trials of Jesus, from an American Indian torture stake to elephants stomping Christians.
Bible stories, like the trials of Jesus Christ on the way to the cross, were always a good excuse to include violence and still appeal to a wide audience, a lesson not lost on Mel Gibson, whose brutal epic Passion of the Christ went on to be the first foreign language snuff film to nearly win an Oscar.
One way to get away with showing torture would be to present it as witches being punished or poor tormented souls being put through tribulations in deepest darkest hell. That didn’t work for 1922 Swedish film Haxan, better known as Witchcraft Through The Ages, which still got banned, more for its sacrilegious content than anything else.
Usually a torture chamber would be the province of the villain, often the Chinese “yellow peril” in silent days, or later on, Japanese and Nazis, since assuredly we wouldn’t have anything to do with such brutal methods.
The Motion Picture Production Code, known popularly as the Hays Code, named after influential killjoy Will Hays, regulated what could and could not be seen on movie screens. “Brutality and possible gruesomeness” were prohibited.
Off screen allusions and coded subtext ruled films until the incursions of foreign films unhampered by censors encouraged US filmmakers to push the envelope of acceptability.
The mondo films of the early 60s certainly opened up some doors, with the genre’s pseudo-documentary “Now It Can Be Shown” approach. Much like the old roadshow concept, they were selling prurient interest through false modesty. “This film is for educational purposes, not entertainment.” Riiiiiiiight. Mondo Cane showed staged footage of savage rituals, and if the savages happened to be nude while they ate bugs, well, all the more “exotic”.
The 1960s saw the gradual erosion of filmmakers’ adherence to The Code, as they pushed the envelope of acceptability, with films like Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs. Jess Franco, with films like “The Bloody Judge”, was a pioneer in pushing the sadism envelope in the 1960s. Similarly graphic films from the period include Mark of The Devil, The Devils, and Witchfinder General, starring the great Vincent Price…
A particular favorite of mine is Theater Of Blood, a classic Vincent Price black comedy where he is a ham actor who puts to death his critics in tortuous Shakespearean ways. Similar to the inventive torture deaths in the Dr. Phibes flicks, but gorier. Price could be called the camp-era torture king, due to his appearance in the above and in a bunch of Roger Corman’s popular Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, which all featured some gothic torture, like being buried alive or the Pit and the Pendulum … he made torture fun!
The Ilsa movies of the freewheelin’ 70s were fairly graphic for their time, and set off a slew of Concentration Camp film imitators.
Italian filmmakers were always looking for the next cheap sleaze film trend to cash-in on, so it’s no surprise the Cannibal film craze is best represented by films from Italy, including Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust. Of course, Dario Argento made murder into a beautiful color filtered canvas; and the scene in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie made you cover your eyeballs long before Hostel ever came out. Joe D’Amato’s Emannuelle In America had its’ shockingly realistic snuff film sequence, mirrored in the staged documentaries of the 80s Faces of Death series.
And if you were to consider the humiliation and violence inherent in the genre of the women in prison and rape/revenge genres, epitomized by favorites Thriller: A Cruel Picture (aka They Call Her One-Eye) and Female Convict Scorpion Agent 41, this category could easily be greatly expanded to fit many, many more titles.
Mainstream films have traditionally shied away from the content matter, except for a quick and prurient tease to give a story a dramatic jolt, like Laurence Olivier as the Worst Dentist Ever in 1976’s Marathon Man. Sadism really hit the mainstream in 1991with the huge success of serial killer flick The Silence of the Lambs, which swept the Oscars for a film the major wouldn’t have even touched 10-15 years ago. The Cell, Sin City, The Punisher, Man On Fire, Payback, -all major studio product from the last ten years with prominent torture themes, the last three featuring righteous heroes that torture.
I personally am a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s, but in recent years, the unfortunate excess of 2nd rate Tarantino clones have added smart-alecky brutes in too many forgettable films, spitting stale “edgy” dialogue back and forth. Not every criminal has to sound like outtakes from Clerks.
And the Japanese have always been batshit, exuding misogynist films from relative tameness of pink films like 1968’s The Joy of Torture to the 70s “roman porno” films like the Angel Guts series, the “heroic masochism” of the Hanzo the Razor films, to 1988’s Evil Dead Trap, the Guinea Pig movies, the films of Takashi Miike (who makes a telling cameo in Hostel), and not a few other asian films of the like that revel in rape and cruelty.
Even a recent Japanese-influenced Korean fantasy like Save The Green Planet has grimly realistic segments of torture and violence. Fellow Korean Chan-Wook Park’s Revenge trilogy certainly has some grueling moments, (Oldboy’s teeth-pulling, Sympathy’s ankle-slitting), but thankfully are not the extent of his talent.
Of course, it could be said that watching some horror movies might be thought of as cruel and inhuman punishment. If you’re anything like me (and you must be, or why would you still be reading this) you have sat through many a horrible film and counted the minutes left until the end. To those intrepid few, torture is not having a fast forward button.

-Mr. Play by Play (aka Eric Bradner)