Torture Porn

I learned a new phrase today while scanning through a review of the movie SAW IV, due in theaters tomorrow. I was thinking of going to see it, since I own the previous three versions of this series.

Torture porn, was the reviewer’s way of describing this latest flick and others of the genre. I am wondering when we moved from slasher flicks to torture porn, but then that’s what it means to get old. When I hear a phrase these days it’s probably already out of date rather than cutting edge. Anyway, back to the subject at hand.

The phrase alleges that people who watch these kinds of movies have basically become numb to the violence, blood and guts that permeates these films (are they still films and not videos?!). That it’s a new way to “get off” so to speak, hence the term “porn.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......I liked the first SAW..the second was pretty good too...but the third one was forgettable....can’t even remember the plot...and there was a plot in both of the first two....

I think that’s why I didn’t like HOSTEL or any of the Jason movies or Hellraiser movies or even Texas Chainsaw movies. I still need plot to go along with the violence. It can’t be gratuitous violence. I don’t mind gratuitous sex if it’s done artfully and with a point to do something other than get me hot, unless it is porn, of course.

The difference for me is that porn I can watch again and again, until I’m bored. Gratuitous violence and blood and guts is a one time thing. I won’t watch the first time, if I don’t perceive that a story is behind the work. Watching people die violently is not entertaining to me.

I still prefer a story first. What surrounds and tells the story comes second. I prefer “scares” to be psychological or more in my mind. That’s why the scariest scene I have ever witnessed remains Hitchcock’s shower scene in Psycho. I was more disturbed by reading “The Exorcist” then by seeing it. Most books I read twice. I have never been able to read that one a second time.

Yet, I don’t know what it is about the SAW movies. I really do want to see this latest one. I know that it is going to be bathed in blood and torture. I am fascinated by the torture methods for one. The previous ones have all been drawn from real history. I want to see how Jigsaw accomplishes it since he was dead at the end of the last one, too. I guess he’s found another disciple to carry on.

When I think about scary movies a few come to mind and this is after I started facing them. When I was a kid, I would hide my eyes or dive into the back seat at the drive in rather than watch the horror unfold. I would only listen and that was so much worse than watching. My nightmares absolutely killed me. My dad finally told me to make myself watch and then it wouldn’t be so bad. He was right. Once I started watching, the scares went away.

Scary movies for me......Psycho....Revulsion (french)....Halloween....The Fog....Scream (opening scenes with Drew Barrymore).....Jeepers Creepers (opening scene, kids in car)....The Exorcist....Darkness Falls.....Nightmare on Elm Street......Alien.....Friday the 13th (Jason was not the killer).....The rest of the slasher genre are unoriginal or remakes of the ones I just listed.

You know what, after writing this..the SAW movies don’t scare as much as they interest me. Hmmmmmmmmm....maybe it is porn after all. .