Flashback Friday: ‘Hostel,’ Wolf Creek,’ and the Rise of Torture Porn
Ahhhh – memories of torture porn on a Flashback Friday!
The year was 2005. Extreme levels of violence had been a staple of horror films for decades, but the truly twisted stuff lurked under the surface, consumed by only the most dedicated gore hounds.
But that was all about to change.
Sure, horror fans had already been introduced to the Saw series and its deliciously wicked villain, Jigsaw. But it would take Eli Roth, fresh off of the success of Cabin Fever, to deliver the film that would effectively create an entirely new sub-genre of horror:
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Torture Porn.
While Hostel is not going to go down in history as the most violent film ever, it does get to make the claim that it brought about the creation of the phrase, “torture porn,” by New York magazine writer David Edelstein, in order to describe the similarity between the depiction of violence onscreen with pornographic acts in X-rated films. While the term has been used to negatively classify violent films in which acts of torture are depicted in lengthy, graphic nature, Roth admitted that part of his inspiration for Hostel was a disturbing trend that he had noticed in pornography and the way men view women:
"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."
Of course, Hostel was not the only horror movie to come out in 2005 that featured sadistic acts of torture that were presented as if they were some sort of mainstream fetish. This was the year that also saw Wolf Creek scare the **** out of anyone who would had ever thought about visiting the Australian outback. While Wolf Creek didn’t exhibit quite the same connection between torture and pornography as Hostel did, it still contained the infamous “head on a stick” part that still makes me a bit queasy today (Warning: the following clip contains violence and some salty language):
Ouch.
Any more, the torture porn subgenre of horror is alive, but certainly not as popular as it once was. Chances are, if the term is being used to describe a movie nowadays, it is not exactly a compliment. Whether torture porn movies were ever scary, or merely disgusting, is up for debate. Still, I cannot deny that some of the best films to earn the label have gone down as a few of the best horror movies made within the last decade, which is why I decided to pay a little homage to the genre as today’s Flashback Friday!