how a human reacts to extreme pressure, fear and/or violence is quite revealing and makes for great drama in films.

BATTLE OF ALGIERS starts off with torture and it's one of my all-time favorite films.

MARATHON MAN is a symphony of torture and widely considered a modern classic

torture figured rather prominanly in CASINO ROYALE last year and no one seeme to complain about it

Even Han Solo got tortured in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Sure CAPTIVITY isn't a very good film, but most films aren't very good. I really enjoyed HOSTEL and HOSTEL 2, but that's because I dig exploitation flicks.

refine your querry and complaint... and if you're just looking to hop on a reactionary bandwagon, feel free to hop off of this site.

The "torture porn" sub-genre contains good and bad films and each film should be approached with an open mind.

it isn't even a sub-genre, it's a bullshit title put on films to belittle them and to scare parents. I fucking hate that term.

Some movies are violent some are really violent, but no legit horror flick is porn. It is not as though the intent of these films is to have the viewer masturbate to the gore.

oh ?

oh ...


http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...gail/shame.jpg

That's where the use of the quotation marks comes into play. That phrase doesn't sit well with me either although I always felt it was implying that a movie is filled with nothing BUT torture and no other redeeming value. A porn is filled with just sex, everything else is slapped on as an afterthought and I've always figured those who call certain movies "torture-porn" feel that said movies are nothing but torture and violence.

Agreed. But i'd say its more media created but you're right i hate that term - just another to pigeon hole an already overly maligned genre.

What about The Devil's Experiment?

Also a few D'amato and Franco horrors have hard core footage in em too..

many of them are just another tool of horr that has come into vogue in recent years. it will play itself out soon enough. it happened with the self-aware slashers in the 90s, it happened with the "scary black haired evil girl japanese movie rip-off" in the early 2000s.

torture is a tool for "horror", and just like all of the tools, when they succeed, people less talented than the originators grab on to it and over use it. All it takes is a single success to spearhead a "movement". I didnt like hostel, but it did well enough to spawn a sequal and get people to jump on the torture bandwagon.


Another example. Dungeons and Dragons came out years before Lord of the rings. It sucked, and we didnt really see any fantasy movies until lord of the rings. then it came out, then suddenly we had eragon, dungeon siege and ahandful of other sucky fantasy flicks riding on teh coattails of its success.