Over a breakfast of oatmeal and grapefruit juice, horror movie director Eli Roth was talking about throwing up. It was a love story.
On a family trip to Florida from Boston, he saw his first horror film – not counting “The Wizard of Oz.”
“We were staying in a place that had closed-circuit cable, and there were two movies on, ‘Rough Cut’ and ‘Killer Bees,”‘ he recalled. His father said if he and his brother wanted to watch a scary movie, there was a “real scary one” on the other channel. The movie was “The Exorcist.” Roth was 6.
At 8, he went to see “Alien.” He asked to leave. But he couldn’t bring himself to walk out. So he watched the last 10 minutes from the aisle. “Then I went out and threw up.” He saw “Dracula,” threw up. Saw Philip Kaufman’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” around that time. Ditto.
When his parents noticed a pattern that begged for a scary-movie intervention, Roth decide he’d cure himself by seeing scarier and scarier movies without hurling.
So this is how a horror fanatic is born.
Roth, the director of the graphic, infuriating “Hostel,” is one of the talented young filmmakers utilizing better technology, richer production values and a way with actors to deliver movies that feel like quasi-snuff films to avid audiences.
Horror’s audience skews young. And while there are more guys than gals, the difference, says Tim Palen,
co-president of marketing at Lionsgate, home to “Saw,” and Roth, isn’t as pronounced as you’d assume. What is significant is that gore, which used to be a cult taste, performs so impressively at the box office that the films make a claim for themselves as mainstream. It was a welcome shock earlier this month when “The Departed” bested “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” at the box office.
That these movies can be aesthetically beguiling, winkingly aware of their meanness, contemptuously superior to their charnel house victims makes them all the more disquieting.
This month hosts the latest installments of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and the better “Saw” series.
If the old saw – pardon the pun – holds, then we’re just a nation getting the type of horror retreads we deserve. Though pitched in a slightly different way, we could ask: What did we do to invite such often punishing fare?
“Horror movies tend to reflect the fears of the moment,” said Roth, by way of explaining the grim reapings of the genre – in particular the gore and hard-gore versions. “Hostel” follows two American college buddies as they do a backpacking tour of Europe. They hit Amsterdam, ready to do hedonism proud. Only the pleasure seekers become the victims of other tourists happy to pay serious money to break the ultimate commandment.
At its first scene of torture, something to do with fingers and their severing, the movie seems to confirm the worst of fears: slasher-style gore hellbent on pushing the cruelty envelope in the name of entertainment.
The first time this nation was awash in gore, it was in the throes of the Vietnam War. Among the low-budget scarefest was Wes Craven’s “The Last House on the Left” (1972) and Tobe Hoopers classic “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1973).
Roth’s debut, “Cabin Fever,” and Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” came out within months of each other in 2003.
“That was when everyone was afraid of SARS. People in Asia were riding around in masks, people in America were traveling through airports with masks and gloves.”
What fed “Hostel” was even more dire. First, there was the story he’d heard from Ain’t It Cool News website master Harry Knowles about people paying thousands in Thailand for the privilege of entering a room and killing someone.
There were also 9/11 and the pervasive cloud of terrorism. But, said the director, there were also the al-Qaeda videos of beheadings being shown on the Internet, in particular the killing of journalist Daniel Pearl.
“These videos were horrifying things for people,” he said. “What if you’re in a room and someone’s going to come in and kill you no matter what amount of money you’re going to pay them, and no amount of words is going to change their minds?”
Reaching the saturation point?
The flow of gore into theaters isn’t likely to be stanched anytime soon. However, there are signs that the market might be saturated. The second Bay-produced “Chainsaw” flick opened earlier this month. With a production budget of $9 million, the first Bay-produced film went on to gross $80 million. The second cost more and has made less thus far.
The “Saw” series is another matter, both in execution and likely longevity.
Palen of Lionsgate is hardly puzzled by the success of the franchise that has a diabolically punishing killer named Jigsaw as its master of horrors.
A few years ago the movie’s filmmakers, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, had invited him to a screening they were holding in Los Angeles.
“By the end of the movie I was completely flipping out,” he said. “It had been a long time since I’d seen something so smart and clever. When Jigsaw stands at the end, the audience stood up and clapped. As if to say, ‘You got me,”‘ said Palen. “How often does that happen in a movie? Horror audiences really appreciate a smart movie.”
Right after the new year, Lionsgate is slated to release Roth’s sequel to “Hostel.” This one ditches its ugly American frat boys (oh, yeah, all but one was killed) for their American girl equivalents.
With Japanese ghosts-in-translation flicks like the “The Grudge” and the “Ring” cycle, and a slew of minor rehashes, Palen admits the market is cluttered.
“There’s a big glut of people trying to get into the game. The ‘Saw’ franchise is built on a smart premise. This is going to be ‘Nightmare on Elm Street.”‘
In the stream of is bloody begats, Jigsaw does seem poised to become rightful heir to “Nightmare’s” Freddy Krueger, as well as Leatherface, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees.
Identifying with the killer
A number of horror fans locate a genre shift from empathy with the victim to a fondness for the killer with “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and its grunting, squealing, masked murderer.
“We felt for Leatherface,” said horror aficionado John
Gulager, whose comically bloodletting “Feast” was just released on DVD. “He’s left out there on the road. He was the good guy.”
But when he lumbered into a screen set up at a college film society, my visceral and vexed relation to horror was sealed. I still see the shuddering feet of his first victim like a flashback, though misrember it like a trauma.
Talking gore to the horror guys (and it remains guys who make horror films) gives one some distance from the actual experience of watching it. There’s a reason why “Scream” was a respite. It’s the same reason “Feast” is a guilty pleasure: Some of us need a heady dose of humor to get through the horror.
Roth said he wants to “make a movie that 30 years from now kids are still renting at a sleepover.”
If they’re anything like him, they may be throwing up.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
