Some of the stuff in movies such as Texas Chainsaw:The Beginning,Saw 3 & 6,Hostel 1 & 2,Rambo 4,Devil's Rejects,Wolf Creek,Halloween (remake) etc is quite gory and violent compared to mainstream movies of the past.
However,they may look tame compared to low budget indies/video nasties of the past (and present).
I think most of the horror films these days lazily depend on graphic scenes of gore, rather, than the suspense side of things. I mean, take The Saw series for example - it's all about chopping people's different parts off and torture - not much to do with suspense, really. This is where the old horror films shine - they'd heavily relied on keeping the viewer on the edge of the seats ..... not literally, though.
I much prefer the horror films of the 60s and 70's - nostalgia admittedly plays a part in this.
Hammer, Amicus, Tigon etc etc produced many real gems , and some prize tukeys of course.
Pete Walker made some hugely enjoyable films- I watched one last night called The Comeback starring the singer Jack Jones of all people. Sheila Keith was as usual on top form , and there was a quite extrordinary role for Bill Owen.
The Saw series are psychological thrillers. If you think Saw I is about someone's foot getting cut off, you missed the point. It's about what would induce someone to cut off their own foot. It's about their mental state. There's relatively little gore, but quite a lot of atmosphere.
For example, there's a scene where Zep uses a stethoscope to listen to Dr Gordon's daughter's heart, then waves his gun in her face to hear her heart speed up. Now, I have problems with this scene
I don't think Zep would have done that. It would fit if Zep were Jigsaw, but he isn't; he's another victim, caught in one of Jigsaw's traps and facing his own death. So why is he enjoying himself so much? Because the film wants us to think he is Jigsaw. It cheats, basically.
but it is quite chilling and suspenseful.
Hostel is another one. It's not a great film, with a weak middle and a ludicrous ending, but the first section is pretty good. It starts off as a simple road trip, with the boys looking for beer, drugs and women, getting thrown out of a bar, etc. The atmosphere grows gradually uneasy, worse as they get closer to Slovakia and the hostel. We get the anti-American sentiment, the encounter on the train, the feral kiRAB, the hostel itself which is too good to be true, their friend strangely absent etc. Some people criticised it for being too slow and not having enough action. It has gore later, but it also has the scene where the clients are talking about how best to make use of their purchases, which is the most chilling bit of the film.
I'm not a fan of Wolf Creek, either, but again the first part is all build-up and suspense. It has gore, but it also has the "head on a stick" moment which was not very explicit visually.
Critics of so-called "torture porn" sometimes seem to see what they expect to see.
I'm fed up with modern horror in all honesty, continued use of torture porn is getting boring.
The trouble is people often label movies differently.
I think Se7en and Saw are deemed psychological thrillers or horror by others.
The old "horror" movies of old can sometimes just be considered ghost stories.
The Thing (my fave ever) is a Sci Fi horror.
Personally I only consider the likes of Hellraiser, slasher movies etc to be horror as the focus of the movie is sheer terror and gore which reveal very few emotions.
This is what I mean by horror films of the 60s and 70s having something eerie about them which todays films lack. No special effects here, no CGI, just plain creepy.
It's also partly to do with the film quality itself. In the gap between the early 90s and the recent digital boom, for economic reasons inferior film stock which diminished depth and dimension, rendering the resulting films to have an 'overlit' veneer about them, became de rigeur . Compare something like Coppola's Dracula with an AIP exploiter from the 70s - all quibbles about the comparative 'artistic' merit aside, the difference in visual quality - the film's inherent 'skin tone', if you like - is so distractingly apparent.
