Clive Barker Knocks Eli Roth and Rob Zombie
 

So what's the big Deal, He is Clive Barker... He can say what ever the fuck he likes!

Well, he is only vocalizing what many people feel. A LOT of people are bored with what passes for a horror flick these days. And it's no laughing matter!

Yeah...


...so?

The only thing about his statements I disagree with is that he includes Rob Zombie in the torture porn genre. Zombie is pretty much his own thing and I think that a lot of directors could learn from him. Even at their worst, his movies are pretty smart and they're full of fun, he also has a flare for metafilm and pop culture nods equalled only by Quentin Tarantino.

I agree with him. (barker, not faustus)

Yeah, I'm behind him all the way. Actually, if people started adapting some more of his books, we might might be in a more exciting state of horror right now...

But I don't see anything wrong, unreasonable, or even harsh, with what the man said.

Without reading most of it, I think 'kinky horror maven' (!) Clive Barker is speaking out against an evolving genre in which he is no longer a major player.

If you had such classics as Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions (snigger!) under your belt, maybe you would too.

Zombie = Tarantino?


Hell no.

I'm with Doc. Zombie's films are original and he doesn't care about the bad reviews. He's not making the same carbon copy slasher flicks that have been done again and again cause he puts his own twist on the genre, and when you think about it, it works. People still see his movies cause there's just this creepiness about them.

Does he equal Tarantino? No. No one can, but he's up there. IMO

No, he's not copying other films and their original, but that doesn't make them good. There's not much character development, I have no idea why he even filmed the rape scene in halloween and I don't feel he puts much work into them.

Does he equal tarantino? No.
Does he equal a pile of shit? Hard to tell.

I think Doc was making the point that Zombie is to horror what Tarantino is to drama in the fact that they are both fond of making pop culture references quite often, using a pre-recorded music soundtrack, having a visceral, fast-paced violent style, etc.

In which case, it's hard to argue against his point. Whether or not he "equals" Tarantino on a talent scale is irrelevent to the argument here.

i'm increasingly convinced that zombie is a hack and that he is like tarantino (a director schooled on bad videos without an original bone in their bodies)


not that i'm trying to spark controversy or anything!!

I do think that Zombie is a cut above Roth, its a tad unfair to lump him in the infamous "torture porn" category. I rank both Corpses and Rejects among the most enjoyable horror movies of the decade. I was more put off by Saw III for example, which is one of those flicks that makes me think I'm getting too old for this shit, to quote Danny Glover...

I'm sorry, but if you can watch Pulp Fiction and say that it isn't creative or original...then you rented the wrong movie.

I kinda want to agree with zero on that one.

Stuck in the middle with you!

critics continually pan Tarantino for "making movies about movies." looking at him in that light, I would definitely say Zombie is a lot like QT. in my own opinion, based on their overall body of work, I think Tarantino is better than Rob Zombie.

I also want to say that I don't have anything against "torture porn." lots of horror fans are ripping on it because it's the hot thing right now, but some of my favorite genre pictures are planted firmly in HG Lewis's footprints and in the 60s and 70s exploitation films as a whole. I hafta say that part of the reason I like them is that it means that there are other fans of these types of pictures.

I think a lot of people are criticizing torture porn because it takes no talent, no talent whatsoever, to make it...no storytelling skills required. And I put most of today's sadistic "horror-like" movies in that category because the payoff to people who see these things is the long, protracted killing scenes. It comes to the same.

H. G. Lewis, now, that guy did his thing forty years ago, more or less, and while it was certainly not artsy, it was a bit fresher and more daring. Doing that stuff now is a refuge for people who don't know how to do anything else.

If you see a "horror filmmaker" who can't do suspense, you should take a good look at that "artist" and really question if their work has any merit at all. If you don't, you may very well be feeding your hard-earned money to an idiot who knows how to talk his way into a deal.

Because let's face it, people: If a studio invests in a horror film and gets a big piece of crap, they will saturation advertise it ANYWAY and tout it as the new groundbreaking thing that's going to rock your mind.

Once a film is made, their money is spent, and their job is to aggressively sell it, and attempt to profit from it. If you think you haven't been sold twenty or thirty pieces of absolute garbage in recent memory...think again.

I completely disagree, since if we take this dubious term in its broadest sense (to include most explicitly gory comtemporary horrors) there are clear differences between say Wolf Creek (brilliantly acted, constantly surprising, alienating and alarming in equal measure), House of 1000 Corpses (bit of a smartarse fanboy misfire aimed at gothic teens) and The Hills Have Eyes 2 (bad all round, possibly redeemed slightly by OTT gore).

If you're saying it takes no talent to make say a Wrong Turn 2 then I see where you are coming from, but the likes of Hostel and Saw are driven by intriguing, dastardly storylines and good perfomances. That they happen to feature extreme violence might just be the icing on the cake.

My conclusion about those who deride the so-called 'torture porn' subgenre is that they believe themselves too intelligent to be insulted by such apparently straightforward graphic titillation - after all, they just seem to be out to shock... where is the pandering to their values and sense of 'purpose'?

This discomfort should be all part of the fun. Remember there are bad films in every genre, but the desired complexities are there to be found even in 'torture porn' if you want them.

Both Roth and Zombie have made 3 features each in the last 5 years.... I think they have done pretty well with their contributions to horror so far.

Why don't you just wait ten years and see what they churn out! Then it might be an interesting debate to come back to.

correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're saying that the quality of a person's art should be judged by their motivations to produce such art.

HG Lewis did some groundbreaking stuff, yes, but he wasn't setting out to be an acclaimed artist. in fact, he readily admits that his now-infamous "blood" trilogy was made purely to turn a quick buck. I mean, that's exactly why his films were dubbed "exploitation," b/c they exploited the public's sensibilities and turned over a decent quick profit by doing so. he wasn't setting out to make art, yet many (including myself) see them in that light now b/c we can see the direct line between his films and the current trend towards "torture porn" (and whoever came up with that term should be shot, but that's another tirade). Lewis's films were violent as hell for the day, but they also contained some very edgy sexual stuff too (once again, considering the time period), much like today's batch of filmmakers.

now don't get me wrong. I am upset by the state of horror films these days, and I hate the crap that is being churned out to the ever-hungry-for-more genre fans such as ourselves, but to completely dismiss all of these films with one sweeping blow does a great disservice to the genre, in my opinion. in this case, one apple should not spoil the whole bunch, is what I'm saying.

to me, the bottom line is that horror films are popular again, which means more money will be put into horror movies, which in turn means more horror movies will be made. if you look at it that way, it's inevitable that, even through just sheer chance, a good movie is going to be made every now and then. if we didn't have the money being spent at the box office on crap like remakes and Wrong Turn 2, good movies like the Descent (good in my opinion, but that's not the point) would never get made.
so the bad turn that horror is on right now is a two-edged sword, in that on one hand you get crap, but without the money the crap generates, you don't get the occasional gold that somehow, lucky for us, gets cranked out.

Yes, just to keep my statements clear, I was not claiming that Lewis had any artistic motivations. I was saying that in my opinion his gore films were fresh and decidedly more original when they came out.

I am bored with current trends in horror because I don't see a lot of talent, and I see a reliance on going back to squirm-inducing gross-out scenes as a replacement for the suspense these modern filmmakers are incapable of creating/generating.

It's REAL EASY to make any audience squirm with a torturously violent situation. Anyone can do it, and that means it takes no talent. When I see a horror movie, I want to see the movie pull off a trick. I want a story, perhaps an outlandish story that I am made to believe via clever storytelling. I want suspension of disbelief. It's more than most of these current "horror meisters" are able to do.

I thought the story behind Hostel was descent... Do you disagree?

Yeah, I guess I wasn't too satisfied by that one.

As far as recent efforts that I thought had some spark of creativity, I liked House of 1000 Corpses, and Cabin Fever, more than those directors' later efforts.

I'm not so sure. They where two movies that lacked origanality in story telling as far as I am concerned. Hostel took a simple part of life that so many people experience and put a twist to it that had not been done before.

Sure there has been plenty of Movies based in Hotels , but a Hostel is another world all together.

There are some great horror films coming out, but there are also shitty ones. I think the majority of them are the same basic outline as they have for decades. Some teens travelling, big massacre, 1 or none survive. But they've changed slightly. They used to rely on atmosphere and suspence, now it seems to be "How much blood and swearing can we fit into these few seconds? How about a bit of sex on top?" That's just what it seems like to me.

Thanks to the writers' strike, you can expect a lot more shitty horror in the near future.

That's nothing new....:rolleyes:

A bold statement, and of course untrue - there are considerable skills required to combine convincing special effects, subtle CGI, an unnerving soundtrack perfectly timed, and intense direction of actors. If any of these goes wrong, the effect is severely diluted and sometimes laughable - the complete opposite to what was intended.

Not to mention that to properly shake up the audience, they must have grown to care about the fate and motivations of the characters - 'torture porn' films are clearly as able to do that as films in any other genre.

If these movies are simply enjoyed as 'spectacle', then so be it - the art crowd will never let this kind of stuff in anyway. But it just so happens that films like Wolf Creek, Hostel and Saw are much more than a sum of the gruesome parts they depict, in both execution and originality.

Which ironically is more than can be said for Cabin Fever, which trips itself up paying homage left right and centre. With the director's next effort, unshackling himself from fanboy attitudes really paid off.

You can find plenty of good and bad suspensful and gore-free horror films if you look for them, both old and new.

Of course, we all must remember that these comments are all opinions, and opinions do not need to be agreed with. They don't even need to be intelligible!

not to mention intelligent

What he said. :cool:

I disagree. In torture porns, the charcters are usually slutty, whore bag teens fucking each other all the time, swearing, drinking and smoking every few seconds. I felt nothing whatsoever for any character in RZH.

Yeah, smoking....

It sounds like you are not disassociating yourself enough with the behaviour of characters in a movie. There are unsavoury, disagreeable types in films of all genres - if it means you could never care anything about them because they are in 'torture porn' movies, I think it proves my earlier point that detractors of this genre find the general lack of perceived decency and moral purpose to be aggravating... perhaps because these viewers mistakenly believe they deserve more respect from the filmmakers.

Why ask a video game guy about movies, anyways? I didn't see anybody ask Ed Boon or John Tobias about action/fighting movies back in the day...

What I'm saying is these people do nothing to get any sympathy or remorse from the viewer.

How about the fact that we should all be able to relate, considering most of us drink smoke or have sex before marriage. As a generation, we're flawed, (if you can call it that) and so are these characters.