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Are you tired from watching the Evil Dead film series all night? If so, bless you.

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the billboard in that picture got taken down, partly in thanks to Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy/Angel, and Firefly).

 

He wrote a blog post about it here: clicky

 

After they received tons of complaints about it, the studio claimed it was an error at their printing company :jerkit , and that the ad campaign was never authorized by executives. They replaced it with signs that said "Captivity was here", sort of thumbing their noses at the campaigners and trying to say "we're so edgy our posters got taken down"

 

thank you for posting that

 

from IMDB

 

Captivity is "disturbing and raw, yet a classy and thought provoking film"

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That's not usually the sort of thing you say if you want people to take you seriously.

 

I've been meaning to get to it, but everytime I go to blockbuster they never have it. My roommate and I are getting a blockbuster.com service (the thing where you rent the movies) so I'll rent it then.

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I really think there is a difference between the slasher movies of old and the sadistic torture movies that are flooding the market these days.

 

Yeah...most of those movies seemed grittier, scarier and WAY more realistic than the ones out today...even w/ the advances in SFX. Trust me, Chainsaw is obviously one of the more well-known, but there were countless others way worse. I mean, I know what you're saying...in some weird way they seem to be glamorizing it a little more or something.

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My roommate and I are getting a blockbuster.com service (the thing where you rent the movies) so I'll rent it then.

 

 

I just signed up myself, I'll go look for it now. Kidding, kidding...letting the girls get what THEY want (well, within reason, of course).

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my son is 11 and has been to several horror movie conventions and seen lots and lots of classic flicks (universal studios monster films from the 30s and 40s, abbot and costello meets flicks, some choice 80s horror, the more recent cartoonized offerings like van helsing and alien v. predator). the ratings system is so fucked (see THIS FILM HAS NOT BEEN RATED for more on this) that I don't put much stock in the ratings. so i'm fully in support of both horror movies and of younger people watching the ones that they can handle responsibly. the horror genre has been the whipping boy for so many groups since forever (even in literature), but the stories have merit. bride of frankenstein is one of the best anti-war films you could hope to see if you really pay close attention (and maybe know a little about james whale).

 

that said, eli roth is a talentless hack with an ego exponentially inflated above the merits of his work. he and james wan are pretty much the two really driving this race to the bottom. beltmann nailed it when he said you are intended to empathize with the criminal rather than the victim. if you watch tobe hooper's texas chainsaw massacre, only the real twisted people would have rooted for leatherface and his family (remember that scene from summer school?) these aren't even horror films as much as exploitation films. they have more in common with 70s drive-in flicks from the masters like herschell gordon lewis than they do with something meritorious like silence of the lambs.

 

interestingly enough, eli roth was working in a production company with scott speigel (evil dead II). as a huge fan of the evil dead franchise, i was glad nothing came of that partnership. cabin fever is the only dvd i ever picked up where the cover art was far more interesting than the film itself.

 

and i have to agree with jude, people who haven't seen the evil dead movies shouldn't be allowed to talk about horror films. ;)

 

"the name's ash ... housewares"

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my 13 year old has been interested in scary movies for a few years - I know it is the attraction of what she isn't supposed to watch. However, I have always given in on some movies like The Others and other movies that offer suspense, a little jump and stuff here and there.

 

In the last couple years I have gotten more and more lenient with what I let her watch - and sometimes she sees stuff at friends' houses, like The Exorcist (which I told her she could see once she got to high school).

 

However, these torture flicks are just beyond the pale for me......and she knows my disgust and issues with them. This, too, likely makes them more appealing to her. The other day she said she wanted to see Hostel II and I said - NO WAY - I then went on to say that I didn't have an issue with scary movies that have plot, suspense, even a little silliness like the old 80's horror flicks, etc - but these movies filled with abuse and torture just seemed unnecessary, mindless and disgusting. She then said, "well that's what I like mom!"

 

:hmm

 

if done well movies like these can be bone chilling. but yes i'm in agreement with Hostel II sucking

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I remember watching Poltergeist when I was probably in 2nd grade. Scared the shit out of me.

 

I'm really careful about scary movies with my kids though. My oldest has issues sleeping because of a scary movie his dad let him watch when he was about 4 or 5. He's 9 now and won't go to sleep if he's more than one room away from an adult and lights have to be on. He says it's because of the movie.

 

My 5 year old loves scary stuff though and he knows that it's just pretend. He LOVES the Pirates of the Carribean movies, which aren't horror movies but are still a little creepy and spooky. When we watched the second one, I acted like I was scared and he said, "mom, there's no reason to be scared, it's just a movie, it's not real life."

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Depends on the kid, depends on the movie. My kids, for better or for worse, have been reciting lines from Jaws since they were able to speak. (No kidding, I think my second child's first complete sentence was "We're gonna need a bigger boat." :wub) At the same time, my oldest still gets a bit freaked from time to time by Monsters, Inc (the whole monsters in the closet bit), so go figure.

 

I grew up on horror movies, and saw plenty of them at a pretty young age (mostly without my parents' knowledge). Some of them hung with me and haunted my mind. For example, there's something about The Exorcist--maybe the fact that I knew the location where it was set, like those creepy-ass steps for example--I know where they are, and somehow that helped blur the lines between fantasy and reality for me even more. And I still to this day get mildly creeped out when I see them--which is awesome! Hell, I still love a good scare. And there were other horror movies from my youth that ranged all of the map from being genuinely creepy to kinda cheesy to being just an excuse for some t&a.

 

And with the movies we're talking about right now, I see all of those things at work--and in itself, that doesn't really bother me. But I will agree that there is something a little different about them. Exploitation was a word that used that seemed kind of apt. There's something very voyeuristic about them. Its all about the gross-out, which isn't necessarily anything new to the genre. But horror flicks proved long ago that not showing something is almost always infinitely more scary than showing something. But here we are in an era when incredible visual effects have suddenly become possible, and undoubtedly the movie producers are impressed with their own ability to graphically show things they never could before--and its almost hard to fault them for wanting to try it. And so the boundary currently being hardest pushed isn't how much they can scare people, but rather its become a test of an audience's squeamishness. How much gore--realistic gore--can they tolerate? Its kind of a game, really, which is why you've got people in the audience effectively saying "Yeah, bring it on! I can take it!" Its an interesting phenomenon, really. Done well (and I'm not sure what that means), these kinds of films really could be genuinely terrifying and tap into some of our most elemental fears. That could be interesting. But I don't know where the line is between "done well" and "sick fucking crap", so oh well.

 

All of which is to say that I really have no idea how I'll respond the first time my kids want to watch one of these. :unsure I'm pretty sure that society will find a way to carry on, and that the world most likely will not end. But, yeah, I'm not really a fan of this recent trend.

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The differences between classic horror flicks like The Exorcist and the "torture porn" of today are almost too numerous to mention. I guess the most obvious difference is that some of those classics actually were films and not just movies: they had realistic characters, a reasonable story arc, actual plot points, and so on. This dreck coming out today, as has been stated here already, simply celebrates sadism as a means of abusing the audience. Twenty-first century special effects make it even worse ("Let's show what it really looks like to have her intestines ripped out by bats! Let's give them an up close view of someone having his ear cut off with a buzzsaw!")

 

The phrase "torture porn" is perfect to describe what these moviemakers are accomplishing. These are movies that take brutal, murderous sadism to an extreme level and rub our faces in it. Why does anybody want to see that?

 

Rose McGowan recently mentioned that these movies are basically like a manual for serial killers. And what's going to be next? Actual pornographic elements? Hot poker in the anus? Genital mutilation? It reminds me of something Jack Nicholson said once: "If you kiss a tit, you get an X rating; cut it off with a sword, and it's an R."

 

People's priorities in this country are so fucked up, I can't even believe it.

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  • 1 month later...

speaking of dipshit parents, I need a read on a situation we encountered last night. i am not a parent so I don't feel that it's right for me to sit in judgment on this woman until gathering some opinions from actual parents...

 

wife and I went to see the new harry potter last night. the previews for same were LOUD and violent, the movie was loud and violent (at least relative to a 0 old, I would think). A mother came in to the theater late with what I would guess was about a 6 or 7 year old and also a tiny baby on her shoulders who couldn't have been much more than a few months old.

 

What in the hell is someone thinking taking a 3 month old baby into a theater like that? Am I off base here? is that the kind of nurturing aurual environment for someone who can't even talk yet?

 

just seemed outrageous to me. I'm hoping someone will say it's no big deal.

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just seemed outrageous to me. I'm hoping someone will say it's no big deal.

 

 

 

Seems COMPLETELY OUTRAGEOUS to me!!! We were just discussing even the books last night and my friend knows her kid is not ready for the last few, so she's going to hold off even tho the son knows that they are out there.

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It's an outrage. Call Child Protective Services and, while you wait for them to get there, flog the parents with a Bull-Whip.

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It's an outrage. Call Child Protective Services and, while you wait for them to get there, flog the parents with a Bull-Whip.

 

this was a fatherless child, and I didn't think it fair to flog the mother with the little girl standing right there. plus, I had popcorn to eat and what not.

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Theaters are too loud for a baby's ears. Other than that, there's nothing to worry about. Did you notice if the mother kept her hands over the baby's ears the whole time? Cause then it would be ok till it cried. Sometimes, baby's go totally to sleep with too much stimulation.

 

what the hell do I know, i've already broke 3 of them.

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No big deal taking a 3 mo. old baby to a flick. Mom's gotta get out, too. Tissue in the ears for the kid is a good idea and the sense to leave to the hallway immediately if the baby starts to act up.

 

We took our newborn to a Todd Snider show in early June when he was 3 mo. old. Second row. The music was just one guy with an acoustic guitar. We did the tissue thing and he got antsy towards about half-way through the gig so we ditched the seats and stood in the back.

 

No big deal.

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