First grotesque anal grafted stills for Tom Six's HUMAN CENTIPEDE (Fright Fest 2009 thread)

yeah about the only things I can think of that I find as gross as the synopsis of "A Serbian Film" are tubgirl and the picture of the dude who scraped off his face with glass while on PCP from rotten.com

i read the first few lines and saw it was about raping babies... how much did yall need to know?

there's enough incredibly depressing shit to read about irl without having to worry about the weird fantasies and lame rationalizations of extreme horror filmmakers/fans

lol @ this thread

history mayne OTM I didn't even bother reading the whole synopsis

like, this stuff has always been around, it isn't really worth paying attention to

serbian film attempts to do the same sort've thing as salo - turn sadism into a metaphor for political brutality - but it's so much more dumb and inelegant, compared to the pasolini, that it REALLY flatters it to be mentioned in the same breath/thought.

that being said, the bbfc are just as dumb; they know that this kind of (re)action just gets ppl to download these movies (i would never have bothered to watch a serbian film if they hadn't kicked up such a stink abt it), and as ever i would like to know how they're defining 'harm' and its effects - on what basis do they believe this film to be harmful (rather than tasteless or stupid or boring or whatever.) have they been 'harmed', also?

Martyrs is such a shit, shit movie. I get angry just thinking about it. A Serbian Film on the other hand at least feels like it's trying to communicate some genuine ideas about people reeling from unimaginable trauma, albeit in an incredibly overblown, ill-considered fashion.

Actually, the guy who wrote ASF also made this actually-pretty-decent historical fantasy flick (totally not scary or gross):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgGCH_E5yXE

What did you and c. not like about Martyrs? I thought people loved that movie.

some people seem to find Martyrs powerful or something but I fond it dishonest and flimsy.

i haven't seen ASF, and as i said, don't care to, but i did see a rather spectacularly brutal yugoslavian film called mehanizam ("the mechanism") several years back at a film festival. though it's a fairly traditional survival/endurance thriller, with none of the over-the-top transgressions that ASF apparently brings to the table, it was so unremittingly, sadistically bleak that it left me quite angry and shaken. walked out the theater absolutely hating it, but once the initial trauma wore off, i came to retropectively appreciate its craft and performances.

thing is, i wound up thinking a lot about mehanizam as the product of the "kosovo conflict" (and surrounding strife), of a generation that lived through a bloody civil war involving fascist tyranny, ethnic cleaning, the bombing of urban centers, etc. looking at it this way helped me understand the film's methods and message, as well as my own "civilized" distaste for its furious brutality. perhaps helps to see something like ASF in a similar context, though again, i'm speaking only of its reputation, in complete ignorance of the actual film.

some people seem to find Martyrs powerful or something but I fond it dishonest and flimsy.

― Simon H. Shit (Simon H.), Tuesday, June 7, 2011 2:11 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

it was dumb, loud and flashy, with absolutely no interest in real character development, which made the third act seem almost completely pointless. i didn't care about anything onscreen, though i did think that the basic idea was interesting.

had similar objections to a l'interieur ("inside"), a film often mentioned in the same breath, but at least that a credible central character and a sense of playful exuberance to balance out the heavy-handed "extremity".

"...at least that had a credible central character..."

Maybe there will be a string of movies: Sebian Beauty, Serbian Dad, Serbian Pastoral.

martyrs is my favorite horror film of the last 10 years

had similar objections to a l'interieur ("inside"), a film often mentioned in the same breath, but at least that a credible central character and a sense of playful exuberance to balance out the heavy-handed "extremity".

yeah Inside was at least upfront about being a brutish genre flick.

I think the biggest problem I have with anything at all torture porn-ish is the vacuous nihilism which informs it and is perpetuated by its existence. I actually don't think I'd mind seeing something that utilized those elements in a more well-rounded or thoughtful way (kinda thinking of something like the interview in DFW's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men where the guy details being sodomized with the broken bottle). Which probably scoots it out of the strict confines of horror. But, y'know, balancing out those extremes of human depravity with hope and some willingness to survive beyond that. I dunno, maybe some of the stuff that's already out there qualifies. I just know that I'm too overly-sensitive to expose myself to depictions of humanity's capacity for atrocious cruelty that I'm not really all that willing to look into this stuff on the off chance that I might find something that won't make me wanna snuff it.

change topic a little bit, is HC2 the only sequel that uses its predecessor as an actual film? the idea of HC2 being a movie about someone who was inspired by the first movie seems like something that's never been done before and is really a cool concept.

Blair Witch 2. Return of the Living Dead (sorta).

OTM, it's clever as hell. great way to get around the fact that your central character is dead, too. too bad about the (alleged) execution (lol).

x-post

oh, and wes craven's new nightmare (sorta)

This seems to be a thing only horror movies do. Ha ha.

O_o at A Serbian Film synopsis. Who knew that the torture porn genre offered such rich, as-yet-uncharted territory *vomits*

xxxp - yeah was kinda wondering how they'd come up with a sequel considering that everybody in the movie dies iirc; you can't really say "well, there was another scientist, and he's mad too" unless you want to do some hangover 2 type shit

is HC2 the only sequel that uses its predecessor as an actual film? the idea of HC2 being a movie about someone who was inspired by the first movie seems like something that's never been done before and is really a cool concept.

i think scream played around with this idea although iirc the events of the first movie 'really happened' and then inspired a fictionalized movie version which was incorporated into the sequels? haha i may not rc

this is annoying me tho because im sure ive seen it done before although maybe not as directly & i cant remember where...

old testament --> new testament

not a sequel, but anyone who thinks they might enjoy meta-horror, get thee to Bigas Luna's 1987 Anguish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAW_7xghhkw&feature=related

^ oh shit yeah! great movie, bizarre and original in the best possible way. "behind you, there's another dimension"

have it on video (lol, like no shit, an old VHS tape i bought when a store liquidated its stock), but haven't watched it in ages. a plan!

plus, there's nowhere else to see Michael Lerner and Zelda Rubenstein topline a movie.

dont want to derail but people using the irritating torture porn nomenclature as a general dismissive all these movies are shit catch all are missing the point tbh. plus we had a whole thread kind of about that but i have to go find it. will link when i do.

wow Anguish looks great! and Michael Lerner speaks spanish!

Enjoying horror films - why do we (or don't we)?

oh also sorry for perpetrating starting out my last post with a torture sentence, jesus

If you can't call the purported Human Centipede sequel "torture porn", then torture porn doesn't actually exist.

I mean, you have a scene where the antagonist wraps his cock in barbed wire and rapes the woman at the end of the centipede! This ho may not be worth saving, cap'n.

eh idk, i have no confidence in human centipede 2, but i am not really down with judging stuff sight unseen (which means i watch a lot of terrible stuff tbh) - if you went by scene specific descriptors of Irreversible or Martyrs you could easily say those must be valueless torture porn exercises, but i think youd be wrong.

i am not really down with judging stuff sight unseen (which means i watch a lot of terrible stuff tbh)

lol you at least recognize how you are sabotaging your argument here, right

as ive said before, i will gladly watch 5 terrible movies to find 1 amazing thing i would have otherwise skipped.

doesn't sound like you skip much tho

xxp: (which is totally aside from you objecting to me calling a movie where someone gets sexual gratification from torturing people "torture porn")

Do you have to see "A Serbian Film", which includes scenes of pretty much every iteration of sexual snuff film that you can think of, before you can call it "torture porn"? Or are you maybe being completely oversensitive here?

torture porn is one of those names for stuff somebody else likes

wait, did that make any sense?

It made total sense, but my argument is that it doesn't make sense to object to all usages of it, particularly when describing movies that are intentionally melding together sexual acts with extreme, protracted violence.

yeah im not sure id call sushi 'torture porn'

xpost

A strong-stomached friend of mine live tweeted ASF, and it gives a good overview of the film and his reactions to it, without having to watch it, which I certainly won't.

http://lookintomyeye.blogspot.com/2011/02/serbian-film.html

haha yeah it did to me xpost

i am just 100% opposed to the term - and just because it might have a more direct and accurate application to this particular film, it still carries all of the baggage with it that came before.

particularly when describing movies that are intentionally melding together sexual acts with extreme, protracted violence.

and not to overuse irreversible, but this is a dead on description of that film as well, but that doesnt make it torture porn

Curious as to why you are opposed to the term justen, is it the lazy way the term ties it into titilation (i.e. "food porn" - a term I can't stand).

a couple things from the other thread-

i think the issue i have with the term is mostly to do with the use of "porn", which operates on a much more ahem functional level where the pleasure is more direct. in other words, using porn to describe this stuff implies that the enjoyment is contained in the visual, which is not true for me.

― First and Last and Safeways ™ (jjjusten), Wednesday, March 17, 2010 5:25 PM (1 year ago)

and i think that it carries an explicit message of shame and wrongness within it as well.

― First and Last and Safeways ™ (jjjusten), Wednesday, March 17, 2010 5:27 PM (1 year ago)

from that ASF overview:

Poor old Milosh. He was actually quite a likeable chap until they injected him with cattle aphrodisiac.

I lol'd

It was "interesting" trying to read those tweets while at work.