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I’m the last person to celebrate the life of a celebrity — but I will make at least one exception: Paul Newman. My fervent hope is that future generations of superstars take his cue — on two fronts. First, he shunned the entire Hollywood machine, even while he was living off it.  He created an entirely new [...]

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This award-winning doc on the painful aftermath of Katrina for New Orleans residents is finally hitting theaters. Check out if it's playing near you and support!

I think "We don't want to get your expectations too high," says it all.

I started watching Asian horror films a few years before they caught on in the U. S. While I didn't catch this fun trend until after "The Ring" came out, I did discover it at a time when the only place I could find these movies was on eBay. I had to be careful that I bought Region 1 and Region 0 DVDS, since the Asian Region 3 DVDs aren't designed to play on American DVD players. That shows how obscure these movies were - it was hard to find some of them that could play on my DVD player.

I did see a few of the remakes, and I've vowed to never waste my time and rental money ever again. While the originals relied on atmosphere and creepy storylines and characters with little or no special effects, the remakes relied on bad acting and crappy special effects. The remakes didn't delve at all into a main issue in some of the Asian originals - the breakdown of the family. That is a core theme in the original "The Ring", "Dark Water", and "Uzumaki". "Uzumaki" is my favorite Asian horror film which thankfully has never been remade. Ever seen it? It's so bizarre I'm not surprised it hasn't been remade. I also have the graphic novels, which are even more weird than the movie.

Here are other classic horror films that have been remade into what are mostly a lot of oinkers. Even "Piranha" has been remade! I remember seeing that goofy thing on TV when I was a kid. Some of these remakes weren't bad. "The Shining" was okay, but it doesn't hold a candle to Kubrick. "The Thing" was phenomenal, but it was based much closer on the original story than the original movie was. I have the remake of "The Thing" on DVD. Jeff Goldblum made "The Fly" worth watching. That was a good movie.

I understand that a remake of "The Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes" is in the works. Oh, geez, I hope that's not serious!

Here's a list of some of the horror movie remakes. I've seen all of the originals.

The Hills Have Eyes 2
2,000 Maniacs
Halloween
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Hills Have Eyes
Dawn of the Dead
When A Stranger Calls
Toolbox Murders
The Amityville Horror
Assault on Precinct 13
The Fog
Willard
Wicker Man
Day of the Dead
The Hitcher
Piranha
Stephen King’s The Shining
House of Wax
The Haunting
Body Snatchers
The Blob
The Thing (1982)
The Fly
House On Haunted Hill
Return to House on Haunted Hill
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Night Of The Living Dead (1990)
13 Ghosts
The Haunting
Psycho (1998)
House on Haunted Hill
Village of the Damned (1995)
Stephen King’s Carrie

The Tie Between Sex And Violence
Horror Movies And "Torture Porn"
By Elizabeth Black

There is something cathartic about a good horror movie. The suspense and terror are often accompanied by scenes of either blatant or repressed sexuality. Nastassia Kinski's character in the remake of "Cat People" must suppress her sexual feelings or she will change into a panther. The movie "Scream" is famous for its "rules", one of which is that any character (especially teenaged and college-aged characters) that has exciting, pre-marital sex in a horror movie will die before the credits roll.

Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist who studies human sexuality and love, said that there is a tie between fear and sexual arousal. The hormone dopamine comes into play when we are frightened. The emotions involved with fear are similar to the feelings involved in sexual arousal. Fisher says that, rather than roses and a nice dinner, it might be more exciting to take your date to a horror movie if you hope to get lucky that night. In an article for iVillage, Fisher said that "the novelty of a dangerous situation you'd see in a horror movie or after trying a slightly risky, adrenaline-fueled activity together can also feed dopamine levels and make him want to feel emotionally closer to you via sex." Some of the best horror movies, such as the Nastassia Kinski "Cat People", the original "The Haunting", and "The Legend Of Hell House", have strong sexual overtones along with the terror. We jump into our partner's arms at the thrilling scenes, elevating our sexual arousal.

The appeal of horror films is that we control our level of terror. We can always avert our eyes, leave the theatre, or turn off the TV. We can remind ourselves that it is only a movie. We know what we are seeing is not real, and we can enjoy the thrill of being scared, yet being in full control of our situation. Real life doesn't always allow that kind of control. Quite often in these films, the hero or heroine survive the terror in the end.

Over the past year or two, it has been difficult to find good horror movies. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what it was that seemed so wrong with the newest crop of terror. Serial killers had become very popular, but they can become boring very quickly. These new horror movies weren't so much scary as gross and dehumanizing. The sexual aspects remained, but the violence was much more intense. There are only so many ways you can kill someone without going over the line into Grand Guignol. Granted, confusing sex with violence is nothing new in horror movies. "Re-animator" contains a famous scene of the decapitated head of a scientist performing cunnilingus on the female star, who is strapped naked to a table. That is oral rape, since the man is forcing himself on her against her will, plus she is tied to the table, unable to escape. The heroine of the cult classic "I Spit On Your Grave" is brutally raped for forty-five minutes in a voyeuristic, sexualized fashion. She gets her revenge by creatively killing off all of the men who had assaulted her. The movie is cathartic in that she takes control of her situation following her rape, and she exacts her revenge. The modern horror films don't seem to do that. Creatively torturing and then killing people, especially women, just to do it over and over again gets old fast.

Or so I had thought.

The media has been following these types of movies, and calls them "torture porn". Another term being bandied about but is not nearly as common is "gorno", a portmanteau of "gore" and "porno". New York Magazine ticked off a list of these movies – "The Devil's Rejects", "Saw", "Wolf Creek", "Hostel", and even "The Passion of the Christ". A screenwriter friend of the New York reporter thought that the trend might just be "a way of ratcheting up the stakes". The reporter also noted that there is a masochistic as well as sadistic component to the mayhem. The sexual overtones are there, but the focus is on terrorizing, torturing, and then killing the main characters, especially female characters. These movies feel hopeless.

Modern tragedies do not affect the release of these films. Despite the shootings as Virginia Tech, Lionsgate released "Hostel: Part II" on June 8. This movie is about the torture killing of college students. Women are the main targets in torture porn. According to The Guardian, the most famous scene in the original "Hostel" was of "a man taking a blowtorch to a woman's face, her eyeball coming out and dangling from the socket. Later, another character snips it off with some scissors."

While the violence in these movies is obvious, also obvious is the sexual torture, especially of women. An article in The Guardian noted that "it's the violence against women that's most troubling, because it is here that sex and extreme violence collide." Nubile young women are shown in various stages of undress, and they are tortured, sometimes sexually, and then killed. According to New York Magazine, Carol Clover described differences between torture porn and older slasher films in her book "Men, Women, and Chain Saws". Clover said that "many hack-’em-ups are empowering; the “final girl” always slays the monster." Sally in the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" gets away in the end. Adrienne Barbeau's Stevie Wayne escapes the ghosts of lepers trying to kill her in "The Fog". Jamie Lee Curtis slays villain Michael Myers in "Halloween" and its first sequel. Nothing of the sort happens in modern torture porn. Nicole remains trapped and cowering in "Rest Stop" after the audience watched her be physically and psychologically tortured for over two hours. She also ends up dressed only in her bra and torn jeans in the end, while covered with her own blood. Even the French have gotten into the act. We watch the hero and heroine of "Ils" ("Them") attempt in vain to survive their home invasion only to die in the end. The identity of their killers is an especially grisly twist that I won't identify in case readers plan to see the movie or the American version, "The Strangers", starring Liv Tyler. These movies also have the cache of supposedly being based on a true story. The "final girls" in "Wolf Creek" and "The Devil’s Rejects" also die grisly deaths after hours of torture.

The movie "Captivity" started getting negative press before the film released, which only gave it more attention. Nicole Sperling reported in The Hollywood Reporter that, "[i]n the wake of a public outcry against Los Angeles billboards and New York taxicab tops advertising the upcoming movie "Captivity" with images of the abduction, torture and death of a young woman, After Dark Films said it will take down the offending ads by 2 p.m. today." After Dark and Lionsgate received scads of phone calls complaining about the "gratuitous depiction" of the film's star, played by Elisha Cuthbert, being tortured and killed. The billboard ads were described as follows: "Abduction " shows Cuthbert with a gloved hand over her face; "Confinement" features the actress behind a chain-link fence with a bloody finger poking through; "Torture" depicts Cuthbert's face, covered in white gauze, with tubes shoved up her nose; and "Termination" shows her with her head thrown back, seemingly dead." Cuthbert is a very attractive young woman who was recently voted the 10th sexiest woman in the world by young male readers of FHM magazine. The expression on her face in the "Termination" ad was frighteningly close to an expression of sexual orgasm, although she was clearly supposed to be dead in the ad. The "Termination" ad had also emphasized Cuthbert's breasts, as if to sexualize her after death.

Josh Whedon, creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly", has written against the "torture porn" trend. He wrote a letter to the Motion Picture Association of America in protest of graphic promotional material of the movie "Captivity". He wrote: "The advent of torture-porn and the total dehumanizing not just of women (though they always come first) but of all human beings has made horror a largely unpalatable genre." He also wrote that the ad campaign “is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it’s an assault … this ad is part of a cycle of violence and misogyny that takes something away from the people who have to see it. It’s like being mugged.” Jill Soloway, one of the writers of the hit series "Six Feet Under", described the ads as the most repulsive, horrifying, woman-hating, human-hating thing I have ever seen in public” and didn’t just represent “horror, this wasn’t just misogyny … It was a grody combo platter of the two, the torture almost a punishment for the sexiness. It had come from such a despicable inhuman hatred place that it somehow managed to recall Abu Ghraib, the Holocaust, porn and snuff films all at once.” The ads were taken down after much protest.

"Torture porn" may be a fad that is likely to fade. Hopefully, horror movies that rely on plot and character development and atmosphere to scare the public will surge in popularity once again. Movie-goers deserve good, seasoned horror flicks like "The Ring", "The Changeling", and "The Devil's Backbone" rather than a smorgasboard of bloody entrails and hacked body parts. Sex has a place in horror movies such as "The Vampire Lovers". Horror movie fans may once again enjoy their popcorn with a good move that will genuinely scare and entice them, not make them feel dehumanized and violated.

SOURCES

"'Captivity' Audience Rebels as 'Torture Porn' Arouses MPAA Fury," by Claude Brodesser-Akner. In The Zone. March 29, 2007.
http://www.tmz.com/2007/03/29/captivity-audience-rebels-as-torture-porn-arouses-mpaa-fury/

"Annals Of Ill-conceived Outdoor Movie Advertising: The 'Captivity' Billboards", by , Defamer: The L. A. Gossip Rag, March 19, 2007.
http://defamer.com/hollywood/captivity/annals-of-ill+conceived-outdoor-movie-advertising-the-captivity-billboards-245382.php

"Stop Killing Elisha On That Billboard, Thanks", by Stacy Parker, The Huffington Post, March 20, 2007.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-parker-aab/please-stop-killing-elish_b_43916.html

"After Virginia Tech, Testing Limits Of Movie Violence," by Michael Cieply, The New York Times, April 30, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/business/media/30hostel.html

"For Your Entertainment", by Kira Cochrane, The Guardian, May 1, 2007.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2069198,00.html

"Torture Porn Again", FourFour Blog, November 1, 2006.
http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2006/11/torture_porn_ag.html

"Horror Movies 101: The Moral Majority Massacre (Part 2 of 4): The Slasher Film", by Lonnie Martin, Great Society,
http://www.greatsociety.org/fpm/content/view/225/2/

"Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn: Why has America gone nuts for blood, guts, and sadism?" By David Edelstein, New York Magazine,
http://nymag.com/movies/features/15622/

"Hollywood's Insatiable Appetite for Torture Porn
Frightening, sex-soaked flicks are becoming downright offensive," by Mary O'Regan , The Utne Reader, April 19, 2007
http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2007_295/news/12526-1.html

"I don't think sex or violence is harmful in movies," By Mike Goodridge, This Is London: Evening Standard, April 12, 2007.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/film/article-23392393-details/I+don't+think+sex+or+violence+is+harmful+in+movies/article.do

"3 Kinds Of Sex All Men Crave", by Nora Zevelansky
Love & Lust, Sex Articles, iVillage
http://magazines.ivillage.com/cosmopolitan/sex/no/articles/0,,426380_672386-3,00.html

"Justin's Guide To Why People Die In Horror Movies", by Justin, Mutant Reviewers, December 6, 2003.
http://www.mutantreviewers.com/rjg17.html

"Scream", by Xamot, Everything Too, July 7, 2000.
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Scream

I just returned from my annual weekend in Telluride with my family seeing 15 amazing films. My mom started the Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival in my hometown, Colorado Springs, after going to the Telluride Film Festival for the first time. Since then it has become a set-in-stone tradition for us, a little jolt of inspiration and art that we experience every Labor Day.

These were the films that I believe have particular feminist resonance from this year's festival, so keep your eyes peeled for them:

American Violet

So often when you see "civil rights" movies, they are set in the time of Jim Crow, Martin and Malcolm. This amazing film--based on a true story--is set in our very own decade. Dee Roberts, a single mom from a tiny town in Texas, is arrested on bogus drug charges--designed to pad the racist district attorney's arrest record. The ACLU gets involved and the rest is history. Dee Roberts and her four kids were actually in Telluride. It always takes your breath away to see a genuine heroine after watching a film like this.

I was especially excited about this film, because an old friend of mine--Malcolm Barrett--stole the show. He and I used to do spoken word poetry together in college and now he's undoubtedly on his way to being a critically-acclaimed actor. Go Malcolm!

On a less encouraging note, this asshole district attorney is still serving in Texas. When the film has its nationwide release, I'll post again about what we can all do to express our absolute outrage that this jerk is still in office.

Everlasting Moments
This Swedish film is a true epic and a frightening look into just how difficult working class women's lives were at the turn of the century. The main character struggles through years of child birthing and rearing, an abusive, alcoholic husband, and poverty with a sort of gritty grace; her salvation is in her discovery of photography.

I was particularly struck by Maria Heiskanen's--the main actor's--capacity to perform the main character as both tough as nails, and frustratingly stuck and permissive to her husband. It beautifully encapsulated women's complex lives and identities at the time.

Happy Go Lucky
This Mike Leigh film provides viewers with a sort of Jesus story featuring a quirky, British school teacher in her 20s named Poppy. As she smiles and stumbles happily through life, one gets the sense that Poppy's limitless capacity to empathize and find joy in every situation is a template for "the good life." Of course her lack of boundaries is the tension for growth in the film.

I can't wait for everyone to see this totally original, totally hilarious film. Not only does Poppy's approach to life serve as a reminder to all us of us that, hell, life is pretty damn good, but she's a total feminist heroine--unwavering when her sister tells her that she needs to sober up and start making babies, kind and fair to all those that cross her path, and the sort of girl who stays up all night with her crew of girls, dancing in cowgirl boots, and still gets up the next morning to try out the art project she's going to present in her elementary school classroom the following week.

Hunger
This was actually one of the most moving films I've seen in years. It is based on the 1981 IRA hunger strike in Ireland, led by Bobby Sands, but writ large it is about ideology and protest, flesh and activism, the oppressor and the oppressed. The visceral images of these men's bodies hitting the concrete floor of the prisons, wasting away in protest was one of the most compelling portrayals of the ways in which bodies serve as tools of ideology and masculinity becomes poisoned that I have ever seen.

We've written about the great film At Your Cervix before, but this time we need your help.

The film's director Amy Jo Goddard has written Feministing to let us know that they're trying to get the word out about the project and, of course, need funds in order to do so. Right now, the film is up for up for a $10,000 award on Idea Blob - they're one of eight finalists. So if you like what At Your Cervix is doing, and you want to support Goddard's work, head on over and vote!

The following is a new article by Tim Mitchell, published in the “depth” section of PopPolitics magazine. Mitchell has previously written for PopPolitics about the “Mimic” film trilogy and “Versus” horror films like Alien vs. Predator and Freddy vs. Jason. Now he tackles the technological complexities of “Dark City” — just in time [...]

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Susannah Breslin at Salon interviewed sex writers, and asked their opinions on "Sex and the City", both the TV show and the movie. The sex writers interviewed are Lena Chen, Tracie Egan, Jamye Waxman, Rachel Kramer Bussel, and Susie Bright. All were critical of the TV show and movie except for Waxman. I agree with the nay-sayers.

Here is some of what Bright had to say, and I agree with her wholeheartedly.

The women of "Sex and the City," asserts Bright, aren't political. "They're desperate to get married. They obsess about their marital status." And they turned the sexual revolution for women of the new millennium into a business. To make her point, Bright references a recent New Yorker essay, "The Fall of Conservatism" by George Packer, in which Pat Buchanan paraphrased social theorist Eric Hoffer: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." Comments Bright: "'Sex and the City' is the racket part of what once was recognizable as the sexual self-emancipation of the feminist movement." For her, the commodification of the 21st century female sexual revolution hits too close to home. "I can't watch these women, you know, make asses of themselves and be so petty and small-minded about sexual possibility. I take it too personally."

Go read the Salon article, and then reread my blog post, I Can't Stand "Sex And The City".

This is amusing. My post "I Can't Stand 'Sex And The City'" made the New York Times topic page, so I wrote about the post making the New York Times.

Now, my post about my post about "Sex And The City" making the New York Times made the New York Times.

How long will it take before this post makes the New York Times topic page?

I wonder how long I can keep this going? It's like those images of mirrors inside mirrors that go off into eternity.

Just so you have the posts and links, here they are:

I Can't Stand "Sex And The City"

My "Sex And The City" Post Made The NYT Topic List!!

Wow, and I wrote that post only an hour ago.

My post "I Can't Stand 'Sex And The City'" made the New York Times topic page. I wonder what kind of reaction I'll get?

Maybe it's time I resurrected this blog from its sleep. I still get a lot of hits on it. I just haven't updated much since moving from family law writing to sex writing.

I'm just tickled that the New York Times topic page found my post. Ha!!! Let's see what kind of trouble I'll get in now.