Introduction
Even from the wording alone, torture porn is a terminology that instantly causes a sense of disgust and shame within a person whose lips have uttered those words. It combines two elements that humanity has long thought are morally wrong; torture is the act of inflicting pain and suffering on a living being, human or otherwise, in order to coerce them to do something against their will. Porn, whilst not as inhumane as the former, often incites a sense of embarrassment as a form of media shrouded in privacy and best not openly spoken about. These two words cause a controversy together, they elicit an emotion of pain and pleasure, two human reactions which are traditionally expected to be separated from one another.
However, the term torture porn was not birthed from the dirty canals of a shameless womb until the late 20th century. The specifics of the sub-genre had existed within the world for years before then, but these films were often categorized as splatter films or simply coined as ‘gore-heavy’ and extreme, no determining name had yet been placed upon their heads. The audience had always found a disturbing enjoyment from watching immoral scenes of violence, with Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Pigalle, Paris, opening its doors in 1897 and allowing the audience to be shocked and horrified by the theatrics of torture. During these on-stage performances the audience would be subject to witnessing sustained terror as doctors gouged the eyes from their patients, lone women were raped and brutalized, men were lobotomized whilst awake, and even children were not safe from the horrific acts of violence. Yet, the audience reveled in the theatrics of horror, escaping from the war-torn world to embrace sustained horror in a safe setting that allowed them to experience the thrill and pleasure of watching debauchery and depravity, without it being a reality.
In 1962 the theater closed its doors, but its influence continued to screen and became a prolific underlying theme for many extreme films that were to come. But it wasn’t until 2006 that audiences were subjected to the terminology of torture porn, as film critic David Edelstein brought around the wording in his piece Now Playing At Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn which was his critical response to Eli Roth’s 2005 film HOSTEL, in which the article damns its portrayal of on-screen torture for the purpose of entertainment. Edelstein’s wording was deliberately chosen to cause the audience a problem, to immediately condemn what was being shown on screen and throw only negativity against the nihilistic nature of films like HOSTEL. Even though Edelstein coined this term negatively, it was adopted by the audience and has since become a staple within the sub-genre of horror. The films that constitute as torture porn are known for their extreme depictions of on-screen violence, and as the name suggests, portrayals of severe torture against the human mind and body.
However, a film like HOSTEL only touched the surface of how deep and dark torture porn could venture, with films within this realm broaching far more extreme levels of brutality. Seeing torture on-screen wasn’t something that only came around during the 2000s when Edelstein’s article was published, it had been a phenomena for much longer than that, spanning back to films such as Salivor Dali and Luis Brunel’s experimental black and white short arthouse film UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929). Films of this nature continued to be released, with a particular boom in Asia that became part of what is known as the CAT III movement; a collection of films that received this adult classification in Japan for their show of graphic violence, sexual depravity and body horror that even the likes of Cronenberg could never reach. Although only really rising to fame in the 2000s due to the terminology being coined, there was an abundance of films from the 80s and 90s that really took the torture and porn to extremely depraved levels; Satoru’s GUINEA PIG: DEVIL’S EXPERIMENT 1985, Hideshi Hino’s GUINEA PIG: FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD 1985, and Takashi Miike’s AUDITION in 1999 all demonstrating just how far on-screen torture could go. These films gained notoriety and have held their title as some of the most disturbing films ever made for the sheer quantity of suffering they relentlessly show on screen, arousing opinions which often beg the question of how could anyone possibly enjoy watching films of that nature.
Even though the sub-genre has a rich history and strong influences from filmmakers across the globe, it has always been one that has received negative press. After Edelstein’s damning article against torture porn, it seemed everyone with a voice wanted to condemn these types of films and the watchers of said films too. So it begs the question – where does the pleasure lie in films where we watch the human body tortured for prolonged periods of time? How could anyone find pleasure in something so depraved? Although these films are considered some of the nastiest and most nihilistic to exist, for some viewers the experience is a cathartic and comforting one, that allows personal fears and traumas to be explored. Which is why in the 2000s there was a surge in torture porn films, ranging from titles like HOSTEL which could be considered as more softcore to ones like SUBCONSCIOUS CRUELTY (2000) that took a more hardcore route, pushing past boundaries to shock, disgust and titillate the audience.
The Torture Porn Boom of 2000s
During the 2000s, there was a rise in torture porn films that weren’t afraid to go to the depths of debauchery by showing inhumane acts of cruelty against the human form. They were made by filmmakers that had seen the want for experiencing something so close to reality that it made the audience uncomfortable and question their own morality whilst watching. One popular trend seen within these torture porn films was the use of the found footage style, a technique that was being effectively deployed in various horror films after the success of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999), and therefore allowing the audience to feel as if the atrocious acts on-screen were a snuff film. When it comes to extreme cinema, found footage is a style that lends a nurturing hand to manifesting an exceptionally nasty tone, with an example being Ruggero Deodato’s 1980 film CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, which felt so real upon release, that it led to Deodato going to court to prove it was just a movie. In 2001, independent filmmaker Fred Vogel took the found footage technique and created something truly disturbing, a film that took influence from the likes of GUINEA PIG and brought it into the modern world with AUGUST UNDERGROUND (2001).
The faux snuff film was founded in depravity, following two young men as they documented their sick fetish for horrifically torturing people in their basement until the victim succumbed to one of the most excruciating deaths ever. Utilising the found footage style allowed Vogel to force the viewer to feel completely immersed in what they were seeing on-screen, making it hard to distinguish between reality and fiction, an element that makes for one of the hardest viewing experiences. The bathroom scene in which we witness a body being hacked into pieces as the main characters gags and vomits over the stench of his act, has since become one of the most talked about scenes in torture porn for it’s barbaric realism. But Vogel didn’t stop there, he took the notoriety of the first and created a trilogy that has become widely recognised as one of the most disturbing of all time with AUGUST UNDERGROUND Mordum (2003) and AUGUST UNDERGROUND Penance (2007) completing the horrific trio. These three films take torture porn to the extreme, combining severe depictions of brutalisation against the human body with humans that find hilarity – and even pleasure – in the acts that they are carrying out. Even more interestingly, Vogel opted to avoid sexism in his films, something the torture porn genre has always struggled with; historically, it is women being tortured but in AUGUST UNDERGROUND we see men and women being tortured, at the hands of both men and women too.
In 2004, Nick Palumbo released MURDER-SET-PIECES, a film that would also gain similar notoriety as AUGUST UNDERGROUND but not quite in the same way. Many argue that torture porn does not exist to solely shock the audience but with Palumbo’s film that seemed like a difficult arguement to make as watching the misogynistic acts on screen felt completely provocative and self-aware of the outrage that would be caused. A German photographer uses his expertise behind the camera to entice young women to pose for his erotic shoots, only to kidnap, rape and abuse their bodies for his own sadistic pleasures. One element to MURDER-SET-PIECES that continuously makes the film even more boundary pushing is the photographer’s obsession with a young school girl, clearly demonstrating his peadophilic tendencies, a taboo that many torture porn films actually avoid detailing. Although extreme horror films have always delved into issues regarding child abuse, torture porn often shows adult bodies being tortured rather than children, but MURDER-SET-PIECES breaches that line completely. The film never gained quite the same status as Vogel’s trilogy – speculation suggests due to the lack of realism, with it even including cameos from Tony Todd and Gunnar Hansen, elements that ultimately removed the audience from feeling immersed by the realities of torture. Regardless, MURDER-SET-PIECES does depict some of the most brutal, heinous and detailed images of torture, all sustained sexually too, which for many viewers will not be easy to sit through.
Another trilogy which is arguably even more spoken about than AUGUST UNDERGROUND and perhaps for its title alone is Lucifer Valentine’s THE VOMIT GORE TRILOGY which started with SLAUGHTERED VOMIT DOLLS in 2006. The film, in itself, feels torturous to watch, not only because of the extreme acts of self-harm, but because of the display of vomiting that the audience has to sit through – there seems to be nothing quite worse than extreme puking. Although the first film isn’t solely focused on the human body being tortured by a third party, it continuously delves into themes of torture porn as we witness teenage runaway Angela self-sabotage, abuse and ultimately torture herself physically and mentally in this experimental nightmare. The second film in the trilogy flirts with torture in a far more gratuitous way, depicting how the body can be manipulated and subsequently destroyed in the most graphic ways, potentially causing the audience to feel physically unwell. Torture is more often than not associated with hurting another person over a sustained period of time, however it can be defined as inflicting suffering, a recurring theme in all of Valentine’s work establishing how accustomed he is to dabbling with the torture porn genre by inflicting these damaging scenes upon the audience.
In 2007, Mariano Peralta released SNUFF 102, with merely the title demonstrating the type of film that this is. Admittedly, it is a clunky film that leaves a lot to be desired, especially when it comes to the painfully jarring sound design, yet it is another example of how showing extreme scenes of torture within film had a strange popularity in the 2000s. SNUFF 102 has a similar atmosphere to AUGUST UNDERGROUND; not only does it portray itself as a snuff film, therefore relying on realism, but it also feels gritty, grimy and gruesome during the entire run time. Through grainy vision the audience bears witness to a pregnant woman desecrated by gential mutilation that hurts the soul and a stomach stomping scene that truly gets underneath even the thickest of skin. Even though it does not speak volumes, SNUFF 102 aims to provide the audience with a societal commentary regarding disturbing content that can be found on the internet and how the supposed dark web is often an influence on these types of films. Time and time again torture porn films aim to make comments about the reality of sick fantasies, and use the medium of film to portray that real life is just, if not more, nasty than what the audience will see on film. Eli Roth’s HOSTEL had a similar tonality, commenting on the supposed existence of torture houses, and venturing a few years down the line to 2011, Michael Goi’s MEGAN IS MISSING raised awareness of the dangers surrounding meeting up with people online and the vulnerabilities of young adults.
One of the most stand out films from the 2000s is one that could be both categorized as torture porn and New French Extremity, which is Pascal Laugier’s MARTYRS from 2008. The film might now be regarded as one of the most brutal yet powerful horror films to ever be made, but it neatly sits within the torture porn genre for the fact that a large majority of the film portrays a woman being vehemently tortured, experiencing the worst suffering known to human. But MARTYRS has something completely different to the other films, it doesn’t feel as if it were made to titillate the audience with the torture itself, it looks to discourage any feelings of pleasure and instead harm the viewer as it harms the protagonists throughout. Which begins to raise the question regarding why an audience would want to watch films that depict the suffering of others? Does it not seem sadistic and cruel to actively want to watch films of this nature?
What’s the Pleasure In Torture Porn?
So, where lies the pleasure in torture porn? It is hard to go into the specifics as horror has, and always will be, one of the most subjective genres to exist. As a sub-genre of horror, torture porn attracts its own audience, one that are looking for something more than just jump scares and ghostly women in dressing gowns running across ceilings from a corner view. There is pleasure to be found in everything for any viewer; many of us find watching the pain inflicted on the human body a cathartic experience, with the torture becoming a metaphor for the suffering that we as humans feel on a daily basis, but shown within the realms of extreme cinema as it encapsulates the severity of those experienced emotions.
When Edelstein coined the term torture porn, he immediately forced negativity onto a genre that had long existed before the term had become contextualized, and by choosing two controversial words that instantly evoke extreme emotions in the receiver, it was his clear intention to make sure that readers and watchers alike would always have distasteful connotations regarding the sub-genre. Within his article, Edelstein went on further to display his disdain towards gory films and even began to pose questions regarding masochism and sadism, stating, “Is there a masochistic as well as sadistic component to the mayhem? In the same way that some women cut themselves (they say) to feel something…” This clearly demonstrates that he had a raging anger in his heart when writing the article, laced with a misogynistic viewpoint, that allowed him to be so flippant towards the genre and try desperately to make the films and the watchers of the films feel completely degraded and disregarded.
There is pleasure to be found in anything, and although sexual arousal seems to be the connection many people will make, pleasure doesn’t necessarily relate to anything sexual. However, with ‘porn’ being included in the naming convention it is hard for one to think otherwise when it comes to looking at the pleasure to be found in torture porn. But the audience can find even the most depraved and disturbing films pleasurable without it having to be any form of sexually arousing experience. These are films that resonate with an audience that are looking for something more tortuous than the physical and emotional pain or trauma they might be experiencing in the real world, which in itself has a healing power, one that allows the viewer to safely process personal grievances, something that can be incredibly empowering and impactful.
The Future Is Uncertain
Even though there have been torture porn films released after the 2000s, in the last 10 years we have seen the decline of such a sub-genre especially within more mainstream cinema. Durings the 2010s, it seemed that most extreme sub-genres wanted to focus on more than just pure torture of the human body and came to realise that to genuinely disturb the audience and push their boundaries even further they needed to include the taboo within these films, with a film like Srdjan Spasojevic’s 2010 film A SERBIAN FILM taking the torture porn genre to the next level and thinking of immoral and unimaginable ways to cause outrage with the audience, which ultimately led to the creation of ‘newborn porn’ which can be read as an even more provocative title than torture porn. One torture porn that held on dearly to its roots was Stephen Biro’s reimagining of the Guinea Pig films with his 2014 film AMERICAN GUINEA PIG: FLOWERS OF FLESH AND BLOOD, which presented itself as a found footage film and depicted two women being brutalized on a table as a group of men took turns to saw their limbs, remove breasts, pull out guts and do the unthinkable in any means possible. However, Biro also added an element of the taboo during the ending scene, taking it from torture porn to something even more wicked.
Perhaps the term ‘torture porn’ became problematic and wrenched filmmakers hands away from creating films that would fall into this category, with many of the directors of the aforementioned films actively mentioning that they found the term torture porn came from a misunderstanding from Edelstein rather than it being truly representative of the sub-genre itself. Eli Roth stated in an interview, “I think that the term ‘torture porn’ genuinely says more about the critic’s limited understanding of what horror movies can do than about the film itself’ and even Pascal Laugier mentioned ‘[MARTYRS] deals with human pain, the meaning of it, which is something completely different. The expression ‘torture porn’ is a very recent one. And it’s almost already gone. It means nothing to me…” These reponses from the filmmakers supposedly churning out torture porn shows that the terminology itself has always caused issues, and that goes for viewers too – trying to justify how one can find pleasure in watching something entitled torture porn feels precarious from the very beginning, even though it is not.
For those of us who are openly fans of this sub-genre it seems that there might be a resurgence on the horizon with Biro’s distribution company, Unearthed Films, leading the way for filmmakers to once again feel comfortable making films of this nature and for fans to indulge in their pleasures whilst watching said films. Domiziano Cristopharo brough out DEEO WEB XXX in 2018 which explores horrific torture clips from the dark web, then we have the potential release of THE PROFANE EXHIBIT (2013) which will bring together some of the most esteemed extreme filmmakers such as Marian Dora, Ryan Nicholson and Ruggero Deodato to produce an anthology full of graphic violence and torture, and finally Unearthed have been working tirelessly on more additions to the AMERICAN GUINEA PIG series which shows that for those who do find pleasure in torture porn. However, we might find ourselves aroused in a cinematic climax of awfulness sooner, rather than later.
No Comments