‘You Think I’m Hostile Now’ … Hostel Part II


Many critics have a terror of going down in history like Bosley Crowther, as the relic who looked at a seminal moment in movie history (in Crowther’s case, Bonnie and Clyde) and reached for the smelling salts. The Siren has no such anxiety. She wears her fuddy-duddiness with pride. Describe her taste as 1950s and she will be flattered. Call her Depression-era and she will buy you a drink.

The film of the moment is, god help us, Hostel Part II, and some excellent critics either love it or expect to. Michael Guillen and D.K. Holme loved it. Kim Morgan, Cinebeats and The Bleeding Tree are eager to see it. Dennis Cozzalio has posted a thoughtful consideration of the movie and what it means for the horror genre.

Still, the Siren examines her end of the bar for the other relics and finds some good company. Here is Filmbrain, a blogger the Siren unreservedly adores, and a man no one can accuse of having a low bloodshed threshold. James Wolcott looked at the “Quentin Tarantino Presents” imprimatur on the Hostel Part II posters and summed up the erstwhile wonder boy as “a pimp for geek sadism.” Jeffrey Wells and David Poland could definitely use a double martini after sitting through the movie. The Siren believes she owes S.T. VanAirsdale a drink now, should she bump into him. And Damian Arlyn posted a most eloquent defense of his refusal to see Eli Roth’s minimum opus. I didn’t think I could add much to Damian’s piece. Do read it, he does a splendid job. But for some reason–maybe it’s those repulsive print ads I keep stumbling across, maybe it’s this impromptu blogathon we seem to have going–I have to say my piece anyway.

The Siren won’t be seeing Hostel or its sequel, or Saw and its spawn, or The Hills Have Eyes remake or Wolf Creek, or any of the antecedents like Cannibal Holocaust or I Spit on Your Grave, for that matter. First Amendment absolutist that she is, the Siren in no way argues for the banning of these movies, although when she reflects that Martin Scorsese had to spend many long days cutting down Goodfellas to avoid an NC-17, the irony just about asphyxiates her.

When the Grand Guignol shut down in Paris in 1962, its final director remarked, “We could never equal Buchenwald.” The likes of Eli Roth and Greg McLean can’t equal the Iraq war, but that hasn’t stopped people from flocking. Well, the Siren requires no elaboration on the “why” behind the grosses for Hostel or its siblings. Our time has no need for catharsis or satiation that plausibly can be called unique. Read William Makepeace Thackeray’s description of the crowd at a London hanging in 1840, and you will have all you ever need to know about what draws us to the most brutal side of horror. It is as fundamental a human taste as any other.

And the Siren doesn’t think having that taste says much about a person. Her longtime roommate in the 1980s adored slasher movies. This was a man who never saw a baby he didn’t want to cootchy-coo at, apologized to his cat when he moved it off the couch and wouldn’t eat in a restaurant on Thanksgiving because he felt sorry for the waiters. He’s the reason the Siren saw a long list of slasher flicks in the Nightmare-Freddie-Jason-Chucky-Hellraiser era, until she finally gave up trying to see the point of them and started retreating to her room with a book.

Most of us have a limited amount of viewing time relative to what we like to call “real life.” Netflix just sent me L’Armée des Ombres, and I have not watched it yet. Anyone want to tell me that Hostel Part II is worth my time as much as that one? Is there a single performance in the latest round of jolly little splatterfests that can withstand comparison with one in Jean-Pierre Melville’s movie? How about the dialogue, the camerawork, the editing, the sound, the art direction, the goddamn costumes even? Is there “social commentary” in any of the gorefests that could sustain an intelligent discussion for more than ten minutes?

You can argue that “torture porn” movies entertain. Rock on. So do a lot of things. Say that they are really about survival; the Siren does not buy that one, but you can argue it. You can point out that some of the techniques make their way into more mainstream fare. Fair enough. Dickens was influenced by the Newgate Calendar. That doesn’t make Dick Turpin into Oliver Twist.

Praising the most gore-splattered subset of horror becomes supportable only by drawing in movies that really don’t fit, such as the original Halloween or the wildly overrated Psycho, both of which achieve their effects far more through suggestion than through explicit violence. You could draw in John Ford–this John Ford–or John Webster , but there is, shall we say, a certain difference in script quality. The only other way to argue for these movies as anything other than disposable crap is to compare them with other blood-soaked horror films (comparing them with something like Val Lewton only exposes their limitations further). Hostel Part II may look great judged by the standards of Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Is it–or any other torture porn flick–great relative to Melville?

P.S. Guess I have my answer. Ian Pugh, of the very good site filmfreakcentral, compares Hostel Part II to Bunuel. Scoot over, Bosley. The Siren owes you a drink.

(Cross-posted at my place, Self-Styled Siren.)

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June 11th, 2007
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Viewing 10 Comments

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    Dearest Siren: yeah, whaddaya gonna do? There's always going to be an audience for this crap, and God knows I've watched my share of it. But moving on to more important matters, I so look forward to reading your thoughts on 'L'Armée des ombres". I wrote a humble little blurb on it in these parts, but I was so impressed (or incapable) that I didn't really say a lot, one big reason being I just wanted people to see the damn thing, and to see it without knowing any plot points ahead of time. (But then I have a weakness for Melville, ever since seeing a dubbed version of "Doulos" on TV when I was very young.)
    • ^
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    Yeah, splatter-fests - like Reservoir Dogs or Kill Bill, the high-minded, "quality" kill-fests. I'm not a fan.

    Though I did enjoy the blood and gore in Monty Python.
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    Dan, I think you were responding here even as I posted my Schlondorff quote on your Melville post. :)
    • ^
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    Hell, I'll watch damn near anything. I'm a sucker for genre pictures. Which is why I've seen Saw, Hostel, and one of Rob Zombie's flicks the name of which escapes me.

    But I'm in no hurry to see -- and perhaps never will see -- the sequels. Reason being, the first installments just weren't all that good.

    Hostel in particular was not as awful as it could have been, and I found the cinematography so dark that it mitigated the gore. But for utter pointlessness, you've got it all here in a 90 minute nutshell. And suspense? Nonexistent.

    Siren, I agree with your overall point. Not every movie is going to be The Seven Samurai (personal fave) but that's no excuse to celebrate junk.
    • ^
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    Dear Siren,

    I started to write a comment on the above comments, and it went and turned into my own little confessional piece. See above.

    (Incapable of doing the smiley-face symbol, so please imagine one right here.)
    • ^
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    Dan, our minds are on parallel tracks this week.

    Kevin, I love The Seven Samurai too. In the spirit of adventure I would like to say I will watch anything but it isn't true. There are certain pictures I just do not want in my head. One of my favorite bloggers confessed to me that he wished he had never seen Last House on the Left, because now those images would be with him forever, ready to jump into his brain whether he wanted them or not.
    • ^
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    Don't get 'em. Don't want to get 'em. But I don't get amusement parks either and I think these movies have more in common with roller coasters and tilt a whirls than to do with other kinds of movies. So I guess I understand the flocking to the theaters, since most of the flocking is done in flocks, or gaggles, or packs, or gangs. It's a social occasion. I don't, however, understand people like your roommate who watch them at home and alone. Unless it's like an addiction. I have to have a cup of coffee late at night. Now that's weird.
    • ^
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    Lance, it sounds to me like you've pretty much hit it with your roller-coaster comparison. Some people just plain like to get the shit scared out of them as grossly as possible. And other people -- perhaps wisely considering that real life is plenty scary enough -- don't. And then you have nitwits like me who really don't like to be grossed out but who every once in a while will perversely watch one of these gore-fests anyway while spending half the time hiding under people's feet or frantically pressing the fast-forward button, invariably followed by the dreaded involuntary gross-scene-flashbacks the Siren's blogging friend referred to. Yes, life would be much simpler if only we humans were rational.

    By the way, speaking of disturbing images branded into your brain, I just last week watched the Criterion DVD of Sternberg's "The Scarlet Empress" and there is a montage of torture and decapitation in the first reel of that which I found more disquieting and unfortunately indelible than anything in "Saw". Sternberg obviously slipped that one out right before the Code clamped down.
    • ^
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    Yes, the roller-coaster comparison is spot-on. In fact I am tempted to a do a film-blogger survey and see whether enjoying the wilder reaches of horror -- willingness to watch anything, as Kevin says -- correlates with a willingness to ride things that send you hurtling along upside down and far up into the sky. It can't be coincidence that I turn green on Ferris wheels.

    Ha, I remember that Sternberg sequence! It is probably the most accurate thing in that movie, historically speaking. Sometimes old movies can surprise you with how chilling they are. There is a scene in The Big Combo (coincidentally, it's on TCM tonight at 8) where Cornel Wilde is tortured that is quite difficult to watch even in 2007.
    • ^
    • v
    Nice!
 

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