Is there a limit in horror?

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  • Is there a limit in horror?

    People do write some pretty sick stuff, but is there an invisible line of some kind that producers won't cross? A line which, if it's perceived you've crossed it, will get you blackballed as a weirdo or sick person as a writer instead of praised as a horror visionary?

    I mean supposedly the idea is to go as out there as far as you can go to horrify people. But is that encouraged, really? (And I'm not talking about, like, showing someone torturing babies or something... no children as victims because that's a line I do know exists. I'm talking about other than that one.) Where is the line between innovative horror and horrible profanity?

    I ask because I have long kept a certain aspect of my imagination firmly in check, because I've always instinctively felt that if I let it go, it could be very unhealthy psychologically. Yes, scenes and stories of horror can be let loose in my mind if I let them, but I never really have, out of instinct... knowing that one shouldn't want to give way to that kind of vision too casually, lest it poison the everyday consciousness.

    Or does one, if they are a writer?

    With writing horror, one is encouraged to go into those realms, stay a while, and bring things back to entertain people. Now I can do that, and am starting to want to do that, but I actually worry that the things I will come up with might be a little TOO sick. But---they also might be right on the money, great original stuff. I've always suspected that good horror writers are not so much in a "writing" mode when they access that material, but rather, tapping into a deeply disturbed subconscious. I believe I have one of those types of imaginations, but haven't really faced until just now that I'm a bit frightened of what's in there, and how people might see me if I were to reveal some of it in the form of "fiction" (I wouldn't dare reveal it under any other circumstance).

    In other words, I'm wondering now if an ability that all my life I always kept shoved to the back of my consciousness, locked in a strongbox, out of fear about what it said about me psychologically, is actually something that I should cultivate so that it might take care of me now that I realize that it could be a source for good horror material.

  • #2
    Re: Is there a limit in horror?

    I'm a firm believer that if Human Centipede can get made -- then anything horror related can.

    I hate to keep bringing that stupid movie up on here but it REALLY scarred my fragile mind.
    Quack.

    Writer on a cable drama.

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    • #3
      Re: Is there a limit in horror?

      That's funny you mention that one, ducky, because that's one of the things that got me on this train of thought. When I read what it is about (that the doctor character sews the victims together mouth-to-youknowwhat, I thought "well if that guy wrote that, and they produced it with that in there, well... things are much more open than I thought." When I first saw the listing for that film I assumed that he had sewn them like chest-to-back or something. How sweetly naive of me.

      I now realize I haven't been tapping the right part of me to come up with horror ideas. There is a well of horrible, disgusting ideas there that I was ignoring completely without being fully aware that I was.

      Maybe we are at a historic place in horror, where new limits are going to be sought. Or even better, new limits for the horror while old values (character/story depth) are reestablished. Well, I can dream, anyway.

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      • #4
        Re: Is there a limit in horror?

        Originally posted by Cioccolato View Post
        When I read what it is about (that the doctor character sews the victims together mouth-to-youknowwhat, I thought "well if that guy wrote that, and they produced it with that in there, well... things are much more open than I thought."
        Emphasis added.

        Who is this "they" of which you speak?

        HC was a exploitation film made for an exploitation market. It wasn't made with the cooperation of any major studio or distributor. The writer-director approached small investors director and rounded up the money that way.

        In this case, "that guy" is "they."

        It's important to understand what the market is for the time of film you envision writing. HC never would have sold to mainstream Hollywood. Instead, "that guy" had an idea and he approached making it the only way it could get made. I think it's abundantly clear that even the independent arm of mainstream Hollywood wouldn't have gone anywhere near that film.

        Are there limits? Absolutely. But they're unique to each distributor/business model. Understand that, and you'll understand what limits are out there.

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        • #5
          Re: Is there a limit in horror?

          This is an excellent issue that I myself am currently struggling with. Here's how I look at it from my own naivete:

          A) Push the limit and come up with a so creatively twisted scenario per Centipede that you'll actually get someone to make it. But on the other hand, I feel producers would look at this tact and say, "I can only get that certain percentage of the prurient audience into this 'shock-porn-horror.'" So that marketing constraint right there limits the appeal of your brilliant but twisted concept.

          B) Use the writing itself to create the ultimate horror NOT on the SCREEN but WITHIN the viewer's MIND. Two movies that do this are the obvious "The Sixth Sense" and the original "The Haunting." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057129/ In my view, this shows ultimately much more skill as a writer, allows the producer a much larger market -- BUT -- is insanely difficult to pull off. But...that's the bar I am shooting for.

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          • #6
            Re: Is there a limit in horror?

            Really you're just talking about exploitation movies, for which there is certainly a rich market.

            My best advice: write the movie you want to see most. If you want to see some crazy wackadoodle exploitation film, write that. If you want to see a j-horror ghost story, write that. If you want to see a period film about sexy cosmonauts infected with a zombie virus in 60's Kazakhstan, then write that.

            Chasing the market is a fool's game. Write what you know and love most and what attracts you to the genre.

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            • #7
              Re: Is there a limit in horror?

              As jcgary mentioned, you guys are just talking about exploitation and gore movies. Envelope pushing horror is popular these days, but it may go out of fashion again soon enough. If you've watched as much horror as I have, you know that the exploitation and gore films of the 70s and early 80s were just as sick and nasty as the recent spate of "torture porn". But then this type of hardcore horror all but died in the 90s and early 00s. Now it's back, thanks in part to SAW, HOSTEL, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, MARTYRS, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and of course THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, but if you take a look at the genre as a whole we're still talking about a fairly small niche. And let's take THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE as an example of a "hot" film in that niche right now, the movie actually isn't very graphic at all. The ick factor is mostly implied. Hell, I think Passolini's SALO is far more explicit and disturbing than THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, and it's an art film, not exploitation. The really explicit transgressor of recent times is A SERBIAN FILM, and it even tries to make a political statement... I just didn't think it was a very good film.

              In my opinion you should know what type of horror movie you're trying to make, and understand that you don't need to pile on the gore and grue unless your concept and story calls for it. And if you're worried about going dark places psychologically by simply thinking about your horror ideas, maybe that's the root of why you think readers would consider you crazy for writing them. Not everyone is cut out to be Clive Barker.

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              • #8
                Re: Is there a limit in horror?

                Originally posted by Cioccolato View Post
                In other words, I'm wondering now if an ability that all my life I always kept shoved to the back of my consciousness, locked in a strongbox, out of fear about what it said about me psychologically, is actually something that I should cultivate so that it might take care of me now that I realize that it could be a source for good horror material.
                Okay, I'm probably not the best source on this, so take what I say with a few grains of salt.

                My personal opinion is too much "horror" now-a-days is either just gross-out butcher shop stuff or pure sadism (or a combination of both). To me, good horror is mostly suspense (less is more). You have to have a character who at least has a chance of making it and someone you care about -- not just a victim. So, personally, I think the line has been crossed over and over -- at least in the scripts I read by wannabes. I very rarely watch these kinds of "horror" movies. Again, my opinion, obviously not shared by everyone.
                STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I'm a wannabe, take whatever I write with a huge grain of salt.

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                • #9
                  Re: Is there a limit in horror?

                  Originally posted by Cioccolato View Post
                  Is there a limit in horror?
                  No.

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                  • #10
                    Re: Is there a limit in horror?

                    After watching A Serbian Film, I now believe there is no such thing as a line.
                    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1273235/keywords

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                    • #11
                      Re: Is there a limit in horror?

                      ^^^ Hah! What's interesting about this sardonic list is the film they COULD HAVE made, with a bit more artistic (?) drive, as an allegorical treatise on Serbia's decline into madness.

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                      • #12
                        Re: Is there a limit in horror?

                        Originally posted by Cioccolato View Post
                        Where is the line between innovative horror and horrible profanity?
                        I have to be honest, I don't understand torture porn at all, and I can't say I think it is innovative either. Yes horror do include shocking moments, but the scare is more how you build up to the scare I think that is the innovative and hard part.

                        The best example is alien. The moment the alien jumps out from his body was horrible the first time you saw it but only because how the movie had slowly build up to that moment. It wouldn't have been nearly that bad if that scene had been preceded with 60 minutes of disembowelment.

                        Take Tarantino for example, his violence is so extreme it often feels more like comedy. I have no reaction to a chopped of leg in Kill Bill while the scene when Ada gets her finger chopped off in The piano is almost unbearable to watch.

                        The bitter script reader have a interesting post on that type off torture porn scripts. Because lets call them for what they are, they are hardly horror, but to be honest with you, when you write that you are scared to tap in to that part off yourself for what could happen, it might be a sign that you should avoid it, you know, don't risk your sanity, instinct can be a very good thing.

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                        • #13
                          Re: Is there a limit in horror?

                          Part of the excitement of reading a good horror book is not what you read, but what you imagine.

                          The art of early horror movie makers was not what you saw but what you expected to see.

                          That art has been lost in a frenzy of blood and gore, naked flesh and gruesome disfigurements, revealing wanton cruelty and vulgarity, forgotten since childhood.

                          Where is the skill of the writer who should lead us into false promises before butchering our expectancy?
                          Ron Aberdeen
                          http://www.ronaberdeen.com/
                          http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3609083/

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                          • #14
                            Re: Is there a limit in horror?

                            Originally posted by The lady green View Post
                            Take Tarantino for example, his violence is so extreme it often feels more like comedy. I have no reaction to a chopped of leg in Kill Bill while the scene when Ada gets her finger chopped off in The piano is almost unbearable to watch.
                            It's not like Tarantino approaches all violence in the same way. KILL BILL is supposed to be splattery, because he's homaging splattery things. DEATH PROOF has a couple of scenes of graphic violence, because that's par for course in a horror movie. But what about the off-screen death of the kid in the back of the car in PULP FICTION? Or Robert De Niro killing Bridget Fonda in JACKIE BROWN? Isn't the scene with the ear in RESERVOIR DOGS "almost unbearable to watch"?

                            The violence should suit the situation. A horror movie should usually not try to emulate THE PIANO, or Tarantino for that matter. Some horror movies do a great job of implying extreme violence without showing it (the knife in the PSYCHO shower scene is never shown breaking skin, there's almost no gore in THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE) but movies that do show extreme violence also have their place.

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                            • #15
                              Re: Is there a limit in horror?

                              Well my intent wasn't to discuss Tarantinos skill as a writer, of course he's done scenes that feels unbearable too watch,
                              the point I was trying to make was that gore does not equal scare.

                              Personaly I think alot of those who views movies like HC doesn't do it because the movie scares them but because they enjoy it on another level. Well maybe I'm just irked that they are sorted under horror for me horror is supposed to scare. I guess in the end you'll get the answer when you figure out what kind of stories you want to write

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