True or False: That old cliche about horror movies that says "it's what you don't see that's truly terrifying..."

I think it means "the lame horror movies you choose not to see can never be more terrifying."

or, "if you see them, you'll see they're not scary."

no horror movies are scary!

val lewton to thread

i think my real beef is with the idea that showing gore in a film is a copout. i think this was a concept invented by the squeamish to justify their own distaste for genre cinema.

also it's a glorified way of denying the basic human NEED for cinematic carnage.

isn't this the kind of thing you hear more from fanboy geeks than from yr average squeamish filmgoers tho?

i'm not really addressing the average filmgoer

I subscribe to this theory, and it's reinforced whenever I see a big budget horror film, like tonight at 30 Days of Night. I'm not squeamish in the least, but I think the gore in these movies has become gratuitous and fetish-y.

"i think my real beef is with the idea that showing gore in a film is a copout. i think this was a concept invented by the squeamish to justify their own distaste for genre cinema."

yes, i am maybe one of these that think that, and i think you've probably delineated the reason pretty well. however, would you not seperate out feeling sick/disgusted/horrified from being chilled/scared?
Saw vs say, Ringu?

ps these are just a few extempore thoughts, i am not a horror buff.

well, i don't think horror fans go see horror films to be scared actually

ie i frequently desire to feel the first and not the second. hence doesn't it make sense that i think senseless gore and puke onscreen is a waste of the possibilities of the 'genre' (though i much preffer horror as part of a mainstream film, the mysterious in everyday life).
something which is guaranteed to produce physial revulsion isn't as exciting as the that which creates suspense and fear, no?

that was an xpost to myself.

yeah. fairy nuff.

Yes, if it's done (I almost said executed!) well, it certainly can be true. Payoff is overrated.

Overt payoff, that is.

"ie i frequently desire to feel the first and not the second"

i meant the other way round.

I don't subscribe to yr "horror movies aren't scary" theory, really, tho as I get older I see very few films that do actually scare me. If you're talking about slasher movies I'd agree more. But there are different kinds of scary: suspense/shocks, creeping dread, "imagine if that awful thing happened to me/my loved ones" - all from different kinds of movie, usually.

To answer the question properly, False. It is the kind of cop-out statement you get from people who usually don't understand the genre they're dismissing. Up there with people who state as a universal rule that a flash of ankle and a chaste peck on the lips in black and white is always far more sexier than full frontal nudity. Like, lol old people.

i don't want to watch stuff like 'hostel' or 'saw' and i dunno what people get out of them.

i think the cliche has some truth to it. the one really scary shot in the whole 'jurassic park' franchise is the overhead shot of the humans walking through a cornfield, with these unseen raptors clearing a path towards them.

Gore isn't scary, obviously

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/original/al_gore_not_planning_on_it.jpg

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/al-gore-prophet-of-doom.jpg

'cache' has one scene of outright gore, and it is terrifying. moderation is the way forward.

moderation is the way forward.

-- Just got offed, Thursday, November 1, 2007 10:39 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

^ban

kinda skipped into that one

lol

Err, is gore usually intended to "scare"? Surely revulsion is the feeling they're trying to get out of you. Films that use a great deal of it generally seem to do it for sheer camp factor, particularly more recently (then again, "The Wizard of Gore" is almost 40 years old)

I do think it can be an effective payoff of sorts in more traditionally "scary" movies though, when a build-up results in something more or less gory. The chestbursting in "Alien" comes to mind. Again, the scene itself isn't really scary once the creature actually pops out, but it gives some idea of the magnitude of the horrors.

As for what you don't see being the most scary, well, sure there's something to it. But I don't think it's so much the "not seeing", so much as the tension building as you sit around expecting to see it. That feeling that any moment now something is going to jump out is one that I personally find very effective, at least. Many feel a movie has copped out if it doesn't provide that release. But, that being said, one of my favorite horror short stories is Borges' Lovecraft-pastiche. That's just some fellow walking around in a house, looking at the decidedly odd furniture etc. Then while he's upstairs, he hears whoever/whatever lives there come home, and the story ends.

I seem to recall some Crowley quote about something he'd noticed at burlesques. The audience would always pay most attention to the newest girl on the stage, who's not yet stripped herself nude, rather than all the girls who are already naked.

Unease, a general feeling of discomfort, that's basically the worst I get from horror movies these days, but that's quite enough for me. I usually get it more effectively from dramas than from horror movies though. I feel far more affected by decent melodramas about someone having their child taken away, than I do some dude running around offing more or less random people.

I went to see "The Shining" at the theatre recently, and there was a lady in the audience who was so scared that she looked at the screen for probably less than half of the movie. I kinda envied her. I was slightly bored, though admittedly mostly because I've seen that movie quite enough times already.

the tension building as you sit around expecting to see it. That feeling that any moment now something is going to jump out

Hitchcock OTM when he said that the best way to generate suspense is for the audience to know what's going to happen, but the characters not. The time-bomb scene in Sabotage being a fine example.

As always, it depends whether the filmmaker has skill or not

A good number of filmmakers I think can do suspense quite well as a technique without being good filmmakers tho. Some of the set-pieces in the Final Destination movies are pretty accomplished but I'm not handing out any auteur badges there.

I've always considered this sort of indie guilt for movie snobs - they don't wanna say "that movie where the lady sawed off the guy's feet at the end was fucking burly" so they start spinning to explain why this movie where the dude got his feet sawed off was actually more in the cinema camp than the movies camp

suspense /= dramatic irony

the audience to know what's going to happen, but the characters not

this is known as "dramatic irony" and has been in common use since at least the 18th century

18th century? get one Oedipus Rex, dude! or ANY greek tragedy. i'm studying them at this very moment in time, and "dramatic irony" features large in more or less every single one.

you really read oedipus rex in college?

Hitchcock generally OTM period

does distaste for "genre cinema" need any justification? No. So this is a valid complaint. I blame Italy for turning American filmmakers on to guts and blood as a legitimate payoff. I respect Japan and Korea for bringing back proper freakout technique and showing gore the door.

actually has America ever bred good horror filmmakers? Craven and Carpenter always get big ups but IMO they're really mediocre.

Last I checked there is PLENTY of Gore in Japanese and Korean horror cinema of late.

yeah tom, i agree.

carpenter is a good storyteller, IMO, but his technique relies really heavily on a kind of hokey device of keeping the audience (literally and figuratively) in the dark as to what is happening as opposed to actually creating drama out of hope and fear and specific foilable expectations.

gore as payoff or reward after a dramatic moment is just fine, but in place of it is sort of just dumb sadism.

nb I have not been pursuing asian horror movies since 2001

...but I do agree that they have some people who are truly doing a service to the non-gory suspenseful horror genre (has anyone seen The Uninvited? By Su-Yeon Lee? Or any Kiyoshi Kurosawa? I wonder if they have their own threads... searching time...).

you really read oedipus rex in college?

yeah! i actually prefer 'oedipus at colonus' though. kick-ass.

actually has America ever bred good horror filmmakers?

Tod Browning (esp the silent stuff w/ Chaney) and James Whale (with heavy dose of comedy / pathos)

'wait until dark' scared the shit out of me when i was a kid

Hitchcock was talking about suspense, not dramatic irony. As in - we know there's a bomb under the table that's going to go off in 2 minutes, but the guy sitting at the table doesn't know it's there. Tick, tick, tick, suspense.

uh, what?

I think Romero, despite his faults, has made great horror films. I think Craven has done some good work too, but my favourites: Serpent and the Rainbow and People Under the Stairs aren't really good horror movies.

remy have you seen Sabotage?

noodle, that's a perfect example of dramatic irony.

and isn't suspenseful at all?

jesus christ

dramatic irony = audience knows more than the characters
suspense = uncertainty about an outcome
mystery = characters know more than the audience

I think you're splitting hairs about something that doesn't play out as separate emotions when you're watching a film. The concert hall assassination scene in Man Who Knew Too Much isn't really ironic, but the tension gets built because we know what the intended victim doesn't.

gore = parts from inside humans

HORROR MOVIES EXPLAINED IN FOUR EQUATIONS xpost

There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.

i've had some terrifying bangs, tom

that is the hitchcock quote. I can't actually find anything attributed to him about "suspense"

That's probly why I can't find the quotes I'm thinking about. The bomb under the table analogy is from the same interview, yeah?

Probably? I used wikiquote.

he said it many times, in many context. the bomb scare scene was a familar trope of his.

Four men is sitting at a table playing poker. The scene is rather boring. Suddenly, after 15 minutes, we hear a big bang - it turnes out there was a bomb under the table. This is called surprise as it isn't what we expected would happen.

If we watch the same scene again with the important difference that we have seen the bomb being placed under the table and the timer set to 11 AM, and we can see a watch in the background, the same scene becomes very intense and almost unbearable - we are sitting there hoping the timer will fail, the game is interrupted or the hero leaves the table in time, before the blast. This is called suspense.

well I guess you guys had better go after hitchcock

not knowing shit about narrative technique and all

or what to call things

err, i'm quoting hitchcock

In the novel The Secret Agent, the kid's death is total dramatic irony, sure. Conrad not being much of a one for writing suspensefully and all. But when Hitch does Sabotage, okay there is still irony in the death but what that scene is about is stomach-grinding anxiety i.e. suspense. And it can be both of those things at once, I think.

suspense /= dramatic irony

WHAT THEN

the idea of dramatic irony that some people are holding on this thread makes almost EVERYTHING dramatic irony. it makes friday the 13th a dramatic irony movie. WE KNOW JASON IS THERE THEY DO NOT... this is suspense. dramatic irony is more like, a character is doing something, and we know what will happen due to his actions, but he does not. at least, in my understanding. if the guy at the poker table punched a famous bombmaker in the face as a child, then maybe it's dramatic irony.

^^^this is why oedipus rex is just about the most fundamental example of 'dramatic irony' in the entire history of everything ever.

exactly.

Oedipus Rex is the most fundamental example of GOD HATES YOU LOL PWNED in the entire history of everything ever.

the tragedie of ian riese moraine

turns out dude killed his old man

Yeah, true (xxpost), but Oedipus at Colonus is, in turn, the most fundamental example of FUCK THE WORLD I AM MY OWN MAN I HAS THE POWER in the entire history of everything ever. If you are ever brought low by life, read that fucking play.

I R-M never ruined Thebes AFAIK.

would it be ironic if i got fired for non-work-related internet browsing, and was caught because i had the wikipedia entry for "irony" opened in firefox? i can't tel if that's irony or not, and it is making my head implode

Suspense is a container class for all of the emotional weight [danger, expectation, hope and fear, anticipation] created by any of various mechanisms that cause us to wonder about an outcome.

Dramatic irony is one of the most useful and effective tools for creating suspense. But surprise, mystery, etc., are too. Furthermore, dramatic irony need not create suspense -- it can be calibrated for humor or counterpoint, or whatever other purpose the storyteller creates it.

xxpost

I saw a TV production of OaC - Antigone too - many years back and I remember being really impressed by it, yeah.

Although the sequence in terms of the action goes OR - OaC - Antigone, they're not a true trilogy, and the order Sophocles actually wrote them was, IIRC, OR - Antigone - OaC. He wrote Colonus when in his eighties. It shows. It also makes the play even more astoundingly brilliant, being as it is a treatise on how to die with absolute dignity.

blind after fucking your mom?

There's dignity for you

remy brings the truth

YEAH but the whole point of the play is that he has been brought SO LOW by life that his path back is that much harder. That he is able to create his own redemption is a source of wonder. His method is certainty: certainty of purpose and certainty of speech. It's a wonderfully self-determinist play, thoroughly uplifting, and it'll make you believe you can come back from anything.

Even parapraxis?

You don't want to come back from parapraxis. I believe I once phrased it thusly: "the little flaws that make us whole".

oedipus rex also has lots of gore in it

interestingly, it's little holes that are my flaw

*flips through copy handily found on desk* The only gore in the entire play is found on Oedipus' bloody bandages, the extent of which can be determined by the director. You thinking of Titus Andronicus?

remy ftw

interestingly, it's little holes that are my flaw

^^^^ kiddy fiddler?!?!?

a noodle too far

Noodle tofu?

actually has America ever bred good horror filmmakers?

Tod Browning (esp the silent stuff w/ Chaney) and James Whale (with heavy dose of comedy / pathos)

-- Dr Morbius, Thursday, November 1, 2007 4:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

yeah thanks: whale is about as american as hitchcock.

don't think suspense as in intercutting was au courant in the 18th century. obviously cinematic techniques have antecedents, but suspense hitchcock-style is hard to achieve in other media. in his own account he got it partly from griffith, partly from john buchan.

Don Siegal, William Friedkin, Robert Wise, George Romero?

Spielberg, ugh

http://theater.cnu.edu/tartuffe.jpg