Violence in Horror

Since I am a couple posts into this whole blogging deal I feel like a bit of a pro. Hell, who I am fooling? I rock the shit out of it. As I mentioned early on, not every post will revolve around a Charles Band movie. This will be one of those posts. I will keep it short and sweet, but there is a topic that I have wanted to address for some time now. There have been some recent events that made me a little leery of breaching the subject, but after reading some reviews of the Texas Chainsaw 3D I felt I needed to get them off of my chest.

The topic I wanted to talk about in this post is violence in movies. With that said, I wanted to write about it in horror movies. This blog is somewhat about movies, so I will leave violence on TV and in video games out. I have a strong opposition to violence in action, war themed, video games that are geared towards teens. That’s a whole different topic that I could start an entire blog about. Now violence in action, thriller or drama movies can be viewed as realistic violence, well at least in some cases. For example, I am pretty sure that there isn't one city on Earth that has a billionaire that is willing to spend millions and millions of dollars to fight crime. However, in the movie universe, both Marvel, and DC, each have one.

Back to the topic on hand…I was reading through some of the reviews of Texas Chainsaw 3D over the weekend. It got the typical user reviews. ‘Too much gore.’ ‘Too much blood.’ I found one that was almost comical. The reviewer stated, ‘I don’t understand why a physiological thriller needed some much death.’ Well Einstein, let me break it down for you. It’s not a physiological thriller. It is a slasher movie. There are three elements to slasher movies. Sex, drugs and gore.

I will go ahead and explain these various pieces of the puzzle to you. Just in case you aren't familiar with the slasher formula.

First there is sex. Now this doesn't always mean flat out humping on camera. In a lot of cases this just means that some of the characters in the film are young, and attractive. But, if there is sex, then that couple will die.

Second there is drugs. I am not referring to drugs such as cocaine, or heroin. I am talking about liquor and pot, but usually both together. But, occasionally they are on their own.

Finally there is gore. If you thought you were watching a slasher movie, but there isn't any gore, then you were watching a thriller. There has to be gore. Not necessarily a lot, but some.

Now that everyone is clear on what is in slasher movies I think we can move on. While I was reading through some of the reviews for the movie I came across a story about the opening weekend. The topic of the story was about how a larger than expected percentage of the attendees were women between 18 and 25. One of the comments on that story said something to the jest of ‘with people out there rotting their brains with this violent filth it’s no wonder we have all of these mass killings’.

OK, is it filth? Yes. Is it rotting our brains? Yes. Is a guy wearing a mask made out of human skin, yielding a giant chainsaw, and brutally killing these young, and sexy, victims making anyone take a gun into a public place and shoot people? Fuck you for even asking that. Really, horror movies make these nut jobs go on these rampages? When was the last time you heard of a psycho wearing a hockey mask going through the mall with a machete killing people? Or, a burned to death child molester chasing people around with his Christmas sweater, and knife glove? NEVER!!! Because it doesn't happen! I understand that it is very tragic when any human life is lost…especially when we are talking about the life of a child. But, let’s not blame that on something totally ridiculous.