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Talk and interviews at Kurja Polt Film Festival

I recently attended Kurja Polt Film festival (Slovenia) to give a talk based on my forthcoming book The Metamodern Slasher Film (which should hopefully be out with Edinburgh University Press later this year).

My talk was titled "Subtraction and Compression in Contemporary Indie Horror" (or, as Google translate put it, "Countdown and The Thickening"). The abstract is available here. A recording of the talk is available below

While I was there, I was interviewed for RTV's Osmi Dan and for the radio programme Gremo v Kino. I was also interviewed by Ana Jurc for MMC about my broader research profile.

It was fantastic to be back in Ljubljana, to be speaking alongside Alexia Kannas again, and to meet the other guests at this year's festival

New Article on Revenge and I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

My article "Appealing, Appalling: Morality and Revenge in I Spit on Your Grave (2010)" will be published later this year in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. A pre-print version of the article is available here

Abstract

Despite being a prevalent theme in popular cinema, revenge has received little dedicated attention within film studies. The majority of research concerning the concept of revenge is located within moral philosophy, but that body of literature has been overlooked by film studies scholars. Philosophers routinely draw on filmic examples to illustrate their discussions of revenge, but those interpretations are commonly hindered by their authors’ inexperience with film studies’ analytical methods. This article seeks to bridge those gaps. The 2010 remake of I Spit on Your Grave is used as a case study to illustrate the benefits of an interdisciplinary engagement with revenge. Philosophical literature on the topic has routinely posited that revenge is either appealing or appalling, and that impasse has stifled conceptual understanding. The interdisciplinary approach employed here elucidates that revenge is simultaneously appealing and appalling; this dualistic nature is evident in I Spit on Your Grave since it is built into the narrative design. I conclude that an interdisciplinary approach to revenge has the potential to advance understanding of revenge-qua-concept both within films studies and philosophy.

New Chapter Out Now

I have a chapter in the edited collection New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror. My chapter is titled "Hardcore Horror: Challenging the Discourses of Extremity".

Abstract: 
This chapter explores the relationship between ‘hardcore’ horror films, and the discursive context in which mainstream horror releases are being dubbed ‘extreme’. This chapter compares ‘mainstream’ and ‘hardcore’ horror with the aim of investigating what ‘extremity’ means. I will begin by outlining what ‘hardcore’ horror is, and how it differs from mainstream horror (both in terms of content and distribution). I will then dissect what ‘extremity’ means in this context, delineating problems with established critical discourses about ‘extreme’ horror. Print press reviewers focus on theatrically released horror films, ignoring microbudget direct-to-video horror. As such, their adjudications about ‘extremity’ in horror begin from a limited base that misrepresents the genre. Moreover, ‘extremity’ is not a universally shared value, yet it is predominantly presented as if referring to an objective, universally agreed-upon standard. Such judgements change over time. Moreover, in contrast to marketers’ uses of ‘extreme’, press critics predominantly use the term as a pejorative. Although academics have sought to defend and contextualise particular maligned films and directors, scholars have focused on a handful of infamous examples. As I will explain, academic publishers implicitly support that narrow focus. As such, the cumulative body of scholarly work on ‘extreme’ horror inadvertently replicates print press critics’ mischaracterisation of the genre. These discursive factors limit our collective understandings of ‘horror’, its ostensible ‘extremity’. and of ‘extremity’ qua concept. Given that the discourse of ‘extremity’ is so commonly employed when censuring representations that challenge established genre conventions, it is imperative that horror studies academics attend to peripheral hardcore horror texts, and seek to develop more robust conceptual understandings of extremity.

The editors - Eddie Falvey, Joe Hickinbottom and Jon Wroot - hosted a book launch event featuring some of the contributors (including me). The video of that event is available here: https://youtu.be/8HACL-xhdTM

 

Snuff Interview

I was recently interviewed by Zafer Yilmaz (Hacettepe University)  about the snuff phenomenon. The interview is published here on the SineBlog in Turkish

Below is a translation into English:

Films shot for entertainment and profit that show real murders and rapes, are referred to as “Snuff” movies. Do Snuff films really exist?

As far as documented cases are concerned, no. Reportedly, the FBI’s criminal investigations into snuff have not uncovered any such material. The principal criterion for defining snuff is that the footage should contain (usually, culminate in) murder. The term ‘snuff’ conveys that a life has been extinguished (“snuffed out”). The hypothetical footage might include other types of violence – such as sexual violence, torture, and so forth – but these other acts are not in themselves sufficient for a film to be classified as snuff. Also, as you note, the motivations matter: snuff is filmed murder for the sake of entertainment and profit.

Note the term “murder” here: the footage has to be of an intentionally caused human death. To illustrate: a film such as Cannibal Holocaust (1980) was shot with the intention of generating profit and was meant to entertain an audience. The film includes real animal deaths, which were staged specifically for the film. For instance, the cast kill and eat a large turtle. The turtle’s death would not have occurred otherwise. However, killing an animal is not classed as murder, and therefore such footage is not snuff.

Many fictional, staged films seek to emulate what snuff might look like, and that sustains the myth that there are real snuff movies. I call these fictional emulations ‘faux-snuff’ films. Usually, vérité techniques (natural light, ambient sound, handheld camera and so forth) are employed to suggest that the footage has been captured by amateurs rather than professional filmmakers. That branch of snuff was almost certainly influenced by uses of vérité techniques in cinema more broadly (and perhaps in Cannibal Holocaust specifically), and by mondo films. Mondo films are documentaries that detail (and sometimes stage) events that would not normally be recorded on film. One famous relevant example is Faces of Death (1978), which contains authentic footage of animal deaths, genuine images of dead humans (taken, for instance, from news footage), and staged emulations of human deaths. The compilation of elements is presented as a documentary, and the vérité approach is employed where human deaths are fabricated, to pass off the footage as “real”. Furthermore, faux-snuff is likely influenced by the film Snuff (1976), which reputedly contained a real murder, which was clearly staged: multiple camera set-ups are employed, and the footage is obviously edited according to traditional conventions to establish continuity. In veering towards a vérité style, faux-snuff filmmakers seek to avoid those overt tell-tale signs that the footage has been intentionally constructed.

Some filmmakers use additional techniques for added realism, or to blur the lines between fiction and “fact”. In Shane Ryan’s Amateur Porn Star Killer series (2007-2009), genitally explicit images of sex are included alongside the staged murder. Since we can see that the sex unambiguously really happened, it is implied that the ostensible murder also could have occurred. Elsewhere, Fred Vogel’s August Underground’s Mordum (2003) includes footage of one performer cutting herself and self-inducing vomiting. Again, since these acts are genuine, it is implied that the staged FX-based murders are also “real”.

 

 

Two Serbian films released around 2010s (The Life and Death of a Porno Gang and A Serbian Film) raise the subject of snuff. Are snuff rumours commonly found in other geographical contexts?

Snuff appears in a wide variety of cultural contexts. Many faux-snuff films or films about the snuff myth are American. Obviously, there is Snuff (1976), but also Hardcore (1979), Run if You Can (1988), 8mm (1999) and so forth. Some of the more recent entries such as The Great American Snuff Film (2004), The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), and The Cohasset Snuff Film (2012) put America or American place names in the titles. Cumulatively, it feels as if these American filmmakers are laying claim to the mythology in some way.

Some of those American films are set in other countries. Famously, Snuff was marketed as being filmed in “South America, where life is cheap”. Other films follow suit: King of the Kickboxers (1990) features a New Yorker traveling to Thailand to expose a snuff ring, Live Feed (2006) features American tourists encountering snuff production in China, and so on. These films have been accused of xenophobia or orientalism because they depict Americans encountering abhorrent “exotic” behaviours in “foreign” lands. Other countries have reflected that relationship too: perhaps in response to Snuff’s depiction of South America, Reel Savages (1977) depicts a Brazilian snuff filmmaker who feigns being North American, for instance. The Italian film Emanuelle in America (1977) also presents an American journalist encountering a snuff film production in an undisclosed location (implied to be outside the US, given that it is accessed by private jet).

There are numerous other examples of European snuff-themed films, including the Spanish film Tesis (1996), the Belgian film C'est Arrivé Près de Chez Vou (1992), the Italian film Snuff Trap (2003), as well as the British films The Last Horror Movie (2003) or the “Sick Room” segment of Cradle of Fear (2001), and the Irish film Red Room (2017). Japan has also produced its share of faux-snuff and snuff-themed films, perhaps most famously the early entries in the Guinea Pig series (1985), but also Abnormal: Ingyaku (1988), and Muzan-e (1999).

What I'm suggesting is that the snuff theme is an international phenomenon. These films probably play differently when contextualised against these various cultural backgrounds. I could not speak to that with any authority. In the UK, the spectre of snuff is still tinged by the video nasties panic and the connotations of “media effects” associated with that controversy. The idea that films – especially unregulated films, distributed in clandestine ways and consumed in private – are somehow intimately linked with real-world violence remains baked into British horror film culture. Those connotations have almost certainly helped to shape and sustain the snuff myth in the UK.

 

 

In your work, you refer to the film Snuff (1976) as a key moment in the development of pseudo-Snuff films and in anti-pornography feminists' responses to the phenomenon. What is the relationship between Snuff-myth and pornography?

Famously, protests were staged outside screenings of Snuff, based on its alleged depiction of a man actually killing a woman (which, to be clear, was faked). Whether those protests were authentic feminist protests, whether they were staged as part of the film’s publicity campaign, or whether it was a combination of both varies according to which sources one consults. In any case, Snuff garnered attention from feminist campaign groups such as WAVAW (Women Against Violence Against Women). The attention to Snuff was amplified by the staged killing happening on a bed, and its initial presentation as a sexual scenario. Snuff played into concerns various feminist groups were raising about pornography at the time. Broadly speaking, such campaigners suggested (to various degrees) that even mainstream hardcore pornography regularly and overtly depicts sexual violence, that women are commonly harmed when making pornography, that pornography encourages sexually sadistic attitudes among its viewers, and that porn goads viewers into committing violence and sexual violence in the real world. Snuff is an extension of these ideas: in this view, men routinely gain sexual pleasure by consuming images of women being harmed, so it is only a slight amplification of that paradigm to suggest that men would gain sexual pleasure from seeing a woman killed on camera. At the root of this model is the idea that porn is misogynistic, and that porn consumers are principally aroused by seeing women being harmed or degraded. Remember that in this view, such forms of porn are thought to be readily available and mainstream, so these attitudes are presented as if they are normative.

In the writings of anti-porn feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and Jane Caputi, snuff is frequently presented as a type of pornography. That way of presenting snuff is replicated in popular culture too. Even in its title, Hardcore (1979) represents snuff films as a branch or extension of hardcore porn. Since snuff is only a myth, it isn’t possible to pin down a typical snuff consumer or to pinpoint the average mode of snuff consumption. Instead, a more familiar model (porn production and consumption) is employed as a substitute.

That slippage is further naturalised by porn’s associations with illicitness and taboo content. One would imagine that if a murder were staged purely for a commercial film, the footage would be banned from distribution, not only because it is evidence of a crime, but also because it is offensive. The extant framework for expressing how improper it would be to distribute such footage is to dub it “obscene”. Obscenity laws usually focus on sexual depictions, because presenting the “private” act of sex in explicit detail is broadly considered to be improper. So, the association between snuff and porn also possibly expresses an attempt to articulate what precisely is objectionable about snuff. A murder entailed during the creation of a hypothetical snuff movie would obviously be objectionable, but I would assume many would not be satisfied if such a murder were prosecuted without reference to the filming and intent to commercially distribute the footage – the latter is an additional wrong, and “obscenity” helps to pin down that wrong according to a familiar legal model.

 

 

What do you think are the socio-psychological and cultural foundations that prepare people to believe in Snuff-myth? How instructive do you think the media-effects model can be in this regard?

People are probably prepared to believe in the existence of snuff because it is within the realms of possibility. Filming a murder then distributing the footage is a remarkably unwise activity (most murderers would seek to remove evidence of their crime rather than reproducing it). Nevertheless, people engage in other serious crimes for financial gain, so it is conceivable that someone might become involved in snuff production if the promise of financial reward were significant enough.

Even if most people would not want to see authentic footage of a murder themselves, one might also readily imagine that someone might want to. It seems at least conceivable that a niche audience might watch snuff (if it existed), based on morbid curiosity about murder. That morbid curiosity might initially seem alien because murder is so horrific, but a cultural fascination with the idea of homicide is quite widespread. Certainly, many people might find crime fiction appealing because they enjoy imagining murderers being brought to justice. There is undoubtedly comfort or satisfaction in the re-enforcement of moral norms. However, the prevalence of crime fiction centred on murder and murderers also suggests that people might be curious about killing and the kind of people who are capable of taking another’s life. That curiosity is probably fuelled by most people believing that they are incapable of such action (outside of self-defence) or are unable to seriously conceive of themselves committing homicide. Crime fiction offers a safe way into exploring those ideas without the moral baggage of engaging with a real murder or murderer, and divorced from the reality of a victim’s grieving loved ones. Documentaries and true crime books also garner large audiences who are interested in actual murder cases, and those texts seem more directly invested in unpicking what drives killers to homicide. Again, part of the appeal might stem from the reinforcement of moral boundaries (marking differences between the killer and the viewer). In any case, however abhorrent murder is, it evidently fascinates many people, for a multitude of reasons.

Faux-snuff or snuff-themed fiction offer alternative windows into the horrors of murder. The vérité aesthetic might imply immediacy, but I assume viewers a priori understand that they are engaging with fiction. I'm sure most viewers would turn away from a faux-snuff film if they ultimately believed it to contain genuine murder. Knowing that it is only fiction, faux-snuff viewers might find vicarious thrills from being close to the killer (seeing what the murderer sees), but others almost certainly focus on the victim’s position, and others on the kind of person who would watch such footage if it were real. The fiction provides a space to safely engage with this triangulation of killer, victim, and consumer, and to explore moral complexities by oscillating between these different positions. In particular, since the viewer of faux-snuff occupies a similar (but, importantly, different) position to the snuff consumer, faux-snuff presents opportunities to explore the extent to which snuff consumers would be implicated in and responsible for the murder they pay to see. That question is built into the faux-snuff structure.

The media effects model takes the opposite stance on a relationship between viewer and film. The model is not interested in the varied appeals of such fiction – it does not account for why someone might watch – instead presenting the viewer as a mindless blank who mechanically replicates whatever they see onscreen in the real world. The media effects model is so reductive that I do not recognise the picture of viewership it presents.

 

In some interpretations, snuff encompasses historical films that entertain people by showing murder, and even propaganda murder videos made by terrorist organizations. What is your opinion on this matter? Are the criteria of "entertainment" and "profit making" indispensable in classifying snuff? What ties are there between capitalism and snuff?

If we take it that snuff is filmed footage of a murder, that the murder was intentionally staged for the film, and that the film was created for the dual purposes of entertaining an audience and generating profit, then these examples would not fit the classification.

Footage capturing genuine deaths is abundant, and some of that footage has been repurposed and sold for entertainment. Films such as Traces of Death (1993) compile that kind of footage under the auspices of entertainment. However, that footage usually captures death incidentally. For instance, camcorder or CCTV footage of a fatal accident might be included. The death was not staged so that it could be captured and the footage sold.

One might argue that a terrorist beheading video captures a genuine murder that was staged for camera, but the footage was not intended to be sold for profit or to entertain an audience. It is possible to repurpose the footage and watch it for some kind of entertainment; sites such as Ogrish, for example, specialised in repurposing footage of death, bloodshed and injury seemingly for the morbid curiosity of its users. However, the footage was not made for that purpose, and so it fails to meet the criteria for snuff. Nor was the footage created as a commercial venture. Its intention is to elicit a response and/or to make a political statement rather than to generate profit.

These distinctions might seem purely semantic, but they are vital in pinning down what snuff is and why the myth endures. The snuff myth is not really about the brute fact that a death occurred and was filmed: it is about moral violation. To put it crassly, killing is bad, but some forms of life-taking are deemed morally worse than others: we penalise manslaughter or second-degree murder less severely than first degree murder, and some consider euthanasia to be permissible. Motive matters in our moral assessment.

Snuff is a powerful myth because it flags two particularly callous motives for taking a life: the filmmaker is seeking profit and the viewer is seeking to be entertained. The monetary value and entertainment value gained from the interaction are obviously insignificant compared with the value of the life lost, and the premise of snuff is that the life was only lost to entertain those who pay to see homicide. It is also suggested that their viewing pleasure is contingent on the idea that the murder is exclusively for their entertainment. The sheer callousness of that interaction and the compounding of moral violations is what sustains the myth. The questions underpinning snuff are who would make that kind of film just for profit, and who would pay to watch (and why)?

 

 

How do you think the snuff myth (or the production of real snuff) will evolve in the future, particularly after COVID-19 and the a potentially post-democratic world)? 

On one level, I would not expect the snuff myth to change much at all in light of recent events. As I’ve indicated, the premise is much more fundamental, being rooted in deeper moral questions about the value(s) of life. Indeed, the snuff myth has sustained in the cultural imagination in more-or-less the same form since the 1970s, surviving multiple recessions, changes in governments, the digital revolution, and so forth.

That said, the moral violation has a monetary component at its heart. Snuff derives much of its power from the notion that it would be morally heinous to profit from murder, to kill simply for profit, or to pay to watch murder. The idea of putting a price tag on lives has become increasingly pressing in recent decades under what many have called a neoliberal or late capitalist state. In fact, I am currently writing a book on how exploitation films explore shifting attitudes towards human life and dignity under late capitalism. The snuff myth may shift if COVID-19 disrupts what have become economic norms. If capitalism were to collapse, I imagine snuff would either vanish or flourish. The myth might vanish because it hinges on the idea that enough money can buy anything, and ultimately can allow people to indulge in their most morally heinous fantasies. That way of thinking might simply not mean much if broader attitudes towards money and its perceived importance shift radically. The concerns snuff raises about putting a price tag on life might become alien to the culture if capitalism falters. Alternatively, snuff may flourish - rather than coming across as the antiquated product of a lost era, the absolute horror of the monetary transaction might be thrown into even starker relief.

Philosophy. Horror. Film. #2 Abortion and Pregnancy Themes in Survival-Horror

New Chapter

My new chapter "Spierig Brothers' Jigsaw (2017) - Torture Porn Rebooted?" appears in the new anthology Horror: A Companion (2019, Peter Lang) edited by Simon Bacon. Read my chapter here, or find more information on the book here. 

Abstract: 

After a seven-year hiatus, the Saw franchise returned. Critics overwhelming disapproved of the franchise’s reinvigoration, and much of that dissention centred around a label that is synonymous with Saw: ‘torture porn’. Numerous critics pegged the original Saw (2004) as torture porn’s prototype. Accordingly, critics  characterised Jigsaw’s release as heralding an unwelcome ‘torture porn comeback’. This chapter investigates the legitimacy of this concern in order to determine what ‘torture porn’ is and means in the Jigsaw era.

Offscreen 2019

On 23rd March I returned to Offscreen Festival in Brussels for the fourth time. This year, I participated in a conference based on Offscreen’s Death on Film theme. I interviewed David Kerekes about his groundbreaking book Killing for Culture, I delivered a paper entitled “La Petite Mort: Sex and Death in Hardcore Horror”, and I participated in a panel discussion with David, Dr Tina Kendall (Anglia Ruskin University), Dr Russ Hunter (Northumbria University), and festival guest of honour Jörg Buttgereit (director of Necromantik, Schramm, and Der Todesking). Thank you to the festival team for having me back, and to everyone who came to the event

Three online articles

January 2019 has been a month of blog-related activities for me

Here is a post I wrote for the Screening Sex blog about the recent BBFC consultation exercise, and their stance on films featuring sexual violence:

https://bit.ly/2RShgv7

Here is a post on Henry Jenkins’ blog in which I'm interviewed by Dr Billy Proctor:

https://bit.ly/2T9wZSJ
Part 2:
https://bit.ly/2MC7O9j

Finally, here is a blog post about the impact case study I’ve been involved in, which is led by Russ Hunter, and encompasses colleagues from across Film and Media at Northumbria

https://bit.ly/2AZSHSg

Kurja Polt 2017

I recently returned from Kurja Polt festival (Slovenia), where I had the opportunity to present on my research (as part of their Cult Film conference), introduce two films (Addio Zio Tom [1971] and Thriller: a Cruel Picture [1973]), and conduct a masterclass with Christina Lindberg. Information about the festival is available here, photographs are available here, and Kurja Polt Facebook page is available here.

A full video of my talk is posted below:

A video of my discussion with Christina Lindberg is here:

Thanks so much to Maša Peče and the Kurja Polt team. 

Things I Learned from Watching the Human Centipede Trilogy Back-to-Back

For anyone who remains blissfully unaware, Tom Six has released a Blu-ray version of the Human Centipede trilogy entitled The Human Centipede (Complete Sequence): Tom Six Edition, which includes all three films stitched together as one long movie. Having previously seen the films in their original forms, I knew the 4.5+ hour epic would include a barrage of crude, offensive events. However, I did not expect that I would come away with an altered perception of the series as a whole.

On the surface, I did not learn anything new or notice much about the films that I was not already aware of (except that Peter Blankenstein appears in all three – that had passed me by). Some of the echoes in dialogue were more apparent when watching the series this way, but these were hardly revelatory. It is also abundantly obvious that Six’s attempts to shock become more overt with each film. Dieter Laser’s contrasting performances bookend that transition.

What did strike me this time around is how effective the three very different aesthetic approaches are when collated into a single run. The first film is coldly clinical; the second is relentlessly dreary and grim; the third is cartoonishly tacky. Regardless of one’s attitude towards these films, it should at least be acknowledged that very few film series are comprised of chapters that boast such wildly contrasting tones. It is certainly one of the only horror series I can bring to mind that prioritises form in this way, embedding those tonal elements in the lighting, cinematography, colour grading, script, performances, effects, and so forth. Arguably Six’s commitment to this formal approach is ultimately detrimental. For example, critics have universally panned the final film, and of the three – taken as stand-alone films – it is by far the weakest. However, given that the Complete Sequence stitches these films mouth-to-anus, it seems only fitting that the “end”, erm, stinks.

The sharp switches between each film are not exactly jarring when watching the series in one sitting, but they do illuminate one another. For a movie about forced coprophagia, the first film feels oddly restrained when juxtaposed with the second and third entries. It is also surprisingly tense at times; Lindsay’s early attempt to escape is a notably well-constructed sequence. The Human Centipede is a better horror movie than its reputation – which is preoccupied with the unusual, shocking premise – would suggest. The second film feels unspeakably bleak when sandwiched between the other two films. Complete Sequence’s second disc offers the opportunity to see the colour version of Human Centipede 2, but it is nowhere near as impactful as the (almost) monochrome version. The grey, rainy, dilapidated industrial environments are aptly drab in black-and-white; the colour version’s augmented palette makes the film much more palatable. Accordingly, juxtaposition with the other two movies – which are colourful, both in the literal and figurative senses – makes the second film feel much more morbid and depressing than it does in isolation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I found Human Centipede 2 much more upsetting and unsettling when viewed as part of a running trilogy. The third film’s eccentric delivery verges on intolerable when viewed as a stand-alone film, but as part of the whole it is exaggerated enough to seem outrageously amusing, particularly after sitting through Human Centipede 2’s gloomy proceedings.

Moreover, each film embeds echoes of the others’ tones within it; the first two films hint towards the dark, crude humour that is foregrounded in the third part. There are moments of the bloody grotesquery and grave violence that are the second movie’s essence within the bookending films, and so forth.

In order to make the most of these comparisons, Complete Sequence has one further trick up its sleeve. Just as Bill Boss threatens to turn is ‘prison centipede’ into a circular perpetual (bowel) motion machine, the disc cycles without credits. Resultantly, the Complete Sequence can be “enjoyed” in an infinite loop (so, I suppose it is never really “complete” at all).

In sum: for anyone planning on revisiting any of these movies, Complete Sequence is the way to do so. For anyone who has no desire to re-watch these films… fair enough. They certainly are not to everyone’s taste. In fact, “taste” is not Six’s forte. I suspect that he might even be offended at the suggestion.

15 Second Review: 31 (2016)

I understand why so many critics are disappointed by 31, but it is nowhere near as bad is being suggested. The movie is ultimately a decently made torture porn flick (NB: if you read that sentence as an insult, then allow me to direct you here). The main issue with 31 is that the plot is so paper-thin that the movie feels hollow, even flat. However, let’s put this in perspective. 31 is still more entertaining than most other movies that share the same plot ($la$hers [2001], for instance), and it is more coherent than Zombie’s debut House of 1000 Corpses, or even Halloween II. Thin plot might be a sensible route for Zombie given that storytelling is not his forte. As I have come to expect from Zombie, the direction is inconsistent, shifting between strong compositions and floundering disarray. The core problem here is shaky cam – a.k.a. the trend that refuses to die, a.k.a. the worst thing to happen to filmmaking – which amplifies the impression that the film is a wild, unfocused jumble of “stuff”. Obviously Zombie should not be singled out here, since so many directors seem enamoured with the technique, even if it means refusing to show the audience what is happening and hampering immersion. Nevertheless, it is frustrating to know that Zombie is capable of much better, as Lords of Salem demonstrates. It is also telling that by far the strongest sequence in 31 is the opening monologue, which is almost entirely constituted by a single static extreme close-up. Richard Brake steals the movie, both because it is a great performance and also because Doom-Head is the film’s only real character. The casting, it should be noted, is one of the movie’s highlights. It was particularly refreshing to see actors such as Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Meg Foster in roles that would typically be occupied by “pretty” 19 year-olds. In sum, this is a step backwards for Zombie after Lords of Salem, but unevenness is the hallmark of his oeuvre. If he stays true to form, his next movie will be a treat.

15 Second Review: Natalie's Lose Lose

Natalie’s Lose Lose (2012) is a no-budget horror film that succeeds on a couple of fronts. First, unlike so many other ultra-low budget films, the performances are generally solid here. Second, the direction is well-judged; the tight close-ups create a claustrophobic atmosphere and even manage to mask some of the budgetary shortcomings that would otherwise be evident in the set-design, costuming and so forth. However, while Natalie’s Lose Lose prospers in areas where others flounder, it struggles when it comes to delivering the most essential aspect: its story. With a running time of only 80 minutes the film ought to feel brisk, yet it drags. Natalie’s Lose Lose is illustrative of a problem with feature filmmaking; if it had been viable to release the film as a 45-minute piece, it could have been edited into a taught, exciting tale. As it stands, it is bloated. The main reason it feels so sluggish is that the film is mainly constituted by dialogue. As a movie that clearly draws on the torture-horror boom of the era, it really ought to have contained more torture. The problem is not a lack of violence per se; after all, many reviewers complain about being “bored” by torture porn’s “endless” agony. Rather, some threat is needed in order to motivate the eponymous protagonist. Natalie never seems fazed by the challenges she faces, and that makes it hard to empathise with her situation. She just does not seem to care that she has been kidnapped. Perversely, one of the overarching reasons that Natalie’s Lose Lose is so uninvolving is that there is also no hope for the protagonist, however stoic – perhaps even blasé – she is about the whole affair. As the title overtly states, Natalie is in a “lose-lose” situation. Consequently, the narrative comes across as an exercise in prolonging the inevitable, offering no hint that Natalie might escape her fate (or indeed, that she will even bother to try). The most fundamental problem, however, is that the narrative ultimately makes little sense. The film offers a final “twist” in order to explain why the abductors would have motive to kill Natalie, but they are given no incentive to question or torment her. Since the film is entirely constituted by questioning and tormenting Natalie, the “twist” renders the film’s content redundant. Unfortunately, watching this movie is a “lose-lose”.

Call for Film Submissions: Ted Bundy Had a Son

Shane Ryan is currently putting together a new film Ted Bundy Had a Son, which is part of his Amateur Porn Star Killer series. The film is a pseudo-documentary that reflects on the Amateur Porn Star Killer films as if they were depicting real-world events. 

Shane is currently looking for submissions from anyone over 18 (worldwide) who would like to contribute, even if you are just shooting on an i-Phone

If you are interested in submitting, full details can be found here:

http://www.madsincinema.com/ted-bundy-had-a-son.html

The history of the series' killer (Brandon) can be found here: 

http://reidryanallen.weebly.com/

Documentary on Shane Ryan

The documentary "A Boy, A Girl, & A Camera" - which is about the filmmaker Shane Ryan - is currently available to watch on YouTube. The documentary was previously available on the 2014 Mongolian Barbeque release of the Amateur Porn Star Killer trilogy. It features interviews with other filmmakers (such as Ryan Nicholson), and even includes a quote from my book Torture Porn.

Check it out below:

My chapter on the Amateur Porn Star Killer films is available in the new book Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media (edited by Neil Jackson, Shaun Kimber, Johnny Walker, & Tom Watson), which is available from Bloomsbury, Amazon and other retailers.

Update: both Torture Porn and Snuff also feature in this video:

Snuff Collection: Update

The collection Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media (edited by Neil Jackson, Shaun Kimber, Johnny Walker, & Tom Watson) is due for publication by Bloomsbury at the end of January next year.

The book is based on a conference that was held at Bournemouth University in November 2012. It features a foreword from David Kerekes (co-author of Killing for Culture) and wide variety of essays on the subgenre. My chapter "A View to a Kill: Perspectives on Faux-Snuff and Self" is based around the Amateur Porn Star Killer movies.

The book can now be pre-ordered from Bloomsbury, Amazon and other retailers. The Amazon link provides a preview of the content.

A book launch will be held on 12th February in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: details can be found here: http://snuffmovie.weebly.com/

I hope to see some of you there

Table of Contents: 

Foreword: A Culture of Change

David Kerekes 

Introduction: Shot, Cut and Slaughtered

Neil Jackson (University of Lincoln, UK)

Part I – The Changing Meaning of "Snuff"

Chapter 1: The Way to Digital Death

Julian Petley (Brunel University, UK)

Chapter 2: The Affective Reality of Snuff

Misha Kavka (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Chapter 3: Animal Snuff

Simon Hobbs (University of Portsmouth, UK)

Chapter 4: Breathing New Life into Old Fears: Extreme Pornogrpahy and the Wider Politics of Snuff

Clarissa Smith (University of Sunderland, UK)

Chapter 5: From Snuff to the South: The Global Reception of Cannibal Holocaust

Nicolo Gallio (University of Bologna, Italy) and Xavier Mendik (University of Brighton, UK)

Chapter 6: A Murder Mystery in Black and Blue: The Marketing, Distribution and Cult Mythology of Snuff in the UK

Mark McKenna (University of Sunderland, UK)

Chapter 7: Traces of Snuff: Black Markets, Fan Subcultures and Underground Horror in the 90s

Johnny Walker (Northumbria University, UK)

Chapter 8: SNuff 2.0: Real Death Goes HD Ready

Mark Astley (Independent Scholar, UK)

Part II – "Snuff" Across Film and Television

Chapter 9: Unfound Footage and Unfounded Rumours: The Manson Family Murders and the Persistence of Snuff

Mark Jones & Gerry Carlin (University of Wolverhampton, UK)

Chapter 10: Wild Eyes, Dead Ladies: The Snuff Filmmaker in Realist Horror

Neil Jackson (University of Lincoln, UK)

Chapter 11: The Mediation of Death in Fictional Snuff: Reflexivity, Viewer Interpellation and Ethical Implication

Xavier Aldana Reyes (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

Chatper 12: "Why Would you Film It?" Snuff, Sinister and Contemporary US Horror Cinema

Shaun Kimber (Bournemouth University, UK)

Chapter 13: Cinema as Snuff: From Pre-Cinema to Shadow of the Vampire

Linda Badley (Middle Tennessee State University, USA)

Chapter 14: Affect

Tina Kendall (Anglia Ruskin University, UK)

Chapter 15: A View to Kill: Perspectives on Faux-Snuff and Self

Steve Jones (Northumbria University, UK)

Money Off Digital Horror Book

As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I have a chapter in the new collection Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon, edited by Linnie Blake and Xavier Aldana Reyes, which is published by I.B. Tauris

If you order the book from I.B. Tauris before 30th April 2016 using the discount code AN2, you can get the book for the discounted price of £41.65.

15 Second Review: American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore (2014)

With American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore, Unearthed Films' founder Stephen Biro has created a faux-snuff film that looks authentically amateur. I don't mean that it looks like footage shot by killers. Rather, it looks like the kind of film schoolkids would make if they were given some prosthetics, a few cameras, and no training. No matter how one feels about the 1980s Guinea Pig series Biro is emulating, Flowers of Flesh and Blood at least boasted some undeniably fantastic effects work. American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore disappoints on that front: no amount of shaking the camera and adding coloured filters in post-production can mask how unconvincing the effects are. The core failure however, is allowing the cast to speak. Films like this do not require Academy Award winning performers, but neither do they require dialogue per se. Indeed, my only recommendation here is that if you really must watch American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore, do so on mute: it is a much more unsettling experience. Anyone lucky enough to buy the three-disc version can indulge in hours of extra material. What exactly that consists of, I will never know: sitting through the 73 minute film - with its pathetic attempts to shock, its annoying insistence on framing everything in extreme close-up, and its atmosphere-sucking extra-diegetic white noise soundtrack - was more than enough torture for me. I hear that the second film in the series (Bloodshock) is currently in post-production. I can only hope that Biro et al put more effort into the sequel than they did this damp squib. 

New Chapter: Torture Pornopticon: (In)security Cameras, Self-Governance and Autonomy

I have a chapter in the new collection Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon, edited by Linnie Blake and Xavier Aldana Reyes, which has just been published by I.B. Tauris.

More info about the book is available here.

To read a draft, click here.

Abstract: ‘Torture porn’ films centre on themes of abduction, imprisonment and suffering. Within the subgenre, protagonists are typically placed under relentless surveillance by their captors. CCTV features in more than 45 contemporary torture-themed films (including Captivity, Hunger, and Torture Room). Security cameras signify a bridging point between the captors’ ability to observe and to control their prey. Founded on power-imbalance, torture porn’s prison-spaces are panoptical. Despite failing to encapsulate contemporary surveillance’s complexities (see Haggerty, 2011), the panopticon remains a dominant paradigm within surveillance studies because it captures essential truths about the psychologies of self-governance and interdependency. This chapter will use torture porn’s panoptical spaces and captor-captive relationships as a springboard into examining those broader philosophical issues regarding selfhood. In the torture-space, cameras signify the control to which captives must submit. Since they are threatened with death, the surveillance dynamic appears to entirely subjugate these prisoners. However, the captive must undertake some agency in the oppression. Much of the captor’s implied threat is enacted by the captives, who brutalise one another to save themselves. The captor’s apparent omniscience is translated into omnipotence only because the captives forsake self-control – opting to engage in violent, contra-social behaviours – out of fear. Thus, it is implied that self-ownership is the bedrock of stable, interdependent sociality. To inspire horror, the opposite is depicted: fractured groups comprised of paranoid, self-invested individuals. By submitting to external pressure, these “weak” individuals empower their tormentor. Captives are not only encouraged to enact their own suppression, but also to internalise culpability for the suffering they undergo. Despite being threatened with erasure, torture porn’s protagonists are spotlighted in these films. Abductees dominate the screen-time, and their suffering drives the narrative forward. Torturers are often motivated solely by their victims’ agony. In many cases, torture is designed specifically for each hyper-individualised captive. These forms of emphasis imply that captives are the stimulus for their own victimisation. The captor’s exaggerated interest in the prisoners is perversely flattering: captives are implied to be worthy of the captor’s maniacal attention, which is reified by the CCTV cameras. In torture porn’s scenarios, it is not immediately clear who has greater control over the individual: the captor or the captive themselves. By dissecting how self-preservation, self-governance, and self-centredness manifest in torture porn, this chapter seeks to examine the dialectical qualities of liberty, interdependency and autonomy.

Talk in Coventry

On Friday, I gave a talk entitled "Women in Horror: Moving Beyond Misogyny" at Coventry University as part of their Femininity in Film series. It was great to meet the staff and students there. Thanks to everyone who came - the turn-out was fantastic.