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Is The Extreme Blood And Gore In Movies Today Scarier Than Older Horror Flix?

In 1963, Herschel Gordon Lewis unleashed a movie called “Blood Feast” on an unsuspecting American movie going public. It featured a man who needed body parts from women to conjure up a long-dead Egyptian Goddess to complete an Egyptian Feast. The scenes of decapitated heads and torsos dripping with blood was the justmovieflix first really gross-out material that most people had seen up to that year. Before that, “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” dealt with the nature of “traditional horror”, meaning that frightening makeup and dark, foggy exterior scenes made up the scary nature of horror movies.

Traditional ways of horror

Some critics much prefer the traditional ways of horror, but the majority of young moviegoers today prefer the torture scenes of movies like the “Saw” trilogy, the “Hostel” movies and the works of Rob Zombie, such as “House of 1000 Corpses” and ” The Devil’s Rejects”. Both of those movies feature extreme torture sequences and headless torsos bleeding from the neck, knives through the skull, sledgehammer blows to the head, and many other such atrocities.In “Hostel 2”, director Eli Roth revisits the same Slovokia hostel that the previous film explored. This time, three beautiful co-eds encounter some very violent killers in their hostel, and the torture begins. You can expect more than a handful of hands being chopped off, limbs tortured and knife-wielding maniacs in this one just like the last one. Eli Roth does have a great grasp of what frightens you, but I would like to see him branch out into a realm of more traditional horror, and perhaps make a vampire movie or two. It would be interesting to see if he has the directing chops to come up with his own “Exorcist” movies without having to resort to extreme blood and gore, even though there’s nothing wrong with that as long as it’s done with a sense of style and flair.With his remake of “Halloween”, Rob Zombie must leave some of his blood and gore and torture sequences from his first two forays into horror at home. This franchise calls for real chills and thrills from the tense action sequences that John Carpenter gave us in the first movie made in 1978 with Jamie lee Curtis. A newcomer actress called Scout Taylor-Compton will play Laurie Stroud in the remake, which looks to be more sinister in nature than any of the sequels if you happen to see the great preview for the flick which will be released this August.Overall, a nice combination of the modern world of blood and gore with the traditional values of older horror movies would make for a very good future for the genre most movie geeks love to the utmost: HORROR!!

Why These Classic Horror Movies Should Be Remade Today

About a year and a half ago, director Rob Zombie was finishing up editing “The Devil’s Rejects” when he got a call from his agent wondering if Rob would like to do a re-tooling of the once-great franchise “Halloween”. The only response he got back from Mr. Zombie was “Sign me up!” A week or two later, the final contracts were drawn up, filming began, and now “Halloween” will be in theaters once again on August 31st, 2007. The reason the project was given a greenlight with Rob Zombie attached so fast was the fact that the “Halloween” series of films have been really bad lately. Steve Miner directed the last atrocity, “Halloween: H20″, with absolutely no credibility and no charisma at all.”Halloween” needed a fresh transfusion of blood for it to continue, and the producers had to find a damn good director to re-imagine the series in a more modern context. Rob Zombie was recommended to the producer’s by many people who had seen Zombie’s previous two horror flix, the aforementioned “Devil’s Reject’s”, and the under-rated “House of 1000 Corpses”.

Classic and semi-classic horror movies

I believe there are many more classic and semi-classic horror movies that could really use a boost from a talented director out there. “Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde” springs to mind as a perfect vehicle for the great director David Cronenberg, who started out by directing pure horror films like “Scanners” and “The Brood”. He really could justmovieflix attack a good script written by somebody who really gets the horror and nuance of the great book written by Robert Louis Stevenson about a good doctor who turns into a horrible monster after drinking a concoction he mixed up in his lab one night. The makeup transformation alone would be worth the price of admission! I see an actor like Daniel Craig or Heath Ledger in the role of Dr. Jeckyl. Jessica Biel or Scarlet Johannsen would make a really sexy and interesting Mary Reilly, who falls in love with the diabolical doctor.The last time anybody took a really creative stab at “Dracula’, it resulted in the brilliant “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Movies that were made afterwards, like the laughable “Dracula’s Curse”, starring Gerald Butler playing a Euro-trash Dracula, never should have been made in the first place. Butler now has huge success after playing King Leonidas in “The 300”, but he really was one of the worst Dracula’s in the history of cinema. Brian DePalma would be a perfect candidate for the director’s helm, and a real movie actor like Willem Dafoe or Colin Firth would be an excellent choice to bring the pain and gravitas of Bram Stoker’s great villain to life. Also, a really great script by David Mamet would help, but I don’t know if he wants to make his hands bloody by writing a violent screenplay. Some great writer who needs a change from the seriousness of “Syriana”, like Steve Gaghan, would be another ideal candidate.Finally, “The Last House on the Left” was the movie that was a HUGE influence on today’s “torture” movies like the “Saw” franchise and “Hostel 1 and 2”. This is a little-seen horror flick that was directed by a young man called Wes Craven. You might know him by his later work directing two huge hits, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream”. “Lat House…” was a movie made in 1972 that featured some of the most horrific torture scenes ever put on celluloid at that time. It follows the story of 2 women who are abducted by 3 murderers and rapists, and challenges the viewer to stay in their seat as Craven directs the movie in close-up 35mm camera takes that really shows the viewer every violent act committed against these two women by their captors. If Eli Roth, the director of “Hostel”, were to direct a remake, I think major box office would follow.If any producers are out there reading this, please give me credit where credit is due, and enjoy the movies!

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