Torture + Porn = 32?

I take pride in my love of the obscene. I relish movies like Visitor Q, Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive, and Sex Kittens 14: Teen Ninja Zombie Whores. You can drown a hooker in a vat of her own poo and I'll squeal in glee. So why am I getting squeamish with the growing genre of torture-porn? (Which, by the way, I claim responsibility for the creation of the term "Torture-Porn". At the very least, I called Hostel that one week before Entertainment Weekly did.) Anyhow...

Don't get me wrong, I've seen three of the four Saw movies and I've been trying to catch the Hostel duo on Showtime with little success (Damn me having to work) but I guess the point is I haven't been trying too hard. I would never own them. Not because they're not good, I think the Saw movies have very good plots for horror films, they just don't have re-watchability. For some reason I can watch some dude have anal with a dead chick in Visitor Q, but I can't stomach someone chopping their penis off to get to a key that will unlock a device that is fixing to...well...probably chop their penis off. Is it because it's tasteless? Well, it is but that's never bothered me. Too bloody? Hells no. Too realistic? Granted, you have a much higher chance of dying from a sadistic serial killer than a zombie war but I don't think so. So, why am I squeamish? Because its too over done. Saw was original and new, but 100 torture-porn flicks later Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning ran out of ways to invicerate victims. Wait...I just had an epiphany. That's it. The problem with these movies is the inviceration. It's there to hide the fact the movie has no scare factor, no plot, no suspense - other than the fact that there is definitely an inviceration coming. Rob Zombie's Halloween was a welcome comeback for the genre. A "mainstream" horror film that explored more than pain and suffering for the sake of pain and suffering. So what needs to be done? Nothing. The industry will fix itself. 80's slasher flicks gave way to 90's Scream clones, and 90s Scream clones gave way to the 00's Torture-Porn and 80's remakes (a subject for another time). Therefore, I have full confidence that we will transition. Unfortunately, by my calculation not until at least 2010. In the meantime...

Watch: Saw 1-3 anyhow. Don't watch Hostel but do watch Cabin Fever and Eli Roth's Thanksgiving trailer on Grindhouse. For that matter watch, no BUY, Grindhouse. And, check out the quirky foreign stuff that gets skipped over here in the America's - Severance, Undead, Black Sheep - all simply amazing. Oh, and if I haven't mentioned it before, anything by Takashi Miike. Now I've got to go and try to find Hostel on Showtime.