Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film 9780748685509

Citation preview

SELLING THE SPLAT PACK

SELLING THE SPLAT PACK The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film

Mark Bernard

EDINBURGH University Press

© Mark Bernard, 2014 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun, Holyrood Road, 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10/12.5 pt Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 8549 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 8550 9 (webready PDF) The right of Mark Bernard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

CONTENTS

List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction

vii ix 1

Part I: The Industrial Context of the Splat Pack 1. Introducing the Splat Pack

13

2. Politics and the horror film: an industry studies intervention

27

3. The DVD revolution and the horror film, take one: from trash to art to collectable

48

4. The DVD revolution and the horror film, take two: rise of the ‘Unrated’ 70 Part II: The Splat Pack on DVD 5. Text, subtext and the story of the film: Eli Roth’s Hostel and Hostel: Part II on DVD

97

6. The ‘white trash’ world of Rob Zombie: class, collecting and slumming spectators

119

selling the splat pack

7. Seriality, subjectivity and new media: consuming the Saw series 142 8. Scars, both material and cyber: Haute Tension and The Descent on DVD 165 Afterword Bibliography Filmography DVD supplemental material referenced Index

viii

188 199 206 208 210

FIGURES

2.1 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: historical reflection or curious commodity? © Decla-Bioscop AG. 30 2.2 Dracula: capitalising on new technologies. © Universal Pictures. 33 2.3 Night of the Living Dead: George Romero as the model of ‘subversive auteur’. © Image Ten/Laurel Group. 39 3.1 ‘Art is not safe’: Rob Zombie on the set of The Devil’s Rejects. © Lions Gate Films Home Entertainment. 49 3.2 A personalised home video experience: the DVD menu for House of 1000 Corpses. © Lions Gate Films Home Entertainment. 62 3.3 Home video auteurs: Quentin Tarantino promotes Eli Roth’s Hostel. © Columbia Pictures Industry. 65 4.1 The unkindest cut: an image from the nine seconds cut from Friday the 13th to obtain an R rating. © Paramount Pictures/ Georgetown Productions. 78 4.2 Serving up more gore: A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child goes ‘Unrated’ on video. © New Line Cinema/Heron Communications. 84 4.3 An ‘Unrated’ evisceration from the ‘Director’s cut’ of Saw III. © Twisted Pictures/Evolution Entertainment. 91 5.1 ‘There’s a huckstering to what it is we all do’: Harry Knowles from Ain’t It Cool News on one of Hostel’s numerous DVD extra features. © Columbia Pictures Industry. 100

selling the splat pack

5.2 Eli Roth unfolds a sinister narrative for Jennifer Lim on the set of Hostel. © Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. 115 5.3 Cameo appearances by the Roth brothers in Hostel. © Hostel LLC/Next Entertainment. 116 6.1 An aesthetic of excess: Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) triptych from House of 1000 Corpses. © Spectacle Entertainment Group/ 124 Universal Pictures. 6.2 ‘I am here to do the devil’s work’: white trash fury in The Devil’s 131 Rejects. © Lions Gate Films/Cinerenta. 6.3 Rob Zombie examines Bill Moseley’s wig on the set of The Devil’s 139 Rejects. © Lions Gate Films Home Entertainment. 7.1 James Wan directs Cary Elwes on the set of Saw. © Lions Gate 146 Films Home Entertainment. 7.2 ‘Cultivating an audience’: Lionsgate’s Saw message board. 161 © Lionsgate Films Home Entertainment. 7.3 A moment reinterpreted: Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell in Saw. 164 © Evolution Entertainment/Twisted Pictures. 8.1 Video reveals the monstrous feminine in Haute Tension. 180 © Alexandre Films/EuropaCorp. 8.2 Video conjures the monstrous in The Descent. © Celador Films/ Pathé. 183

x

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many sincere thanks to Cynthia Baron who encouraged me to undertake this study in the first place. Thanks to Paul McDonald, Maisha Wester, Scott Magelssen, and Donald McQuarie for their suggestions and advice. Special thanks to Yannis Tzioumakis who encouraged me to take this project to Edinburgh University Press. Many thanks to Gillian Leslie, Jenny Peebles, Michelle Houston, Rebecca Mackenzie, Eddie Clark, and all the amazing people at EUP. Thanks to Alan Jones for coining the term ‘Splat Pack’ and for corresponding with me when this project was in its infancy. Thanks to Rebekah McKendry for helping me find Dickens Video by Mail. Thanks to Kate Egan and Emma Pett for discussing this project with me over coffee. Thanks to everybody at the York County Public Library in Rock Hill, SC. Thanks to my longtime friend Jym Davis for help with the images. Thanks to Fred and Linda Bernard and Bill, Pam, and Brandon Davis. Finally, all my love and gratitude to Hope Bernard, who has been with me every step of the way. This book is dedicated to her.

xi

INTRODUCTION

It’s Only a Movie? During the summer of 2007, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens in New York hosted the film series ‘It’s only a Movie: Horror films from the 1970s and today’. Running from 16 June to 22 July, the series featured screenings of over twenty-five horror films, mostly those made and released in the 1970s and the 2000s. Though some of the films were non-American productions, the thrust of the series was predominately American, as evidenced by the screening selection for the opening of the series: The American Nightmare (Simon, 2000), a documentary film that takes its title from Robin Wood’s treatise on American horror films of the 1970s. The documentary describes how American horror films from this turbulent time ‘reflect’ the social turmoil of an era that included the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the counterculture movement, movements for the rights of oppressed people, and Watergate. This selection for the opening screening set the tone for the series in a significant way. The curators of this series demanded that these films be taken seriously, as a reflection of the times in which they were made. The description of the series on the Museum’s website makes this aim explicit: Horror films are currently enjoying a resurgence in production, popularity, and inventiveness unparalleled since the rise of the indie horror movement in the 1970s. Today’s ‘Splat Pack directors’, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, and Alexandre Aja . . . among them, draw direct inspiration from the

1

selling the splat pack

earlier generation’s masters, including John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and George A. Romero. Then and now, the best horror movies are transgressive and powerful, challenging taboos and offering social commentary while delving deeply into our darkest desires and fears. (anon., 2007a) This write-up suggests that the museum curators – and, perhaps, viewers as well – have come to expect a great deal from their horror movies. Once dismissed as exploitation or ‘trash’, in 2007 horror movies were expected to be ‘transgressive’ and ‘powerful’, and to offer insightful social commentary. To emphasise the horror film’s power to challenge hegemony and the ‘status quo’, the curators of the series paired horror movies from the ‘Golden Age’ of American horror films with current horror films. The first decade of the twenty-first century, like the late 1960s and early 1970s, was rife with unrest and upheaval. Recent years have witnessed the attacks of 9/11 and the United States’s subsequent murderous military campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and any other country suspected of harbouring ‘terrorists’ in the Bush administration’s ill-defined ‘war on terror’. Relentless governmental deregulation has led both to corporate control of the country and to one of the worst economic meltdowns of recent history. As Jason Zinoman explains in his piece on the film series for the New York Times, the series title, ‘It’s only a Movie’, is a nod to the ‘advertising slogan’ used in the marketing of Wes Craven’s first film, The Last House on the Left (1972) (Zinoman, 2007). The poster for Craven’s brutal story of a married couple who take bloody revenge on the hoodlums who raped and murdered their daughter warned audiences: ‘To avoid fainting, keep repeating: it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie . . . ’ The title of the series, however, was also obviously meant to have an ironic meaning, with the assumption being that, in troubled times, horror movies are anything but ‘only a movie’. Instead, they are reflections of the political and social ills of an historical era. Many events and screenings during the series emphasised this social function that had been hoisted on the shoulders of the horror film. The documentary The American Nightmare that opened the series argues that horror films of the late 1960s and early 1970s comprise a commentary on that turbulent period. By programming current horror films alongside these supposedly subversive and oppositional films of the 1960s and 1970s, the curators implicitly made the argument that current horror films perform a similar function for the present era. Further, many contemporary horror directors, such as those in the ‘Splat Pack’ whom the series description mentions, had become adept at making the case for the social significance of their films. Before the series, the ‘Splat Pack’ had received much attention in the press, and a few of the high-profile members of the group were extremely vocal about the political and social significance of their films. In fact, the film series had a

2

introduction

special ‘Series preview’ on 6 June that featured Eli Roth, one of the most vocal and visible of the Splat Packers. Ten days before the beginning of the series proper, the museum hosted a special advance screening of Roth’s Hostel: Part II (2007), the much-anticipated sequel to Hostel, his 2006 hit. Not only did museum members get the chance to see Roth’s film before its American release on 8 June but, afterwards, they were also treated to a discussion with director Roth and some members of the Hostel: Part II cast. Roth’s Hostel films had stirred up controversy with their graphic and gory depictions of torture, a controversial hot potato during the ‘war on terror’. Roth was always willing to give interviews and make media appearances to ‘explain’ that his films were actually social commentary masquerading as exploitation. Roth, in many ways, had fashioned an image of himself as an artist and provocateur, and the museum’s series offered him a platform from which to present his films as art and make the case for how they critique societal ills. The ways in which other films by Roth’s cohort in the Splat Pack were paired with established classics supported the claims Roth made for his movies. For instance, on the afternoon of 17 June, the series featured a screening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974), a film long celebrated for calling attention to the evils of capitalism and the exploitation of the working classes (see Wood, 2003). Later in the evening, film series attendees were treated to a screening of The Devil’s Rejects, a 2005 film directed by heavy metal musician turned director, Rob Zombie, another highly visible member of the Splat Pack. Thus, the series framed Zombie’s depiction of a clan of ‘white-trash’ serial killers unleashing their wrath on the middle class as a contemporary complement to Hooper’s film. Nestled between the afternoon’s screening of Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the evening’s screening of The Devil’s Rejects was a panel discussion entitled ‘Considering Horror’. The impressive panel was made up of three New York City-based film critics – Nathan Lee from The Village Voice, Maitland McDonagh from TV Guide, and Joshua Rothkopf from Time Out New York – and an established academic, Adam Lowenstein, cinema studies professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The purpose of the panel was to discuss ‘The aesthetic, cultural, and political implications of contemporary and 1970s horror films’ (anon., 2007a). While the panellists’ opinions of the films screened were not unanimously positive, there was agreement among them that horror films were significant and offered insight into our society. As Lowenstein explained, ‘My feeling is that in a lot of ways – the films from the present, I like to think about [them] as a kind of continuously unfolding post-9/11 moment – the films from this series that represent that moment are plugged into their social and historical context in pretty complicated and compelling and moving ways’ (anon., 2007b).

3

selling the splat pack

‘Cool’ Commodities: Reflectionist Paracinema for Sale How did this happen? How did a genre often considered to be simple and exploitative become ‘complicated and compelling’? Where did the assumption that horror movies offer social commentary come from? Where did the notion that horror movies are ‘art’ come from? The museum’s ‘It’s only a Movie’ series encourages one to ask these questions. The answers for some of these questions are obvious. Horror movies, as many scholars have argued over the years, can offer provocative glimpses at our culture. Simply put, looking at what a culture finds horrifying and depicts as monstrous in its entertainment can reveal a great deal about the predilections and prejudices of a culture. Along these lines, film scholars and critics – both inside and outside academia – have produced compelling readings of how horror films offer insights into a culture’s multitude of anxieties. The type of commentary provided by the ‘It’s only a Movie’ series, however, can be problematic in ways that point to deficiencies in film scholarship. Foremost among these is a lack of focus on the industry that produces these films. More often than not in film studies, movies are analysed via close readings of the filmic texts without much consideration of the industrial mechanisms that exist outside the text, that produce the text, and that make certain that the filmic text gets into the hands of consumers (and scholars). In the study of horror films, the impulse to focus only on the texts of the film is especially tempting, given how well the dark, nightmarish content of horror films is complemented by psychoanalytic frameworks that have been instrumental in film studies since the 1970s. While psychoanalysis and other text-centred modes of analysis have produced valuable work on the horror film, readings of how horror films uncover significant revelations about the structures of power in our society sometimes transformed into simple praise for horror film’s ‘subversive’ or ‘oppositional’ political perspective. Some of this rhetoric can perhaps be attributed to a misapplication of – or consumer culture’s appropriation of – Jeffery Sconce’s notion of ‘paracinema’, a critical position that extols the virtues of ‘bad’ cinema from ‘low’ or disreputable categories, such as horror and exploitation, over more mainstream ‘good films’. As Sconce explains, the critic, scholar or fan takes this position as a ‘calculatedly disruptive and scandalous choice, one that is explicitly political, whether confined to the arena of cinema poetics or engaging the larger ideological terrain of American popular culture’ (2007: 7). Sconce’s position has been challenged or refined;1 the aim of this study, however, is not to take issue with Sconce’s claims as much as show how they have been appropriated by the industry and used to sell ready-made paracinema. As Matt Hills observes, these faux-paracinematic texts are often ‘revalori[sed]’ as ‘“serious” political commentary’ by some commentators (2011: 108). Hills

4

introduction

explains: ‘The notion that horror can be read in relation to its societal and cultural contexts is well established as an interpretive strategy among media sociologists and cultural historians of the genre’ (2011: 108). The still-present academic belief in ‘Reflectionism’, as Hills calls it, is very often problematically married with Sconce’s notion of ‘paracinema’ to produce an idea of the horror film as a means for iconoclastic directors to take an oppositional – and political – stance against the ills of mainstream culture. Thus, horror films supposedly both ‘reflect’ world events and ‘comment’ on them. As Hills warns, however, one should have ‘profound skepticism’ for any reflectionist gesture that attempts to ‘canonically [recuperate] and read certain horror films as “social commentary” ’ (2011: 111). Hills’s warning echoes another by Peter Hutchings when he observes that horror films, even those that may reveal structural inequalities in their telling, are not ‘political manifestos bearing a cohesive ideological message’ (2004: 123). Indeed, horror films are not ‘political manifestos’ but, rather, commercial commodities placed on the market with one ultimate goal in mind: to generate profit. Without an eye on the industry, studies that focus only on the filmic text are in danger of losing sight of this basic but significant fact of the film commodity. Ignoring industry matters runs the risk of missing how the industry and its various structures and alignments are vitally important to what types of films are made, how they are made and how audiences encounter them. Additionally, a consideration of media-as-business is essential in a commercial context in which the idea of ‘coolness’ is being sold along with products. As Nancarrow, Nancarrow and Page explain, the selling of ‘cool’ is founded on the idea that one can gain cultural capital through certain ‘consumer practices’ (2001: 315), like buying commodities that have been discursively bestowed with a patina of oppositionality.2 With regard to the films featured in the ‘It’s only a Movie’ series, while the films from both the 1960s/70s and the 2000s have a relationship to their historical and cultural context, they came about not merely because of their relationship to history – for example, as reactions or reflections of the Vietnam War or the events of 9/11 – but also because of changes and realignments in the film and entertainment business. This book explores connections between horror movies of the 2000s, the Hollywood film industry, technology and how the interaction between those three poles affects the ways in which audiences encounter and value these films. This exploration focuses on the Splat Pack, a name that came to describe a group of contemporary horror film-makers including Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and others. The line-up of the film series at the Museum of the Moving Image suggests that these Splat Pack directors were at the forefront of making contemporary horror films that offered social commentary on their historical moment. To frame the discussion of the Splat Packers in this manner, however, is to ignore the corporate, industrial structure that gave rise to the

5

selling the splat pack

Splat Pack and their films. One such industrial and technological development that cleared a path for the Splat Pack was the advent of DVD (digital versatile disc) technology and subsequent growth of the DVD market in the late 1990s and early 2000s. DVDs changed the ways in which viewers encountered and understood horror films. They also changed the types of horror films that studios began producing and distributing. The introduction of DVD technology was very profitable for the Splat Pack. Niche genres, such as horror, have a built-in audience and Lionsgate,3 the savvy distributor of many of the Splat Pack’s films in the United States, took full advantage of horror’s loyal fans with their DVD releases of Splat Pack films, making certain that their films on DVD were packed with extra features, such as commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and the reinsertion of footage that was supposedly too gory for the films’ cinema release. Lionsgate’s efforts won the studio a great deal of financial reward, as their releases of the Splat Pack’s films were huge moneymakers for the independent distributor. For instance, their DVD release of Eli Roth’s Hostel in April 2006 (four months after the film’s cinema release in the United States) sold a million-anda-half copies, grossing around $23 million, almost 50 per cent of the film’s cinema income. Lionsgate responded to these numbers by releasing another edition of Hostel the next year with even more extra features. Lionsgate has given other Splat Pack films, such as House of 1000 Corpses (Zombie, 2003), Saw (Wan, 2004), Saw II (Bousman, 2005) and The Devil’s Rejects this ‘­double-dip’ treatment. These multiple editions appeal to the horror fan’s collector mentality. Some Splat Pack DVDs have sold so well that they have moved into the province of top-selling DVDs, a region of home video once reserved for blockbusters and family films. For example, Saw II sold an impressive 2.8 million copies for a home video gross of around $44 million, while Saw III sold 3 million copies, grossing $47 million on home video and landing in the top forty best-selling DVDs of 2007. Given the corporate nature of the film industry, this kind of profit prompted the mid 2000s wave of violent horror films just as much as any national trauma. This point could easily get lost in any analysis of these films that focuses on the films’ texts and neglects to engage with their commodity status. Selling the Splat Pack A political economy approach can usefully foreground the films of the Splat Pack as commodities. Janet Wasko explains that this approach to film studies recognises that ‘profit is the primary driving force and guiding principle for the industry’ (2003: 3). She insists, ‘The profit motive and the commodity nature of film have implications for the kinds of films that are produced (and not pro-

6

introduction

duced), who makes them, how they are distributed, and where/when they are viewed’ (2003: 4). Contextualising the films of the Splat Pack in the growth of the DVD market is a useful way of considering the industry that produces and distributes these films and emphasises the films’ commodity status. This approach is integral to this book’s first section. Chapter 1 offers an overview of how these film-makers were hyped by mainstream media. Articles about the Splat Pack frame them as independent, subversive film-makers who operate outside the Hollywood mainstream. One of the ways in which ­journalists – and the Splat Packers themselves – construct the Splat Pack’s image of oppositional outsiderdom is by likening them to past horror directors such as George Romero and Wes Craven from the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of subversive American horror films. For this reason, Chapter 2 turns to an analysis of the often celebrated horror films of the late 1960s and early 1970s to illustrate how, rather than organically emerging from the progressive ethos of the counter-culture movement, these films were commodities well suited to the changes and realignments taking place in the industry at the time. From its origins, the horror film has been read as a dark mirror of societal anxieties, while horror film’s commercial aspects, which have profound implications for film content, have been overlooked. This situation has been exacerbated by film studies methodologies that rely on textual analysis without a consideration of the film industry. Chapter 2 shows how a consideration of the Hollywood film industry is essential to understanding the evolution of the American horror film. ‘Golden Age’ horror films, which have often been championed as subversive, must not be blithely admired but understood in context of industrial changes that had been taking place in the Hollywood film industry since the Paramount Decree in 1948. These changes include: the studios’ transition from production to distribution; the retooling that took place after the advent of television; the studios’ willingness to rely on independent production; the use of auteurism as a marketing tool to sell independent productions; and changes in ratings and industry self-regulation that enabled the studios to sell to niche audiences. While this chapter strays afield from the Splat Pack, it lays the groundwork for the following chapters, for the films of the Splat Pack must also be encountered and understood as commodities made by possible – and profitable – industrial changes, most specifically, the introduction of DVD technology and the DVD market boom. The films of American horror’s ‘Golden Age’ and the films of the Splat Pack are very similar but not in the rebellious ways one may suspect. Instead, they are similar in ways that, when teased out by a focus on the industry, can illuminate the ways in which Hollywood does business. The third and fourth chapters focus on how DVD has changed attitudes towards the horror film and the types of horror films that can be widely distributed. Chapter 3 looks at how DVDs – with their ‘Special editions’ and

7

selling the splat pack

‘Director’s cuts’ versions of films, illusions of permanence, and p ­ rovocatively designed sleeves – have transformed once marginal horror movies into mainstream ‘art’ for collectors. This chapter considers horror’s journey from ‘trash’ to ‘art’ in the context of the various ways in which the film industry has adapted its marketing strategies to the changes in the home video market, from the rental outlets of the VCR era to the ‘sell through’ pricing mandates of the DVD era. The chapter also examines how Lionsgate positioned the films of the Splat Pack as works of art produced by cutting-edge auteurs to sell the films better on DVD. The journey of these films to the Museum of the Moving Image began with how DVD makes these films museum pieces on the shelves of DVD collectors. Chapter 4 discusses how DVD led to the mainstreaming of once marginal ‘Unrated’ movies. Again, a parallel between the ‘Golden Age’ horror films and the films of the Splat Pack becomes apparent as both groups emerge after an industrial change in ratings policy. This chapter looks at how more relaxed regulatory restrictions on videotapes led to ‘Unrated’ movies surfacing during the VCR era but the industry’s lack of control over the rental market kept the ‘Unrated’ movie on the margins. This changed during the DVD era, however, when the industry’s ‘sell-through’ mandates, coupled with DVD’s ability to add to, and take away from, the content of a film led to ‘Unrated’ movies making their way to the mainstream. Thus, the increasing prevalence of gory, graphic and prolonged violence in films made by the Splat Pack need not be read as reverberations of traumatic aftershocks of 9/11 or the ‘war on terror’. Instead, this bloody brutality can be seen as the film industry taking advantage of a rating system that had changed because of DVD technology. Cinema versions of these films need only feature ‘just enough’ gore, blood and carnage to entice viewers to check out the ‘Unrated’ version on DVD, a product that, the consumer is assured, is ‘uncut’. The second part of the book offers an examination of major films of the Splat Pack, accentuating their commodity status as ‘films-on-DVD’. While films in other horror film cycles in the late 1990s/early 2000s prominently featured media technology in their narratives – for instance, The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sánchez, 1999) and The Ring (Verbinski, 2002) – the films of the Splat Pack do not, apart from a few exceptions, foreground the use of media in their narratives but rather are best understood as new media products themselves. The second part of this book explores how these films are presented on the DVD platform, looking at issues such as: how some Splat Pack directors utilise director’s commentary in an attempt to craft interpretations of their films and self-fashion images of themselves; how issues of DVD collecting and ‘behind-the-scenes’ access intersect with issues of class and power; how lowbudget horror can compete with big-budget blockbusters in their embrace of new media-influenced storytelling and media convergence; and how alternative

8

introduction

versions of films on DVD can be powerful discursive documents of industry self-regulation and front-office tampering. Chapter 5 examines how Eli Roth uses the DVD format as a platform to shape audiences’ interpretations of his films. Roth, on the multiple commentary tracks and extras available on the DVD releases of his Hostel films, makes claims for the subversive and oppositional nature of his films. While the narrative content of his films often does not bear out his claims, Roth, to borrow an expression from Ernest Mathijs, places ‘quotes’ on his films that offer ‘tools for interpretation’ for audiences by encouraging them to consider the films in the light of world events (2008: 3), in this case, Abu Ghraib and the Iraq War. This chapter critically examines how Roth uses DVD extra features both to guide interpretations of his films and to create a new narrative and image of himself as an auteur–provocateur. The focus of Chapter 6 is another of the Splat Pack’s celebrity auteurs, Rob Zombie. Zombie’s films are preoccupied with monstrous denizens from the underclass attacking the middle class. His films are seemingly subversive because of the ways in which Zombie sympathetically depicts his ‘white-trash’ monsters and does not offer the middle class any redemption. The oppositionality of Zombie’s films is complicated, however, by how it is presented on the DVD platform. In many ways, DVD has enabled a mainstream, middle-class appropriation of subversive cinema. At the same time, however, Zombie’s films-on-DVD and how they focus on the acting process foreground the fluidity of identity and the ultimate instability of class, especially during the economic meltdown of the late 2000s. Chapter 7 approaches the Saw films which have been the most financially profitable – both theatrically and on home video – of the Splat Pack films. Hills observes that the Saw films have not been taken as seriously by critics and academics (2011: 111). Nevertheless, American journalists often included the creative minds of the Saw series – James Wan, Leigh Whannell and Darren Lynn Bousman – in the Splat Pack. Any analysis of the Splat Pack and its relation to media industries would be incomplete without a consideration of the Saw films because, out of all the films in the Splat Pack cycle, they are the most concerned with media. The Jigsaw killer uses media to build his notorious identity as a serial killer and media celebrity. The Saw films are designed to resemble interactive, new media products that encourage audience interaction. As is often the case, the vestiges of ‘old’ media remain critical in any study of ‘new’ media. Following suit, this chapter considers how the Saw films are crucially plugged into two new media iterations of Tom Gunning’s idea of a ‘cinema of attractions’: the DVD as ‘digital theme park’ (see Brown, 2008) and YouTube as a digital cinema of attractions (see Rizzo, 2008). The multiple versions of films available on DVD are at issue in Chapter 8 which examines two films directed by the Splat Pack’s European contingent,

9

selling the splat pack

Alexandre Aja from France and Neil Marshall from Scotland. Lionsgate ­tampered with Aja’s and Marshall’s films when they released them in cinemas in the United States. The DVDs retain evidence of this tampering in various ways, with this residue constituting what Timothy Corrigan might call the ‘material scars’ of a film’s troubled production and/or release (1991: 30). According to Corrigan, these material scars – or, in this case, ‘cyber scars’ – encourage interaction and engagement with a particular film. These ‘scars’ can work in concert with the possibility for a more ‘active and interrogative relationship’ that Kate Egan has noticed between ‘video nasties’ and their audiences (2007: 163). This chapter explores these opportunities for interpretive interaction with the DVD versions of these two Splat Pack films. One of the goals of this book is to return to the ‘It’s only a Movie’ title of the Museum of the Moving Image’s film series. The Splat Pack films are not political manifestos created independently of markets, material bases and desire for profit. Instead, they are commodities made for profit. This position does not suggest that these films are unworthy of study; instead, it finds that these films are complex, contradictory and obstinate cultural artefacts existing at the violent intersection of art and commerce. When viewed in this way, these movies can reveal a great deal about the business of fear in American culture. Notes 1. Mathijs and Sexton (2011: 89–94) offer an overview of Sconce’s position and various responses to it. 2. I would like to thank Claire Molloy. Her volume on Memento (2010) made me aware of this reference to the marketing of ‘cool’. 3. Lionsgate Entertainment changed its name from ‘Lions Gate’ to ‘Lionsgate’ in late 2005 (McDonald, 2007: 167). Though this name change took place after the release of several of the films discussed here, I refer to the company as ‘Lionsgate’ throughout the book in the interest of clarity and consistency.

10

1. INTRODUCING THE SPLAT PACK

The ‘New Blood’: a Name Catches On Excitement about the Splat Pack seems to have been ignited with the April 2006 issue of the British film magazine Total Film. The issue featured an article by Alan Jones, entitled ‘The New Blood’. Its title was accentuated by a ‘Parental Advisory: Explicit Content’ label to let readers know they were about to enter forbidden, dangerous territory. Evidently, the local cineplex had been transformed into dangerous territory because ‘a host of bold new horror flicks’, such as Eli Roth’s Hostel and Alexandre Aja’s 2006 remake of Wes Craven’s 1977 shocker The Hills Have Eyes, had assaulted audiences with levels of brutality missing in ‘all those toothless remakes of Asian hits starring Jennifer Connelly, Naomi Watts and Sarah Michelle Gellar’ (Jones, 2006: 101, 102). Jones devotes his article to showcasing the young directors who were ‘taking back’ horror from purveyors of ‘watered-down’ genre movies (2006: 102). One of the auteurs in the movement featured in Jones’s article is Eli Roth who positions himself as one of the power players of this movement. Jones’s article features a photo of Roth brandishing a chainsaw, a devilish smirk on his face, surrounded by photos of bloody carnage from Roth’s Hostel, including an image of a man being castrated with a pair of bolt cutters. These grisly visuals imply that Roth can deliver the gory goods. In the article, Roth – a graduate of New York University’s film school whose father and mother are, respectively, a Harvard professor and fine artist – comes across as forcefully as these images

13

selling the splat pack

would suggest. Roth declares: ‘Guts and gore are in right now because audiences are fed up with loud bangs substituting for scares and quick cutaways from the money shots’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 102). Roth’s effusive language, which conflates horror and pornography, continues as he claims that he was the one who got this movement started with his 2003 directorial debut, Cabin Fever: ‘I don’t want to sound egotistical, but Cabin Fever was one of the first of the new distressing rash that didn’t hold back [but instead] put full-frontal gore back on the agenda’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 104). If one considers the numbers, it is not difficult to see why Roth felt that he was at the forefront of a successful cinematic new wave. Cabin Fever, the story of a group of young campers infected and destroyed by a gruesome flesh-eating virus, cost only a million-and-a-half dollars but grossed over $30 million worldwide for Lionsgate. His follow-up film Hostel, made for under $5 million, had just, in Jones’s words, ‘taken the box office by storm’ in the United States by grossing $47 million (2006: 101). After these gory hits, Roth had emerged as a cinematic celebrity. Another director on Jones’s list of significant horror directors was already a celebrity before he stepped behind the camera. Rob Zombie was the lead singer of the groove metal group White Zombie that had risen to prominence during the early 1990s thanks to heavy airtime on MTV. After White Zombie disbanded in 1998, Zombie continued to record and tour as a solo act before turning his attention to making horror films, a logical extension of his music which is laden with references and audio samples from horror films such as Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968). Displaying Zombie’s vision of kaleidoscopic carnage, his first film, House of 1000 Corpses (2003) resurrected the carnival excesses of the ‘hillbilly horror’ subgenre of the 1960s and 1970s by unfolding, in grisly detail, the exploits of the Firefly family, a clan of whitetrash murderers living in the 1970s whose only pleasures in life are the torture and murder of any suburbanites unfortunate enough to cross their path. According to Jones, Zombie’s debut film ‘was no classic but is still a key title in the current neo-nasty movement’ (2006: 103).1 Jones was not alone in feeling that Corpses was notable; even though the film was not a huge box office hit – grossing only around $16 million globally during its cinema run – it garnered enough of a following on video to convince Zombie – (and Lionsgate who picked up the film for distribution after Universal and United Artists passed on it) 2 – to produce a sequel. Thus followed The Devil’s Rejects (2005), a gritty epic that pitted fugitive members of the Firefly family against a twisted sheriff in the burned-out, western-style desert of 1970s-era rural Texas. According to his comments in Jones’s article, the 1970s are, for Zombie, more than an historical backdrop for the narratives of his films; this era also produced films that had an influence on his own. As Zombie puts it: ‘There was a realism and bleakness to 70s genre cinema . . . All the kids blown away

14

introducing the splat pack

by those 70s shockers are old enough to be making movies themselves, and they want to emulate the same effect’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 103). The content of Zombie’s films reflect these sentiments, as few genre films in the 1980s or 1990s had been as bleak, merciless and visceral as Zombie’s tales of the Firefly family. Zombie is not the only director, showcased by Jones, who voices his admiration for American genre films of the 1970s. He is joined by Neil Marshall, a Scottish-born director heading up what Jones calls ‘the British vanguard against harmless Hollywood horror’ (2006: 104). Marshall scored a cult hit in the United Kingdom with his campy 2002 paramilitary versus werewolves film Dog Soldiers. After making his second film, The Descent (released in the United Kingdom in 2005 and in the United States in 2006), however, about female potholers pitted against savage, cave-dwelling mutants in a fight for their lives, Marshall finally felt that he had ‘done [his] job properly’ by living up to the standards set by 1970s American cinema (quoted in Jones, 2006: 104). As Marshall explains: I wanted [the film] to be hard-hitting and back-to-basics brutal because it was the 70s-styled survival picture I’ve always wanted to make . . . The reason why so many titles from that golden period in the 70s have stayed in my memory for so long is they were starkly oppressive, visually stunning and very frightening. (quoted in Jones, 2006: 103–4) Another European film-maker, profiled in Jones’s article, who looks to genre cinema of the 1970s for inspiration is French film-maker Alexandre Aja. According to Aja, his 2003 neo-slasher Haute Tension (released by Lionsgate in the United States as High Tension in 2005) ‘was [a] self-confessed homage’ not only to 1970s genre fare, such as Craven’s Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes and Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but also brutal, ‘survivalist classics’ from the era, such as Straw Dogs (Peckinpah, 1971) and Deliverance (Boorman, 1972) (quoted in Jones, 2006: 103). Aja explains that he ‘wanted to recreate that atmosphere of savagery with no apparent boundaries’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 103). Even though the audacious twist ending of Haute Tension baffled some audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, the film was successful enough to land him the job of helming a remake of Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes for Fox Searchlight. Given that he is such a professed fan of films from this era, Aja was elated by the opportunity to remake Craven’s story about a Midwestern family stranded in the desert and under siege by a vicious clan of cannibals. Jones emphasises these new horror film-makers’ allegiance to horror films of the past, specifically the 1970s, by including a sidebar entitled ‘The Old Blood’, with the byline ‘More gore? The new guys on the chop-block have a lot to live

15

selling the splat pack

up to . . . ’ (2006: 106). This sidebar includes a list of five films accompanied by photos and a brief blurb about each film. Out of the five films featured, three are films from the much-celebrated era of 1970s horror: Last House on the Left, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Shivers (Cronenberg, 1975). The other two films on the list – infamous Italian shocker Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980) and American slasher film The Burning (Maylam, 1981) – are both chronologically close to the 1970s and also similar in that they share the other films’ high-violence, high-gore ethos.3 As Jones’s byline suggests, the ‘New Blood’ directors profiled in his article have high levels of violence and brutality to live up to in their film-making. Comments from Zombie, Marshall and Aja suggest they are ready to take up this unforgiving attitude in their films. These young horror directors not only share indebtedness to the past; Jones’s article also shows that many of these film-makers believe that their films have a specific relationship to the present as well. Aja positions the films made by his cohort as reactions to the traumatic events of 9/11 (Jones, 2006: 103). This sentiment is echoed by Eli Roth who argues that, in 2006, ‘Americans feel unsafe in their own country . . . They are scared of an unseen enemy they can’t do anything about. They are so wound up they want to scream’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 103). The ‘golden period’ of 1970s also influences how these film-makers react to their current historical moment, however; Jones compares their output to how ‘the 70s spawned one subversive shocker after another’ (2006: 103). Aja’s comments support this connection as he explains that he had to change very little of Craven’s original film as he was working on his version of The Hills Have Eyes because ‘2006 is so similar to 1977’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 103). Aja even seems to insinuate that the situation in Iraq War-era America is more strained, more paranoid and more intense than in Vietnam-era America; according to Jones, he ‘shrieks with glee’ when he learns that his version of the story was too violent for Craven (2006: 106). Ultimately, Jones suggests this generation of horror film-makers will produce horror films that are more intense, more graphic and more subversive than their predecessors from the 1970s. At the very least, the work of these directors represents a unified new wave of horror directors. He underscores this notion in another sidebar wherein he groups together a select number of these directors under the catchy moniker ‘The Splat Pack’, an appellation that evokes the hip swagger of the 1950s ‘Rat Pack’ combined with the youth and vitality of the 1980s ‘Brat Pack’, with a splash of gore added. Though Jones’s article mentions a number of current horror directors, only five make Jones’s illustrious ‘Splat Pack’ sidebar: Neil Marshall, Eli Roth, Alexandre Aja, Rob Zombie, and Greg McLean, an Australian-born director who scored a minor hit in the United States with Wolf Creek (2005),

16

introducing the splat pack

the violent tale of a savage killer stalking backpackers in the Australian outback. Even though Jones worried if this group of film-makers was really a revival that was ‘built to last’ or only ‘a slash in the pan’ (2006: 100), Jones’s name for the group definitely stuck. In late 2006, articles began to appear in the American press that used Jones’s term for the group and heralded these filmmakers as the next wave of horror cinema. On 22 October 2006, two articles appeared, one in Time magazine and the other in the New York Post. Rebecca Winters Keegan, the author of the Time article titled simply ‘The Splat Pack’, alters Jones’s list of Splat Packers. There is no mention of Greg McLean and, in his place, she adds three new members to the list: James Wan, Leigh Whannell and Darren Lynn Bousman, the creative minds behind the successful Saw franchise. In 2004, Wan, a director, and Whannell, his writing partner, teamed with independent studio Twisted Pictures to produce Saw, a meagrely budgeted, gory thriller that followed the exploits of Jigsaw, a mastermind serial killer who creates elaborate and sadistic traps for his victims. Picked up for distribution by Lionsgate, Saw became a gruesome blockbuster, grossing over $100 million worldwide. Saw became a successful franchise for Lionsgate, and Saw II and III, both directed by Bousman, followed in 2005 and 2006. A film school graduate new to Hollywood, Bousman was recruited by Wan and Whannell to lead the continuing adventures of Jigsaw.4 Bousman took Saw to new heights, both viscerally – Jigsaw’s traps became more elaborate and victims’ deaths became gorier – and financially, as the second and third Saw films both grossed more than the original. Keegan’s article and Reed Tucker’s article in the New York Post arrived just in time for the release of Saw III which was opening nationwide the following Friday, 27 October. As Jones started a trend with his coinage of the term Splat Pack, Keegan began a trend as well. For American journalists, Splat Pack membership congealed around Roth, Zombie, Marshall, Aja, Wan, Whannell and Bousman. American journalists rarely mentioned McLean in association with the group after this point, and Keegan admits that even the core seven members of the group are ‘loose knit’, more kindred spirits than partners working shoulder to shoulder (Keegan, 2006). Keegan does, however, attempt to unify the work of these film-makers by identifying the semantics of a Splat Pack genre. According to Keegan, films made by the Splat Pack have in common a ‘basic plotline [of] people [who] are stuck somewhere and have to endure horrible things – or indeed, do horrible things to each other – to escape’ (Keegan, 2006). Despite the darkness and oppressiveness of this plot outline, both Keegan’s article and Reed Tucker’s New York Post piece portray the Splat Packers as attractively devious, fun-loving mischief-makers. Tucker begins his article by detailing Roth’s trip to Home Depot to do some ‘research’:

17

selling the splat pack

. . . while throngs of customers shop for insulation and garden hoses, Eli Roth is prowling the power-tool aisle with a special twinkle in his eye . . . When he takes a shine to particular drills and saws, you can bet the implement won’t end up building a deck. Instead, it’ll turn up drilling into someone’s thigh or power-sanding someone’s eyeball. (Tucker 2006) Similarly, Keegan’s article begins with an anecdote about Bousman, distressed about trouble with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) over Saw III’s rating, calling Zombie to ask for advice. According to the article, Zombie advised Bousman to ‘Explain why the extreme violence is necessary to tell the story in a way that’s more socially responsible’ (quoted in Keegan, 2006). Keegan reveals, however, ‘When pressed, Zombie admits he doesn’t actually care what’s socially responsible. He just wanted to help out a kindred spirit, another guy who understands the unique beauty of a properly lighted viscera shot’ (Keegan, 2006). In these articles, the Splat Pack comes across as a rag-tag group of naughty boys that enjoys disgusting audiences and ‘pulling a fast one’ on the curmudgeonly MPAA by cloaking their love of gore in the garbs of ‘social responsibility’ (Keegan, 2006). Nevertheless, both Keegan and Tucker respect the Splat Packers’ ability to generate revenue at the box office and on home video. According to Tucker, ‘Their films have modest budgets but end up earning big bucks for the studios’ (Tucker, 2006). Likewise, Keegan notes that, by keeping their budgets under ten million, Splat Packers ‘are given almost free reign . . . to make unapologetically disgusting, brutally violent movies’ that reap ‘gruesome profitability’ at the box office (Keegan, 2006). Along with admiring the Splat Packers’ abilities to make money with their low-budget films, Keegan’s remarks also suggest that the profitability of Splat Pack films allows their makers a certain level of independence from studio interference. Another similarity between Keegan’s and Tucker’s assessments of the Splat Pack is their opinion that films made by the Splat Packers are an attractive departure from the various horror film trends that preceded them. Like Alan Jones, Tucker bemoans the day before these new film-makers came along, when ‘Self-referential horror [Scream (Craven, 1996)] and Asian-derived creepiness [The Ring (Verbinski, 2002)] ruled the cineplexes’ (Tucker, 2006). Keegan admits, ‘it’s still too soon to tell’ if ‘there’s a nascent Stanley Kubrick or Steven Spielberg in the mix’ because ‘Most of the Splat Packers are on only their second or third film’ (Keegan, 2006). At the same time, she gushes that their ‘innovative filmmaking . . . rises above the mindless slasher sequels of the 80s or such predictable teen-star killfests of the 90s as I Know What You Did Last Summer (Gillespie, 1997)’ (Keegan, 2006). For all of their mischief and antics, the Splat Packers, as depicted by Keegan and Tucker, display flashes of ambition and purpose. For instance, when discussing horror films of the recent past, Zombie laments, ‘Horror [movies] had

18

introducing the splat pack

been watered down to nothing [and had] lost all their impact’ (Tucker, 2006). While Zombie’s ambitions seemed to veer more towards terrifying and disgusting audiences to the fullest extent, Roth was apparently aiming even higher, towards both shocking audiences and offering social and political critique. In Keegan’s article, Roth claims that when people attack him and ask, ‘How can you put this [violence and gore] out there in the world?’ he replies, ‘Well, it’s already out there’ (Keegan, 2006). To unpack Roth’s elliptical statement, Keegan cites an appearance that Roth made on the Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto in April 2006. While Roth’s appearance on the show coincided with – and was surely meant to hype – the DVD release of Hostel on 18 April, the director also took the opportunity to defend his films and, by extension, the work of fellow Splat Packers, by arguing that their films belong to a rich tradition of horror films that are critical of, among other things, the United States’s military policies. He explained: With horror movies, it goes in cycles. In the 70s, with Vietnam, you had films like Last House on the Left and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead [Romero, 1978] . . . If you talk to all the horror directors of the 70s, they say that they were making films as a reaction to watching Vietnam on television . . . now, thanks to George Bush, Dick Chaney, and Donald Rumsfeld, there’s a whole new wave of horror movies . . . we’re in the war now and you feel like it’s never gonna end. Judging by their respective articles, both Keegan and Tucker appear to agree with Roth’s assertion that the Splat Packers’ films continue the mission of horror films of the past – the ‘subversive shockers’ of the 1970s mentioned in Alan Jones’s article – that had been subversively oppositional and politically progressive. Keegan notes, ‘The Old Guard of horror directors, including Craven and Tobe Hooper, has welcomed the newcomers, inviting them to . . . dinner parties in Hollywood’ (Keegan, 2006). To punctuate the point further, Tucker ends his article with a brief interview with ‘Old Guard’ horror director John Carpenter who assesses the films of the Splat Packers and praises, among others, the Saw films and films by Rob Zombie who would go on to remake Carpenter’s slasher classic Halloween (1978) in 2007. Over the next couple of months, the Splat Pack picked up steam. In an article by Pamela McClintock, published in Variety on 26 December, the stakes seemed to be getting higher. Like Keegan and Tucker, McClintock praises the Splat Packers for producing profitable films on a low budget: ‘Their films cost next to nothing to make. Yet they mint gold’ (2006: 1). Also similar are the ways in which she designates the bloody, gory and violent films of the Splat Packers as radically better than other horror films in a genre that ‘has been hijacked by watered down PG-13 fare’ (2006: 1). Unlike Keegan,

19

selling the splat pack

however, who, just two months earlier, described the Splat Pack as ‘looseknit’ (Keegan 2006), McClintock claims that the Pack is ‘closely knit, young and well-educated’ (2006: 1). Rather than being kindred spirits, the Splat Pack now sounded like a full-blown movement. According to Roth, ‘We all have the same agenda: to bring back really violent, horrific movies’ (quoted in McClintock, 2006: 1). Described by McClintock, the Splat Pack’s agenda is an independent movement, originating outside mainstream Hollywood machinery: By and large, the fresh-faced and enthusiastic helmers go unrecognized by the press and Hollywood establishment, which has long considered horror the bastard stepchild of the movie business. The men in the group still feel like outcasts as they make their movies for indies like Lionsgate or studio genre labels. (McClintock, 2006: 1) Many who reported on the Splat Pack for the popular press, like Keegan, Tucker and Vanessa Juarez (2006), in her article ‘Sweet Torture’ for the 13 October issue of Entertainment Weekly, discussed the Splat Pack in conjunction with the wave of horror movie remakes that emerged around the same time as the Splat Packers’ films. For example, in addition to interviews with Splat Packers, Tucker’s article mentioned director Marcus Nispel who directed the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre released in 2003. It also featured quotations from Jonathan Liebesman, who directed a prequel to Nispel’s remake, entitled The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006). Behind the production of these films was Platinum Dunes, a company run by Hollywood insider Michael Bay, director of such action blockbusters as The Rock (1996) and Armageddon (1998). These films were released via New Line Cinema, a subsidiary of Hollywood conglomerate TimeWarner. While other journalists bring up directors such as Nispel and Liebesman in their assessments of the Splat Pack, McClintock does not mention them and thus cements the Splat Packers as rebellious Hollywood outsiders who work for independent studios like Lionsgate which she dubs ‘the home studio of this group and their films’ (2006: 1). When McClintock notes that Warner Bros. courted Eli Roth to direct a remake of The Bad Seed (LeRoy, 1956), she dismisses such a thing ever happening: ‘It’s doubtful whether the majors would really go for the jugular and make the kind of movies Roth and his cabal make’ (2006: 1). In McClintock’s article, the Splat Packers evince a more serious attitude towards their films. McClintock includes the story of how Zombie offered advice to Bousman when Saw III ran into trouble with the MPAA but, this time around, the story seems less about merely thwarting the ratings board but more about rebelling against Hollywood by making films that convey a

20

introducing the splat pack

message and rise above mere exploitation. Bousman says that the situation with the MPAA forced him to defend the film on grounds of artistic expression: Only a filmmaker can eloquently say why someone is getting tortured or massacred. It’s not just exploitive. Take the scene of a naked woman being tortured [referring to a scene in Saw III in which one of Jigsaw’s victims is stripped naked, hung in a freezer, and sprayed with cold water until her body freezes solid]. The rating board just saw torture and nudity, they didn’t see the raw emotion. I, as the filmmaker, could explain that. (quoted in McClintock, 2006: 1) This time around, Zombie seems to echo Bousman’s sentiments and claims that he wants his films to unsettle audiences, not offer escapism: ‘My movies are supposed to be shocking and horrible. I don’t want it to be fun’ (quoted in McClintock, 2006: 1). As the Splat Pack gained momentum, McClintock’s overview of the group suggests something more than exploitation and escapism is going on in the gore-filled narratives of their films. Perhaps the most audacious claims in McClintock’s article come from Eli Roth who, thanks to his television appearances and visibility, was becoming a spokesperson for the Splat Pack. Speaking about the films made by his cohort, Roth declares, ‘These films are very subversive’ and boasts, ‘Art Forum magazine said that Hostel was the smartest film in terms of being a metaphor for the Iraq war and America’s attitude overseas’ (quoted in McClintock, 2006: 1). Roth’s comments are similar to the ones he made during his appearance on Fox News. He scoffs at the notion that films made by the Splat Pack merely exploit audiences’ fear of torture, a controversial topic since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 and especially after the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal of 2004. He insists, ‘People assume these are movies by idiots for idiots. They’re not’ (quoted in McClintock, 2006: 1). Roth implies that films by the young, well-educated Splat Packers offer subversive social critique for intelligent, discerning audiences. Regarding the Splat Pack’s audiences, McClintock notes that the Splat Pack directors ‘are heroes among horror fans, who consider the director the star, not the actors, a distinction any auteur craves’ (2006: 1). Selling Independence and Subversion The ways in which these articles herald the Splat Pack’s arrival offer an intriguing glimpse into how notions of independence, outsider status, and claims of subversion are used to sell films and the personalities of their directors. Cynthia Baron notes: ‘the “authoritative” material about films and film stars found in the press can be an important component of what Hans Robert Jauss calls the “horizons of expectation” held by audience members’ (2002: 19).

21

selling the splat pack

The ‘horizons of expectation’ established by these journalists’ comments about the Splat Pack tend to involve two assumptions about these directors: they are ‘independent’ and operate ‘outside’ the Hollywood establishment; and their films, by virtue of their ‘independent’ nature, are subversive critiques of their historical moment. The assumption of the Splat Pack’s ‘independence’ manifests itself in several ways. For many, the term ‘independent’ evokes film-making by ‘young filmmakers with a strong personal vision away from the influence and pressure of the few major conglomerates that control tightly the American film industry’ (Tzioumakis, 2006: 1). Journalists cater to this idea by crafting an image of Splat Pack directors as mavericks ‘breaking away’ from dominant trends in horror. Jones establishes this notion by framing the Splat Pack’s films as a rebellion against ‘toothless’ horror of mainstream Hollywood (2006: 102). Other journalists took up the notion that the Splat Pack represented a departure from the mainstream. McClintock’s Variety article especially emphasises this point as McClintock quotes Roth’s claim that a major studio ‘wouldn’t know what to do’ with a rebel like himself (quoted in McClintock, 2006: 1). Another way in which journalists and the directors themselves position the Splat Pack as ‘independent’ is by framing their films as a reaction to audience desires. Roth argues that Splat Pack films are popular ‘because audiences are fed up’ with other horror films that fail to deliver scares and gore (quoted in Jones, 2006: 102). He even goes so far as to claim that, if the success of Hostel ‘has proven anything, it’s that audiences absolutely determine taste’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 102). According to Roth, Splat Packers are not beholden to any corporate parents; their only ‘bosses’ are the audiences who demand the blood and gore that the Pack delivers. These claims, however, should be carefully qualified. Scholars who have researched the genealogy of the term ‘audience’ would temper Roth’s argument that the Splat Pack merely serves audiences’ demands. Vincent Mosco and Lewis Kaye find that the ‘audience’ is ‘a product of the media industry itself, which uses the term to identify markets and to define a commodity’ (2000: 42). Thus, Roth’s comments reflect a specious model of the culture industry. Roth attempts to create a scenario in which an audience democratically votes for what they want to see in movies and gets it. If the audience itself is a creation of the culture industry, however, this bottom-up model dissolves, and one can see that the apparent groundswell for violent films has been manufactured by the Hollywood machinery. These film-makers’ relationship to the machinery of corporate Hollywood bears examination. McClintock cites Lionsgate as ‘the home studio’ of the Splat Pack, though ‘home distributor’ would be a better description. Lionsgate has handled distribution for all Roth’s films, all of the Saw films, Zombie’s first two films, and the United States releases of Aja’s Haute Tension and Marshall’s The Descent. Lionsgate

22

introducing the splat pack

is ‘one of the leading independent companies’ currently active in a corporate Hollywood environment wherein ‘independent distributors are rare’ (Wasko, 2003: 79). Tom Schatz describes Lionsgate as a ‘powerful Vancouver-based indie producer–distributor that has remained steadfastly independent’ (2008: 30). Schatz is quick to note, however, that Lionsgate ‘often collaborates with Conglomerate Hollywood, as it did on Hostel. Lionsgate handled the domestic (North American) theatrical release of that film, while Sony Screen Gems handled foreign theatrical and Sony Home Entertainment handled the DVD release’ (2008: 30). While McClintock acknowledges this partnership in her article, she frames the relationship in a more sensationalist manner. She writes, ‘Screen Gems, part of the Sony empire, gave Hostel to Lionsgate to market and sell, reportedly concerned about content’ (2006: 1), suggesting that Sony was worried about being associated with the film’s content. Sharing distribution deals as Lionsgate did with Sony on Roth’s Hostel, however, is simply a smart way to do business. Thus, Sony profits by distributing overseas a film that was already a hit in the United States; Lionsgate gets to enjoy the security of a major distributing their film overseas. This security in overseas territories which is offered by a major distributor is especially important given that, as Roth himself admits, Hostel ‘plays on the xenophobia of a nation where only ten percent of the population has a passport’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 103). Ultimately, the Splat Pack’s claims of being ‘independent’ – not to mention journalists’ claims of their independence – should be equivocated. According to Yannis Tzioumakis, the term ‘American independent cinema’ operates as a discourse that ‘connot[ates] a particular brand of quality that [is] perceived as absent from the considerably more refined (and expensive) but impersonal mainstream Hollywood productions’ (2006: 13). With these connotations, the term ‘independent’ often becomes a ‘marketing category’ (Tzioumakis, 2006: 13). In this light, the hype surrounding the Splat Pack, rather than seeming like a populist movement, actually begins to look like Hollywood marketing and advertising. One of the foundational mantras of all commercial advertising is the promise that something is ‘new and improved’. Repeatedly, journalists positioned Splat Pack films as ‘new and improved’ horror, not the ‘safe’, watered-down horror of films such as the American remakes of The Grudge (Shimizu, 2004) or Dark Water (Salles, 2005). Independent Splat Pack distributor Lionsgate was, no doubt, pleased that journalists packaged the Splat Pack in this manner because independents need all the help they can get. Independent studios and distributors have to play by the rules set by the majors if they want to survive in corporate Hollywood where the major studios ‘very much govern the way [independent] film moves through the marketplace’ (Lewis, 2001: 29). Given that independents do not have the cushion of corporate money to land on if their films are not successful

23

selling the splat pack

at the box office and in ancillary markets, they have to be fiercely competitive. Independents are often forced to utilise ‘saturation releases and other marketing techniques associated with mainstream cinema’ with significantly smaller marketing budgets (Tzioumakis, 2006: 265). If, as the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, independents always need to find new ways to market their films. This necessity may have led Lionsgate and the Splat Pack directors to sell their films in different ways, thus representing a shift in the long history of how films have been sold by Hollywood. Crucially, these different modes of marketing are connected to film ratings and industry self-regulation. During the Hollywood studio era, the Production Code not only regulated film content, it also promised consumers, not to mention ‘the press, religious, educational, and civic groups, and state and national legislatures’, that Hollywood’s output was ‘“pure” entertainment, amusement that was not harmful to its consumers’ (Maltby, 2003: 61). A key component of this notion of ‘harmless entertainment’ was that movies, ostensibly, contained no ‘moral or political intent’, and their ‘producers’ attitude denied responsibility for the meaning of any movie’ (Maltby, 2003: 61). Studio-era Hollywood claimed that it delivered entertainment, instead of messages, with its movies because audiences want to be entertained, not preached at. With the implementation of the ratings system in 1968, Hollywood shifted its mantra from ‘harmless entertainment’ to ‘responsible entertainment’ (Sandler, 2007: 41). According to Kevin S. Sandler, ‘responsible entertainment’ consisted of a balance of ‘artistic freedom with restraint’ or ‘artistic expression and cultural sensitivity’ (Sandler, 2007: 41). More specifically, the rating system allowed Hollywood film-makers to deal with possibly provocative subjects, such as sex and violence, but one of the board’s sanctioned ratings – G, PG, or R – assured audiences that these taboo subjects would be handled with ‘suitability’ and ‘respectability’ (Sandler, 2007: 44). Sandler details the struggles between film-makers, studios, civic groups, ratings boards and other industry self-regulatory agents to achieve an ‘Incontestable R’ which is ‘a social contract between Hollywood and consumers that guaranteed responsible entertainment to Hollywood’s critics and audiences’ (2007: 9). In the era of ‘responsible entertainment’, film-makers could excite audiences with provocative material, as long as the provocative material was kept to a minimum and presented only in service of telling a socially and morally responsible story. The discourse surrounding the Splat Pack suggests that Hollywood’s ideas of responsibility, the role of entertainment, and ratings shifted again. In contrast to the ‘harmless entertainment’ model of the studio era, film-makers like Roth claim that viewers ‘want’ films with both social commentary and an increased amount of brutality that reflects the harshness and uncertainty of the war-torn world around them. The other ‘horizon of expectation’ created by the jour-

24

introducing the splat pack

nalists in their writing on the Splat Pack is that their films are subversive and critical of dominant political ideologies or beliefs. Roth and Aja, in particular, argue that their films are critiques of their current historical moment, a milieu structured and informed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration’s global ‘war on terror’, and global economic recession. They feel that their films make national trauma visible. In bringing these horrific elements to light, the Splat Pack is not only willing to go to new levels of cinematic excess, but eager to do so, eschewing the restraint expected of directors during the era of ‘responsible entertainment’. Even a film-maker active during this previous era, like Wes Craven, who often found himself at odds with the guardians of ‘responsible entertainment’ (Lewis, 2000: 178–80), is shocked by the level of violence in Aja’s remake of his The Hills Have Eyes (Jones, 2006: 106). Similar to film-making practices during the eras of ‘harmless entertainment’ and ‘responsible entertainment’, the Splat Pack’s ability to push the boundaries of what can be depicted on screen is tied to a change in Hollywood’s policies of self-regulation. More specifically, the DVD market – and the acceptance of widespread release of ‘Unrated’ movies on DVD that followed – facilitated the Splat Pack’s emergence in a range of ways that are detailed in Chapters 3 and 4. The Splat Pack was not exactly a group of film-makers operating ‘outside’ Hollywood machinery but rather a part of it, with their outsider status manufactured by media coverage. Given McClintock’s audacious claims for the Splat Pack’s independence, an ironic image appears in her article. Placed beside a photograph of Roth directing actors on the set of Hostel: Part II is a drawing of a man holding aloft a chainsaw with the blade dripping blood. Using this type of drawing to ornament an article about horror is expected but what is unexpected is the man wielding the chainsaw is dressed in a suit and tie. While this outfit may seem like strange attire for a maniacal killer, it is perfect for the Splat Pack, for it represents, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, two contradictions yoked together by violence in the Splat Pack’s media image. On the one hand, there is the rebellious iconoclast with a mischievous penchant for violence represented by the chainsaw. On the other hand, there is the corporation man represented by the suit. As the sampling of articles in this chapter demonstrates, one of the ways in which Jones and the other journalists tend to obscure the suit and emphasise the chainsaw is to compare the Splat Pack to the celebrated horror film-makers of the 1970s. Jones calls the 1970s an era that ‘spawned one subversive shocker after another’ (2006: 103). This connection is taken even further with 2007’s ‘It’s only a Movie’ film series at the Museum of the Moving Image that places films by the Splat Pack alongside their counterparts from the 1970s. This marketing position – depicting horror films from the 1970s and 2000s as oppositional, and the consumption of these films as a subversive act – is

25

selling the splat pack

tempting for journalists to take. It is especially understandable that Jones, a British journalist writing for a British film magazine, takes this position about consuming horror films. During the ‘video nasties’ moral panic that took place in Britain in the 1980s, many violent and gory horror movies on video were banned by the Video Recordings Act (VRA) which Kate Egan identifies as ‘perhaps the most stringent form of regulation imposed on the media in a western country’ (2007: 1). During the ‘video nasties’ era, the consumption of horror films could be framed as a subversive act. Vipco, a video distribution label in Britain, however, has more recently used the ‘video nasty’ label to sell their products and ‘to create a commercial niche for itself as a historically authentic and nationally specific outlaw company’ (Egan, 2007: 219). Jones evokes the nasties discursively to brand the Splat Pack as ‘authentic outlaws’. When the label travels to the United States, however, where horror films have never been subjected to restrictions such as the VRA, this strategy loses its national specificity and becomes another marketing tool to sell ‘rebellion’ to audiences and to hide the material base of film’s commodity status. The discussion that follows exposes, rather than obscures, the ways in which the Splat Pack’s success is tied to a material base. Because the Splat Pack draws much energy and many claims of significance by evoking the films and film-makers of horror’s ‘Golden Age’, the next chapter takes a close look at the American horror films of the 1970s. Emphasising film as a business and foregrounding the film product as commodity, this study reveals that Aja’s claims about 1977 and 2006 being ‘similar’ are, indeed, true but not in ways he may realise. Notes 1. ‘Neo-nasty’ is a play on the term ‘video nasty’. This term originated during the early 1980s when in Britain, there was moral panic surrounding the release of violent and gory horror films on video cassette. Tapes of these films came to be known as ‘video nasties’. For more on the video nasties controversy, see Barker (1984), Martin (1993) and Egan (2007). 2. Corpses was shot on the Universal lot during 1999 and 2000 but Universal, after learning that the film would probably get an NC-17 rating, dropped the film from its 2001 release schedule (anon., 2001). MGM reportedly considered releasing the film but they ultimately passed on it as well (Nigro, 2008). 3. Three of these titles – Last House on the Left, Cannibal Holocaust and The Burning – were among the seventy-two video nasties. 4. Wan and Whannell contacted Bousman after they read a script he had written called The Desperate. The duo felt that, with a few changes, Bousman’s screenplay would make a good sequel to Saw. Bousman agreed to adapt The Desperate into Saw II only if he could direct the film as well. Twisted Pictures agreed, and Saw II was Bousman’s first feature-length film as a director (Berman, 2009: 147–48).

26

2. POLITICS AND THE HORROR FILM: AN INDUSTRY STUDIES INTERVENTION

Revisiting the ‘Golden Age’ Films by directors from the horror film’s ‘Golden Age’ in the late 1960s and early 1970s set the standard for Splat Pack directors. Splat Packers like Roth, Aja and Marshall have often noted their admiration of films from the 1970s because of their uncompromising ferociousness, bloody gore and subversive stance. A media industry study analysis reveals, however, that they are less subversive when considered in their industrial context. Many scholars have read ‘Golden Age’ horror films as symptoms of a country in trauma after the violence of Vietnam and the disillusionment of Watergate. These readings are incomplete, however, without an acknowledgement that the success of ‘politically progressive’ fare such as Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre also represented Hollywood’s willingness to rely on independent productions during a time of transition for the film industry. While the studios were rebounding from a crippling recession, Hollywood was also making the transition from a film industry to a horizontal media industry. A key element in this transition was television, a medium that had profound implications for how Hollywood made, packaged and sold films. Writing about the study of film genre, Steve Neale has called for film scholars to ‘[go] beyond film content to study advertising, the star system, and studio policy, and so on in relation to the production of films’ (2003: 180–1). Given this imperative, it is important to offer an overview of the economic situation that gave rise to the ‘Golden Age’ of horror films.

27

selling the splat pack

The glut of horror films featuring new levels of adult content released during the ‘Golden Age’ and the films of the Splat Pack were both facilitated by economic decisions and changes in industry self-regulation. Jack Valenti, then president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), created a new ratings system in 1968 that helped Hollywood attract audiences into cinemas. This shift in industry self-regulation foreshadows the flood of ‘Unrated’ films on DVD which followed in the wake of the ‘DVD revolution’ that encouraged the wave of films from the Splat Pack. Television also plays a part in engendering the films of horror’s ‘Golden Age’ as well as those of the Splat Pack. Valenti’s ratings system aided the growth of multiplex cinemas that imitated the ‘choices’ offered by television, just as the ‘DVD revolution’ was another step in how the Hollywood film industry established television as an ancillary market. Understanding that horror films from the ‘Golden Age’ were commodities and well suited to the changes and realignments taking place in the film industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s makes it possible to see that the films of the Splat Pack were also marketable in their industrial environment. Horror’s Origins: Selling Caligari Political economy analysis generally plays a limited role in discussions of the horror film. For example, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1920) is widely cited not only as a cornerstone of the German expressionist movement but also as one of the foundational films of the horror genre. One need not look very far to find claims for Caligari’s importance to the establishment of the themes, semantics and syntax of the horror film genre. For example, writing in 1980, Morris Dickstein claims that, while the popularity of other genres may wane, ‘fright and terror’ films ‘have never really been out of style, not since the classic chillers like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ (1984: 65). For Dickstein, Caligari is a high-water mark that horror’s popularity continues to meet and sometimes surpass. The title alone of S. S. Prower’s 1980 book, Caligari’s Children: The Film as Terror Tale, suggests that Wiene’s expressionistic film is responsible for spawning the horror genre. David J. Skal cites Caligari as a revolutionary, European harbinger of ‘an enormous westward expansion of horrors’ and of ‘the dark beings that had used the European avant-garde to find a modern expression [that] would soon begin crossing the Atlantic, in film canisters instead of coffins’ (1993: 60). Rick Worland observes that, in horror film history, Caligari is noteworthy, if only because of ‘the times it was more or less directly imitated’ by American horror films (2007: 50). If being held responsible for spawning the modern horror film is not enough, Caligari has had also to act as a window into the tumultuous cultural and societal anxieties of the historical moment of its production and release. As

28

politics and the horror film

Thomas Elsaesser explains, Caligari is a film that seems to be ‘locked into’ a particular historical moment and forced to act as an allegorical retelling of the past and an oracle foretelling the future (2000: 8). For instance, Skal reads the film’s chaotic vision of the world as a direct response to the horrors of ‘Modern warfare’ introduced by World War I (1993: 48). Even more famous is the level of accountability to which Siegfried Kracauer has held the film. Kracauer reads the film as a revelation of the zeitgeist of Weimar Germany: ‘Caligari exposes the [German collective] soul wavering between tyranny and chaos, and facing a desperate situation’ (1947: 74). Kracauer feels the film represents the anxieties that plagued a defeated Germany after World War I. According to Kracauer, Caligari also foreshadows the Germans turning to tyranny for stability. Ultimately, Kracauer argues that Caligari offers a potent insight into Weimar culture and foreshadows the rise of National Socialism more than a decade later. Up to the present day, horror films following Caligari are often treated similarly, with critics and commentators analysing the content of the films to survey the fears, traumas and anxieties of a culture at a given point in time. As Bruce Kawin explains, ‘The best horror films are not sexist bloodbaths but unsettling confrontations’ with various elements of the psyche, and many horror films ‘use such confrontations as a base from which to make social and political observations’ (1987: 104). Kawin lists Caligari among his examples of horror films that perform this function. Thus, Caligari has been framed as setting the standard for horror films, not only in terms of generic conventions but also commentary about the film has established the view that horror films reflect societal anxieties and attitudes and thus can be read as political comment. A few significant factors are left out of many interpretations of Caligari, however. Peter Hutchings points out that German expressionist films, such as Caligari and Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922), ‘were neither produced nor originally marketed as horror films but instead as “art movies” ’ and that the labelling of these films as ‘horror’ came later in the 1960s (2004: 3). Therefore, Caligari’s ‘designation’ as a horror film is ‘retrospective’ (2004: 3). By looking at how Caligari was first sold to audiences, both in Germany and around the world, Hutchings follows the lead of Thomas Elsaesser who, to release Caligari from the historical readings it has been ‘locked into’ by critics such as Kracauer, attempts to foreground the film’s status as a commodity, as a saleable product. According to Elsaesser, the ‘Expressionism’ that many critics feel exposed Germany’s soul through its films was, perhaps more significantly, a form of ‘branding’ (Elsaesser, 2000: 26), that is, of differentiating Germany’s products in the global film marketplace. Elsaesser explains that the ‘Expressionistic’ techniques on display in Caligari – the claustrophobic set, the stylised props, all the elements that supposedly offered a glimpse into the cultural chaos of the historical moment – were

29

selling the splat pack

Figure 2.1  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: historical reflection or curious commodity? © Decla-Bioscop AG.

attempts to disavow ‘the cinema’s industrial conditions of production by promoting it as art’ (2000: 43). Thus, Caligari represented an effort on the part of the film-makers and the studio to offer ‘a mass-produced object that disguises its technological–industrial origin by reproducing meticulously the forms, textures and attributes of value associated with a unique, hand-crafted or cult object’ (Elsaesser, 2000: 43). The characteristics of Caligari that have convinced critics and scholars that the film offers a glimpse into the confused souls of the people who made and watched it – the elements that have supposedly conveyed the critique of the society and culture that produced it – stemmed, at least in part, from an attempt to sell the film by making it an attractive commodity. By foregrounding the film as commodity, Elsaesser constructs a radically new reading of the film; rather than being a howl of torment issuing from a confused collective German soul, the film is perhaps about the fashioning of one’s self through consumer choice (2000: 45), a process during which the film’s status as commodity is as significant as its status as historical document.

30

politics and the horror film

Considering the Industry: a Political Economy Approach Elsaesser’s consideration of Caligari as a commodity has a methodological kinship to political economy studies and media industry studies. With regard to Caligari, Elsaesser’s consideration of the industrial practices that gave rise to the film’s production and marketing give a fuller picture of the film’s possible cultural significance than a mere reading of the textual details of the film offers. As Richard Maltby insists, ‘movies are products for consumption’, and ‘it is through a thoroughgoing acknowledgement of their commercial existence, not a denial of it, that their complexity can be most fully examined’ (2003: 553). Foregrounding film as a commodity does not rule out or replace ideological or cultural readings of films. Instead, studies of material factors are ‘necessary grounding for ideological readings and cultural analysis of a film’s content’ (Wasko, 2003: 9). Before undertaking any ideological or cultural readings of a film, one must first consider the ‘capitalist cultural institution’ that created the film product and this institution’s ‘essentially opportunist . . . economic motivation’ (Maltby, 2003: 30). Only by first considering the film’s commodity status and the industrial structures that produced the film can one lay the groundwork for ideological critique of a film’s content or assessment of a film’s cultural relevance. If the horror film genre is the offspring of Caligari, the genre has inherited more than the film’s iconography – ‘all those monster–bride confrontations and roof-top chases in the routine horror-movie’ (Prawer, 1980: 167). The genre has also inherited the tendency to be read as producing allegories of the anxieties and traumas of its particular historical moment without due consideration given to the industrial and technological factors that play a role in what types of films are produced, distributed and widely seen by audiences. Of course, this interpretive strategy is not unique to horror film. As Eric Smoodin explains, the problem extends to all films: All too commonly, when . . . historians try to talk about a film’s relationship to ‘history’, for instance, they do so through the rather useless binary of text versus context; that is, history is ‘out there’, all around a film, and the film in some manner or other ‘reflects’ it. So, to understand ‘history’ we need only to interpret the film. (2007: 17) The overdependence on textual and filmic analysis at the expense of filmindustry analysis is a quandary that affects all of film studies. Moreover, the tendency to interpret horror films based solely on textual evidence is exacerbated by the similarity of horror films’ dark and disturbing subject matter to nightmares, a similarity that seems to beg for psychoanalytic interpretation. Cultural historian Andrew Tudor has described horror films as

31

selling the splat pack

‘a kind of collective dreamworld requiring analysis by methods derived from one or another tradition of psychoanalysis’ (1989: 2). Since psychoanalytic criticism was one of the ways in which film studies found its way into the academy and ‘legitimat[ed] the academic study of cinema through its insistence on the intellectual complexity of its own activity’ (Maltby, 2003: 553), psychoanalysis became ‘the most common critical approach to the horror film’ (Grant, 1996a: 4). Hutchings also notes the predominance of purely psychoanalytic approaches to the horror film. According to Hutchings, psychoanalysis is a tempting methodology, not only because horror films resemble nightmares but also because horror film narratives are often replete with ‘psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and other mental health specialists’ (2004: 59). These presences, however, should be enough to put the psychoanalytical reader on guard because they may have been ‘consciously put there by the film-makers concerned’ (Hutchings, 2004: 63), thus busying the reader with another level of text. While Hutchings is careful to note that psychoanalytic approaches to horror are historically significant and can still be useful, he notes they are ‘problematic’ because they leave out considerations of other issues such as ‘the economic’ (2004: 76). Indeed, this psychoanalytic focus often came at the expense of other factors such as the economic and industrial conditions of film production and distribution. Recently, studies of the film industry have made their way into studies of the horror film. Kevin’s Heffernan’s 2004 book, Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953–1968 is generally noted as the first extensive economic history of the horror film. Valuable studies followed, one of these being Robert Spadoni’s 2007 book, Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound Film and the Origins of the Horror Genre. Spadoni’s study provides an excellent analysis of how technological changes and industrial shifts exert an important influence over the types of films that Hollywood produces. Spadoni provides in-depth analysis of Dracula (Browning, 1931) and Frankenstein (Whale, 1931), two films that inaugurated the sound horror film in the United States. Rather than reading these films through a text-oriented psychoanalytic lens, Spadoni focuses instead on how film-makers used new sound technologies to disorient audiences who were accustomed to silent films, thus capitalising on a new technological development. These newly ‘medium-sensitive’ viewers alternated between a ‘heightened awareness of the two-dimensionality of the screen image’ and a riveted apprehension of ‘the potentially frenetic visual intensity of the vocalizing human figure’ (Spadoni 2007: 26). The film-makers consciously made significant aesthetic decisions so that these films would be more attractive commodities. By this rationale, these films’ commodity status and how they relate to industrial and technological changes must factor into reading and interpreting them.

32

politics and the horror film

Figure 2.2  Dracula: Capitalising on new technologies. © Universal Pictures.

The films should not be considered merely as ‘reflections’ of their historical moment but, instead, as a cluster of aesthetic, cultural, technological, industrial and capitalistic expressions and impulses. Spadoni’s work also shows that considerations of industry, technological changes, and film’s commodity status need not replace psychoanalytic readings and close textual analysis. As the title of his book suggests, Spadoni argues that early sound films had an ‘uncanny’ effect on audiences in that the people – or, in the case of Dracula and Frankenstein, the monsters – on screen seemed both more real and more artificial because of new sound technology (Spadoni, 2007: 6). Thus, a consideration of industrial changes works in concert with more traditional psychoanalytic models of film analysis. Another noteworthy entry in the economic study of horror is Richard Nowell’s 2011 book, Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle. Nowell departs from more traditional modes of film studies, including ‘interpretive text-based scholarship on film-type’ (2011: 4), when approaching the American slasher film boom in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Instead, Nowell undertakes ‘the first industry-focused history of the first teen slasher film cycle, one which sheds new light on the decision-making processes that shaped teen slasher film production and distribution, and which challenges

33

selling the splat pack

standard thinking on the film type’ (2011: 4). As such, Nowell’s study considers film cycles as: a series of chronologically distinct phases of activity so as to illuminate the ways in which industrial developments, market shifts, and changing commercial imperatives underwrite production and distribution of a film-type as well as the content of individual films and their marketing campaigns . . . (2011: 5) Nowell also draws attention to the survival strategies of independent producers and distributors whom he describes as ‘resourceful, professional, and opportunistic entrepreneurs who labored tirelessly to make a living at the periphery of the American film industry in the hope of carving out long-term careers’ (2011: 29), a dicey proposition in the increasingly corporate environment of Hollywood in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Spadoni’s and Nowell’s scholarship offer templates for this examination of the Splat Pack. Like Dracula and Frankenstein, films like The Devil’s Rejects or Hostel are products of their industrial context and take advantage of technological changes. Like Halloween and Friday the 13th, Splat Pack films represent efforts of independent producers and distributors to break into the corporatecontrolled film market. One must take these factors into consideration before attempting to reckon how these films ‘reflect’ their historical moments or interpreting these films using only methodologies that skew towards the ahistorical. A look at the industrial context that gave rise to the ‘Golden Age’ shows how a political economy approach to studying horror films can offer a more complex view of films as commodities, rather than merely considering them as dark, mysterious reflections of historical and cultural anxieties. The Spirit of 1968 . . . or the Material Consequences of 1948? The dawn of the ‘Golden Age’ of horror films occurred around the same time that film studies began to be institutionalised in universities as an academic discipline. These two phenomena are not unrelated. Film studies entered the academy during one of the most politically contentious times in American history – the 1960s – and the events of the time galvanised academics and had a significant effect on the nature of their scholarship. As Richard Maltby explains, 1968 was a particularly important year: The events of 1968 – the political uprisings in France in May, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August, the outbreak of political violence in Northern Ireland, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the ongoing protests against the Vietnam war – provided a

34

politics and the horror film

powerful impetus for the political analysis of culture and cultural forms. (2003: 531) While the drive to explore the political dimensions of cinema was a worthwhile endeavour, many scholars saw film as a ‘quasi-autonomous realm of political struggle’ (Stam, 2000: 133). Political or ideological examinations of cinema were often separated from considerations of cinema’s material reality and means of production. Maltby argues that an ahistorical view of cinema predominated in part because ‘the emerging academic subject of film studies resisted the industrial discourses contained in both the trade papers and the professional journals in favor of critical practices drawn from elsewhere in the Academy’ (2003: 495–6). According to Maltby, ‘the opportunity for a sustained critical engagement with the industry’s professional practice and history was lost, or at least long postponed’ (2003: 496). For film studies officially to enter the academy, ‘it had to develop a set of theoretical concerns recognised by the academy’s established institutional criteria. Only with these concerns in place could study of the movies proceed to the higher ground of the established humanities or social sciences’ (Maltby, 2003: 501). Film studies had to speak a language that the humanities would recognise and accept. Unfortunately, a study of industrial practices was generally not considered one of these languages. It was in such an environment that Robin Wood would write that Hollywood cinema grew more complex in the late 1960s and early 1970s because of ‘major eruptions in American culture’ like the Vietnam War, Watergate, and ‘the growing force and cogency of radical protest and liberation movements’, such as ‘black militancy, feminism, gay liberation’ (2003: 44). In particular, Wood argues, the horror film grew more interesting during this period, proposing that these films spoke ‘for the quandary of a civilization’ (2003: 63). It is little surprise that Wood, a scholar trained in literary analysis and Marxist-informed psychoanalysis, would see the content of Hollywood films shifting to reflect the zeitgeist, without giving too much consideration to how major changes in the American film industry may have affected the types of films being released at the time. Yannis Tzioumakis explains, however, that, while ‘changes in American society and culture played . . . a significant part’ in the development of American cinema during this era, economic factors were also significant (2006: 169). Indeed, a look at what was taking place in the industry at this time shows that it is only reasonable that horror films would flourish, not necessarily because they were directly reflecting the ‘politics of the time’ but rather because it made good economic sense given the shape the industry was in in the late 1960s. During this era, Hollywood was on the brink of a crippling recession that would, by 1971, result in ‘more than $200 million in losses’ (Cook,

35

selling the splat pack

2000: 9). This economic downturn was another example of the instability Hollywood had been experiencing since 1948, when the Paramount Decree forced the major studios to divest themselves of their most profitable exhibition sites. Giving up monopolistic control of their cinemas was an extremely unattractive notion for the studios, especially given that ‘94 percent’ of their total investment went into their exhibition sites (Cook, 2004: 239). Nevertheless, as Maltby explains, ‘In the period immediately after divorcement, Hollywood retrenched, cutting back severely on production: B-pictures, shorts, cartoons, and newsreels were dropped, and the studios concentrated their efforts on fewer A-pictures’ (2003: 161). As the studios cut corners and worked out how they were going to operate without vertical integration, B-pictures such as horror were among the first things to get dropped from the studios’ slates. B-pictures did not disappear but transformed into ‘exploitation pictures’, a name that ‘came to be . . . loosely applied to the output of independent companies such as American International Pictures (AIP) and Allied Artists, which sought to fill the product shortage for the 8,000 theaters still showing double bills’ (Maltby, 2003: 169). As the studios scaled back on production in response to the Paramount Decree, these independent studios filled in the gap and made the types of pictures the studios were not making, such as horror films and other exploitation pictures. Additionally, ‘Away from the shadow of the majors, these low-end independents did not have to adhere to tested formulas and subject matters that originated during the studio years’ (Tzioumakis, 2006: 159). These independent studios ostensibly operated ‘outside’ the Hollywood system, and their pictures may not have been subjected to the more stringent standards that studio-made pictures were. Hollywood studios benefited from the success of these independents during this time because ‘Contrary to the intentions of the Paramount decrees, the majors retained their near-monopoly over distribution’ (Maltby, 2003: 161). Because the studios controlled distribution, it was in their best interests to let smaller companies make exploitation and horror films as outrageous as they wanted because the studios would make money from these films by controlling distribution. Horror films, such as foreign-made Hammer productions The Curse of Frankenstein (Fisher, 1957) and Horror of Dracula (Fisher, 1958) and Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price, like House of Usher (1960) and Pit and the Pendulum (1961), were boons to the major studios’ distribution arms – so much so that the studios ‘actually increased their share of box-office income’ in the years following the Paramount Decree (Maltby, 2003: 161).1 It is little wonder, then, that Eric Schaefer cites 1959 as ‘an endpoint of classical exploitation’ films because, among other reasons, this is a time when Hollywood studios begin trading heavily in exploitation films (1999: 8). Another material consequence of the Paramount Decree that encouraged

36

politics and the horror film

Hollywood studios to change from being film producers to being media distributors was the development of television throughout the 1940s and 1950s. From the medium’s beginning, the Hollywood studios were extremely interested in establishing a direct investment in television, with Paramount, Warner Bros., MGM, and 20th Century-Fox all attempting to set up television stations in the late 1930s and early 1940s (Balio, 1990: 21). Unfortunately for them, the ‘FCC created insurmountable barriers to entry’ into television production for the studios because of how the Paramount Decree ‘severely prejudiced the studios’ reputation in the eyes of the FCC’ (Balio, 1990: 21). The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) efforts did not forever banish Hollywood from the television business, however. In 1947, television began a ‘commercial expansion’ but encountered a problem: ‘Local broadcasters had the choice of producing live programming to fill the gaps in their schedules (which was expensive) or of searching out films to lease’ (Balio 1990: 30). Networks turned to the studios for product to fill airtime, but the sale of films to television was opposed by ‘craft unions and exhibitors’ who wanted, respectively, to negotiate new residual rights contracts and to avoid competing with television for movie viewers (Balio, 1990: 30–1). Nevertheless, the major studios began selling their back catalogue of films to television in 1955, either through purchase or through lease agreement (Balio, 1990: 31). In the same year, Hollywood began telefilm production, with Lew Wasserman’s Music Corporation of America (MCA) eventually becoming ‘the unchallenged giant of television production’ and ‘supplying a third of the programs on prime time’ (Balio, 1990: 34). Thus, television became another outlet – an ancillary market – whereby Hollywood could make money, redesigning the television screen as a ‘second screen’ for films that prefigures the video era. Via a series of strategic moves, Hollywood was able to break into television. In a manner of speaking, television also ‘broke into’ the movie business during this time, as the medium of television taught Hollywood several significant lessons about the marketing and exhibition of its products. As Balio puts it, ‘after television, the film industry realised that motion pictures no longer had universal appeal and began targeting audience segments’ (1990: 28). Targeting different audience segments required the studios to differentiate their product lines to give audiences the illusion of choice offered to consumers by television, a medium wherein the presence of multiple channels guaranteed choices. One way the film industry offered an illusion of choice was by modifying conventional distribution to the multiplex model (Balio, 1990: 29). The multiplex cinema offered ‘consumers a range of motion picture choices under one roof’ (Balio, 1990: 29), a format obviously modelled on the ‘choices’ offered by television via its multiple channels.2 To fill multiplex cinemas with choices for film-going audiences, the majors would rely on independent production methods to produce profitable films

37

selling the splat pack

that could defray risk and help them weather tough economic times. The studios turned to ‘low-budget independent production by (mostly) hyphenate filmmakers that quickly became the model for mainstream Hollywood filmmaking for a short period of time’ (Tzioumakis, 2006: 170). Films from this era, often romantically referred to as ‘The New Hollywood’ or ‘Hollywood Renaissance’, were ‘characterized by the production of stylistically diverse and narratively challenging films that were much more tuned in to the social and political climate of the era’ (Tzioumakis, 2006: 170). This ‘tuning in’, however, was not exactly the radical break from the Hollywood system some critics and scholars have often suggested, nor did these films organically emerge from the politics of the time. Rather, the studios’ decision to produce – or, perhaps put more accurately, distribute – films like those from the ‘Golden Age’ of horror films was a calculated move to capture audiences with desirable, niche-oriented commodities. During the late 1960s, an era marked by significant political upheaval, a more desirable film commodity would ideally possess a patina of countercultural zeal. The two films that Tzioumakis notes as landmark examples of this new type of film-making – The Graduate (Nichols, 1967) and Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969) – are key examples of teenpic genres (sex comedies and biker movies, respectively) developed by independents, co-opted by the majors, and shot through with a counter-cultural attitude that proved to be immensely profitable for their distributors (2006: 170–1). Another significant film that fits this ‘counter-cultural’ profile and was released in the key year of 1968, the year between The Graduate and Easy Rider, is George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (NOTLD). Independently distributed, Romero’s film set the standard for the counter-cultural exploitation film that was taken up by the Hollywood majors in the following years; it became a ‘model’ for ‘subversive’ horror films such as Last House on the Left, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes to follow (Cook, 2000: 223). In NOTLD, the horror film genre, after being nurtured on the independent drive-in circuit for the previous two decades, is infused with social consciousness. The film, a simple story about human survivors fighting against hordes of flesh-eating zombies, not only began a trend of more bloody and apocalyptic horror movies but has also been embraced by academics for the ways in which it attacks social institutions, from systemic racism to patriarchy to the traditional family. For instance, in Midnight Movies, J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum (1991) praise the film as if it emerged organically from the tumultuous events of 1968. Tony Williams cites NOTLD as the first example of horror films from the ‘Golden Age’ that interrogates the image of the traditional family (1996: 13). Similarly, Barry Keith Grant admires Romero’s film – declaring it ‘significant for the boldness and originality with which it locates the monster, in a movie overpopulated by monsters, within society’ (2003:

38

politics and the horror film

Figure 2.3  Night of the Living Dead: George Romero as the model of ‘subversive auteur’. © Image Ten/Laurel Group.

123) – and the ones Romero made later in his career for attacking ‘capitalism as consistently as they do the ideology of masculinity’ (1996b: 207). Grant depicts Romero as a sort of folk hero, describing him as ‘an independent regional filmmaker’ who ‘has managed to make several progressive and commercially viable features while remaining on the margins of the mainstream’ (1996b: 211). While Romero is an admirable, left-leaning filmmaker, the image of him as iconoclastic auteur supposedly emerging fully formed from the counter-culture to combat all the reactionary ills of society obscures a consideration of the industrial context from which he emerged. Also obscured is how he and the auteurs in his cohort (Tobe Hooper, Larry Cohen, John Carpenter) were allowed to flourish at a time when it most benefited Hollywood studios. It is understandable that people such as Wood and Grant wrote so admiringly about Romero in the 1970s and 1980s at a time when ‘Romero’s films [had] not yet received their critical due’ (Grant, 2003: 123). This admiration, however, has transformed in some cases into an adoration that can be easily commodified. One need not look much further than the ebullient title of Jason Zinoman’s 2011 book, Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and

39

selling the splat pack

Invented Modern Horror, for an example. The mythology of auteurist triumph is right in the title. 3 While this kind of hype is fine for the popular press, academics – ­especially those dealing with political economy – must remain sceptical. Timothy Corrigan explains that the notion of auteurism has always ‘been bound up with changes in industrial desires, technological opportunities, and marketing strategies’ (1998: 40). The studios’ embrace of auteurism during this tumultuous time in Hollywood’s history epitomises Corrigan’s claim; as Cook explains, ‘Auteurism’ was, during the recession of the late 1960s and the early 1970s, ‘a marketing tool’ that enabled the studios to hold their ground as they moved from the vertical integration of the studio era to the horizontal integration of corporate Hollywood (1998: 35). The counter-cultural ‘auteur’ of the Romero stripe did not emerge in opposition to Hollywood as much as this figure was constructed by the industry for economic reasons. This matrix of influence – industrial and economic– was instrumental in the rise of the auteurist ‘New Hollywood’, a movement that seemed very much in keeping with the heady times of revolution of the late 1960s. Many critics and commentators, including Zinoman and those Splat Packers who themselves refer admiringly to the old-guard horror directors of the ‘Golden Age’, keep alive the rhetoric of cinematic revolution. The emergence of ‘Golden Age’ horror films, however, has as much to do with the effects of the 1948 Paramount Decree as with the zeitgeist of 1968. The Paramount Decree resulted in independent producers taking up and developing the exploitation film and, rather than working ‘outside the system’, they made a considerable profit for the majors who still controlled distribution. Further, exploitation films, such as Romero’s NOTLD, which contained just enough counter-culture associations to make them appealing to youth audiences, helped Hollywood weather a potentially disastrous recession. A reliance on auteurism as a marketing strategy also helped the studios through this period. After all, 1968 was also the year of Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968) which represented a major Hollywood studio (Paramount) investing in a horror film directed by a celebauteur from Eastern Europe. Success of a Salesman: Jack Valenti and the Ratings System Auteurism and counter-culture appeal were not the only marketing techniques conjured by Hollywood studios to make it through tough economic times and retool for the corporate era. NOTLD and Rosemary’s Baby were both released during the key year of 1968, when ‘the MPAA scrapped the Production code in favor of the Code and Rating Administration (CARA) system, whose guidelines allowed for the representation of graphic violence in its R and X categories’ (Cook, 2000: 224). The CARA rating system, developed by Jack

40

politics and the horror film

Valenti, then president of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), played a major role in diversifying Hollywood’s commodities and targeting new audiences. Just as it is necessary to consider the industry’s dire economic straits when contextualising the beginnings of the ‘Golden Age’ of American horror films, it is also necessary to pay close attention to how the emergence of the ‘Golden Age’ of American horror films coincides with the beginnings of the CARA ratings system. Like the Hollywood film industry’s growing willingness to rely on an independent model of production throughout much of the late 1960s, the adoption of the rating system did not reflect the tenor of 1960s counter-culture, nor did it represent taboos being overthrown, as much as it was an attempt to solve economic problems with which Hollywood had been struggling for two decades. Before that, problems with state censorship and questions about how to regulate film content had plagued the film industry’s drive for profit since its beginnings. After undergoing several significant challenges during the studio system’s pre-history,4 industry self-regulation in the studio era was not born out of the desire to make ‘moral’ films. Rather, censorship and the labelling of movies had primarily an economic function. Though the guidelines of the Production Code Administration (PCA) under the reign of Joseph Breen were notoriously strict, studios were willing to follow them because Breen’s approval meant that their films would be free to do business in markets in the United States and other parts of the world. As Jon Lewis points out, ‘In Hollywood, content regulation does have its political dimension. But the political is subsumed by or conflated with the economic’ (2000: 7). The trouble began in 1946 when box office revenues began to drop off from the spectacular heights they had achieved during World War II (Lewis, 2000: 65). After the Paramount Decree, this situation continued to worsen, as box office revenues steadily declined year after year. Amid this industry malaise, director and producer Otto Preminger, in the early 1950s, decided to adapt for the screen The Moon Is Blue, a ‘moderately risqué Broadway farce’ (Lewis, 2000: 65). In early 1953, Breen made it clear that he would not grant a seal of approval to an adaptation of this bawdy comedy but Preminger and United Artists pressed ahead with production anyway, a decision made ‘Less as a matter of principle than in acknowledgement of just how desperate things had gotten at the box office’ (Lewis, 2000: 105, 107). After the film’s completion, United Artists withdrew from the MPAA, released the film without a seal, and the film was a ‘box office hit’ (Lewis, 2000: 107). After the success of The Moon Is Blue and other ‘adult-themed’ films, it was apparent that the PCA and its morality code were impediments, blocking potentially profitable films from reaching interested consumers. Jon Lewis notes, ‘Market research suggested that a targetable sector of the mid-1950s movie audience – those people still interested in spending their entertainment

41

selling the splat pack

dollars at the box office – were interested in adult-themed material’ (2000: 114). Attempting to keep films like The Moon Is Blue from the screen, the PCA was actually ‘prevent[ing] [the studios] from better exploiting the adult demographic’ (Lewis, 2000: 111). During the mid to late 1950s, the Hollywood film industry’s policies evinced the antithesis of good marketing strategy, a conundrum that could be solved only if the industry changed its self-regulatory policies so that ‘certain films could be profitably marketed to specific segments of the audience’, while the industry still projected the image that regulators were doing their job to protect the public from harmful content (Lewis, 2000: 133). A task such as this called for a marketing and public relations expert, and the film industry found one such figure in Jack Valenti, ‘a former Houston adman’ (Lewis, 2000: 135). In 1966, Valenti was appointed president of the MPAA and, like Breen before him, positioned himself as the new moral guardian of the movies as he engineered the MPAA’s new film rating system that was eventually adopted by the studios in late 1968. Concerned very little with morality, studio heads like Lew Wasserman at Universal pushed for Valenti’s appointment ‘because [he] was an advertising man’ (Lewis, 2000: 136). Wasserman’s endorsement of Valenti illustrates that the Hollywood studios were not looking for a moral guardian as much as they were looking for a salesman. Nevertheless, Valenti, when constructing the new film rating system, was careful to stress the notion of ‘parental guidance’ and to craft a rating system that seemed, on the surface, to be a handy guide to help parents discern which movies were appropriate for their children and which films were not (Lewis, 2000: 141). These ratings were really put in place for marketing reasons, however – to help studios ‘update their product lines’ and give these products an ‘entryway into the marketplace’ (Lewis, 2000: 133). The MPAA used the rating system ‘to better advertise their pictures’ and ‘to more precisely target audiences’ (Lewis, 2000: 141). In the years before Valenti, during the reign of Breen’s PCA, the studios turned out ‘one product for everyone’, and a particular film had to be broadly and generally advertised to a heterogeneous film-going audience as a whole (Lewis, 2000: 133). By comparison, Valenti’s rating system allowed the industry’s marketing forces to be much more precise by offering different products to different audiences, specifically at a time when reliance on independent production and niche marketing was helping Hollywood weather a recession. Ratings and the Horror Film: Selling to New Audiences Before the ratings system, Hollywood studios often had a difficult time squaring their moral, ‘squeaky-clean’ image with their production and distribution of dark, disturbing horror films. Thus, horror films by mainstream studios

42

politics and the horror film

flourished most when industry self-regulation was weak or unfocused. For instance, Tod Browning’s silent mutilation melodramas in the 1920s, such as The Unknown (1927) starring Lon Chaney, and Universal’s sound monster movies in the early 1930s enjoyed success. This scenario changed dramatically when Breen took over the PCA and strengthened the code in early 1934. After that, films such as Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935) encountered problems from both Breen and local censors until horror film production in Hollywood was sanitised or dropped entirely (Lewis, 2000: 103). The second wave of Hollywood horror began around 1939, with another Universal Frankenstein film, Son of Frankenstein (Lee, 1939). Interestingly, this return to horror occurred after an internal review of the PCA by Francis C. Harmon, chief vice president of the Hays Office, revealed that ‘the PCA was monitoring a much wider range of issues than those strictly governed by the code’ (Vasey, 1997: 222). As a result, Breen’s heavy-handed censorial tactics, that had got him his job in the first place, began to be seen as ‘liabilities’ and ‘Breen’s position was comparatively weakened’ (Vasey, 1997: 223). The first mention of the production of Son of Frankenstein in the trades was on 29 August 1938, just a few months after Harmon’s internal review. The weakening of Breen’s position caused a shift in power that allowed for Son of Frankenstein and more monster pictures from Universal, not to mention producer Val Lewton’s suggestive horror noirs, such as Cat People (Tourneur, 1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (Tourneur, 1943), at RKO which followed soon after.5 These types of films flourished throughout the 1940s when there was ‘a growing uncertainty and ambivalence in the consensus over what constituted harmless entertainment’ (Sandler, 2007: 25). Thus, these ‘changes occurring in . . . the medium itself’ can be more accurately read as reflecting not their historical moment, as much as ‘disharmony’ within the industry over self-regulatory practices (Sandler, 2007: 25). This disharmony continued into the 1950s and 1960s, when Hollywood studios were acting primarily as distributors for independently produced horror films. Throughout this era, the inner workings of the Hollywood film industry were marred by ‘internal strife’ as MPAA president Eric Johnson and PCA chairperson Geoffrey Shurlock disagreed over revisions to the code that could help dwindling box office returns while still making the studios look socially responsible (Sandler, 2007: 32). Kevin Heffernan concurs, noting that, in the years following the Paramount Decree, ‘The Production Code, which had depended for enforcement on studio ownership of the premium theaters, began a decades-long weakening’ (2004: 5). Amid this front office disarray, it is little wonder that censors winked at, say, the bloody, dismembered dead bodies of 1957’s Curse of Frankenstein because distributing these films kept the industry afloat in the years following the Paramount Decree. In addition to lacking a unified vision through internal squabbling, industry self-regulation

43

selling the splat pack

had been further defanged by the Supreme Court’s decision in Joseph Burstyn v. Wilson, Commissioner of New York, also known as ‘The Miracle Case’, that film was protected under the First Amendment (Draper, 1999: 187). Also significant was the Supreme Court’s 1964 decision in Jacobellis v. Ohio, a case that began when Nico Jacobellis, a Cleveland cinema owner, was arrested after screening Les Amants (Malle, 1959) against the wishes and injunctions of local censors (Lewis, 2000: 129). Jacobellis was exonerated by the court’s decision which signalled a greater willingness, on the Supreme Court’s part, to protect theatre owners accused of exhibiting obscene materials. After the Miracle decision in 1952, Hollywood film-makers such as Otto Preminger going beyond commonly accepted boundaries of filmic content in 1953, and the decision in Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964, the establishment of a rating system in 1968 that allowed release of different types of filmic content could be construed as a huge step towards freedom of expression in the film world. This is not the case, however. As Jon Lewis unequivocally states, Valenti’s ratings system ‘is still a subtle but nonetheless effective form of regulation, not of film content but of participation in the marketplace’ (2000: 150–1). In other words, the new ratings system allowed the major studios to offer ‘a wide range of product lines’ (Lewis, 2000: 150). One of the new types of product engendered by the new ratings system was ‘the kind of overtly sensationalist material they had previously left to independents like AIP’ (Lewis, 2000: 150; Maltby, 2003: 179). And one of the ‘sensationalist’ genres taken up by the studios was the horror film. Wood points out that the horror films of the 1970s became ‘more gruesome, more violent, more disgusting . . . than ever before in its history’, a transformation that he attributes to ideological confusion and political intent (2003: 63). This content shift, however, also represents how Hollywood was taking advantage of the new rating system and updating their product lines with more graphic, violent pictures. Valenti the salesman was certain that ratings would help sell these pictures. After all, if the film was rated R, the audience was, more or less, guaranteed a certain level of blood and gore. This strategy represents yet another way the majors appropriated techniques from exploitation film-makers; as Eric Schaefer notes, ‘adults-only’ labels and ratings, while ostensibly placed in advertising to inform parents and protect children, were actually there to ‘[act] as powerful beacons, promising audiences sights that were not found in the average Hollywood film’ (1999: 124). Thus, when one of the majors wanted to take advantage of the new freedoms offered by the ratings board and set aside their product from standard fare, they had the comfort of CARA’s R rating to ensure that their film screened in many venues with few problems. An example of this would be Warner Bros.’s The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973) which was a blockbuster hit for the studio and grossed just over $89 million at the box office (Cook, 2000: 226).

44

politics and the horror film

A key component of Valenti’s system, however, was that not everyone was guaranteed equal opportunity to take advantage of these newfound freedoms of the screen. Lewis points out that, when the major studios, all members of the MPAA, agreed to adopt Valenti’s rating system, ‘the smaller American independent producers and distributors’ were among the groups left out of the deal (2000: 150). As a result, horror films made by independent producers were routinely threatened with an X, a rating that was attacked, as early as 1970, for ‘being used by CARA . . . to ghettoize independently produced and distributed films’ (Lewis, 2000: 173). Such was the situation with Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, a brutally violent film that the MPAA attempted to cut until it was incomprehensible (Craven quoted in Lewis, 2000: 171). The ratings system served a dual purpose for the majors with regard to the independent productions that helped them through the tough economic times of the late 1960s and early 1970s: they could keep up box office numbers by awarding certain independent horror films an R, and control and limit the market by consigning other independent releases with an X rating. Eventually, the independents were brought to heel by the majors. Cook notes that the explosion of independent film-making lasted only as long as the major studios needed it, and ‘by the end of the decade [independent films] had been crowded off American screens by the majors’ saturation-booking tactics and by their invasion of the exploitation field itself’ (Cook, 2000: 19). This invasion of the exploitation field was engendered by Valenti’s new ratings system that allowed a diversification of products and control of the film market. The major studios’ takeover of the mainstream and exploitation film markets was also abetted by several significant court decisions regarding obscenity laws. As Lewis argues, the Supreme Court’s decisions in five obscenity cases in 1973 – the most significant of these being Miller v. California – were ‘helpful in the studios’ ongoing attempts to regain control of the theatrical marketplace’ (2000: 262). The rulings in these cases ‘made it difficult to screen hardcore films in all but a few venues nationwide’ at a time when hardcore films such as Deep Throat (Damiano, 1972) had achieved enough success in mainstream exhibition venues to make the majors nervous (Lewis, 2000: 262). After the Supreme Court’s rulings, hardcore movies ‘migrated to home video, a technology whose national diffusion was virtually driven by hardcore’ (Cook, 2000: 282), so much so that the Adult Film Association of America estimated that ‘pornographic films accounted for 70 to 80 percent of all videocassettes sales through 1982’ (Cook, 2000: 283). Nevertheless, pornography was not the only exploitation genre to migrate to video, as it was joined by scores of blaxploitation, kung fu, and, most significant to our discussion here, horror films. Again, television plays a significant role for, as early as 1955, the studios were working to shape television into an ancillary market for Hollywood fare. In the 1970s, home video was

45

selling the splat pack

an extension of this line of thinking and, even though independent distributors got there first, the majors eventually caught up. The next two chapters detail how the home video market and the majors’ conquest of this market has affected how horror movies are marketed and how audiences receive them in the twenty-first century. Against Cinema as Art The ‘Golden Age’ of American horror films was ushered in by economic necessity just as much as it was by counter-cultural revolutionary zeal. While the horror films of the times may have indeed represented codified reactions of disillusionment over Vietnam and, later, Watergate, they also represented the Hollywood film industry’s efforts to broaden its reach by updating products and marketing them to more viewers. These events coincided with the entry of film studies into the academy. For film studies to gain acceptance in this new setting, film studies scholars utilised methodological approaches that the apolitical academy could recognise. In particular, horror films, given their nightmarish content, lent themselves to psychoanalytic analysis. This situation led to ideological readings of horror films often performed with little or no consideration of the material circumstances of their production. This connection of the horror film to the academy becomes even more relevant as journalists like McClintock describe the Splat Pack as ‘well-educated’ and insinuate that their audiences are equally discerning (McClintock, 2006: 1). Thus, the horror film has travelled away from the lowly ‘body genre’, that is, films calibrated to affect the body of an audience member to ‘[mimic] what is seen on the screen’ (Williams, 2003: 143, 145); instead, various discourses have elevated the horror film into more cerebral territory and attempted to reinterpret certain horror films as artworks to be contemplated by connoisseurs unconcerned with such crass and unintellectual matters as film industry business. This is unfortunate because industry conditions – whether they are changes in technology or regulatory policies – have enormous influence over filmic content and what types of films get made and distributed. Without considering the industrial conditions that gave rise to the film commodity, critics and scholars run the risk of simply elevating the film to the status of ‘art’ and scrutinising its ephemeral, filmic details without considering its very material connections to capital. Raymond J. Haberski Jr laments: The twin engines of modernism – one driving art into ever more abstract and purer forms, and the other driving criticism to be more inclusive of popular forms, including those mass produced – ultimately elevated movies to art but undermined the debate that fueled that transition. (2001: 6)

46

politics and the horror film

According to Haberski, moving films to the unquestioned status of ‘art’ has had a detrimental effect on ‘the will to debate the meaning of movies in an era that demands such discussion’ (2001: 6). Considering the industrial factors surrounding the production and distribution of films as well as the commodity status of films is a way of wresting films from the safe haven of ‘art’ and dragging them back into a critical discussion and debate of their relationship with our culture and society. Owing to the adoration of critics and admiring comments of current filmmakers, ‘Golden Age’ horror films are in danger of being sequestered in the realm of ‘art’ wherein their praises are sung but their historical and industrial context and commodity status are in danger of being ignored. Film-makers such as Eli Roth evoke the sacred texts of American horror’s ‘Golden Age’ to lend validity to films made by his cohort and, implicitly, to mask their commodity status. This chapter has focused on the industrial context from which the Golden Age horror films emerged in order to demythologise them and show how their content is tied to changes in the film industry that were taking place at the time of their production and distribution. This discussion also lays the groundwork for the analysis of the films of the Splat Pack that follows. The films of these new horror directors emerge from a historical moment similar to the ones discussed in this chapter, as Hollywood studios seek to capitalise further on the home video market, benefit from a change in ratings policy, and use technological and industrial changes to cloak the commodity status of their films. Notes 1. This era is discussed in detail in Kevin Heffernan’s Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953–1968 (2004). 2. The first multiplex in the United States was opened in Kansas City in 1963 by Stanley Durwood whose family business would become exhibition juggernaut American Multi-Cinemas (AMC) in 1968 (Acland, 2003: 103). In 1948, however, Canadian theatre owner Nat Taylor had ‘twinned’ the operations of his Elgin Theatre in Ottawa, meaning that Taylor opened a second, smaller auditorium inside the already operational Elgin (Acland, 2003: 103). 3. Zinoman provided for the New York Times a write-up for the ‘It’s only a Movie: Horror films from the 1970s and today’ film series. 4. For overviews of industry self-regulation before and during the studio era, see Black, 1994 and Vasey, 1997. 5. Another reason for Universal’s return to horror with Son of Frankenstein was the success of a 1938 re-release of Dracula and Frankenstein which was immensely profitable for Universal, netting close to $500,000 for the studio (Weaver, Brunas and Brunas, 2007: 183).

47

3. THE DVD REVOLUTION AND THE HORROR FILM, TAKE ONE: FROM TRASH TO ART TO COLLECTABLE

‘Art is Not Safe’: Straddling Downwards and Elevating the Commodity A difficult day of filming on the set of Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects led to an interesting behind-the-scenes story. On this day, Zombie and his cast were shooting on a set dressed to look like the interior of a sleazy, 1970s-era motel room. The scenes they were shooting depict Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), two members of the monstrous Firefly family, holding two married couples hostage. During this sequence, Otis and Baby threaten, torture and humiliate the couples. Their cruelty reaches a perverse crescendo as Otis forces one of the women (Priscilla Barnes) to fellate him while holding a gun to her head as her husband (Geoffrey Lewis) watches helplessly. Having to shoot this particular scene for The Devil’s Rejects bothered Moseley. He later explained that performing the level of cruelty required for this scene was ‘very frightening’ for him and ‘really bummed [him] out’ (Rejects, ‘30 days’). Zombie noticed Moseley’s discomfort and took him aside before filming to try to help him get through the scene. Moseley said that, after he explained his discomfort to Zombie, the musician turned director stated with emphasis four words: ‘Art is not safe’ (Rejects, ‘30 days’). Moseley claimed these words inspired him and instilled him with the confidence to get through the scene even as, according to Zombie, people on the crew who were watching ‘had tears coming down their faces’ because the scene was ‘very powerful’ and ‘very real’ (Rejects, ‘30 days’).

48

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

Figure 3.1  ‘Art is not safe’: Rob Zombie on the set of The Devil’s Rejects. © Lions Gate Films Home Entertainment.

This anecdote has been repeated several times in several different forums, mostly in the context of praising Zombie as an iconoclastic auteur who exhibits immense bravery in the pursuit of his vision. What may be more interesting about the anecdote, however, is the assumption that the film Zombie is making is ‘art’. While the notion of ‘film as art’ is certainly nothing new, The Devil’s Rejects is not exactly what comes to mind when one thinks of ‘art house’ cinema. Zombie’s claim suggests that definitions of art cinema have changed to include horror films – even the most distasteful ones – under the umbrella of art, as long as there is a guiding intelligence, such as Zombie’s directorial vision, behind them. Ernest Mathijs observes this discursive tactic in his analysis of the various reception contexts of David Cronenberg’s Shivers; amid outrage over the controversial film, two Canadian film journalists recontextualised Cronenberg’s film as worthwhile by ‘identify[ing] the form and content of Shivers as filmic mediations of personal concerns’ and ‘placing Cronenberg’s “vision” at the centre of their interpretation’ (2003: 115). ‘Auteurist interpretation’ discursively elevated Cronenberg’s film from a distasteful film about a killer venereal disease to an artistic statement (Mathijs, 2003: 115). While there are many discursive elements, both in the popular press and in academia, that have led to horror movies being considered as art, there are material and commercial aspects that have aided in this change as well. One of these material conditions has been the emergence of the DVD market which has connections with the rise of Splat Pack directors such as Zombie. The DVD market has changed the ways in which certain audiences perceive horror films. As Greg Taylor explains, many art critics and arbiters of taste

49

selling the splat pack

believed that ‘American culture’s class mobility . . . opened it to a marked fluidity of taste cultures’ and hoped that ‘most “cultural straddling” . . . would be upward, with the socially disadvantaged gaining access to a rich high culture of which they had been deprived’ (1999: 32). Taylor notes, however, ‘the last fifty years have been marked with as much downward straddling, with the former emerging as something of a marginal highbrow response to the latter’ (1999: 32). Rather than bearing witness to how high culture may be disseminated to ‘enlighten’ the deprived classes, American culture has seen much more evidence of the highbrow middle class embracing ‘trash’ culture, as evidenced in the writings of outspoken critics such as Manny Farber. The DVD market mirrors these larger movements regarding taste and class in American culture. Horror films, especially those of a graphic nature, were once marginalised as crass exploitation and disposable entertainment; in the case of the ‘video nasty’ scare, they were even banned. The introduction of ‘Collector’s edition’, ‘Special edition’, and ‘Director’s cut’ DVDs, however, has turned once marginal and ephemeral horror movies into ‘art’ for collectors. The distributor for a majority of the Splat Pack’s films, Lionsgate, embraced this movement. The discussion of Lionsgate in Chapter 1 illustrates the need for independents to anticipate trends and embrace new ways of selling their films in order to survive in a film marketplace controlled by a handful of media conglomerates. After the ‘DVD revolution’ saw DVDs becoming a top-selling consumer product, Lionsgate took notice and released many films in their catalogue on DVD with elaborate artwork, packaging and other ‘extras’. With their ‘collector’s item’ uniqueness, Splat Pack films on DVD not only represent ‘trash’ turned into ‘art’ but also represent an attempt to dissuade consumers from downloading pirated copies of their films. Working in concert with this attempt was an industry-wide embrace of the DVD as a read-only technology so the studios could have more control over the home video market (Greenberg, 2008: 157). The implication is that the true connoisseur will want to own the entire package represented by the DVD release. Movies for Rent: the Vhs Era One may immediately wonder why this change would accompany DVD and not VHS which was the preceding revolution in home video technology. This change did not take place during the VHS era for several reasons. The Hollywood film industry initially encountered much difficulty and confusion with the arrival of home video technology in the form of the VHS video cassette, and it took Hollywood several years to discover how to profit from this new technology. Additionally, the changing position Hollywood studios took towards video rental versus ownership during the transition from VHS to DVD also had a distinct effect.

50

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

The mid 1970s saw the debut of two home video formats. Sony’s Betamax machines debuted in Japan in 1975 and were available to American consumers the following year; in 1976, JVC debuted their Video Home System (VHS) format (McDonald, 2007: 33–4). A format war broke out in the years following the introduction of these two videotape cassette formats, as Sony and JVC both worked to secure their product as the home video format of choice. Eventually, the VHS format overtook Sony’s Betamax, and Sony discontinued the format in the late 1980s (Wasser, 2008: 121). One of the early appeals of both formats was that they offered customers the ability to ‘time shift’, that is, to record a television programme and watch it at a later time (Wasser, 2008: 121). As Frederick Wasser explains: It is important to note that the VCR [video cassette recorder] was not initially viewed as a new market for theatrical movies. The development of a market for pre-recorded video movies was not sought out by Hollywood or the VCR manufacturers but arose, without much forethought, as the market reached a critical mass. (2008: 121) The production and release of Hollywood movies on videotape were not calculated moves on the part of the studios after the introduction of the VHS tape but, rather, it was an afterthought that followed behind the introduction of the technology. Before the Hollywood studios arrived at the afterthought of movies on video, however, their reaction to home video ranged from hostility towards the new format to confusion over the best way to profit from it. While studios such as Universal and Disney were waging court cases in an attempt to prevent the circulation of videotaped copies of their films, studios did not attempt to set up their own video distribution arms (Wasser, 2000: 122). Home video was, at this time, largely the province of hardcore adult films (Cook, 2000: 282–3), an industry from which the major studios had taken great pains to distance themselves. Also, the studios were not in charge of broadcast television at this time and thus were not in a position to profit from the VCR’s ability to ‘time shift’. The major studios had no structure in place for maintaining and controlling the home rental market. It was not until an independent entrepreneur named Andre Blay, head of a Michigan-based company named Magnetic Video, took a chance on licensing previously released Hollywood films. After he began transferring them to videotape in 1977, the studios started establishing home video divisions (Wasser, 2008: 122–3). After a couple of years, 20th CenturyFox bought out Blay’s successful business in 1979 (Wasser, 2008: 123). The other studios followed suit soon after and, by 1981, all the studios had video distribution divisions (Wasser, 2008: 123). After the studios slowly embraced home video, they had to work out how

51

selling the splat pack

best to profit from it. One way to make certain that movies on videotape were profitable was to mark up the prices and make videotapes expensive. The high price of videotapes, which averaged over fifty dollars apiece, placed them out of the price range of most buyers, with most tapes being purchased by shops that rented the tapes to customers (Wasser, 2008: 122–3). Shortly thereafter, ‘the ability to rent movies from video stores caught on like wildfire’ (Ulin, 2009: 164). These rental shops had been going strong since Blay’s introduction of prerecorded videotapes in 1977 (Wasser, 2008: 121). The rise of video shops, however – often locally owned, independent of the studios – threatened Hollywood studios with ‘looming disaster’ (Ulin, 2009: 164) as the rental market benefited local retailers more than the studios. If a title costs the video shop fifty dollars to purchase and the shop rents the tape for five dollars a night, the video shop need only rent the title ten times to recoup its cost (Ulin, 2009: 169). The video would probably be rented more times than was required for the video shop to break even but the studios would not profit with each rental as they made money only from the initial sale of the tape to the shop. Also, there was much worry on the part of the studios that consumers ‘would copy movies and TV shows’ from rented videotapes and ‘keep them for a home library’ (Ulin, 2009: 164). To appeal to consumers’ desire to own a library of films, the studios began to explore the possibility of making videotapes more affordable for sale to customers (Wasser, 2008:123). In 1982, Paramount took the first steps in this direction. When venturing into this new frontier, Paramount played it safe with their film selection and offered Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Meyer, 1982), a successful sequel in a franchise with name recognition, at a lower price of forty dollars (Wasser, 2008: 123). The video release of Star Trek II at this lower price was enough of a success for the studios to adopt ‘sell-through’ prices for some titles (Wasser, 2008: 124). The studios again proceeded with caution, however, and did not lower prices for all titles, and they ‘had to decide whether films would attract high enough volume sales outside the usual rental stores’ (2008: 124). The studio only ‘released the biggest films and children’s titles . . . at the lower sell-through prices while most films, even very popular ones, were released at the higher prices and were bought predominantly by the rental stores’ (Wasser, 2008: 124). Thus, the movies available which were priced to own on video consisted mainly of big-budget blockbusters, mega-moneymakers, or children’s movies, while high prices ‘ranging over $70’ were reserved for other films (Wasser, 2008: 127). Additionally, ‘there was a disincentive to lower pricing significantly when the rental business was thriving’ (Ulin, 2009: 170). These high prices restricted the purchase of most films on tape to video rental stores and well-off collectors who could afford to pay high prices for tapes. In this manner, the studios made the home video market one of their biggest

52

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

sources of revenue. The studios’ distribution arms received at least 40 per cent of the retail price for videotapes and, by 1987, ‘videocassettes provided the single largest market for films, contributing . . . 43 percent of worldwide revenues for US films and surpassing the theatrical, cable, and broadcast television segments’ (Wasser, 2008: 123, 126). Additionally, home video allowed the studios further to control the film market. As Wasser explains, ‘on the retail and wholesaling market, [the video business’s] structure favored oligopoly’ with massive chain stores such as Wal-Mart and Blockbuster creating an environment in which ‘no independent producer/distributor tries to enter without forming alliances with a Hollywood studio that has the clout to deal with such retailers’ (2008: 127). In this shift towards oligopoly, independent ‘mom and pop’ video shops began to be absorbed by bigger chains such as Hollywood Video and Blockbuster Video (Ulin, 2009: 168); Hollywood became even more directly involved with control of the video market in 1994 when Viacom – the corporate parent of Paramount Studios – purchased Blockbuster Video, then the United States’s ‘top video retailer with revenues of $200M’ (Ulin, 2009: 168). Though it took the Hollywood studios a few years to adapt, home video became an immensely lucrative boon for them. Several factors kept there from being a massive, priced-to-own rollout of genre films such as horror during the VHS era. This changed during the DVD era which found Hollywood more prepared to profit from the video market by capitalising on several lessons learned from the VHS era. Movies for Sale: the ‘DVD Revolution’ After the growth of the home video market, the Hollywood studios were prepared for the next major trend in home video which ended up being the Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc, better known as DVD. This format was the result of several years of experimentation with trying to create a digital platform for home video. As early as 1969, Lew Wasserman, the head of Universal and media juggernaut MCA, had interest in developing a videodisc format, and his interest grew throughout the 1970s as videotape became a contested terrain. As Paul McDonald explains, ‘MCA developed videodisc as a read-only medium to protect against copyright infringement, which, they argued, was possible with Betamax’ (2007: 44). Wasserman’s vision would eventually come to fruition, as DVD was an effort ‘by Hollywood studios to reclaim the control of their products that they lost to mediators and consumers in the 1980s’ (Greenberg, 2008: 157). Over the next two decades, after several formats, such as Laserdisc, CD-Interactive and Video CD (VCD), failed to catch on because of their cost and image reproduction problems (Ulin, 2009: 180–1), DVD arrived on the

53

selling the splat pack

marketplace in 1996 (McDonald, 2007: 53–5, 1). As McDonald describes it, the DVD was a revolutionary consumer product: DVD not only replaced the VCRs and videocassettes but also introduced a new media object. Videocassettes had always remained a linear medium, working along the single plane of record, play, rewind and fast-forward. DVD, however, provided access to many different sources of content via menus. DVDs increased the storage capacity of video software units, providing space for the inclusion of other types of content beyond the main programme. (McDonald, 2007: 1) This new type of media product took the market by storm. According to Wakso, a ‘DVD revolution’ began in 1997 and peaked at the end of 2002 when DVDs and DVD players ‘represented the fastest selling consumer electronic product ever’ (2003: 133). Studio revenues continued to increase after 2002, soaring from $10.39 billion in 2002 to $20.8 billion in 2005 (Epstein, 2010: 90), around the time that Splat Pack films began to appear on the market. The launch of DVD was the culmination of several decades during which the Hollywood studios learned to embrace the notion of home cinema. At first, during the 1950s, the studios attempted to compete with television by offering widescreen, Technicolor spectacles to entice audiences back to cinemas. Throughout the 1960s, however, the studios learned to coexist more profitably with television by selling or leasing their film libraries to television, moving into telefilm production and establishing a ratings system that helped differentiate films for cinema release from their more tame telefilm counterparts. In effect, the industry learned to produce both for the cinema and for television. This multimedia programming only increased throughout the 1970s as Hollywood was absorbed into synergistic practices of corporate conglomerates that bought out the studios. During this decade, Hollywood not only learned how to use television commercials to sell movies (Balio, 1990: 30), it also learned how to use movies to sell home cinema products made by electronics manufacturers, such as Sony, that existed under the same corporate umbrellas as the studios. After all, one of the selling points of the DVD was that it was a huge improvement in sound and picture quality from videotape (Ulin, 2009: 174–5), all the better to showcase one’s home video system. The rapidity with which DVDs caught on with consumers was planned by a film industry that, thanks to the VHS era, knew the potential profitability of home video. Though the new DVD format had some brief competition from Digital Video Express or Divx (McDonald, 2007: 145–9), the Hollywood studios’ overriding agenda was to ‘[build] upon the lessons learned from the VCR launch’ and endorse ‘cooperation between the manufacturers and the film studios’ by ‘band[ing] together to “adopt” a format’ (Wasser, 2008: 128;

54

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

Ulin, 2009: 175). This way, the studios dodged ‘the competition which plagued the launch of the VCR’ (McDonald, 2007: 55). Predictably, there was a bit of trepidation on the studios’ part in the inaugural years of DVD’s introduction. Fears of piracy kept most studios from fully utilising the format until Warren Lieberfarb, the president of Warner Home Video, encouraged other studios to embrace DVD by ‘pioneering the technology’ and ‘championing its introduction against naysayers and those who wanted to delay launching’ (Ulin, 2009: 178). Following Warner Home Video’s lead, the studios gave the DVD launch a huge promotional push that video cassettes did not receive. McDonald offers a telling comparison between the launch of videotape and the launch of DVD, noting that, in Western Europe, DVD players reached over 50 per cent penetration in six years after their launch whereas it took VCRs twelve years to reach 50 per cent penetration (2007: 59). The VCR launch not only taught the studios about the value of pushing a standard format, it also taught them the value of ‘sell through’ pricing. The studios took full advantage of this lesson during the DVD launch. They selected only a relatively small number of films (blockbusters and family films) to be priced to own on VHS but, after the home video market proved to be the most profitable ancillary market for films, the studios took a drastically different tack with DVD pricing: ‘To encourage the establishment and growth of a large retail market for DVD, the Hollywood majors immediately started pricing DVD releases at comparatively low prices . . . which appealed to consumers’ (McDonald, 2007: 150). With studios being able ‘to earn 58 to 60 per cent of the DVD wholesale price’ (Wasser, 2008: 128) – as opposed to around 40 per cent of videotape sales – it was mandated that all DVDs be priced at sell-through prices to maximise profitability (Wasser, 2008: 128). In this transition, the studios lost the rental market as rental shops waned because DVDs for sale at retailers, such as Wal-Mart, took away attention and foot traffic from videos-for-rent outlets such as Blockbuster (Ulin, 2009: 181). The studios’ consolation prise for losing the rental market was a more profitable DVD market predicated on consumers ‘buy[ing] videos’ and ‘keep[ing] them on the shelf as a new sort of trophy or archive’ (Ulin, 2009: 171). From Trash to Art to Collectable: Horror Movies on DVD The sell-through pricing mandate changed the home video market in two ways, and both of these changes had profound effects on the horror film. First, this mandate opened up shelf space for a wider variety of products for sale on video. As James Bennett and Tom Brown note, ‘DVDs have not simply been associated with an aura of quality, but equally importantly, an aura of quantity’ (2008: 5). Retailers like Wal-Mart, which became ‘the biggest sellthrough outlet for videos and DVDs’ (Wasser, 2008: 126), caused the sales of

55

selling the splat pack

DVDs to rocket (Epstein, 2010: 90). To meet this demand, the number of films available on DVD also had to rocket. Anne Friedberg reports, ‘In 1997, in the United States, 900 titles were available on DVD; in 1998, 3,000. By the end of 2000 there were over 10,000 titles available on DVD in the United States’ (2002: 38). These hugely growing numbers demanded more product lines. As Raiford Guins notes, ‘The sheer availability of older titles being rereleased and remediated on DVD, as well as out-of-print, restored, and debuting titles . . . prompted new sections to be housed in media superstores’ (2005: 25). After the ‘DVD revolution’: Since the six major studios [Disney, Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros., Universal and Sony] now produced relatively few films, they needed to increase their ‘throw weight’, as one Paramount executive termed it, to persuade merchandisers like Wal-Mart to cede them the strategic shelf space for their videos. So, beginning in the 1990s, they either bought existing independent distributors . . . or created their own ‘independent’ subsidiaries . . . to acquire the rights to foreign movies and low-budget movies made outside of Hollywood’s purview. As a result of their search for throw weight, the studios came to dominate much, if not all, of the independent film business as well. (Epstein, 2006: 19–20) Independents, such as Lionsgate, with their profitable ties to majors, such as Sony, were poised to assist the majors in providing retailers with ‘throw weight’. No doubt, the majors encouraged Lionsgate and other independents to increase their DVD output because they realised that the more foot traffic travelling the DVD aisles of superstores, such as Wal-Mart, the better business would be for everyone. Lionsgate helped fill the demand for genre pictures and ‘low-budget movies made outside of Hollywood’s purview’ like horror films by the Splat Pack. These horror films for sale on DVD became, as Tom Schatz observes, ‘a major revenue generator’ for Lionsgate properties, such as Saw and Hostel (2008: 30). The types of films produced by the Splat Pack were specifically geared for success on DVD. Considering their popularity on home video – an ancillary market that had become the primary market, making up almost half of studio revenue (Ulin, 2009: 161) – is the only way to reckon with the ways in which the popular press, in articles mentioned in Chapter 1, applauded the Splat Pack’s ability to make money. For instance, Pamela McClintock’s comment in Variety that Splat Pack films ‘cost next to nothing to make’ but ‘mint gold’ is seemingly disproved by their box office grosses (McClintock, 2006: 1) which are relatively low even compared to other horror films. Movies in the ‘torture porn’ subgenre – such as the Saw and Hostel films – are ‘only fifth-highest domestic grossing subgenre’ of horror films made between 1998 and 2007

56

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

(Davis and Natale, 2010: 48). Further, ‘Not only do less-gory horror films actually make more money than gory ones, it is the least-gory horror that are often the most successful’ (Davis and Natale, 2010: 46). Thus, the gory films of the Splat Pack were calibrated for a different market than the cinema one which would, nonetheless, remain significant in ways discussed in Chapter 4. Splat Pack films were meant for the DVD shelves of major retailers. During the VHS era, violent, gory, and low-budget horror was rarely for sale at major retailers. Videotapes of popular franchise films, such as the Friday the 13th series or A Nightmare on Elm Street series, might make it to retailers’ shelves but, for the most part, horror films, like most films that were not blockbusters or children’s fare, were relegated to rental outlets. After DVD, however, a wide variety of horror films, with more extreme violence and gore, made their way on to the shelves of major retailers and were for sale at affordable prices. Additionally, the types of horror titles available for sale appealed to ‘the niche logic of the specialty market’ that boasts ‘a relatively small but loyal set of fan consumers’ (McDonald, 2007: 154). During the DVD era, this marginal behaviour was brought into the mainstream by the release of more horror films on DVD. Mainstreaming this behaviour leads to the second significant way in which the sell-through pricing mandate changed home video and affected the horror film. As Barbara Klinger observes, ‘the ascendency of DVD’ is intimately linked with ‘the increasing importance of the sell-through market’ (2006: 59). In other words, with all DVD releases priced at sell-through, emphasis is placed on owning films, as opposed to renting them. This shift has profound implications. For Klinger, the impulse towards buying, rather than renting, DVDs encouraged by the studios ‘tap[s] into a middle-class consciousness about the superiority of ownership’ (2006: 62). Paul McDonald takes a somewhat wider view: DVD has spread the practice of privately amassing discs beyond the dedicated collector to a wider body of consumers . . . With the introduction of DVD, video collecting has therefore become a more generalized practice which exceeds the realm of the elitist collector. (2007: 69, 70) Nevertheless, sell-through prices for DVD hails every consumer as a potential ‘collector’ who must be offered something ‘worth buying’. Along with the promise of perfect digital quality, the presence of extra materials was a feature that ‘differentiated the [DVD] medium from the VCR and videocassette’ and made the DVD ‘an attractive product for consumers’ (McDonald, 2007: 59). Since the DVD’s status as an attractive product was bound to its special features, the studios began putting effort into offering a film on DVD with numerous ‘extra features’, such as:

57

selling the splat pack

scene access menus, theatrical trailers, deleted scenes or outtakes, on-screen biographies of the performers and other creative personnel involved with making the film, short ‘making-of’ featurettes and other documentaries, music videos for songs from the soundtracks of films, galleries of production stills, options for subtitles and a choice of language tracks. (McDonald, 2007: 64) Studios looked to laserdisc releases issued by speciality and art house distributor, the Criterion Collection, for models of how to package a film for release on DVD and strategically choose special features for films (McDonald, 2007: 63–4). Another strategy adopted by the studios was to highlight these extra features by labelling a release of a film on DVD as a ‘Special edition’ or ‘Collector’s edition’. Accordingly, these DVDs are often packaged in such a way as to make them look like a unique work of art. This remaking or remediation of a film on DVD as a work of art becomes particularly interesting when marginal fare, such as horror and other exploitation films, is released on DVD. If the sell-through mandate mainstreamed the type of collecting behaviour normally reserved for ‘cultish’ audiences, it also mainstreamed some marginal genres and turned these products into ‘art-objects’. Some would argue that the line between ‘low’ culture, such as horror and exploitation films, and ‘high’ culture has already been blurred. Joan Hawkins challenges ‘the binary opposition of prestige cinema . . . and popular culture’ and points out how ‘high culture trades on the same images, tropes, and themes that characterize low culture’ (2000: 3). Hawkins looks at the ways in which avant-garde cinema and horror cinema intersect, overlap and inform each other. If, as Hawkins argues, the lines between elite, art house cinema and trash horror films are more difficult to discern than one may initially think, these boundaries became even more blurred with the rise of the DVD market. For art house distributor Criterion was not the only model for how to package and market a ‘special edition’ DVD; horror and exploitation distributor Anchor Bay also had a profound influence. Anchor Bay began as a distribution house for videotape releases of licensed titles. During the videotape era, the United States-based distributor catered to niche collectors by releasing ‘uncut’ versions of horror films such as Dawn of the Dead and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films (1981, 1987). Like Criterion, Anchor Bay’s videotapes and laserdiscs pioneered the practice of including extra materials with a film’s release that would become an industry standard after the advent of DVD. When DVDs were first introduced in 1996, Anchor Bay was one of the first distributors, along with Criterion, to take advantage of DVD’s storage capacities. It began offering titles that were digitally remastered for picture and sound quality, complemented with restored scenes that may have been cut by censors or distributors and extra features such as ‘making of’

58

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

documentaries. Also included were essays or liner notes discussing the film’s history and significance. While Criterion focused their efforts on supplying DVD releases for art house and prestige fare, Anchor Bay continued in the tradition of their videotape releases and offered marginal cinema or ‘paracinema’ deluxe treatment on DVD.1 A testament to how the distributor markets to the horror home video collector is the number of horror-themed ‘collections’ they have released. These product lines include: the ‘Bruce Campbell collection’ which features films starring the affable cult star of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films; the ‘Cult classics of horror collection’, a selection of popular horror films from the 1970s and 1980s; the ‘Midnight movies/grindhouse collection’ which features cult films; the ‘Hollywood legends collection’ which features work by popular horror directors; and ‘The Dario Argento collection’, featuring films by the Italian horror director. This last collection is of particular interest, as Raiford Guins has explored the ways in which previously marginalised films are ‘remediated’ on DVD in the age of digital media. Using Italian horror films from directors such as Argento as case studies, Guins argues that the DVD format and the discursive practices that surround these films’ release on DVD ‘produce knowledge about, and define, Italian horror within U.S. cinema culture’ (2005: 17). Italian horror films first reached American audiences as films on videotape. These videotape copies, which were often cut by censors and poorly dubbed, ‘positioned’ these films as ‘object[s] of low quality, low value, and . . . removed from any claim of authorial intentions’ (Guins, 2005: 21). Nevertheless, ‘fan discourses’ surrounding these films valorised them for their high quantity of blood and gore effects and thus positioned the films as ‘gore-objects’, filmic texts valuable primarily for their capacity to offer more blood and gore than the average American horror films (Guins, 2005: 24). Guins explains, however, that the value of these films changed significantly with the discursive practices that surrounded their release on DVD. The status of these films, once considered merely as gore-objects, ‘has shifted. A set of meanings has been refashioned through DVD technology and the aesthetics of its new design (packaging, liner notes, booklets, etc)’ (Guins, 2005: 27). Anchor Bay’s ‘Dario Argento collection’ transforms these once-disparaged films into art objects in various ways. One way the DVD releases do so is by stressing the status of the director: ‘Directors like . . . Argento are hailed as “auteurs” and “masters” of their respected works’ (Guins, 2005: 26). Guins describes the packaging of Deep Red (Argento, 1975), one of the films in Anchor Bay’s ‘Dario Argento Collection’: ‘the title Deep Red is introduced as a “film by Dario Argento”. The back cover continues to sing Argento’s praises. His name appears six times and the synopsis begins with “Dario Argento’s Masterpiece” ’(2005: 26). Other ways DVD distributors, such as Anchor Bay,

59

selling the splat pack

remediate these films through their DVD release are by painstakingly designing the DVD’s packaging with high-quality photographs and artwork from the film’s original release and including notes and essays from film critics. The DVD itself anchors all of these discursive practices surrounding the DVD-release-as-art-object. One of the attractions that made DVDs successful commodities was the promise that the DVD contains a perfect, permanent copy of the film; McDonald calls this the ‘Aura of DVD Quality’ (McDonald, 2007: 59). Though it was used to sell consumers on switching from VHS to DVD, the claim that the DVD held a ‘perfect’ replication of a film was untrue. Manufacturers were able only to store an entire film on the limited memory space of a DVD by ‘looking at the difference between frames and only storing the differences’ (Ulin, 2009: 176). This way, DVD makers could ‘cheat’ by dropping frames in which no differences occur, thus compressing the film to fit on to a DVD. Claims for DVD’s perfection worked, however, because DVD quality was significantly better than that of videotape. As Guins remarks, ‘The sense of permanence attributed to a disc . . . elevates the disc as an object that is . . . a “self-contained art work” ’ (2005: 27). Guins posits that, even though these Italian horror films have been made into art objects by their DVD release, they still contain their subversive power. Noting Scone’s and Hawkins’s assessments of paracinema’s tone of ‘“opposition” and/or “reaction against” the doldrums of mainstream Hollywood product’ (2005: 29), Guins believes that ‘The Italian horror film as art-object can also double as a reactionary-object’ (2005: 29). He observes that Italian horror films began arriving on DVD during the late 1990s, a period which ‘also marked a commercial high point for U.S. horror films, such as Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997), Scream 3 (2000), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, sequel 1998), [and] The Faculty (1998)’ (2005: 29). The audiences consuming Italian horror films on DVD make up a subversive shadow of the ‘younger audience snacking low-cal on the banal pastiche of clean-teen horror’ such as the Scream films (2005: 29). These were the films that journalists such as Reed Tucker and Pamela McClintock claimed were improved upon by the films of the Splat Pack, a new type of horror film that emerged to speak to the brutal first decade of the twenty-first century. Guins’s assessment differs significantly from those of journalists such as Tucker and McClintock, however, because he foregrounds how industrial and technological changes play an important part in determining the types of films that are made and how they are distributed and marketed. While the Splat Packers, and many journalists writing about them, might posit that the Splat Packers’ films are political reactions to post-9/11, war-on-terror-era America, Guins’s work suggests that the Splat Pack’s films may have came about at this particular time for other reasons. American horror films did not transform from the ‘low-cal’, lightweight, low-gore films of the late 1990s to the darker,

60

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

more ‘serious’, blood-and-gore-soaked films of the Splat Pack because terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center or because the United States entered two disastrous wars. The historical moment of the Splat Pack’s emergence also coincided with the arrival of new media that was remediating and drastically changing the ways in which films – in particular, horror films – were viewed and received by their various audiences. This moment also coincided with independent distributor Lionsgate’s decision to draw upon Anchor Bay’s tactics to lend an air of ‘authenticity’, ‘oppositionality’ and ‘artistry’ to some horror films of their own to capitalise on the ‘DVD revolution’ and compete in a marketplace dominated by the majors. Commercial Works of Art: the Splat Pack on DVD The techniques utilised by distributors, such as Anchor Bay, that transformed once marginal horror movies into art objects definitely had an influence on Lionsgate, the unofficial ‘home’ of the Splat Pack, as they adopted many of Anchor Bay’s techniques when they began packaging and selling DVDs of films by Splat Pack directors. Thus, mainstream horror, once strictly the province of ‘low-cal’ horror, was remade in the image of marginal, subversive paracinema. Analysis of key titles by Splat Pack directors released on DVD by Lionsgate demonstrates how Lionsgate appropriated some of the same techniques utilised by Anchor Bay. Lionsgate even pioneered a few techniques beyond Anchor Bay’s to make their DVDs resemble ‘unique’ works of art and to offer highly desirable, customisable experiences for the home video consumer. One of Lionsgate’s most audacious DVDs was the first Splat Pack film they released on DVD in 2003, Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses. The cover for the DVD is tastefully basic. Against a black backdrop, it features a close-up of one of the many undead corpses that emerges in the film’s final sequence. This ghastly face is framed on the left by the title ‘Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses’. With Zombie’s already established celebrity as a musician, it was a given that his name would be featured prominently on the cover. Under the title of the film is a blurb touting it as ‘The Most Shocking Tale of Carnage Ever!’ Under this blurb is another, this time from Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas, describing the film as ‘Demonic Brilliance!’ The cover is embellished along the bottom with a shot of the eponymous house and a shot of an eerie graveyard, subtly promising that the film will live up to the high body count promised by the title. While this is a visually striking cover, what sets this DVD apart are its extra features. Included on the DVD are additional features that can be found on many DVD releases, such as director’s commentary, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and interviews with key players in the film. The most elaborate

61

selling the splat pack

and interesting extra features included, however, are the menus. For these, Lionsgate took interactive menus to a new level by having actors Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon Zombie appear as their characters – the demented Captain Spaulding, the murderous Otis Driftwood and the childish Baby, respectively – in live-action footage shot especially for the DVD menus. When the main menu loads, its backdrop looks like Captain Spaulding’s Fried Chicken and Gasoline, a seedy roadside attraction run by Haig’s character in the movie. A prompt appears, instructing viewers to ‘ring the bell for service’ – referring to a bell resting by a cash register on a cluttered checkout counter – by punching the ‘select’ button on their DVD remotes. When one rings the bell, Captain Spaulding actually enters from a door in the background and directly addresses the viewer with jokes, obscenities, taunts and threats such as, ‘If ya’ll don’t stop doin’ the asshole shuffle and pick one of these features [from the DVD menu], I’m-a come over there and put my boot up your ass!’. When the viewer finally picks an option, Spaulding makes another wisecrack – for instance, if the viewer picks ‘Scene Selections’, Spaulding shrugs and says, ‘Well, there ain’t a whole lotta shit you can do with Scene Selections, is they?’ – and the viewer is whisked away to another menu hosted by another character: Otis hosts the ‘Scene Selections’ menu, Baby does ‘Special Features’, and they both share duties on the ‘Set Up’ menu. The elaborate nature of the Corpses DVD suggests a few things. First, it

Figure 3.2  A personalised home video experience: the DVD menu for House of 1000 Corpses. © Lions Gate Films Home Entertainment.

62

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

seems to acknowledge that this film would encounter a majority of its audience on DVD. The immense amount of work put into the creation of the Corpses DVD, however – calling back the actors, shooting new segments with them, and so on – begins to look less like a basic desire for profit (profit that is virtually guaranteed when a low-budget horror film is released on video) and more like an attempt at making the consumer’s encounter with this DVD a unique, customisable experience. The care taken to construct this DVD clearly echoes the efforts of distributors such as Anchor Bay as they reposition once marginal cinema as art objects. While other Zombie releases were less elaborate in terms of their menus, they nonetheless borrowed other techniques that construct films on DVD as art objects. Most important among these techniques was an attempt at making the DVD look and feel like what Guins calls an ‘authored original’ (2005: 29). Guins explains that distributors practising this technique ‘place their directors on the market as auteurs in order to invoke value statements that valorise the director’s work as an art-object’ (2005: 29). Accordingly, the DVD release of Zombie’s next film, The Devil’s Rejects (2005), sports a cover with a banner at the top proclaiming that this release is the ‘2 Disc special edition director’s cut’. Zombie’s authorship is further emphasised by the words ‘Written and Directed by Rob Zombie’ that appear on the DVD’s cover directly under the film’s title, and the inclusion, on the release’s second disc, of a feature-length documentary titled ‘30 days in hell: The making of The Devil’s Rejects’ that features extensive behind-the-scenes footage of Zombie conceptualising and filming the movie. To capitalise on the cinema release of Zombie’s remake of Halloween (distributed by Dimension Pictures) Lionsgate continued to sell Zombie the auteur when they issued, two years later in the summer of 2007, the ‘Rob Zombie 3-Disc Collector’s Set’. This set reissued Lionsgate’s earlier releases of Corpses and the two-disc Rejects, only this time Zombie’s name is featured more prominently on the cover than the titles of the two films. Lionsgate sells Zombie’s auteur status just as much as they do his films, and this emphasis on auteurism is emblematic of Lionsgate’s attempts to frame these films, not as exploitation but as an ‘authored original’ piece of art. Issues of art, auteurism and DVDs converge in the case of Eli Roth. Using auteurism to sell films – and, more specifically, to sell films on DVD – has been a factor in Roth’s career since the beginning. While the DVD release of Roth’s first film, Cabin Fever, does not feature his name on the cover, it does feature the name of another bankable auteur: above a striking image of a shadowy cabin in the woods that resembles a skull and has been ominously tinted red, there is a quote from Peter Jackson proclaiming Cabin Fever as ‘An unrelenting, gruesomely funny bloodbath. I loved it!’ Jackson, who was, at the time, riding high on the global success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003), has a unique appeal as an auteur. Not only is he a recognisable name to the general

63

selling the splat pack

public, because of his involvement in the blockbuster Rings movies, but he also possesses cult appeal for his earlier work, made up of ‘“low” splatter horror and gore films, and then for his “high” art house film Heavenly Creatures [1994]’ (Wu, 2003: 84). In early publicity, Roth was linked to another notable auteur, as it was often cited that he interned for David Lynch.2 By connecting Roth to auteurs such as Lynch and Jackson, figures who, between them, run the gamut between art house acclaim, cult appeal and mainstream success, the discourses surrounding Roth seem to position him as a celebrity director with the power to appeal to popular, cult and art house audiences. When moving on to his Hostel films, Roth became attached to an even splashier personality: Quentin Tarantino, whom Corrigan argues ‘is in many ways the quintessential 1990s’ American auteur’ for the ways in which the director illustrates how ‘the artistic expression of contemporary directors is fully bound up with the celebrity industry of Hollywood’ (1998: 39, 38–9). Further, auteurism has ‘from its inception . . . been bound up with changes in industrial desires, technological opportunities, and marketing strategies’ (Corrigan, 1998: 40). Corrigan explains that one of the industrial and technological factors in the 1990s that engendered the success of an auteur like Tarantino was the ubiquity of home video technology (in the form of the VCR) that has ‘recuperated’ auteurs ‘as promotional stars’ who share their films in a seemingly direct manner through the medium of video (1998: 50). What Tarantino was to the VHS era, Roth attempts to be for the DVD era. The marketing and promotion of Roth’s Hostel films emulate the model set by Tarantino and make it clear that Roth found a fitting mentor in the mediaand-marketing-savvy director who worked as an executive producer on the films. In the case of the Hostel films, Lionsgate can doubly appeal to auteurism to sell these films because both Tarantino’s and Roth’s names are featured prominently on the posters. Their names quite literally frame the title: above the title reads ‘QUENTIN TARANTINO Presents’, and below is ‘Written and Directed By ELI ROTH’. Corrigan explains that Tarantino’s image is one of ‘a confrontational individual succeeding in Hollywood despite an uncompromising trash-art vision’ (1998: 39). Attaching Roth’s name to his in this manner throughout the release of the Hostel films assures audiences that Roth is similarly confrontational and uncompromising. It is with the film’s release on DVD, however, that Lionsgate’s marketing gives the consumer the promise that they are finally being given access to the renegade vision of these two auteurs. Four months after the January 2006 cinema release of Hostel, Lionsgate released the film on DVD in the United States. Identical to the film’s theatrical release posters, the DVD cover prominently features the names of Tarantino and Roth framing the title but, this time, there is a red banner above their names that announces that this DVD release contains the ‘Unrated Widescreen Cut’ of the film. The illicit nature of

64

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

this version of the film is further emphasised by a graphic that appears next to an image of the gnarled metal hook that dominates the box cover. This graphic makes it look as if someone has rubber stamped the words ‘Sick and Twisted Unrated’ on the cover. If this is not enough to let consumers know that they are in for a visceral experience when watching this film, the graphic has been made to look like someone has handwritten on the stamp. The letters ‘ER’ have been scratched in above the end of the word ‘Sick’, transforming it into ‘Sicker’. Similarly, the word ‘MORE’ has been scrawled in above the word ‘Twisted’, enhancing it into the phrase ‘More Twisted’. The insinuation is that the scratched-in additions to the stamp on the DVD cover originate from the authors’ – or auteurs’ – hands. These words guarantee consumers that Tarantino and Roth, two ‘confrontational’ and ‘uncompromising’ auteurs, are delivering an authentically horrifying experience. This pact is made possible by the intimate venue of home video where, supposedly, the auteur’s ‘true’ vision is allowed to flourish. These techniques clearly represent Lionsgate’s attempts to replicate the feel of the ‘authored original’, positioning DVDs of Hostel as art objects. It may seem paradoxical to argue that mass-produced objects such as DVDs are intended to be received as art objects. In the case of Lionsgate, this

Figure 3.3  Home video auteurs: Quentin Tarantino promotes Eli Roth’s Hostel. © Columbia Pictures Industry.

65

selling the splat pack

s­eemingly contradictory scenario comes into clearer focus when one considers the curious career of Tim Palen, art photographer and co-president of Theatrical Marketing at Lionsgate. Palen has overseen the marketing and promotion of Lionsgate’s Splat Pack films. In her Variety article, McClintock describes Palen as not just a corporate Hollywood ‘suit’ but as an artist, ‘an accomplished photographer’ who has ‘turned the selling of horror pics into an artform’ (McClintock, 2006: 1). In an article in the Los Angeles Times, published just before Hostel: Part II’s theatrical release, Patrick Goldstein describes Palen as ‘a master of guerrilla marketing for [Lionsgate’s] popular horror films’ (Goldstein, 2007). Goldstein proclaims, ‘In an era when most movie marketing material is dreary and unimaginative, Palen has quietly built a reputation as Hollywood’s most daring impresario’ (Goldstein, 2007). Palen’s photographs and designs have gained him enough notoriety that, in 2007, he released a coffee table book of his grotesque artwork, entitled GuTS. This book is quite the art object in its design. The cover is a close-up photograph of raw meat that makes the book look like a slab of meat. The book sits on an absorbent paper towel and is shrink-wrapped onto a white, styrofoam tray so that the whole item looks like meat packaged for sale at a grocery shop. GuTS offers a tantalising glimpse of Palen’s work, reproducing it in beautiful, high-quality photographs. Even more interesting are the ways in which the book frames the horror films by Splat Pack directors as works of ‘art’ and demands they be approached as such. Roth provides an introduction to the book that is brief, but illuminating. In praise of Palen’s work, Roth writes: His artistic eye not only shapes the way people see a subject but he shapes the way they see my movies before they even walk into the theater. Tim’s artwork tells the public that my films are disturbing, scary, and violent, yet done with an artistic eye. He says all of this with one image, and he has had a massive impact on how the public views my work, and views me personally. (quoted in Palen, 2007: 5) Roth’s comments reveal a great deal about how his films are sold and how audiences are encouraged to receive them. Palen’s approach to selling these films emphasises the familiar elements of exploitation cinema present in films like Roth’s (that the films are ‘disturbing, scary, and violent’) but, through his well-designed posters and DVD covers, he assures consumers that they are encountering an ‘artistic’ vision of a true auteur when they watch his films. Roth includes himself when discussing how Palen’s artwork sells his films (Palen’s work affects how the public ‘views [him] personally’), offering an example of how the image of the ‘renegade’ auteur is sold along with the auteur’s films. Fittingly, Roth himself is the subject of Palen’s camera in several of the photographs in GuTS. His introduction to Palen’s book is printed along-

66

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

side a photo of Roth dressed in a black suit, gloves and sunglasses, standing in a ruined, gutted house in the middle of the desert and looking very much the part of a gangster in one of Tarantino’s crime epics. Speaking of Tarantino, GuTS is introduced, on its title page, by a quote from the director. Tarantino proclaims that Palen’s work is ‘The perfect blend of SPLATTER, PORN, and Diane Arbus’ (quoted in Palen, 2007: 3). In 2007, the two most provocative elements of this blend would have been the first two, especially considering the controversial debate that erupted over the success of the Saw films and Hostel when New York Magazine critic David Edelstein labelled these films ‘torture porn’, films that use graphic violence to titillate and appeal to the viewers’ most perverse desires (Edelstein, 2006). Tarantino’s usage of the words here, emphasised with all capital letters, represents a ‘taking back’ of this term in the name of ‘art’. This point is embellished by Tarantino’s mention of photographer Diane Arbus, a figure whose famous work resides in the liminal space between horror-as-exploitation and horror-as-avant-garde. Joan Hawkins argues that the worlds of exploitation and art overlap to a point where the two are almost indistinguishable, especially in the field of horror. One of the points where the two seemingly separate worlds of art and exploitation began to overlap is when Freaks (Browning, 1932), a film that was ‘Initially made as a mainstream horror film at MGM’ and ‘pulled from mainstream distribution shortly after its initial release’ (Hawkins, 2000: 25), was leased to exploitation distributor Dwain Esper who rereleased the film on the exploitation circuit (Hawkins, 2000: 25). After this remediation of the film, Freaks was later remediated again, ending up on the art house circuit where it found one of its most ‘avid fans’ in Arbus (Hawkins, 2000: 165). Browning’s film inspired Arbus to undertake a ‘systematic exploration of freak culture’ as she began frequenting and photographing performers at ‘one of the last remaining freak shows in North America, Hubert’s Museum on Forty-second street’ (Hawkins, 2000: 166). While Arbus produced ‘unforgiving and brutally matter-of-fact’ portraits of ‘“freak” performers’, she was also inspired to take photos ‘of “normal” people’ that were ‘downright freakish’ (Hawkins, 2000: 166). Eventually, these photographs ‘were displayed, as part of a major retrospective of the photographer’s work, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1972’ (Hawkins, 2000: 167). For Hawkins, this is a key moment when the boundaries between horror exploitation and horror art become irrecoverably blurred: ‘Browning’s Freaks started as a mainstream horror film that migrated into the exploitation arena before being finally recuperated as an avantgarde or art project’ (2000: 167). With Arbus’s photographs displayed in the Museum of Modern Art, and described by Susan Sontag as ‘horror’ (quoted in Hawkins, 2000: 167), horror had travelled from the mainstream to exploitation to art (Hawkins, 2000: 167).

67

selling the splat pack

Tarantino’s invocation of Arbus in a coffee-table book of Palen’s commercial art suggests that horror’s trajectory has come full circle, from art to exploitation back into the mainstream as Palen’s art for mass-produced DVDs promises consumers that they are in for a horrifying but artistic experience. While Palen’s designs adorn film posters and other promotional material, these are often ephemeral, disappearing from cinemas as films open and close. The more lasting influence of Palen’s artwork is when it embellishes the artefact of the DVD, the ‘permanence’ of which insinuates that it will sit on collectors’ shelves for many years to come. This promise of films-on-DVD as an ‘artistic experience’ converges with the film industry’s sell-through pricing imperatives – not to mention the rush to fill the shelves of Wal-Mart and other retailers with new and varied product lines – to position the DVD as a collectable art object of permanence. The selling of Splat Pack horror titles and the personalities that have produced them on DVD is the industrial and historical context that has given rise to the Splat Pack. The initial hype of the Splat Pack discussed in Chapter 1 illustrates how effective Lionsgate has been in selling the directors in their ‘stable’ (in other words, directors whose films they are distributing) as ‘artists’. The effect of Lionsgate’s role as a distributor should not be minimised. When Alan Jones initially grouped together a cluster of young horror directors, his list included people such as Greg McLean, James Gunn, and Dave Payne alongside auteurcelebs such as Zombie and Roth. When the Splat Pack moniker migrated to the United States, however, directors such as McLean and Gunn were relatively ignored while membership congealed around those directors whose key films were being distributed in the United States by Lionsgate. McClintock’s Variety article even identifies Lionsgate as the Splat Pack’s ‘home studio’ (McClintock, 2006: 1). Thus, the Splat Pack looks less like a legitimate ‘movement’ than like an example of Lionsgate’s marketing muscle which capitalised on the rock stardom of a Rob Zombie or the salesmanship of an Eli Roth as effective tools for packaging and selling these films on DVDs. The DVD market, with its sellthrough pricing and appeal to collectability, has led mini-majors like Lionsgate to adopt the methods of speciality dealers when it comes to packaging and selling their horror titles. Tracing the Splat Pack’s emergence through the DVD market shows how mainstream and independent distributors were able to appropriate speciality dealers’ methods of selling paracinema. Thus, horror films on DVD were works of ‘art’ created by ‘artists’. Using the DVD platform and its attendant box cover and sleeve design to frame these horror films as ‘art’ performs another critical discursive function: it gives the films a patina of artistic validity and distances them from common, everyday horror films. Splat Pack films promise to cross boundaries, but they promise to do so tastefully, so as to not enrage any moral watchdog groups. Palen himself admits, ‘It’s easy to shock people. But you have to know when

68

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take one

you’re crossing the line. It’s all about appropriateness . . . or you run the risk of people shunning you’ (quoted in Goldstein, 2007). Indeed, in the film business, being shunned can be anathema to commercial success. In his Total Film article, Jones evokes the spectre of the video nasties controversy to lend cult credentials to the Pack but Lionsgate would never want their Splat Pack films to be seen as ‘nasties’ or legislated against as the nasties were. Egan observes: [the video nasties box covers’] heightened foregrounding of violent and excessive incidents and themes over narrative context or any notions of artistic or esoteric quality could be seen as a marked form of provocation in a British cultural climate where entertainment was supposed to stay in its culturally designated place and not indulge in the excessive, the forbidden or the unfamiliar. (2007: 56–7) While these covers were meant to titillate and entice consumers, Egan speculates that the covers may have had the unintended effect of attracting the ire of moral campaigners (2007: 57). An American corollary to the video nasties ban would be catastrophic for Hollywood, and especially for Lionsgate, an independent producer/distributor that could very easily be made into a scapegoat by the majors. Thus, Lionsgate framed their horror films as ‘art’ and kept them away from the realm of the irresponsible and distasteful. It was crucial that Lionsgate maintain this boundary as they moved away from Hollywood’s decades-old notion of ‘responsible entertainment’ and ventured into new territory by embracing the ‘Unrated’ label for their horror films on DVDs. The ways in which the DVD market affected the rating system enabled the studios to appropriate more than methods of selling paracinema; they were able to appropriate some of the extreme content of paracinema as well. The next chapter examines how the DVD format enabled more gore and more violence in horror films by the Splat Pack by moving ‘Unrated’ movies into the mainstream. Notes 1. Anchor Bay still handles the distribution of horror films on DVD and Blu-ray. In recent years, the company has attempted – with horror titles such as Hatchet (Green, 2007) and Frozen (Green, 2010) – to break into theatrical distribution without much success. 2. An interesting piece of discourse linking Roth to Lynch is a blog entry, entitled ‘Lessons Learned from David Lynch’, that Roth wrote for MTV’s Movie Blog and posted on 24 May 2007. Roth wrote a series of blog entries for MTV to promote the upcoming cinema release of Hotel: Part II (Roth 2007).

69

4. THE DVD REVOLUTION AND THE HORROR FILM, TAKE TWO: RISE OF THE ‘UNRATED’

‘The Unrated DVD Changed Everything’ One imperative in cultivating an appreciation for a work of ‘art’ is making certain that one has access to the artist’s entire vision. DVDs not only make it possible for films to be positioned and sold as art objects; they also give studios the opportunity to create the illusion for consumers that they are experiencing the entire film: complete, unadulterated and uncut. In the case of the horror film, Lionsgate and other distributors did this by releasing films ‘Unrated’ on DVD. This label promises consumers that no censorious organisations have come between them and the film which, in the case of the Splat Pack, has been discursively constructed as ‘art’. As Guins explains, this label is intimately linked to a film-on-DVD’s status as art object: ‘Even the “Not Rated” classification accompanying paracinema on DVD today is closer to a category of exemption attributed to art than the outlawed “NC-17” or nostalgic “X” afforded to filmic licentiousness’ (Guins, 2005: 28–9). As Chapter 3 outlines, the rush to sell films on DVD as art objects and collectables is one factor in how the Splat Pack was sold to a film-going – or a DVD-buying – a­ udience. Working in concert with this factor is Hollywood’s decision to release ‘Unrated’ films on DVD, another material change in film industry policy that facilitated the emergence of the Splat Pack. A few illuminating comments about ratings appear at the beginning of Jones’s article on the Splat Pack. These few provocative quotations are not from a member of the Splat Pack but from Tarantino. Tarantino had posi-

70

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

tioned himself as something of a mentor to Roth and to other Splat Packers. Not content to sit on the sidelines, Tarantino had got into the act himself. At the time of his comments to Jones, he was taking a break from working on Death Proof, a homage to drive-in era car films and videotape-era slasher films that would play alongside Robert Rodriguez’s apocalyptic zombie movie Planet Terror as the combination film Grindhouse, released in the United States in April 2007. Jones begins his article with Tarantino proclaiming: ‘No question – this is a fantastic time to be making real horror movies’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 101). As Tarantino continues ‘in his trademark motormouth fashion’ (Jones, 2006: 101), he identifies the reason for this horror renaissance: Ratings systems have drastically changed . . . Censor boards like the MPAA in America have finally realized horror movies with extreme gore and horrendous violence are clearly marked. Audiences want to see them because they are so bloody and brutal. That’s the whole point! (quoted in Jones, 2006: 101) Tarantino’s connection between the Splat Pack ‘movement’ and changes in industry policy is astute. Throughout most of the journalistic writing on the Splat Pack, however, this attention to the industry was generally drowned out by discussion – both by journalists and by the film-makers themselves – about how their films were reflections of post-9/11 America. The issue of ratings resurfaces briefly in the New York Post article when Roth admits to Tucker that the introduction of the ‘unrated DVD changed everything’ (quoted in Tucker, 2006): When a [horror] movie is released unrated, it probably triples the audience. Hostel came out and it was outselling [The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Adam Adamson, 2005)] at WalMart. So for Hostel: Part II, Lionsgate is saying, ‘Go nuts. We don’t want to even do an R-rated DVD’. (quoted in Tucker, 2006) If Hostel was outselling the first Chronicles of Narnia film at Wal-Mart, Roth would have much to crow about and Lionsgate would have much cause to celebrate. Superstore retailer Wal-Mart became crucial territory for studios during the DVD era; Wal-Mart’s ability to move DVD product led them to ‘account for most of the studios’ revenues’ (Epstein, 2010: 178). Doubly impressive would be outselling a film like Narnia, considering that ‘kids’ videos’ were the ‘ultimate accelerant for the sell through market’ (Ulin, 2009: 173). Thus, beating a children’s film in sales would be a significant accomplishment. Interestingly, Jeff Ulin argues that the emergence of the DVD market and the profit it promised spurred ‘the reinvigoration of [Disney’s] animated film

71

selling the splat pack

business’ (2009: 173) which brought about an industry-wide investment in animation and children’s films. When Roth brags about his films’ profitability and how this profitability is tied to the DVD format, something similar may have been the case with the proliferation of violent ‘Unrated’ horror films also spurred by the DVD market. The DVD market enabled, for the first time, mainstream Hollywood studios to release ‘Unrated’ films widely. Officially releasing a film without an MPAAsanctioned G, PG, or R rating – with the additional ratings PG-13 and NC-17 added in 1984 and 1990 respectively – used to be an uncommon practice for the studios because of the public relations problems it created. DVD made this practice more common for several reasons, however. Video was not subjected to the same stringent rating system as cinema releases. Also significant were the format’s interactivity, sell-through pricing, and major retailers such as Blockbuster agreeing to sell and rent ‘Unrated’ DVDs. While this change has affected all genres, it has significantly affected the production and release of horror films, a genre that has a history of being a contested terrain in terms of censorship. Jack’s Rules: the Ratings System and the Stigma of X The adaptation of the studios’ philosophy concerning ratings policy warrants a closer examination. Chapter 2 noted how a change in industry self-regulation contributed to the release of films from American horror’s ‘Golden Age’ in the late 1960s and early 1970s. While these then graphic films may be read as subversive critiques of, among other things, the United States’s involvement in Vietnam, these films also represented how the then restructuring studios took advantage of Jack Valenti’s new ratings system to get audiences into cinemas to see provocative content they could not see at home on television. The ‘subversive’ content of these films was largely a by-product of Hollywood’s desire to regain ground after a recession and losing audiences to television. It is interesting, then, that Splat Packers should so often cite the horror film-makers of the 1970s as an influence on their own films. There is certainly a connection between these two groups of film-makers but a less rebellious one than they lead consumers to believe. One of the strongest resemblances between the horror directors of the 1970s and the Splat Packers is that they both emerge from an industrial change in ratings policy. The trajectories of audience manipulation in these two instances move in reverse directions, however: if the ratings system adopted in 1968 intended to draw adult audiences out of their homes and back into cinemas, the ‘Unrated’ DVD suggests that, to see a film completely and properly, one has to see it at home. Before considering the rise of the ‘Unrated’ DVD, a summary of the history of ratings such as X and NC-17 will illustrate that these ratings do not represent greater

72

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

freedom for film-makers but, instead, allow the industry more control over the film marketplace. When Valenti created the ratings system, he copyrighted the G, PG, and R ratings but neglected to copyright the X rating. Valenti’s pitch for not copyrighting this rating was grounded in terms of opening up the market and allowing film-makers’ freedom of expression. Valenti explained: ‘We didn’t copyright the X rating from a legal standpoint. It had to be open-ended so that if somebody doesn’t want to submit a picture, they can use the X. Otherwise, we could be challenged on First Amendment grounds’ (quoted in Wyatt, 1999: 241). Valenti claimed that the X rating gave film-makers the option of not submitting their films to be reviewed by CARA. If film-makers chose to make use of this ‘freedom’, they could simply label their films with an X and release them in the marketplace. If any film-makers attempted to take this tack, however, they faced significant, if not insurmountable, obstacles in the movie marketplace. When Valenti instated the ratings system, ‘approximately 50 percent of theatres across the country refused to play X films, and as many as thirty large city newspapers, along with many television and radio stations, refused to advertise them’ (Wyatt, 1999: 244). Thus, any film released with an X rating or without a rating – in other words, any film that attempted to circumvent CARA and MPAA standards that were controlled and set by the major studios – were marginalised in the marketplace and had little to no hope of economic success. As ‘the X rating became synonymous with stronger adult (later pornographic) content’ (Wyatt, 1999: 244), this rating did obtain cachet as a marketing tool for the hardcore film industry. Key pieces of legislation, however, ended this brief period of success by favouring the studio members of the MPAA. Wyatt and Jon Lewis both cite the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Miller v. California as perhaps the most significant piece of legislation in this regard. In this case, the Supreme Court ‘relinquished power over deciding on obscene media to the individual states and localities’ (Wyatt, 1999: 254). Wyatt notes, ‘The implications for the porno market were far-reaching – ­suddenly producers and distributors of both hard- and soft-core feared that their market faced erosion through possible prosecution on a market-bymarket basis across the country’ (1999: 254). The implications reached further than just hardcore and soft-core film-makers and distributors. As Chapter 2 notes, the decision in Miller v. California (1973), coupled with decisions in the cases Paris Adult Theater I v. Slaton, United States v. 12 200’ Reels of Super 8 mm Film, and United States v. Orito, ‘gave the MPAA exclusive access to the theatrical marketplace’ (Lewis, 2000: 263). Valenti’s ratings system made it so that only pictures with CARA-approved ratings (G, PG, R and later PG-13) would be guaranteed easy passage through cinema distribution and exhibition circuits. Films without a CARA-approved rating would get little

73

selling the splat pack

or no a­ dvertisement and ‘were fair game for local prosecution’ (Lewis, 2000: 273). The method set in place for cinema distribution and exhibition by Valenti’s rating system still holds today for the most part. Cinema chains, many of which are now back in the hands of the studios (or, more specifically, the corporate conglomerates that own the studios) after the decision in the 1985 case United States v. Capital Service, will not screen X or ‘Unrated’ films (Lewis, 2000: 70).1 Even when CARA added the NC-17 rating in 1990, the designation did not significantly alter the landscape of how films were distributed or exhibited in cinemas. Ostensibly, MPAA members drew up the NC-17 label to test the waters and discover how profitable distribution and exhibition of more adult-themed materials would be. The answer, after the lukewarm to hostile reception of such films as Henry and June (Kaufman, 1990) and Showgirls (Verhoven, 1995), seemed to be resoundingly negative. This result should not be surprising because, as Jon Lewis explains: NC-17-rated films face significant industrial obstacles. They don’t play in most mall theaters (where leasing agreements prohibit such fare) or at many multiplexes (for fear of folks sneaking in after paying to see another title). None of the premium pay-channels . . . screen NC-17 films. Blockbuster Video and Kmart won’t shelve NC-17-rated videos. (Lewis, 2001: 26) Perhaps memories of the taboo X rating loomed so large in the media marketplace that NC-17 never stood much of a chance. After years of pitching the ratings system as a way to protect children – Valenti often argued that the ‘primary objective’ of the ratings system was to protect children from harmful or pornographic materials (quoted in Lewis, 2000: 141) – the MPAA had difficulty selling NC-17 films, such as Henry and June and Showgirls, that looked a great deal like soft-core pornography. After home video had been established as the primary venue for hardcore pornography, it was difficult to entice audiences to pay to see soft-core in the cinema and run the risk of public embarrassment of being seen at a ‘dirty movie’ when they could enjoy hardcore pornography on their VCRs in the privacy of their homes. The biggest strike against the NC-17 rating was that the MPAA never intended for it to work anyway. The NC-17 rating resulted from protests by ‘independent producers and distributors, who led the charge of the longstanding accusation that CARA’s policies prevent serious adult films from being made’ (Sandler, 2007: 84). By creating the NC-17 rating, Valenti and the MPAA seemed to be catering to independent producers and distributors but the establishment of this rating was similar to Valenti’s subterfuge in 1968 when he argued that the X rating would offer freedom for film-makers who wished

74

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

to operate outside the Hollywood film industry. The change from X to NC-17 was ‘merely cosmetic. The MPAA and NATO conducted business as usual, continuing to abandon the adults-only category, as did video store chains, by now a well-established lucrative ancillary market for theatrical films’ (Sandler, 2007:85). Like the X rating, NC-17 was a handy tool for the MPAA to marginalise producers and distributors that were outside Hollywood’s inner circle. The MPAA’s disapproval and other tactics aside, the NC-17 rating was not a good fit for either the family-friendly or hardcore crowd. It simply was not worth the risk of producing and distributing NC-17 films for cinema and for home video markets, especially given the increasingly global reach of corporate Hollywood. The primary purpose of the film industry’s self-regulatory policies is to make certain that Hollywood creates ‘a product that won’t have problems in the marketplace’ (Lewis, 2000: 7), in other words, a film that will offend as few people as possible, encounter little to no resistance at the local level, and have the ability to play without problems in as many media markets as possible. Outside the System? Home Video and Ratings This ratings system, however, has been mostly restricted to cinema exhibition sites and has not affected home video in the same ways: Unlike television or radio systems, the activities of the global video market were not dependent on government license or large-scale capital investment in the institutional conditions of production and dissemination. The porous trade in video hardware and software therefore could operate outside systems of regulation and control. (McDonald, 2007: 85) Rating policies for the distribution of feature films on video were different from Hollywood’s policies for cinema-shown films, as movies on videotape did not necessarily have to adhere to MPAA-sanctioned ratings. Instead, films on videotape were routinely released as ‘Unrated’, a label that was able to escape the pornographic stigma of the X rating. While ‘Unrated’ films had a difficult time playing in cinemas, ‘Unrated’ versions of cinema releases released on videotape did not, for the most part, encounter the same obstacles in the United States. Aside from more lenient regulatory policies, home video was a viable avenue for the release of ‘Unrated’ films for several other reasons. With home video, greater responsibility is shifted to the consumer and away from the producer, distributor or retailer. If shopping mall cinemas will not show films beyond an R because of leasing agreements, these agreements do not extend to the home. Similarly, with home video, there is no cinema manager who has to worry about children paying to see a PG movie and sneaking into an ‘Unrated’ film.

75

selling the splat pack

If an adult rents an ‘Unrated’ videotape, brings it into the home, and a child in the home views the tape without permission, it would be impossible for the adult to blame the distributor of the videotape. Ultimately, even as cases like Miller v. California redefined the regulation of ‘obscene matter in public places’ better to suit and protect MPAA members, it left ‘constitutional doctrines of privacy in the home’ relatively untouched (Sandler, 2007: 59). For these reasons, ‘Unrated’ films on home video posed minimal risk for producers and distributors in the United States. Many films issued as ‘Unrated’ on videotape were horror films from independent producers and mini-majors that had to have some scenes of violence or gore edited in order to obtain an R rating. Frederick Wasser explains that, after the advent of the VCR: Independent producers and mini-major studios such as Orion, Vestron, DeLaurentiis, Carolco (allied with LIVE), and Cannon did not have big libraries [that they could reissue on video] and therefore expanded their production through the mid-1980s in anticipation that the global video market would pay for more new movies. (2008: 124) These independents and mini-majors often focused their energies on ‘the production of properties that could be easily exploited in ancillary markets’ (Tzioumakis, 2006: 223). They also pioneered the possibilities of the home video market by offering their horror films, which necessarily had to be rated R to play in cinemas, as ‘Unrated’ on videotape by reinstating footage (sometimes only amounting to a few seconds) that had to be cut from the film to obtain an R rating for cinema release. Even though the home video market for VHS set a precedent for the release of ‘Unrated’ films, the ‘Unrated’ horror film on videotape did not bring about the sea change for the horror film that the ‘Unrated’ DVD did in the late 1990s and 2000s. There are several reasons the ‘Unrated’ film on videotape failed to bring about this change. One is that the majors neglected to utilise fully the economic possibilities of ‘Unrated’ videotapes. A brief look at how Paramount handled the various releases of its lucrative Friday the 13th franchise offers an illuminating case study of the majors’ reluctance to venture into ‘Unrated’ territory during the VHS era, even when horror fans were clamouring for them to do so. Paramount, Friday the 13th, the VHS Era and Ratings Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980) was a financial triumph for Paramount Pictures when it was released in 1980. Shot on a minuscule budget of just over half a million dollars, the independently produced slasher film was a sleeper hit for distributor Paramount, grossing almost $40 million in the United States

76

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

(Bracke, 2005: 314). The film’s success should not have come as a huge surprise: it had a catchy, memorable title and its plot closely followed the formula of John Carpenter’s Halloween, a sleeper hit two years earlier. One of the keys to success in Hollywood is to offer a film that is similar to a previous hit but just different enough to convince people who paid to see the earlier film that they are not paying to see the exact same thing again. One of the ways Friday the 13th differentiated itself from Halloween was having a higher body count; the trailer for Friday the 13th promised thirteen victims, as opposed to Halloween’s five.2 Another way Friday the 13th differentiated itself from Halloween was by promising its viewers kills with plenty of blood and gore which had not been central to the relatively bloodless Halloween. As director Cunningham explains, ‘Halloween was a real artistic piece of work, but I knew that Friday was going to be very gory’ (quoted in Grove, 2005: 16). Cunningham hired Tom Savini, a special effects artist who specialised in gore and was riding high after the success of Romero’s 1978 ‘Unrated’ zombie epic Dawn of the Dead for which Savini supplied gore effects. Savini’s work on Friday the 13th did not disappoint, and several moments – like one victim (Kevin Bacon) being killed by having an arrow shoved through his throat, another victim (Jeannine Taylor) receiving an axe blow to the face, and the killer (Betsy Palmer) being bloodily bested when the film’s ‘Final Girl’ (Andrienne King) decapitates her with a machete – became beloved set pieces among horror fans. Despite the gory kills, Friday the 13th had relatively few problems when Paramount submitted it to CARA. According to Peter Bracke, ‘after only two submissions, the MPAA requested a mere nine seconds of deletions from the film’s graphic murder sequences before granting it an R classification’ (2005: 40). Bracke finds it surprising that Friday the 13th was required to cut so little from its running time because it is, as he proclaims, a film that ‘revel[s] in the kind of lurid, sadistic violence that tested not only the standards of the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board, but all manner of good taste, propriety and social responsibility’ (2005: 40). In Hollywood under Valenti’s ratings system, however, the decision to pass Friday the 13th with as few cuts as possible makes complete sense. Because Paramount is an MPAA member, the MPAA wants Paramount’s films to play in as many venues as possible, something that obtaining one of Valenti’s copyrighted ratings assures. If violence and gore are elements that differentiate Friday the 13th as a product, it is in the interest of Paramount and the MPAA that the film retain as much gore as possible to draw curious customers into the cinema but not so much that the film would cause public relations problems. After Friday the 13th concluded its profitable cinema run, Paramount neglected to restore to the film the nine seconds cut from the cinema release and issue Friday the 13th on home video as ‘Unrated’. Several factors account

77

selling the splat pack

Figure 4.1  The unkindest cut: an image from the nine seconds cut from Friday the 13th to obtain an R rating. © Paramount Pictures/Georgetown Productions.

for this decision. Paramount had been purchased by zinc and sugar giant Gulf+Western in 1966. Thus, the studio was no stranger to the rules that made global corporate conglomeration work. Valenti had placed a stigma on X or ‘Unrated’ that remained in 1980. Even though the ‘uniqueness’ of a film such as Friday the 13th depended upon the presence of graphic violence, the potential public relations problems releasing an ‘Unrated’ version of Friday the 13th could cause corporate parent Paramount were not worth the risk.3 Simply put, in 1980 ‘Unrated’ was simply too close to the stigma of X. The economic and public relations problems that dealing in X or ‘Unrated’ fare could cause Paramount were brought to life on 23 October 1980 when critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert devoted an entire episode of their television programme to starting a campaign of moral outrage against slasher films, a cycle that both critics blamed Friday the 13th for starting (Bracke, 2005: 45; Nowell, 2011: 228). Even worse, a ‘vast majority of national critics’ joined Siskel and Ebert’s campaign (Bracke, 2005: 45). This backlash put Paramount in a difficult position. They wanted to make more money by exploiting what was now a marketable title and producing more Friday the 13th films. They also had to worry about including too much gore and graphic violence in the series, however, and getting stuck with an X rating, especially in the cinema market. This conundrum placed Paramount in a situation where they had to provide just enough violence to please the viewers for these films but not enough to get an X rating and encounter difficulties in the marketplace. Paramount’s approach to the sequels to Friday the 13th predictably left

78

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

some fans disappointed. This disappointment is evident both in Chas Balun’s movie guide, The Gore Score (1987), and John McCarty’s, The Official Splatter Movie Guide (1989), both of which are geared towards the gore-andsplatter-hungry audience. This approach is apparent in Balun’s movie ranking system for The Gore Score: Besides employing the customary one to four star (skull) rating system in assessing the relative merits of each film, I have added a second numerical rating that deals with elements totally unrelated to whatever artistic or aesthetic virtues the film may possess. This numerical appraisal based on a scale from one to ten, is . . . The Gore Score. This evaluation, then, deals with nothing but the quantity of blood, brains, guts, and assorted precious bodily fluids, spilled during the course of the film. (Balun, 1987: 9) Balun hopes that ‘both the serious student of contemporary horror as well as the totally undiscriminating, bloodthirsty, sociopathic gorehound’ will find his dual rating system valuable (1987: 9) adding, with a wink, ‘I know which drawer I fall into. That’s why I thought the splatter rating was of such fundamental importance’ (1987: 9). McCarty’s approach to evaluating films is similar to Balun’s. Guins cites Balun and McCarty as ‘definitive voice[s]’ in the fan discourses surrounding gore and splatter films in the 1980s (2005: 22). Their growing disenchantment with Friday the 13th as the series continued throughout 1980s offers a glimpse into the sometimes hostile relationship horror fans had with the Friday the 13th franchise based on how they felt the series disappointed when it came to delivering graphic gore. Like many fans, Balun and McCarty admire the first film. Awarding the film three-and-a-half skulls out of four, Balun praises the first Friday as ‘fast paced and graphic’ with ‘Imaginative murders’ and ‘great effects work by Tom Savini’ (1987: 27); he gives the film a seven out of ten on the all-important ‘gore score’ scale (1987: 27). McCarty likewise praises the first film as ‘the controversial box-office smash that propelled the independent, low-budget splatter movie into the big time’ (1989: 54). Balun and McCarty begin to display a bit of wariness, however, with the second film, Friday the 13th Part 2 (Miner, 1981). McCarty grumbles, ‘In this and most subsequent Friday the 13th flicks, the MPAA insisted on cuts and Paramount agreed to avoid an X rating’ (1989: 55). Though McCarty is disappointed about there being less gore in this sequel, he shrugs it off and ends his review by admitting that the film is ‘Still fairly splattery, though’ (1989: 55). Balun, on the other hand, has no words of praise for the film: ‘Heavily cut by censors, this sequel is definitely the weakest of the lot . . . An infuriating . . . waste of time’ (1987: 27). As the series wore on, Balun’s fury over the lack of gore in these films reaches a fever pitch. When reviewing the fifth film, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

79

selling the splat pack

(Steinmann, 1985), Balun complains that the film ‘blows it by having the relatively bloodless murders happen OFF screen’ (1987: 28). Balun makes his rage personal when reviewing the next film, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives! (McLoughlin, 1986). Not content with merely pointing out that ‘almost all the signature killings happen OFF screen’ (1987: 28), Balun accuses the director of making the film with a ‘bloodless and wimpy hand’ (1987: 28). McCarty’s disenchantment with the series also develops into outright hostility as he begins his review of Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (Buechler, 1988): This latest installment in the long-running series contains no surprises. In fact, even the gore is less explicit, due to more stringent controls from the ratings board. The filmmakers have the killings down to a science. The camera cuts away at exactly the right moment so that we think we’ve seen more than what is really shown (in fact, so tightly timed are these shots that if you happen to blink at just the right moment, you may end up thinking you’ve seen much less than is actually shown). (1989: 56) If Balun and McCarty are representative of fan discourse surrounding the Friday the 13th series, one may ascertain three things. First, there was immense fan interest in seeing Friday the 13th films with a large amount of gore. Secondly, the fans were hungry for more gore than image-conscious, MPAA member, corporate-owned Paramount was willing to offer in the R-rated cinema cuts of their films. Third, Paramount failed to capitalise on the less restrictive format of videotape as an avenue of giving these customers what they wanted. Both Balun’s and McCarty’s books – with their lists of films spanning several years – were meant to be guidebooks for the video renter and/ or collector. In short, releasing these films in an ‘Unrated’ format apparently was not an option for Paramount. Because fans were clamouring for more gore in their Friday the 13th films – gore that would be allowable in an ‘Unrated’ cut of the film on home video – releasing these films ‘Unrated’ on home video could have been profitable for Paramount but the stigma that Valenti’s restructuring of the rating system placed upon the X or ‘Unrated’ film still held sway more than a decade after its creation and simply made it not worth the trouble Paramount could get into with moral guardians or unpredictable markets. It is also possible that it simply did not occur to Paramount to release alternative versions on home video because of the video cassette format. DVD was drastically different from the home video formats that had come before in how it stressed interactivity and changeability. In contrast, the video cassette was, like film, ‘a linear medium, working along the single plane of record, play, rewind and fast-forward’ (McDonald, 2007: 1). The linearity of the videotape format perhaps encouraged studio executives to view their feature films as set, stable objects, not as something that could be added to or taken away from

80

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

after being prepared for cinema release. The movie-on-video cassette was supposed to replicate the cinema experience, not deviate from it. Also, retaining the R rating for a film set it apart from other films, such as hardcore pornography, that were released direct to video in an ‘Unrated’ form. Perhaps the ultimate reason that Paramount refused to release the Friday the 13th films ‘Unrated’ on videotape is that, despite fan interest in these titles, releasing ‘Unrated’ videos was not that profitable a proposition for them. The VHS market was based on renting videotapes, not selling them. Under this model, when a video became popular and was rented repeatedly, the video shop enjoyed the lion’s share of the profits, not the studios which profited only from the initial sale of the videotape to the shop. Videotapes of a popular franchise such as Friday the 13th were an easy initial sale to video shops that would be happy to have a cinema cut to offer their customers. Offering anything beyond that might financially benefit the video shop but the financial benefits would be negligible and not worth the headache that could possibly emerge from trading in ‘Unrated’ materials. Paramount had a plethora of reasons not to make their horror films available in ‘Unrated’ versions on video cassette. ‘Unrated’ Videotapes: from Margin to Centre During the VHS era, price also marginalised the ‘Unrated’ videotape. Because the market for videotapes was built on the rental model, and the imagined audience that would buy and collect horror films on VHS was small, studios and releasing houses increased the prices for videotapes of horror films so their risk in producing and distributing these products was significantly defrayed. Tracking pricing trends for horror movies on videotape reveals how high the prices for these items were. For ‘Unrated’ videotapes, the prices increase even more. These high prices, like the majors’ reluctance to adopt the ‘Unrated’ videotape as a viable format, kept the ‘Unrated’ videotape from having much of an impact on the ways in which horror films were made during the VHS era. One can track pricing trends for horror movies on videotape during this era by surveying video sellers’ advertisements in Fangoria magazine, a hub for horror fans during the 1980s. Hoping to capitalise on Fangoria’s base of horror fans, several video-by-mail speciality dealers – like Michigan’s Marshall Discount Video Service and Sacramento’s Dickens Video By Mail – took out advertisements to publicise their wares in nearly every issue of Fangoria. These advertisements reveal the remarkable extent to which prices of horror videotapes were marked up, even years after the institution of sell through pricing. In the June 1987 issue, one dealer offers classic titles from Universal’s horror canon, such as Dracula and Frankenstein, for the sizeable fee of $59.95 each. These prices, five years after the introduction of sell through pricing, indicate that studios felt these types of films for sale on videotape appealed only to

81

selling the splat pack

niche viewers and priced them so that selling to this limited audience would be profitable. If the audience for horror films on videotape was niche, the audience for ‘Unrated’ horror films on videotape was even smaller. This is reflected in the prices of ‘Unrated’ videotapes that are even more expensive than the classic horror films on videotape. After more time passed and VHS penetration increased, prices of horror titles began to get closer to sell through prices but the prices for ‘Unrated’ fare remained high. In the July 1990 issue of Fangoria, Dickens Video by Mail took out an advertisement of ‘Uncut’ and ‘Unrated’ titles for prices that would leave even the most well-to-do gorehound’s chequebook in pain. Available for $59.95 are ‘Uncut’ versions of such titles as the notorious rape–revenge film I Spit on Your Grave (Zarchi, 1978) and the epic Italian zombie gorefest Zombie (Fulci, 1979).4 This advertisement for Dickens shows two pricing tiers that are even more expensive: $79.95 and $89.95. A glance at the films available on ‘Uncut’ and ‘Unrated’ video shows that it was mostly the independents and mini-majors who were taking advantage of the ‘Unrated’ video format. For instance, two films that Dickens was selling ‘Unrated’ for $79.95 are Bad Taste (Jackson, 1987) and Nail Gun Massacre (Leslie and Lifton, 1985) both of which were distributed on video in the United States by Magnum Entertainment, a distributor that specialised in low-budget exploitation. Even further up the price range, on sale for $89.95, is a parade of titles from some of the 1980s’ most prolific independents and mini-majors: The Carpenter (Wellington, 1988) and Night of the Demons (Tenney, 1988) both distributed on VHS by Republic Pictures Home Video, Waxwork (Hickox, 1988) distributed by Vestron, and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (Randel, 1988) distributed by New World Pictures. As Yannis Tzioumakis observes, companies like Vestron and New World ‘exploit[ed] specifically’ the ‘highly unusual circumstances’ brought about by the rise of ancillary markets in the 1980s (2006: 223). These advertisements for ‘Unrated’ movies on videotape, however, reveal several significant factors that kept the ‘Unrated’ video from having much of an impact on mainstream consumption habits during the VHS era. First, the high cost of ‘Unrated’ videos, marked up to defray financial risks for producers and distributors, kept ‘Unrated’ materials from having any sort of support from mainstream film watchers. Instead, these high-priced ‘Unrated’ films on VHS attracted cult enthusiasts with the interest and the financial means to collect the videotapes. While the ‘Unrated’, collectors-item film did not enter the mainstream at this point in history, these videotapes did, at least, set a precedent for ‘Unrated’, ‘Collector’s edition’ DVDs that would follow later when the DVD market aimed to make collectors out of every customer. At this time, though, the high prices for some of the ‘Unrated’ videotapes (a few of the titles on Dickens’s list would be near a hundred dollars once shipping and

82

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

handling costs were added) would have kept them out of the price range even for some videotape collectors. Another strike against ‘Unrated’ videotapes catching on and thus affecting the way that Hollywood does business was the major studios’ challenge to offer their products as ‘Unrated’ on home video and maintain good public relations. The major studios would have to work out how to seek profit in the ‘Unrated’ business while not ruining their profits in major markets with bad public relations. Just as these advertisements reveal both the high cost of ‘Unrated’ videotapes and the majors’ hesitance to get involved in the ‘Unrated’ business, however, they also show that things were beginning to change and that the ‘Unrated’ video was making its way to the mainstream. Though Dickens Video by Mail sold a substantial number of ‘Unrated’ videos for astronomical prices, they also offered a few titles at the sell through, consumer-friendly prices of $19.95 and $14.95. Predictably, most of the titles offered at sell through were independent productions such as Empire Pictures’s horror–comedy Re-Animator (Gordon, 1985) and Craven’s infamous Last House on the Left which was being distributed on videotape at the time by Vestron. That these ‘Unrated’ films were offered at the same sell through prices as Hollywood blockbusters and family films was a sign of things to come. Another was the majors’ gradual warming to the ‘Unrated’ format represented on this list, in part, by a couple of titles offered for the sell through price of $14.95. Listed at this price were ‘Uncut’ versions of Warner Bros.’s cult classic Blade Runner (Scott, 1982) and Carolco’s supernatural thriller Angel Heart (Parker, 1987). Again, it is clear that the mainstream was still playing it safe when it came to home video and ‘Unrated’ material in particular; these two choices for ‘Uncut’ release possessed a certain air of respectability. Bombing at the box office, Scott’s Blade Runner had, by 1990, been reassessed in many circles as a maligned masterpiece from a visionary director. Similarly, Alan Parker, with films such as Midnight Express (1978) and Birdy (1984), had established himself as an ‘artistic’ director, a label that evaded most horror directors at this point. After Parker famously clashed with the ratings board over having to remove approximately ten seconds from a love-making scene between actors Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet in Angel Heart, the inclusion of these lost seconds for an ‘Unrated’ release on home video could easily be framed as the restoration of an artist’s vision and was one of ‘the earliest unrated and unedited . . . Hollywood and independent films released in the ancillary markets’ (Sandler, 2007: 93). New Line Cinema could probably not claim ‘artistic’ credibility when they released an ‘Unrated’ version of A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (Hopkins, 1989), the fifth instalment in their Nightmare on Elm Street series. Nevertheless, in the same advertisement for Dickens Video by Mail, New Line, through Media Home Entertainment, their home video distributor, was

83

selling the splat pack

Figure 4.2  Serving up more gore: A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child goes ‘Unrated’ on video. © New Line Cinema/Heron Communications.

­ ffering an ‘Unrated’ version of this film for the princely sum of $89.95. While, o at this point in its history, it would be inaccurate to call New Line a ‘major’, it was certainly not marginal. Though the company had started in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a distributor for underground fare such as Reefer Madness (Gasnier, 1936) and John Waters’s early films, it had achieved mainstream success with the Nightmare films which, by 1989, had grossed a total of around $170 million dollars at the United States box office, not to mention revenue from home video, merchandising, and other tie-ins. New Line ‘officially’ became a part of corporate Hollywood in 1993 when it was acquired by Turner Broadcasting which was, in turn, acquired by conglomerate giant TimeWarner in 1996. New Line had been a major player for at least a decade before these acquisitions, however, owing, in no small part, to their success with the Nightmare on Elm Street series. New Line’s decision to release an ‘Unrated’ version of A Nightmare on Elm Street: A Dream Child, a horror franchise film with little or no ‘artistic’ credibility, represents a major step towards the mainstream distribution of ‘Unrated’ exploitation films. Unlike Paramount which, as of late 1990, was offering its Friday the 13th films at sell through prices but only in R rated versions, New Line seemed to be responding to fan viewers – like those represented by Balun’s and McCarty’s writings – who were demanding more gore in franchise horror films. It is important to note, however, that this decision to issue ‘Unrated’ horror on videotape does not represent a daring move or a commitment to artistic integrity on New Line’s part. Rather, their decision

84

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

to put out this instalment of the Nightmare series in an ‘Unrated’ version on videotape probably represents an attempt to cultivate a new avenue of revenue for a film series which had reached a point of saturation that was harming its value as a franchise. The Nightmare on Elm Street series had been a financial success for New Line, so much so that head of production Robert Shaye has often been cited as referring to the studio as ‘the house that Freddy built’ referring, of course, to Freddy Krueger, the wisecracking anti-hero of the Elm Street series. The first Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984) was a massive hit for New Line, grossing over $25 million in the United States against a budget that was just under $2 million. The grosses from Elm Street films continued to climb until A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (Harlin, 1988) grossed a series-high of $49 million domestically. The success of these films encouraged New Line to develop a series of spin-offs in various media markets, including toys, comic books and a syndicated horror anthology television show entitled Freddy’s Nightmares. The franchise’s fortunes took a turn for the worse in the summer of 1989, however, when the next film in the series, The Dream Child, grossed only $22 million domestically, less than half that of its predecessor, and became the lowest-grossing film of the series. When considered in this light, New Line’s decision to issue the film ‘Unrated’ on videotape seems like an attempt to revitalise a franchise that had reached the point of oversaturation. Just as Freddy had reached the mainstream and began to appear ‘too safe’ for the gore-hungry types of fans represented by Balun and McCarty, New Line made the financially sound decision of appealing to these viewers by reinserting a minute or so of gory special effects that had been cut from the R rated cinema release. Owing both to more lenient rating restrictions on videotapes and to responsibility for content being shifted from distributor to consumer during the video era, the MPAA did not object. Issuing the fifth Elm Street film in an ‘Unrated’ version on videotape evidently paid off for New Line for they employed a similar strategy when they acquired the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise and attempted to revitalise the property with Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (Marcus, 1993). After the film failed to find an audience at the box office – grossing an anaemic $15.9 million in the United States – New Line issued an ‘Unrated’ version of the film on videotape. The videotape was issued in a box bearing a label that proclaims the videotape is a ‘Special Collector’s Edition’ of the film. The inclusion of this label is an early example of the mainstreaming of sales strategies that were once used to appeal only to the most cultish film fans. New Line’s forays into offering ‘Unrated’ exploitation movies available at sell through pricing are a precursor of what would become an industry norm during the DVD era.

85

selling the splat pack

‘Unrated’ Explosion: Transitioning into the DVD Era While, owing to the sell through pricing mandate, cultish consumption was mainstreamed fairly quickly after DVDs were introduced to the consumer market, it took the ‘Unrated’ DVD a little longer to catch on. While horror films, specifically neo-slasher films, underwent a mini-boom in the late 1990s after the success of Scream, the distributors did not release these films on DVD in ‘Unrated’ versions. Instead, Dimension Films (then a subsidiary of Disney) issued Scream and its sequels, Scream 2 (Craven, 1997) and Scream 3 (Craven, 2000), on DVD in boxes with covers that were blandly designed, prominently featuring the then popular actors featured in the films. While Dimension was appealing to a collector’s sensibilities – the covers for all three discs feature a matching banner at the top that reads ‘Dimension Collector’s Series’ – they were not attempting to appeal to marginal, cultish collectors with DVD covers adorned with the visages of mainstream television stars such as Courtney Cox and Neve Campbell. These films were ‘low-cal’ horror, the mainstream opposite of the Italian horror released on DVD at the same time (Guins, 2005: 29). Similar to the situation with VHS, ‘Unrated’ versions of films began to make their way into the mainstream during the DVD era when a respectable director encountered trouble with the MPAA and had to edit the films to achieve an R rating for theatrical release but were able to restore ‘lost’ footage to the film on DVD. This was the situation with director Stanley Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut, released by Warner Bros. in 1999. Controversy surrounded Kubrick’s film before its release when ‘In order to obtain an R rating from the CARA board, Kubrick supervised the addition of computer-generated figures to obstruct [the audience’s] view of the action during a long and wholly unerotic orgy scene’ (Lewis, 2001: 23). Lewis reports that ‘a number of well-known film reviewers complained about the computer graphics’ that had been inserted into Kubrick’s film (2001: 24). In response, Terry Semel, a co-chairman at Warner Bros., explained their decision to insert the figures and secure an R rating for the film: ‘We’re not in the NC-17 business. NC-17 is a whole industry. It includes triple-X-rated porno films. So to us that’s just not a business that we’re in’ (quoted in Lewis, 2001: 24). Lewis calls Semel’s comment ‘disingenuous’ partly because of the enormous possibilities for revenue that the home video market had opened up to the studios by allowing them to release movies on DVD with a different rating than their cinema release: ‘In 2001, Warner Brothers released the “director’s cut” on video and DVD. From the very start the plan at Warner Brothers was to cash in a second time on a film that really isn’t very good the first time you see it’ (Lewis 2001: 24). By this point, the majors saw the profitability of the ‘Unrated’ film on video. With the institution of sell through pricing for DVDs, the potential for profit outweighed the potential for risk from moral campaigners. To move

86

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

DVDs off the shelves of retailers such as Wal-Mart, DVDs had to be attractive commodities worth the dollars it took to purchase them. In the VHS era, it was not worth the trouble for the studios to invest in ‘Unrated’. The practice of renting films on VHS rather than owning them assured that independently owned rental outlets would enjoy the majority of revenues, so the studios did not focus on making VHS tapes attractive commodities for purchase. With DVDs, however, the more attractive these commodities could appear to potential buyers the better. After ‘Special Features’ and ‘Deleted Scenes’ were adopted as standards featured on many DVDs, it was not much of a jump to include scenes that were cut from the cinema release at the behest of CARA. Still, spectres of the past always die hard, and studios proceeded with caution when issuing ‘Unrated’ movies on DVD. Issuing Eyes Wide Shut as ‘Unrated’ was not a risky move for Warner Bros. because the film was directed by one of cinema’s most acclaimed directors, starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, two of America’s most popular actors, and was the centre of a cause célèbre. This was similar to the case of another film issued in an ‘Unrated’ version by a major distributor in 2001, MGM’s DVD release of the controversial Dressed to Kill (De Palma, 1980). This DVD gave the consumer the option of viewing either an R rated, cinema cut of the film or an ‘Unrated’ cut. Like Eyes Wide Shut, Dressed to Kill was a film by an established, critically acclaimed director who had got into a public tussle with CARA over erotic – and, in the case of De Palma’s film, violent – content. The first time that De Palma submitted his film to CARA, he received an X rating. Samuel Z. Arkoff, who was co-ordinating the ‘promotion and distribution’ of Dressed to Kill for Filmways, was pleased with this news: When the CARA board initially indicated that Dressed to Kill would probably receive an X rating, most mainstream industry executives would have panicked. But Arkoff understood that the preliminary rating was mostly good news. So long as De Palma could somehow cut the film to suit CARA – and he had to in order to cash Arkoff’s check – the R-rated version of the film would be immediately notorious and easily exploitable. (Lewis, 2000: 277) Arkoff’s shrewd business plan found new life during the DVD era, as studios and distributors could potentially double their profit from controversy. If a film clashes with the MPAA and has to have footage removed for the cinema release of the film, audiences may be tempted to go to the cinema to see what the fuss is about. If the audience is still intrigued, they have the promise that the offending footage might be reinserted or made available as an extra feature for the film’s DVD release. The DVD would be available at a sell through price, a majority of which would end up in the distributor’s pocket.

87

selling the splat pack

As ‘Unrated’ films became more prevalent on DVD in the early 2000s, their acceptability was aided by Blockbuster Inc. which was then owned by Viacom and was one of the most powerful players in the home video market. As Guins explains, Blockbuster was not ‘a neutral space and benign service provider for the distribution of prerecorded media for home consumption’ (2009: 98). Instead, as part of corporate Hollywood, Blockbuster was ‘a control technology’ for determining what was acceptable on the home video market (2009: 98). Even before Viacom purchased the company, Blockbuster helped the MPAA control the film marketplace by only stocking titles with MPAAapproved ratings, and it justified this decision under the banner of being family friendly. As former chief executive officer Wayne Huizenga once proclaimed, ‘Our philosophy is family and kids’ (quoted in Guins, 2009: 98–9). While Blockbuster followed through on its philosophy and commitment to providing only family-friendly entertainment by refusing to stock X rated and even MPAA-approved NC-17 films, the corporation made a different decision when it came to ‘Unrated’ DVDs. Rather than refuse to carry them, Blockbuster stocked ‘Unrated’ films and made them readily available on the shelf next to a ‘Rated’ option (Guins, 2009: 99). Given that Blockbuster was an important component of the infrastructure of corporate Hollywood, the video chain’s decision to stock ‘Unrated’ titles represented a significant change in Hollywood’s self-regulatory policies. As Guins puts it: Blockbuster’s access to the home through its channels of cable television, Internet rentals, and, soon to pass into obsolescence, video stores provides ways for its ‘philosophy’ to affect viewing in the home. Its policy governs access through these circuits of distribution. And these hold influence over Hollywood production on account of Blockbuster’s conglomerate ties to the industry. (2009: 100) Blockbuster’s decisions have implications for the types of films that Hollywood makes and the types of films that viewers see. Their decision to stock ‘Unrated’ titles can be read as both the ‘Unrated’ DVD’s way in to the mainstream and as an invitation to exploit this new rating possibility. When the industry halfheartedly offered the NC-17 rating as an option in 1990, the studios’ true intentions could be read in the home video sector’s refusal, led by Blockbuster, to stock NC-17 titles. Conversely, Blockbuster stocking ‘Unrated’ films was a clear signal that the industry was in support of this new classification, at least for home video. Blockbuster’s acceptance of ‘Unrated’ DVDs may, at first, resemble New Line’s attempts to revive their dying Elm Street franchise in 1989 with an ‘Unrated’ VHS release. The decision might look like a last-ditch effort for Blockbuster because the company went into financial decline after the rapid

88

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

growth of the DVD sell through market in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Daniel Gross explains that Blockbuster’s profit margins were designed for renting videos, not selling them: ‘it is three and half times more profitable for Blockbuster to rent than sell’ (Gross, 2004). The decline of Blockbuster was no accident, however: the industry knew that to create a sell through market, the rental market – at least, the traditional, bricks and mortar rental market – would have to be sacrificed. This sacrifice came in late 2010, when Blockbuster declared itself bankrupt. Dish Network purchased Blockbuster in early 2011 but has, to date, been unable to decide what do to with the property. They tried video by mail and instant streaming options but Netflix, the Internet rental business that took off in the wake of Blockbuster’s fall, had already conquered this market. To make things worse, Redbox, a company that loans DVDs and Blu-rays via kiosks placed outside supermarkets and retail markets, has stolen customers from Blockbuster. As Redbox continues to grow, Dish Network continues to shutter Blockbuster shops. Netflix and Redbox followed in Blockbuster’s path and continue to offer consumers access to ‘Unrated’ movies. Around the time Blockbuster was normalising ‘Unrated’ movies on DVD, independent distributor Lionsgate was solidifying its position as the top independent distributor in the film industry, and it made its future plans evident in industry trade magazines such as Variety. For instance, a September 2004 article for Variety by Dana Harris depicts Lionsgate as ready to profit from the industry’s acceptance of ‘Unrated’. As Harris notes, the studio found itself ‘on top of the indie heap’ partly because of its ‘relatively inexpensive pickup’ of Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever which ended up being a hit (Harris, 2004). Further, Harris remarks that Lionsgate planned to remain on top by repeating the success of Roth’s low on budget, high on gore hit: ‘Look for the company to turn away from the bigger budgets in favor of low-cost, high-return properties such as Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, a sequel to distrib’s 2003 hit House of 1000 Corpses’ (Harris, 2004). Mentioned in passing at the conclusion of Harris’s article is Lionsgate’s January 2004 acquisition of Saw, the spectacular success of which would further solidify Lionsgate’s reliance on low-budget, gory horror films for a reliable stream of revenue. Lionsgate’s turn towards ‘grindhouse’ horror was addressed again in a Variety article by David S. Cohen published almost a year after Harris’s article. According to Cohen, Harris’s prediction that Lionsgate would turn towards low-budget, violent horror had come true, with Rob Zombie leading the way: ‘The truest reincarnations of the grindhouse . . . have come from rocker-turned-shock auteur Rob Zombie’ (Cohen, 2004). This evocation of the ‘grindhouse’ may have had cachet with some viewers but it seems like a shaky foundation upon which to build an independent production and distribution business, especially in corporate Hollywood. Lionsgate’s decision to proceed in this manner grows even more questionable

89

selling the splat pack

in the light of Davis’s and Natale’s findings that gorier horror films perform worse at the box office than those with little or no gore, like ‘the ghost film, haunted house film, and period horror’ (2010: 46, 48). Lionsgate’s actions begin to make more sense, however, when one looks beyond the box office and at ancillary markets which accounted for almost 80 per cent of studio revenue at the turn of the century (Ulin, 2009: 161). Lionsgate’s Splat Pack films were perfect products for a home video market in which the ratings system had grown more elastic with the widespread acceptance of ‘Unrated’ movies on DVD. Their films needed ‘just enough’ violence and gore in their cinema release to encourage audiences to investigate the ‘Unrated’ cut on video. With this plan, Lionsgate was, in many ways, simply putting their own twist on a trend that was industry wide. The ‘theatrical platform, to which most of the PR hoopla, magazine covers, TV talk shows, and the rest of the celebrityworshipping culture is geared, is crucial to generate world wide DVD sales’ (Epstein, 2010: 184). Studios were using the cinema window to create publicity for the video release. Following suit, the cinema versions of films, such as Saw and Hostel, were merely rough cuts or previews of the ‘final’ version that would be available on DVD. This trend caused cinema owners – especially those like AMC and Regal that are not owned by the same corporate parents that own the studios – to feel as if they were being used. In a speech delivered at the ShoWest Opening Ceremonies in March 2007, John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), attacked the practice of releasing ‘Unrated’ movies on DVD, stating: we call for our studio partners to abandon the practice of releasing unrated DVDs of the same movies that played in our theatres with a rating. We know that unrated DVDs – unlike unrated movies in our theatres – can do brisk sales. But it is frankly galling to see marketing campaigns designed around the very fact that a movie is ‘unrated and uncensored’. That cheap shot at the rating system undermines everything we strive to accomplish in partnership with America’s parents . . . At an absolute minimum, no movie should ever be marketed on the basis that it flouts the rating system. (Fithian, 2007: 3) The proverbial genie was already out of the bottle in 2007, however; almost a year earlier, Roth had already noted that the ‘Unrated’ DVD ‘changed everything’. Lionsgate took advantage of the ‘Unrated’ format with their DVD release of Haute Tension and The Devil’s Rejects as the DVD format allowed them to add footage that allegedly had to be cut for cinema release. ‘Unrated’ DVDs also allowed Lionsgate to continue to up the ante for the films in their Saw

90

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

Figure 4.3  An ‘Unrated’ evisceration from the ‘Director’s cut’ of Saw III. © Twisted Pictures/Evolution Entertainment.

series. Not only did 2006’s Saw III become the highest grossing film of the series, pulling in just over $80 million in United States box office sales, but an ‘Unrated’ version (with just under a minute of gore restored) sold nearly three million copies on DVD and earned over $45.5 million, more than half of its cinema earnings. The Saw III DVD was the best-selling horror DVD of 2007, Lionsgate’s best-selling release of a feature film on DVD in 2007, and the thirty-eighth best-selling DVD of 2007. When box office numbers for the Saw series began to slip, Lionsgate increased the amount of restored footage to the DVD versions of the films, a move that resembles New Line’s decision to release an ‘Unrated’ VHS version of the fifth Nightmare on Elm Street after that film underperformed at the box office. While under a minute of footage was restored for the ‘Unrated’ version of the top-grossing Saw III, much more was added to the fourth and fifth films. For instance, when the United States earnings of Saw IV fell from the third film’s gross of $80 million to $63 million, the DVD release of Saw IV beefed up the film’s running time from ninety-two to ninety-five minutes. Something similar happened with Saw V. Again, American box office earnings fell – this time to $56 million – and the ‘Unrated’ DVD version extended the film’s running time by four minutes. While not all of the material added to the films consists of gore, the implication of the ‘Unrated’ label is that the material being reinserted into the film is in some way ‘forbidden’. The strategy worked; like the Saw III DVD, the DVD releases of Saw IV and Saw V were immensely

91

selling the splat pack

profitable, with the fourth film reaching thirty-ninth and the fifth reaching fiftyfourth place during their respective years of release. ‘Unrated’ Saw DVDs have generated major sales for Lionsgate that put these DVDs in the same league as family films and mainstream blockbuster releases. Saw III sold about 150,000 more copies than the family-oriented film Flicka (Mayer, 2006) during 2007. Figures like these, coupled with Eli Roth bragging about the DVD release of Hostel dethroning Chronicles of Narnia as the best-selling DVD at Wal-Mart, illustrate how the landscape of the home video market has changed since the VHS era when blockbusters and family films dominated the sales charts and ‘Unrated’ videos were relegated to collectors and sold for nearly a hundred dollars each. Now, issuing ‘Unrated’ cuts of films on DVD is commonplace. Perhaps the best example of this is when, in early 2009, Paramount finally issued an official release of the ‘Unrated’ cut of the first Friday the 13th film with the ‘offending’ nine seconds restored to the film at last. Paramount still shied away from the ‘Unrated’ label, however, rereleasing the film on DVD and Blu-Ray with the title ‘Friday the 13th Uncut’ on the cover and the spine of the box while the ‘Unrated’ label is hidden on the bottom of the back of the box. Conclusion to Part I: Approaching the ‘Film-on-DVD’ A confluence of factors surrounding the DVD format – how it framed horror films as ‘art’ and how it made ‘Unrated’ films more widely acceptable and available – created a media marketplace in which the Splat Pack films could be released, receive wide attention and attain financial success. As such, the Splat Pack is not exactly an independent-minded rebellion against the Hollywood establishment even though it is often depicted as such. Instead, their films represent the efforts of an independent distributor trying both to follow and to create new industry trends. The Splat Pack is not operating ‘outside’ or ‘against’ the MPAA and the ratings system inasmuch as they are working alongside them to create a novel commodity for a very specific industry marketplace. In their case, the novelty is including ‘forbidden’ visuals that viewers have not been able to see in a cinema or in a horror film before. The marketing impulses that have manifested themselves in the journalistic hype surrounding the Splat Pack and in the material changes in the film industry that have enabled their success reveal the need to consider the commodity status of the Splat Pack’s films before delving into a cultural or ideological analysis of the films. Robert Alan Brookey and Robert Westerfelhaus call the DVD ‘perhaps the ultimate example of media-industry synergy, in which the promotion of a media product is collapsed into the product itself’ (2002: 23). The commodity status of Splat Pack films is inextricably bound up in the DVD-fuelled home video market that gave rise to their success, thus making

92

the dvd revolution and the horror film, take two

it imperative that the films be read in context of synergistic practices that produced them and sold them to viewers. The films of the Splat Pack can and should be read specifically as ‘films-on-DVD’. Regarding ‘films-on-DVD’, Klinger argues, ‘Special collector’s editions are . . . suggestive for textual study’ because ‘As feature films appear in new cuts with added footage, their definition as texts becomes unstable’ (2006: 72). Harold E. Hinds Jr posits a useful methodology for approaching the ‘unstable’ texts of films on DVD. According to Hinds, the ‘texts’ of popular culture, such as films, always: come with a lot of accessory baggage, and thus form what has been termed an ‘encrusted’ text. The ‘primary’ text is encrusted within a sublevel of texts which are produced by the cultural industry to promote it: these consist of such items as ads, criticism and comments, gossip columns, and fan magazines. The original and encrusting text(s) together form a ‘super’ text, the appropriate text for study. (2006: 168) In the case of ‘Unrated’, ‘Special edition’, and ‘Collector’s edition’ DVDs, the ‘primary’ text (the film) is yoked together and encrusted with the culture industry’s ‘sublevel’ of texts (commentaries, ‘making of’ documentaries and so on) thus making them especially rich objects of study. In the following chapters, the films of the Splat Pack are considered as ‘unstable’ and ‘encrusted’ texts through the matrix of their commodification on DVD. Notes 1. For more on the distributors’ takeover of exhibition after 1985, see Lewis, 2003: 86 and Acland, 2003: 90–106. 2. For the record, Friday the 13th’s body count is ten which is double Halloween’s but short of the trailer’s promise of thirteen. 3. Warner Bros. acquired distribution rights for the film outside the United States and released it uncut on videotape in the United Kingdom. This ‘Unrated’ version of the film did not fall foul of the ‘video nasties’ controversy. 4. These two films gained infamy when they were included on the list of ‘video nasties’.

93

5. TEXT, SUBTEXT AND THE STORY OF THE FILM: ELI ROTH’S HOSTEL AND HOSTEL: PART II ON DVD

DVD and the Self-fashioning of an Active Auteur Eli Roth is the perfect figure with which to begin a discussion of the selling of the Splat Pack and their films on DVDs. As interest in the films of the Splat Pack grew, Roth positioned himself as a spokesperson for the group, making himself available for interviews and readily speaking about himself, his films and the films of his cohort. In many ways, Roth is the epitome of what Ernest Mathijs calls the ‘active auteur’. Writing about David Cronenberg, a director whose work blends the avant-garde with horror, Mathijs observes that Cronenberg’s ‘activities to assert his authorship’ in a public sphere in which his films have often drawn controversial attention include ‘writing letters to papers, reacting to hostile reviews and granting interviews to informationhungry fanzines to get his own views known to his audiences’ (2008: 5). These activities make Cronenberg an ‘active auteur’, who ‘has not retreated into an ivory tower’ but instead ‘shares his insights generously’ (2008: 5). One need look no further than the DVD releases of Roth’s films to find generous helpings of Roth’s auteurist activity. The number of extra features included on DVDs of Roth’s films is staggering. The DVD release of his debut feature Cabin Fever contains five feature-length commentaries consisting of Roth chatting about the movie with a variety of people, ranging from cast and crew, to his parents, to one of his former professors at New York University. Also included are a ‘making-of’ documentary, deleted scenes, and other precocious features, such as a ‘Family Friendly’ version – hosted by Roth in mock-Mr

97

selling the splat pack

Rodgers mode – which is only sixty seconds long and a ‘Chick-Vision’ version, a mode in which silhouette fingers cover up the film’s gore. The extra features on the DVDs of the Hostel films are even more extensive. The first edition of the Hostel DVD released in April 2006 has four feature-length commentaries featuring Roth and various people, such as Tarantino, who executive produced the Hostel films, and Harry Knowles, online film critic and founder of Ain’t It Cool News, an online hub of film news and reviews. This release also contains ‘Hostel dissected’, a ‘making-of’ featurette directed by Gabriel Roth, the director’s brother. When Hostel was reissued as a two-disc release in 2007, copious bonus features were added, including three featurettes focusing on the film’s music and sound design, its production design, its special effects, an international television special entitled ‘Hostel dismembered’, deleted scenes, and a radio interview that Roth did with film critic Elvis Mitchell for NPR’s (National Public Radio) The Treatment. The DVD release of Hostel: Part II was similarly packed with three feature-length commentaries, two featurettes – entitled ‘The next level’ and ‘A legacy of torture’ – directed by Gabriel Roth, two additional featurettes on the film’s special effects and production design, deleted scenes, and another radio interview with Mitchell on The Treatment. While the indiscriminate spectator can choose to pass over these extra features in favour of watching Roth’s films unadorned, the sheer volume of the extra features almost dares the viewer to ignore them. Roth himself has noted that the DVD releases of his films are important to him and that he sees DVDs as a significant platform. He begins one commentary on the first Hostel by stating: The first question you might have is why are there, you know, four or five different commentary tracks on this DVD, and I’ll tell you: I’ve got a lot to say. It’s hard to shut me up, especially when I’m talking about horror movies, and I feel like I can’t fit it all into ninety minutes. (Hostel, ‘Director’s commentary’) Comments such as these suggest that, for Roth, the DVD extras are of equal, if not greater importance, than the feature film that anchors them. One obvious reason that Roth has such an affinity for DVD extras is that they provide multiple opportunities for the active auteur to fashion an identity for himself. Drawing from Stephen Greenblatt, Ben Kooyman discuss how horror directors use DVD extra features to ‘[fashion] their identities through artful processes which [blur] the distinctions between reality and fiction, between life and text’ (2010: 198). Kooyman notes that this process ‘is hardly new to the horror genre’, citing the ‘showmanship and theatricality’ of figures such as William Castle (2010: 198). Roth clearly follows in this tradition. His kinship to a figure like Castle

98

text, subtext and the story of the film

is clear when, during one of the commentaries on the DVD of the first Hostel, Roth notes that some of the best advice he received was when Tarantino told him, ‘Make yourself the star. That’s what you have to do’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s commentary’). On another of the disc’s commentaries, Knowles praises Roth for being a public figure: ‘You realize very much that if you don’t promote yourself, nobody else is [sic] . . . there’s a huckstering to what it is we all do’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s & guests’ commentary’). Roth gets in the spirit of hucksterism, or aggressive selling, on DVD extras, so much so that he sometimes sounds like a horror host, a cross between William Castle and the CryptKeeper. ‘Hostel dismembered’, the international television special on the Hostel DVD, begins with the lights fading up on a shot of the gnarly, rusted metal chairs into which victims in the films are strapped and tortured. In voiceover, Roth ominously intones: Imagine you’re sitting here in this room, strapped to this chair. And someone very rich has paid a lot of money to come in here and kill you. No political message, no webcams, they just want to know what it feels like to kill someone. And there’s nothing you can do about it. This . . . really . . . happens. (Hostel: Director’s Cut, ‘Hostel dismembered’) Though Roth’s self-fashioning is a part of a long tradition of horror hucksterism, there are several elements that make Roth’s construction of his image exceptional. One of these elements is Roth’s tendency to view himself – and to sell himself – as a political film-maker. Despite his claims above that the scenario from Hostel contains no political content, Roth and other people on his commentaries and extra features label him as not just a schlock-horror film-maker but as an artist with ‘something to say’. Many times on the Hostel DVD extra features, Roth discusses how his film is not an exploitation film but a film about exploitation. Knowles corroborates Roth’s statement, claiming, ‘There’s a lot of stuff that’s going on in [Hostel], if you’re able to see more than the gore’ (Hostel: Director’s Cut, ‘Hostel dismembered’). Roth more aggressively cultivated his image as a provocateur on the DVD of Hostel: Part II. With the extra features for this film, Roth engages with ongoing discussions of movies – many directed by Splat Packers – labelled as ‘torture porn’ because of their use of sexualised violence to titillate audiences. Roth attempts to become the consummate ‘active auteur’ who, ideally, has ‘full ownership over the debates’ surrounding his films (Mathijs, 2008: 5). Roth’s efforts to control interpretations of his films are undermined, however, by multiple tensions between the content of the films and the claims Roth makes for them. Further complications arise as Roth’s extra features drown out the ‘film itself’ and foreground process over product. Ultimately, the main narrative of the Hostel DVD becomes the making of the films and Roth’s self-fashioning

99

selling the splat pack

Figure 5.1  ‘There’s a huckstering to what it is we all do’: Harry Knowles from Ain’t It Cool News on one of Hostel’s numerous DVD extra features. © Columbia Pictures Industry.

as a horror–auteur–provocateur. Roth attempts to use the DVD platform to impose ‘proper’ interpretations of his Hostel films and frame these films as subversive ‘reflections’ of their historical moment. The digital remediation of these films, however, and their attendant instability make them much more complicated and collapse ‘fiction’ and ‘reality’ to create a new narrative that is, more than anything else, about Roth fashioning an image of himself. DVDs and the ‘Proper Interpretation’: Framing the Hostel Films as Subversive In one of the earliest critical studies of how the DVD platform affects frameworks for film interpretation, Brookey and Westerfelhaus discuss how the extra features on the DVD release of David Fincher’s Fight Club ‘make the product more marketable to mainstream audiences by framing the homoerotic elements of the film as homosocial behavior’ (2002: 22). Citing John Fiske’s notion of ‘primary texts’, such as films and television programmes, and ‘secondary texts’ that direct audience attention and privilege particular readings

100

text, subtext and the story of the film

of the primary text, Brookey and Westerfelhaus see the DVD as a medium in which the line between primary and secondary texts becomes blurred. On DVD, secondary texts – what Brookey and Westerfelhaus call ‘extra-text ­material’ – that used to be ‘marked by both temporal and spatial difference’ from the primary text are grafted directly on to the primary text in a ‘selfcontained package’ (2002: 23). Thus, the relationship between primary and secondary texts, that was once ‘intertextual’, becomes ‘intratextual’, and ‘the signifying relationship’ that secondary texts have with the ‘primary- text’ is greatly amplified (Brookey and Westerfelhaus, 2002: 23). According to Brookey and Westerfelhaus, this signifying power that extra text materials have over the primary cinematic text allows those behind the film’s production – more often than not the director of the film – to rebuff criticisms that the films may have encountered. Fight Club’s DVD provides an excellent case study because of the hostile critical reaction the film received upon release and its subsequent reappraisal as a subversive work of art, a reappraisal aided by the ‘Special edition’ of the DVD that reframed the film in a more appreciative light. During the process of reappraising the film, the director is elevated: Individuals involved in the film’s production are presented in the extra text as having privileged insights regarding a film’s meaning and purpose and, as such, they are used to articulate a ‘proper’ (i.e., sanctioned) interpretation. This privileged positioning may be best understood as a return to ‘auteurism’. (Brookey and Westerfelhaus, 2002: 23) The DVD platform allows the director to ‘direct the viewer toward preferred interpretations of the primary text while undermining unfavorable interpretations, especially those that might hurt the product’s commercial success’ (Brookey and Westerfelhaus, 2002: 24). The DVD releases of the Hostel films undertake a similar process. Released in 2006 and 2007, Roth’s Hostel films were shocking not only for the amount of violence and gore they contained but also for how they foregrounded images of torture, a hot topic during the mid 2000s, as controversies surrounded the United States’s authorisation of the use of torture to obtain information from detainees in the global ‘war on terror’ and subsequent scandals such as Abu Ghraib. The first Hostel tells the story of two young American men backpacking through Europe who are captured by Elite Hunting, an underground business that uses a Slovakian youth hostel as a front to kidnap travellers and auction them off to be tortured and killed by wealthy, sadistic people. The sequel tells a similar story but switches the gender of the protagonists to three female college students who fall foul of Elite Hunting and their deadly Slovakian hostel. Several times during the extra features on the Hostel DVD,

101

selling the splat pack

Roth recounts the origin of his idea for the film. Knowles told him about a website for an underground business in Thailand that allowed impoverished people to sell themselves to be killed by wealthy people seeking a thrill. Half of the money would go to the needy families of the deceased (Hostel: Director’s Cut, ‘Hostel dismembered’). Roth says that the story haunted him and that he wanted to make a film about it. He explains that, when he met producers Mike Fleiss and Chris Briggs, they wanted to do a horror film about terrible things that befall a group of backpacking Americans in Europe, and that he finally saw a way to make a film about ‘that place in Thailand’ (Hostel: Director’s Cut, ‘Hostel dismembered’). Though Roth says he never learned if the website in Thailand was real or not, he nevertheless plays up the verisimilitude of the scenario to sell the film in promotional materials included with the DVD; one need only recall his melodramatic, horror host introduction – ‘This . . . really . . . happens’ – to the ‘Hostel dismembered’ television special. Even though Roth plays up the gritty realism of the film, however, he is, at first, reluctant to place the film into any political discussion or debate. On one commentary, Roth notes that the torture scenes ‘really came out of [his] fears of those al-Qaeda videos’, but just as quickly backtracks and insists, ‘Let’s take away the political element. I don’t want to make a political movie’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s commentary’). Even though Roth is hesitant to use, as Brookey and Westerfelhaus might say it, his ‘privileged’ position as the film’s ‘auteur’ to direct readings of the film in this manner, another auteur present on the DVD’s extra features – executive producer Quentin Tarantino – encourages Roth in this direction. At one point during the ‘Director’s & executive producers’ commentary’, Tarantino champions Roth and his contemporaries who also trade in extreme violence and gore as being ‘the first legitimate horror subgenre to exist since the slasher films of the 80s’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s & executive producers’ commentary’). Tarantino’s comment seems to bolster Roth as he later comments during a discussion of changes in the ratings system that have allowed for more graphic violence: ‘Well, I think [a change in ratings policy] reflects the culture where we’re at right now. I mean, you know, if we’re at war, how much worse is my movie?’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s & executive producers’ commentary’). On the first Hostel DVD, Roth admits the real-world influence on his films and flirts with the notion that his films may reflect their current historical moment or take on broad and vaguely defined issues, such as ‘exploitation’, but, for the most part, he avoids identifying himself as a political film-maker. Roth’s stance shifts significantly on the extra materials for the DVD for Hostel: Part II as he begins to fashion a new, more politically engaged identity. This transition should come as little surprise considering the media coverage – both positive and negative – afforded to Roth and other members of the Splat

102

text, subtext and the story of the film

Pack in the year between Hostel and Hostel: Part II. As Chapter 1 illustrates, the popular press gave Roth and the Splat Pack a considerable amount of attention throughout mid to late 2006. Over the course of these interviews, the Splat Pack became more audacious, especially as they found themselves caught up in the ‘torture porn’ debate. Near the conclusion of the ‘Hostel dismembered’ documentary, Roth admits, ‘Another reaction [to the film] that I’ve had – that I really didn’t expect – is that discussions have now sprung up about what is going on in American culture that people are flocking to movies this violent’ (Hostel: Director’s Cut, ‘Hostel dismembered’). Though he may not have expected these debates, he began to engage with them after encountering them. Emboldened by the debates and his recently minted media celebrity, Roth crafts a more intellectual, political image of himself on the DVD extras for Hostel: Part II. This self-fashioning of a politically charged identity is clear at the outset of his director’s commentary for Hostel: Part II, as Roth sounds unlike the director who, on the DVD of the first film, said that he did not want to make a ‘political movie’. After only a few minutes into the film, Roth mentions the ‘torture porn’ debate that followed in the wake of David Edelstein’s article, ‘Now Playing at Your Local Megaplex: Torture Porn’, in New York magazine, citing this debate as the reason he felt compelled to go on various news stations, such as Fox News, and defend films directed by himself and his Splat Pack contemporaries. Roth explains on these news programmes: [The shows’ hosts and I would] get in . . . rather heated discussions about violence. They would say ‘how can you put this violence in a movie?’ And I’d say, basically, ‘How can you support the Bush administration who kills people in Iraq for oil, and, you know, Dick Chaney and Haliburton and all his buddies get rich off of it?’ (Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth’) Roth clearly designates Hostel: Part II as an extension and development of these views, declaring, ‘Hostel: Part II really is my disgust with the Bush administration and with the fact that these oil guys are getting rich off the death of Americans’ (Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth’). As the commentary continues, so does Roth’s politicising of his film. Not content with framing his film as a proclamation of disgust with the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, Roth spreads his ire even further: ‘You know, look at Hurricane Katrina. For five days, the US government did nothing. I mean, nothing happened’ (Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth’). Roth wavers a bit on his political venom but ultimately does not abandon it: ‘And again I’m not gonna turn this into Bush bashing, and I don’t wanna make this political, but actually Hostel: Part II is a very politically charged film. These

103

selling the splat pack

are things that I think of, and these are things that upset me’ (Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth’). Roth sounds even more resolute on the ‘A legacy of Torture’ documentary included in the DVD’s extra features. Like the documentary on the making of the first Hostel film included on that DVD, ‘A Legacy of Torture’ is directed by Gabriel Roth, the director’s brother. The family affair does not end there as this featurette features both Roth’s father, Dr Sheldon Roth, a Harvard professor and psychologist, and his mother, Cora Roth, an artist. Comments by both of his parents frame Roth’s films as psychologically complex and artistic. Dr Sheldon Roth opens the featurette with intellectual heft by quoting Plato, stating that the philosopher ‘said it best when he said: “The good dream of what the bad do” ’(Hostel: Part II, ‘A Legacy of Torture’). Later, Cora chimes in, evoking the history of fine art, stating, ‘Violence has been depicted in art forever’ (Hostel Part II, ‘A Legacy of Torture’). Sandwiched between these two quotes is Eli Roth’s proclamation about the social and political viability of the American horror film: Whether it’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers talking about Communism, whether it’s, you know, Ed Gein and those murders and that’s reflected in Psycho, whether it’s Vietnam in terms of Last House on the Left, whether it’s the Manson family with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, there’s always been social commentary in horror movies . . . So, what was great was I felt like, you know, that I wasn’t crazy for thinking this stuff, for doing this stuff. (Hostel: Part II, ‘A Legacy of Torture’) Brookey and Westerfelhaus’s theory of the extra text’s signifying power when grafted on to the primary cinematic text holds that these extra text materials attempt to craft an elaborate, ‘proper’ interpretation of Hostel: Part II. Sheldon Roth’s comments guide the viewer to think of the film from a philosophical perspective while Cora Roth’s comments frame the film as a work of art that, like many other pieces of fine art, considers the age-old topic of violence. Roth’s comments place the film in a long line of American horror films that contain ‘social commentary’. Analogous to how Roth’s discovery of horror film’s capacity for ‘social commentary’ lent validity to his interest in horror films (‘I felt like . . . I wasn’t crazy for thinking this stuff, for doing this stuff’), extra materials such as this featurette aim to elevate the primary cinematic text and insist that the ‘proper’ way to interpret this film is to consider it as a philosophically and psychologically complex work of art that contains social commentary. By extension, Roth fashions himself as an auteur who deftly juggles entertainment, exploitation, violence, gore, political messages and social commentary in his films. Keeping all these objects in the air at the same time,

104

text, subtext and the story of the film

however, can be a precarious, if not impossible, task. Kooyman observes that self-fashioning is always an uncertain process that threatens to fall apart at almost any moment, observing, ‘subversion is interiorized within the orchestrated identity of the artist’ and noting in horror director commentaries there are often moments of ‘self-fashioning’ and ‘self-sabotaging’ (2010: 200). These contradictory processes are also at work in Roth’s commentaries and supplemental features for Hostel: Part II. As Roth strikes out against the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, he also hedges, stating, ‘even though I’m against the war . . . believe me, I’m a pretty conservative guy. I’m for the death penalty, and not against war in general’ (Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth). Similarly, Roth waffles throughout his commentary until the closing credits. As the credits roll, he uses the commentary track to attack ‘people profiting off the death of Americans’ and declares: ‘This is the way the world is, and my films are really a comment on that. And that’s how I feel. And I think it’s great when you can get kind of your message out there in a subversive way’ (Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth’). Shortly thereafter, Roth equivocates, stating that, while he enjoys getting a ‘message’ into his movie in a ‘subversive way’, he does not ‘want to force a message down people’s throats’ (Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth’). Understandably, Roth feels multiple ways about his film. Further, it is possible and even favourable that a film contains multiple meanings to appeal to multiple viewers. Roth’s ideological waffling, however, imposes instability on the identity that he and the extra features attempt to craft. This instability is amplified when the extra material on the DVD is considered alongside the content of the primary cinematic text. Many times in Hostel: Part II, Roth runs counter to his insistence that he does not ‘want to force a message down people’s throats’ and instead does just that, obviously tipping his hand. One scene depicts Stuart (Roger Bart) and Todd (Richard Burgi), two American businessmen who have paid to torture and kill two women captured by Elite Hunting, being driven by a chauffeur to the torture warehouse. Stuart, who is apparently having second thoughts about the venture, asks Todd, ‘You think we’re sick?’ The more aggressive of the two, Todd answers, just before snorting a line of cocaine, ‘Fuck, no! Dude, you look anywhere in the world where there’s no law, whether it’s fucking Chad or New Orleans, this is the shit people are doing, bro. We’re the normal ones.’ This dialogue gives literal voice within the primary cinematic text to comments Roth makes about Hurricane Katrina in the extra text layered over it. Again, Roth seems to be inspired by his mentor Tarantino. A scene in the first Hostel film depicts the film’s two main characters – Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson), the two Americans backpacking through Europe who fall into the clutches of Elite Hunting – visiting a museum of torture in Slovakia. While the scene plays in the movie, Tarantino, on one

105

selling the splat pack

of the commentary tracks, exclaims, ‘There’s, like, a thing running throughout the whole film of torture as entertainment. It’s not even a subtext – it’s a text!’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s and executive producers’ commentary’). Even though he claims that he does not want to ‘force a message down people’s throats’, Roth takes transforming subtext into text to new heights in Hostel: Part II. In the ‘A Legacy of Torture’ featurette, he discusses how he was influenced by ‘images of Abu Ghraib’ that depicted American military personnel torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners and rips these images and overtly employs them in his films (Hostel Part II, ‘A Legacy of Torture’). The use of these images, owing to the weight they carry in their historical moment, foregrounds the Iraq War as text rather than subtext, denotation rather than connotation. The shifting of subtext to text creates even greater instability in Roth’s selffashioning on the Hostel: Part II DVD. Annalee Newitz cites Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991) as an excellent example of what can happen – and what can be neglected – in a horror film when the subtextual is made textual. Issues of sexuality and gender difference, which are usually relegated to the level of subtext in past horror films, are made into a ‘splash[y] narrative about gender and the art of violence’ in Silence while ‘questions about social class and economic mobility’ brought up by the characters of Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) ‘are safely contained as subtext’ (Newitz, 2006: 4). Newitz’s analysis suggests that, when one subtextual element is brought to the surface, others are pushed beneath the surface which can cause even a film like Silence, which appears to be progressive owing to the presence of a strong female protagonist and Demme, a ‘director/auteur . . . well known for his thoughtful, critical films about U.S. culture’ (2006: 4), to reinscribe some of the societal conditions that it supposedly interrogates. In the case of the Hostel films, a similar scenario plays out but in a way specific to the DVD platform. Roth attempts to use the extra features to inscribe a ‘proper’ interpretation on the films as ‘subversive’ attacks against the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq and in the ‘war on terror’. At the same, the director fashions an identity for himself as an auteur/provocateur. This interpretation of his film, however, and this identity he fashions for himself are both unstable, unravelled not only by Roth’s equivocation of his position but also by the content of the primary cinematic texts of both Hostel films. Similar to how, according to Brookey and Westerfelhaus, David Fincher and others employ the extra text of the DVD to efface homoeroticism in Fight Club, Roth uses his commentaries and extra features to hide that, in many ways, the Hostel films promote many of the same ideologies that fuel the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’. It would be reductive – and incorrect – to accuse the Hostel films of being xenophobic; nevertheless, the films do create a world in which white, Western, heteronormative bodies are at the top of the list of lives that are in the most danger and most worth protecting, grieving, and mourn-

106

text, subtext and the story of the film

ing, a geopolitical imaginary that is in line with, rather than against, the United States’s policies in the ‘war on terror’. Torture and American Vulnerability: the National Security Subtext of the Hostel Films One could read the Hostel movies, with their scenes of people being tortured in various horrible ways, as subversive because they show Americans vulnerable at a time when the United States was trying to depict itself as invulnerable. Judith Butler argues that, after the events of 9/11, embracing grief and feelings of vulnerability could have been an opportunity for American citizens to see themselves as relational beings in a global context – that is, not to consider their pain as an isolated, special incident but rather to put their pain in context with suffering that regularly takes place all over the world. This vulnerability could have offered ‘the basis of claims for non-military political solutions’ to national and international situations (Butler, 2004: 29). Unfortunately ‘President Bush announced on September 21 that we [had] finished grieving and that now it [was] time for resolute action to take the place of grief’ (Butler, 2004: 29). That proclamation led to a ‘denial of this vulnerability through a fantasy of mastery . . . [that fuelled] the instruments of war’ (2004: 29). The last decade of military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq has been buttressed by the United States denying its vulnerability and attempting to assert its mastery over the world. Roth’s Hostel films seem to be one of the few venues in popular culture for a depiction of American bodies as vulnerable and under severe attack. These films depict Americans as incredibly vulnerable. The American victims in Roth’s films confidently travel into an Eastern European environment with a sense of bravado and entitlement, only later to find themselves in the clutches of ruthless tormentors and murderers who dismantle the victims’ world and destroy their subjectivity. Diana Taylor claims that torture ‘attacks personhood, suspends the rules, and unmakes the world of the victim by turning it into a strange and terrifying place’ (2007: 710). This description sounds like an extreme version of Butler’s definition of grieving as ‘the moments in which one undergoes something outside one’s control and finds that one is beside oneself, not at one with oneself’ (2004: 28). Read in this way, Roth’s Hostel films may be seen as offering their American viewers a site of mourning that President Bush’s mandates and policies have denied them. A closer look at Butler’s Precarious Life, however, and an acknowledgement of how subtext becomes text in Roth’s films – especially as they appear on DVD – suggest that the message of the Hostel films may not square with the politically engaged persona Roth projects. While Butler claims that a more prolonged period of grieving could have been beneficial for the United States

107

selling the splat pack

following the events of 9/11, she also feels that Americans’ process of grieving and the designation of which lives should be grieved over both need to be significantly revised. As Butler explains, there is a ‘hierarchy of grief’ that exists (2004: 32), with the lives of white Westerners sitting comfortably at the top of this list of lives worth mourning. She notes, ‘we seldom, if ever, hear the names of the thousands of Palestinians who have died by the Israeli military with United States support, or any number of Afghan people, children and adults’ (2004: 32). These same hierarchies of grief are present in the Hostel films. While the films show the vulnerability of American lives, these films also create a world view in which American lives are in the most danger. Any readings that position Roth’s films as subversive must overlook that Roth replaces real Afghans and Iraqis who have been systemically abused during the ‘war on terror’ with Americans cast in the role of the victim. In Roth’s films, Americans, not the numerous Iraqis or Afghan people who have been killed in the United States’s murderous military campaigns, are the true victims and the ones in danger in our current geopolitical situation. The Hostel films position privileged, white, male, heterosexual bodies as being in the most danger and the most to be grieved over of the visible bodies on screen. Non-normative bodies – those of women, people of colour and homosexuals – are either subordinated to white, male suffering or variously vilified by the films’ narratives. Amid all of the violence and gore of the first Hostel, the film focuses extensively only on the torture of three characters: Americans Josh and Paxton, and Kana (Jennifer Lim), a Japanese woman. While there are other characters captured by Elite Hunting and tortured by their clients, the deaths of these victims take place off-screen. The first victim, Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), a freewheeling Icelandic man with whom Josh and Paxton travel to Slovakia, is killed offscreen; the audience sees only the aftermath of his demise. Kana’s friend Yuki (Keiko Seiko) is captured, and the film shows only the prelude to her torture and death. A hierarchy of bodies to be grieved for among these characters that are tortured or killed on-screen begins to emerge. During his escape from his captors, Paxton finds an Elite Hunting business card with prices written on the back, revealing that American lives cost the most. It costs twenty-five thousand dollars to torture and kill an American compared to five thousand for a Russian or ten thousand for someone from elsewhere in Europe. American lives are the most desired and thus the most in danger and are worth the most. Josh, as a white, western, heterosexual, male body tops the list of bodies to be grieved over, of lives worth something. Kana, as a non-white, eastern, female body is at the bottom of the list. Paxton occupies an ambivalent space between the two poles as he is ‘normative’ (western, male, heterosexual) and a person of colour (he is Hispanic). The film positions Josh as the life most worth mourning. Throughout the

108

text, subtext and the story of the film

film’s opening scenes, he is depicted as the most shy, timid and decent of the group. While the guys are cavorting around Amsterdam, Josh is hesitant to indulge at a hash bar and suggests that they go to a museum instead. When they visit the red light district, Josh resists the pressure to visit a prostitute and says, ‘Paying to go into a room and do whatever you want to someone isn’t exactly a turn-on’. When the trio journeys to Slovakia and Josh is captured, his torture and murder are the most intimate, graphic and prolonged; the spectator stays with Josh from the time he gains consciousness in the torture chamber – the first moments of the sequence are shot from Josh’s point of view, peering through a hole in the black hood that has been placed over his head – until the moment his tormentor slits his throat. The destruction of Josh’s ‘normalised’ white body occurs exactly midway into the film and casts a shadow over the entire narrative. Josh’s body is further normalised – and his death made more grotesque and lamentable – by the ‘queerness’ of his killer, the Dutch businessman (Jan Vlasák). Homophobia and homosexual dread inform much of Hostel’s narrative. Many times in the film, Paxton and Josh use the word ‘gay’ in order to describe things in a derogatory way. While Josh and Paxton’s homophobia can be explained away as Roth showing the immaturity of these young men, the ‘queerness’ of the Dutch businessman is more difficult to account for. Paxton, Josh and Oli first encounter him on the train to Slovakia. During the course of their conversation, the businessman refers to Josh as a ‘handsome American’. This draws uncomfortable laughter from Paxton but the situation turns hostile when the businessman places his hand on Josh’s thigh and asks, ‘What is your nature?’ Josh screams, ‘Don’t touch! Don’t fucking touch me!’ The trio rebuke the businessman and chase him from their car. When the businessman later reappears, he and Josh have a drink together but this drink is merely a prelude to the true consummation of the Dutch businessman’s ‘courtship’ of Josh: torturing and murdering him. While torturing Josh, the Dutch businessman touches Josh’s thigh again after he drills holes in his chest and legs with a power drill (penetrating him) and before slicing through the tendons of his heels so he cannot walk (castrating him). Thus, Josh’s body is made more heterosexual, normative and able to be grieved for when contrasted to the monstrosity of his ‘queer’ – and foreign – killer. If Josh’s life is positioned as the one most to be grieved over in the film, Kana, as a non-white, eastern, female body, is the one least to be grieved for. Kana’s torture and death are as bloody and gory as Josh’s but Roth frames her suffering in a different way. While the spectator witnesses Josh’s torture and death through Josh’s eyes and experiences his torment from beginning to end, the audience does not see Kana’s torture from the beginning. Instead, the audience first encounters her torture from Paxton’s perspective as a distant scream which he hears as he is escaping. When Paxton comes back for her,

109

selling the splat pack

killing her tormentor and freeing her, Kana’s horror and pain are framed by Paxton’s experience of her pain, not hers. Kana’s torture is hideous – one side of her face has been completely destroyed by a blowtorch – but is made meaningful by folding it into the larger story of Paxton, redeeming his previously unsavoury character by attempting to save her from Elite Hunting’s clutches. Likewise, Kana’s death, unlike Josh’s, is so grandiosely depicted that it borders on black humour. When Kana sees her disfigured face and commits suicide by jumping in front of a train, her bloods sprays all over screaming bystanders and onlookers in a moment tinged with disgusted humour, rather than horror. As a female body from the east, Kana is depicted as simply not worth mourning or grieving for. Somewhere between the two poles lies Paxton who often seems to be both American and Other. Paxton’s ability to speak several languages is highlighted throughout the film, and it sets him apart from Josh. When he and Josh are locked out of their hostel in Amsterdam, he tries to reason with the manager by speaking Dutch. A more striking example is when Paxton is being tortured and attempts to reason with his German torturer by speaking to him in German. More dramatically, Paxton is set apart from Josh by his skin colour which is referred to only once during the film’s narrative. When Paxton is first kidnapped and ascertains that being American makes him a more desirable object for torture, Paxton screams at his capturers, ‘Look at me! I’m not fucking American!’, referring to the colour of his skin and, significantly, equating Americaness with whiteness.1 Paxton’s liminal status makes him both American and Other, thus both to be grieved over and not to be grieved over. Paxton is also the only one of the trio who turns the tables on his tormentors and eventually escapes. When Paxton catches up with the Dutch businessman in a railway station bathroom at the film’s conclusion, his vengeance is remarkably excessive. He chops off a couple of the businessman’s fingers, repeatedly slams his head into a toilet, and then slits his throat, killing him in exactly the same manner the businessman had killed Josh. The insinuation here is that Paxton has become as violent as Elite Hunting’s demented clients. The ways the film sets him apart racially and the problematic hierarchies of bodies the film creates could imply that Paxton is able to act in such a despicable manner because of his racial otherness. His violence is justified, however, because he is acting on behalf of whiteness to ‘avenge’ Josh’s death. The economy of bodies in Hostel: Part II continues the hierarchy of lives to be grieved for established in the first film. In the sequel, a trio of collegeaged women – Beth (Lauren German), Whitney (Bijou Phillips) and Lorna (Heather Matarazzo) – travel to the deadly Slovakian hostel. Though the gender of the protagonists changes in Hostel: Part II, the hierarchy of bodies remains similar. Lorna and Whitney are excellent examples of this because

110

text, subtext and the story of the film

both of them are captured while they are in the thrall of heterosexual romantic pursuit. An employee of Elite Hunting (Roman Janecka) captures Lorna by posing as someone trying to seduce her. Whitney is taken when she and a man staying at the hostel (Stanislav Ianevski) steal away for some amorous activity. Predictably, the deaths of these women are truly terrible. Lorna is hung upside down naked and slashed with a scythe until she bleeds to death, and Whitney has a power saw shoved into her face. As in the first film, Hostel: Part II constructs a distinct hierarchy of bodies, with white, western heterosexuals topping the list of bodies in the most danger and most worth grieving for. Also similar to the first film is how the lone survivor of the group, this time Beth, is set apart from the other members of the group by her difference. While racial and ethnic difference set Paxton apart from his companions, Beth’s sexuality makes her different. Though the film never explicitly states that Beth is a lesbian, it is insinuated throughout. Unlike Lorna and Whitney, whose pursuits of men put them in danger, Beth shows no romantic interest in any men during the course of the film. The only person with whom she gets physically close is Axelle (Vera Jordanova), the woman who insidiously leads Beth and her friends to the deadly hostel. Analogous to how Lorna and Whitney are kidnapped during their pursuits of heterosexual desire, Elite Hunting strikes when Axelle caresses Beth’s body and kisses her neck while they relax in a hot spring. Like Paxton, Beth is able to survive her ordeal because of her otherness. Adhering to the stereotype of lesbians as women who desire to be men, she is a phallic woman who can torture and murder just as savagely as the men. In the torture chamber, Beth overpowers Stuart, her tormentor. Beth’s ability to outmanoeuvre Stuart, however – which involves ‘penetrating’ him with a needle into his eardrum – does not guarantee her freedom, as she comes face to face with Sasha (Milan Knazko), the Slovakian owner of Elite Hunting. After Beth offers to pay her way out of the torture chamber with the millions she has inherited from her deceased mother – Beth’s financial power is another phallic aspect of her personality – Sasha informs her that money is not enough; if she enters into a contract with Elite Hunting, she must kill before she can leave. This provision does not prove to be a problem for Beth, for she immediately cuts off Stuart’s penis with a pair of garden shears, tosses his penis to guard dogs that greedily consume the amputated appendage, and walks out, pronouncing, ‘Let him bleed to death’. This climactic scene literalises the trope of the ‘castrating bitch’ and illustrates that Beth is able to survive because she is a phallic woman, a body that does not need to be grieved for or mourned because it is just as monstrous as the things that threaten it. Roth transforms those who threaten in Hostel: Part II – Elite Hunting’s clients who pay to torture and murder people – from foreigners in the first film into Americans. This time around, Roth devotes much of the narrative to Stuart and Todd as they journey to Slovakia to indulge in the ultimate

111

selling the splat pack

forbidden behaviour: killing another human being. At first, Roth’s choice to feature Americans as the primary villains of Hostel: Part II seems to go against the grain of the first film and its depiction of those outside the United States’s borders as savage murderers hostile to the livelihood of Americans. Additionally, the casting of Americans in the role of the torturers also seems to disrupt previously established hierarchies of bodies that place white, western males at the top of the list of lives in danger and worth mourning. The ways in which Roth unfolds the stories of Stuart and Todd, however, ironically makes these privileged men just as much victims of torture and bodily violence as the women. Todd initially comes across as hypermasculine; with relish, he looks forward to killing Whitney. After he runs a power saw into her face, however, he loses his nerve and refuses to kill her. He rushes out of the chamber, collapses and weeps in an elevator, and is ripped to shreds by Elite’s guard dogs. Likewise, Stuart’s attempts to regain the potency and masculinity that he feels his wife has taken from him lead only to his literal castration at Beth’s hands. Roth clearly portrays these men as victims, a tendency present in his depiction of their journey to the torture warehouse to kill their intended victims. During an extended sequence, the men are shown picking out their weapons, putting on their slaughter suits, and entering into the torture chambers while mournful violin music plays over the soundtrack. On the commentary track, Roth notes, ‘What I really wanted to do with that montage is when that door [to the torture chamber] slams, I wanted everyone to be as scared as Stuart. I wanted you to really feel for these guys’ (Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth’).2 Here, what Roth says in the extra text lines up with the primary cinematic text, driving home the point that white, western heterosexuals remain the ultimate victims on the geopolitical stage, even when they torture. ‘Yeah, Dude, Smoke It!’: the Story of the Film There is a significant amount of dissonance between what happens in the primary cinematic text and the claims Roth makes for the primary cinematic text in the extra text. This is not the whole story, however, when it comes to Roth’s Hostel films. While the politics of the films are problematic, it would be incorrect – not to mention incredibly unfair – to accuse Roth of xenophobia. In the ‘A Legacy of Torture’ featurette, Roth explains, ‘I don’t feel like I’m making movies for American audiences. I feel like I’m making movies for audiences around the world, and I love putting together an international cast’ (Hostel: Part II, ‘A Legacy of Torture’). One could cynically claim that Roth is merely interested in these audiences for profits but there is plenty of evidence that suggests otherwise: for instance, Roth’s insistence on shooting on actual European locations and casting local actors from the region. With the Hostel

112

text, subtext and the story of the film

films, Roth’s persona, and the multiple, encrusted paratexts that surround both, the only thing consistent about the whole supertext is its inconsistency, its contradictions. Perhaps a more productive way to approach the network of signification at work in the Hostel series is to consider how the films on DVD create a larger, multivalent narrative that fictionalises the making of the film and mythologises those involved in the making. Catherine Grant examines how intertextual factors from the pre-DVD era (such as promotional materials in newspapers and magazines) were involved in ‘the actual “production” of auteurs, that is, the bringing into discursive existence commercially- and critically-defined “significant directors” ’ (2008: 103). This production of auteurs has been accelerated by DVD culture. Grant critiques Brookey and Westerfelhaus’s notion that the ‘kind of auteurist “communication” or “expression” ’, such as commentaries and other extra texts, ‘is always (or almost always) subordinated to filmic narration, the telling of a particular story-meaning in a particular film’ (2008: 103). Readings of films on DVD, such as the one posited by Brookey and Westerfelhaus, while they admit that the boundary between primary and secondary texts is blurred, still privilege the primary text as the foundational text that reveals the director’s true meaning, despite whatever claims the director makes in the secondary materials. Grant suggests that focusing solely on how auteurs attempt to shape interpretations of their films with DVD extra texts does not do justice to the ­complexity of the unstable text of the film on DVD: But when one looks closely at a broad cross-section of directors’ commentaries (and indeed at DVD audio commentaries in general), the telling of a particular story-meaning in a particular film in order to communicate a privileged reading of the film is only one of a number of concerns, and often one of the least important, of those participating in the production of these intratexts. (2008: 105) Grant also notes, ‘A director’s vision of a film, as expressed in DVD discourse, is often focused much more on the other things a film might be selling, beyond the particular nuances of its narrative meaning’ (2008: 105). To apply this formulation to the DVDs of the Hostel films, Roth’s framing of the films as ‘subversive’ and as a critique of the Bush administration – even though the content of the primary cinematic text may not support these claims – is only one discursive function that the film on DVD may be supplying. The numerous discourses present on the film on DVD form multiple narratives that have little to do with the narrative of the primary cinematic text. Grant’s comments reflect the multiple and divergent narratives present on the Hostel DVDs. The sheer volume of extra features available on these DVDs

113

selling the splat pack

virtually guarantee that Roth’s self-fashioning of himself as a politically provocative film-maker is only one thread running throughout numerous others at play on the DVD’s extra features. There is also Roth’s joyful and mischievous love of gore and special effects; discussing a particularly gruesome scene on the ‘Director’s commentary’ for the first film, Roth mentions, ‘Sony Home Video’s like, “Do you have extra stuff for the unrated DVD?” and I was like, [in an elated voice] “Ha ha! Yeah, sure!” ’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s commentary’). Also embedded is the story of Roth’s ascent from humble horror movie fan to Hollywood power player; at one point, Roth notes, ‘[After the success of Cabin Fever] All of a sudden, here I was. I was this kid at the Fangoria convention waiting on line for Kane Hodder’s autograph, and next thing you know, every studio in town calling wanting to meet me’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s commentary’).3 Beyond these threads, there are multiple humorous asides in the extra text of the Hostel DVDs: Roth complaining about waterless toilets in Prague; the director beatboxing and breakdancing with local kids during downtime on the set; a local actor apparently being too drunk to shoot his scene when called to the set; and the incessant ribbing of eccentric production accountant Mark Bakunas, a trope that even continues from the extra features for the first film to the extras for the sequel. The most encompassing thing one can conclude about the supertext of Roth’s Hostel films is that they are ultimately about Roth’s process of making the movies – not the exact narrative of the films, not his political intentions, and not even one precise self-image he tries to fashion. Grant corroborates this conclusion, arguing that in DVD culture ‘“understanding the film” is not reducible simply to understanding the story told by the film, but instead to understanding the story of the film’ (2008: 107). She elaborates: commentaries and documentaries . . . provide broader forms of identificatory and dialogic ‘infotainment’, ones predicated on authorial and auteurist discourses of vision, control of chance, achievement, and occasionally on the failure or inability to achieve . . . DVD director’s commentaries and, to a lesser extent, making-of documentaries, directly turn their authorized, documented, and intimate stories of the filmmaking process itself into a product. (2008: 112) Thus, the story of the making of the film – with all its authorial intentions, happy accidents, struggles, laughter and misfires – becomes the actual ‘story’ of the film on DVD, not the narrative of the primary cinematic text. At times, the extra features on the Hostel DVDs almost seem aware of the process that Grant describes. On the ‘Hostel dissected’ featurette on the first film’s DVD, there is a sequence that shows gore make-up being applied to actress Jennifer Lim’s face for the scene in which the right side of her face is

114

text, subtext and the story of the film

Figure 5.2  Eli Roth unfolds a sinister narrative for Jennifer Lim on the set of Hostel. © Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

gruesomely burned away by a blowtorch. As she sits in the make-up chair and Roth stands and examines her face in the mirror, she asks Roth if the film is based on a true story. Roth proceeds to tell her about the website that initiated the idea for the film. As Roth tells the story, low, ominous music plays on the soundtrack beneath Roth’s voice telling the story (Hostel, ‘Hostel dissected’). In this ostensibly ‘real’ moment, Roth’s ‘fictional’ visual storytelling is conflated with his ‘real’ oral storytelling. Clearly, the main attraction here is the teller, not the tale. Or, as Grant might say, the film on DVD treats the home video spectator to the story ‘of’ the film, not merely the story ‘told by’ the film. A scene at the beginning of the first Hostel hints at the importance of the story ‘of’ the film in DVD culture. About three minutes into the film, Josh, Paxton and Oli visit a hash bar. As they sample the establishment’s wares, a voice bellows from off-camera, ‘Yeah, dude, smoke it!’ The next shot reveals the voice’s source: a pair of young, students’ fraternity-type guys sitting at another table who are marked as obnoxious Americans by their attire – one wears a Boston Red Sox T-shirt and the other sports a backwards cap. The American wearing the Red Sox shirt goads the American in the backwards cap

115

selling the splat pack

Figure 5.3  Cameo appearances by the Roth brothers in Hostel. © Hostel LLC/Next Entertainment.

to take a hit off a bong. The man in the backwards cap complies but violently coughs, spraying bong water everywhere while the other American exclaims, ‘Aww, dude!’ Josh then turns to Paxton and asks in an irritated voice, ‘Are there any fucking Dutch people in Amsterdam?’ On one level, this scene merely conveys the ubiquity of obnoxious Americans travelling abroad. The facts, however, that director Eli Roth cameos as the American in the Red Sox shirt and his brother Gabriel plays the American in the backwards cap make this incident much more significant. Mathijs writes, ‘director cameos are often part of a film’s comment on its own status’ (2013: 146). A director cameo can function as a ‘signpost for cult cinema. The obsessive mining for details and endless kinds of talk these moments have generated are evidence of an explosive frame of reference that challenges profoundly the way we usually think about film’ (Mathijs, 2013: 147). In an obvious way, Roth’s cameo performs a similar function here, as his presence announces the status of Hostel as a significant film engineered to engender cultish devotion and an ‘obsessive mining for details’ in and about the film. This ‘mining for details’ is fed by DVD extras, such as commentaries and behind-the-scenes documentaries, that, in this case, were directed by Gabriel Roth. Thus, if Eli’s presence at the table announces the status of Hostel, Gabriel’s presence announces the equal status of Hostel’s DVD extra text.

116

text, subtext and the story of the film

‘That’s What Makes You Different from Those Guys!’: Authenticity Against the Ephemeral The signpost provided by Eli’s and Gabriel’s cameos at the beginning of Hostel is only one of many factors that illustrate the importance that Eli Roth places on the DVD releases of his films. It is only fitting that Roth should value the DVD platform. The ‘Unrated’ DVD gives him the opportunity to distribute movies widely with, essentially, as much gore as he likes. Additionally, the aura of the DVD as art places Roth’s films on a pedestal and frames Roth himself as an ‘artist’ or, at least, an ‘important’ director with ‘something to say’. Jonathan Gray writes that DVD extra texts perform ‘an impressive act of alchemy’ as they ‘create an author figure, surround the text with aura, and insist on its uniqueness, value, and authenticity in an otherwise standardized media environment, thereby taking a heretofore industrial entity and rendering it a work of art’ (2010: 82). Gray also notes that extra features can show ‘the cast and crew [allying] themselves with the viewers against other filmmakers and audiences . . . as members of a small elite band’ (2010: 82). Similar processes of validation and authentication are constantly at work on the Hostel DVD. On the executive producers’ commentary for the first film, Roth recalls how some directors advised him against following up Cabin Fever with another horror film because he may get typecast as ‘the horror guy’. Tarantino excitedly interjects, ‘But that’s what’s cool about you! You want to be “the horror guy”! That’s what makes you different from those guys!’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s and executive producers’ commentary’). Here, Tarantino discursively bestows authenticity upon Roth and his persona. Roth is elevated to a true artist and horror director; he makes these films because he wants to make them, not for the money. For figures like Roth and Tarantino, authenticity is tied to a film’s longevity and, in the film industry, longevity is inexorably tied to its afterlife in other media, primarily home video. Gray observes this trajectory when, citing Charles Acland, he notes that ‘“film texts grow old elsewhere”, living on in other venues and on other viewing platforms, and hence “the influence of individual texts can be truly gauged only via cross-media scrutiny” ’ (2010: 90). Roth often shows his awareness of the connections between authenticity and longevity, and their relationship to home video. He notes on the ‘Director’s commentary’ for Hostel that Tarantino said to him, ‘“Eli, it’s not about opening weekend. It’s about that weekend thirty years from now” . . . Hopefully, thirty years from now, kids will still be renting it’ (Hostel, ‘Director’s commentary’). On his commentary for Hostel: Part II, Roth says that he includes so much extra material on DVD releases of his films because ‘The whole point of it is you can own this movie ten years and then go back to it, you know, and find more and more information’ (Hostel: Part II,

117

selling the splat pack

‘Commentary with Eli Roth’). Roth frames his films in such a manner to shield them from being considered ephemeral. Gray argues that the strategic employment of extra texts can help elevate ‘“lower” form[s] of culture’ that are often considered less significant (2010: 105). Roth elevates his films – framing them as ‘artistic’, ‘political’, or ‘meaningful’ – with the DVD format. His films may be meaningful because they make a political statement or because they were made by an authentic artist or horror fan. It may ultimately be inconsequential or uncertain why exactly the films are considered important, just as long as they are considered important. One thing is clear, however: rather than being reactions to, or reflections of, post-9/11 trauma, the Hostel films emerged from a specific context in which a film’s success was dependent on its being watched over and over again, even ten or thirty years into the future. Notes 1. Roth claims he wrote Paxton as white but was so impressed with Hernandez’s audition that he gave him the role (Hostel, ‘Director’s and executive producers’ commentary’). Hernandez’s line ‘Look at me! I’m not fucking American’ was probably added during shooting. 2. Roth mentions that he thought of Stuart and Todd as grown-up versions of Josh and Paxton had they not died as a result of their run-in with Elite Hunting (Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino and Gabe Roth’). 3. Stuntman turned actor Kane Hodder is much loved in horror fandom as, to date, the only actor who has played Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th franchise more than once. Hodder has played the character in four films.

118

6. THE ‘WHITE TRASH’ WORLD OF ROB ZOMBIE: CLASS, COLLECTING AND SLUMMING SPECTATORS

From TV to Film and Back Again: Zombie’s Creature Feature Show Despite all his showmanship, Roth would never become the biggest celebrity in the Splat Pack. Even with his appearances in a couple of Tarantino films, there was little chance that Roth could top the celebrity of Robert Cummings, better known as Rob Zombie. In the late 1980s, Zombie formed White Zombie, a noise metal group. After several years, a few album releases, and a shift from noise metal to groove metal, White Zombie signed with Geffen Records and released their major label debut album, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One, in 1992. The group catapulted into fame after the music video for their single ‘Thunder Kiss ’65’ was featured on MTV’s popular animated programme, Beavis and Butt-head. While a member of White Zombie, he began dabbling in film-making, directing music videos for the band. After recording and releasing another successful album, Zombie disbanded White Zombie in 1998 and began recording and touring as a solo artist. Zombie soon entered into feature-length film-making by writing and directing House of 1000 Corpses. A career in film followed, making Zombie a rarity: a successful musician who became an equally successful film-maker, becoming ‘a cross-platform juggernaut who delivers variations of trashy yet clever schlock-horror to all manners of media, from film to record . . . to the stage’ (Erlewine, 2007). Zombie’s journey from heavy metal front man to ‘cross-platform juggernaut’ was not an easy one, as his movie career had an inauspicious start. If Zombie’s music was a more danceable version of metal, his dark, brutal films

119

selling the splat pack

did not make many people feel like dancing. After Zombie had successfully designed Universal Studio’s ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ attraction for their studio tour, Universal financed Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses. Zombie and company shot much of the film on the Universal lot during 1999 and 2000. Things turned sour, however, when Universal executives disliked Zombie’s violent film which, despite its often cartoony and psychedelic palette, is brutal, gory and downbeat. Suspecting the film would unavoidably receive an NC-17, Universal dropped Corpses from their release schedule in 2001. After floating in limbo for about a year, the film landed at Lionsgate. The distributor managed to get an R rating for Zombie’s film and gave it a cinema release in April 2003. The film grossed a modest $16 million at the box office but found an audience on DVD, enough of one for Lionsgate to finance and distribute a sequel, The Devil’s Rejects, released in July 2005. Many aspects of Corpses make the film seem tailored to be a hit on DVD. Chapter 3 describes Lionsgate’s elaborate home video release of the film, a DVD complete with interactive, character-hosted menus, director’s commentary and a plethora of other behind-the-scenes materials. Beyond the DVD extra texts grafted on to Zombie’s film to make it more marketable on home video, the primary cinematic text itself is incredibly televisual, which is not surprising considering Zombie’s background in music videos and television production.1 The film makes its obsession with the televisual apparent from the beginning. It opens with television static that cuts to a few fuzzy seconds of Boris Karloff from The Old Dark House (Whale, 1932). Then, it changes to black-andwhite, low-fi footage of a man in a suit wearing pale-faced ghoul make-up. A low-voiced announcer proclaims, ‘Attention, boils and ghouls, it’s time for Dr Wolfenstein’s Creature Feature Show’. An obvious throwback to television horror hosts of the past, Dr Wolfenstein stands behind a mad-­scientist laboratory kit and cackles: ‘Ah-hhh! The doctor is in. Don’t scream. Don’t move. Stay tuned for Channel 68’s Halloween Eve movie marathon. I’m your host, your ghost host with the most, Dr Wolfenstein. I will be with you until the end!’ Wolfenstein does not keep his promise to be with the viewer ‘until the end’, however; he appears only once more on a television in the background of a scene about twenty minutes into the film but never reappears afterwards. The film bursts out of its televisual frame as it tells the story of four suburbanite kids being kidnapped, tortured and killed by the mass-murdering Firefly family in rural Texas in 1977. Even as it breaks out of this frame narrative, it compulsively returns to images of televisions as characters in the film watch old horror films, such as House of Frankenstein, and campy sitcoms, such as The Munsters. These images of television continue even into The Devil’s Rejects, the sequel to Corpses. Set in 1978, a year after the events of the first film, Rejects follows the exploits of three members of the murderous Firefly family, Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby

120

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

(Sheri Moon Zombie), as they flee from the police led by vengeful sheriff John Wydell (William Forsythe), the brother of one of the Fireflys’ victims in the first film. With its wide desert vistas and gunfights, Rejects is more cinematic than Corpses – Zombie has stated that he often thinks of the film as more of a western than a horror film – but television still re-emerges and interrupts the proceedings. In one scene, Otis and Baby take a group of victims hostage at gunpoint in a cheap motel; even during all the excitement, Baby gets distracted by a Buck Owens performance on the room’s television: ‘God damn it, look at that jacket!’ she excitedly exclaims, which prompts Otis to admonish her to ‘keep [her] head on the business at hand’. Zombie also cannot seem to pull his eyes – and mind – away from the television,2 which makes him a perfect fit for the Splat Pack because the group’s success was predicated on home video and the DVD revolution. Zombie is aware of how things translate to television; he was launched into stardom when his band appeared on a television-within-the-television show, Beavis and Butt-head, which primarily featured its lead characters watching television.3 Zombie places a great deal of focus on how his films will be received on video, and Lionsgate loaded the DVDs for Corpses and Rejects with special features, perhaps the most impressive of the batch being the documentary ‘30 days in Hell: The making of The Devil’s Rejects’. Running for 144 minutes – more than thirty minutes longer than Rejects – ‘30 days in Hell’ is an example of extra text that envelopes and consumes the primary cinematic text. Like Roth, Zombie utilises extra text to dramatise and narrativise the making of his films, that is, to collapse the ‘fiction’ of the film’s narrative with the ‘reality’ of the film’s making into one supertext that encompasses ‘the story of the film’. This impulse is apparent from the beginning of ’30 days in Hell’ which, like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Devil’s Rejects itself, begins with an ominous opening crawl: On May 25th, 2004, director Rob Zombie began work on ‘The Devil’s Rejects’, a follow up to his bizarre cult hit, ‘House of 1000 Corpses’. The film would follow the further exploits of Captain Spaulding, Otis and Baby. Production would be completed in a grueling thirty days under the blazing sun of the California desert. This is that story. (Rejects, ‘30 days’.) Zombie’s extra features are similar to Roth’s in how they dramatise – and mythologise – the process of the making of the film. In Zombie’s case, this process is even more important. Anticipating that critics could write off

121

selling the splat pack

Zombie as a stupid metal musician posing as a serious film-maker, the extra texts on the DVDs of his films stress Zombie’s status as a consummate ‘artist’. On the extra features for Corpses, actor Rainn Wilson who plays Bill, one of the Fireflys’ victims, gushes that ‘Rob Zombie’s imagination is just unfettered’ and that the film lets the viewer ‘see the inner workings of his brain become unglued’ (Corpses, ‘Making of’). Chris Hardwick who plays Jerry, another of the Fireflys’ victims, describes Zombie as ‘thoroughly articulate’ and adds ‘If he doesn’t know what is going on all the time, then he is a brilliant actor’ (Corpses, ‘Making of’). Perhaps the biggest compliment comes when Karen Black – who, in Corpses, plays Mother Firefly, the matriarch of the murderous family – describes Zombie’s directorial style as ‘high aesthetic’ (Corpses, ‘Making of’). Unlike Roth, however, Zombie appears less interested in framing his films as ‘political’ or ‘subversive’ which is interesting when one considers how the primary cinematic texts of Zombie’s first two films could be read as very subversive. Zombie’s Firefly family films – and his later remakes of Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009) – belong to a subgenre of horror that features murderous members of the underclass attacking victims from the middle class. The Firefly family emerges from a ‘white trash’ milieu. The ‘white trash’ stereotype in popular media serves to demean white people from lower economic strata by portraying them as ‘poor, dirty, drunken, criminally minded, and sexually perverse people’ (Newitz and Wray, 1997: 2). The Firefly family meets these criteria excessively. One would be hard pressed to find more demented underclass characters in mainstream cinema. One could argue that the ferocity of Zombie’s murderous denizens of the underclass is meant to horrify middleclass viewers and to demonise members of lower social classes; usually, the function of the ‘white trash stereotype’ is to ‘[serve] as a useful way of blaming the poor for being poor. The term white trash helps solidify for the middle and upper classes a sense of cultural and intellectual superiority’ (Newitz and Wray, 1997: 1). When there is an (often violent) encounter between ‘middleclass whites’ and ‘lower-class whites’ in film, ‘Lower-class whites get racialised, and demeaned, because they fit into the primitive/civilized binary as primitives’ (Newitz, 1997: 134). This typical scenario is not present in Zombie’s films because they elicit affection for the underclass monsters and contempt for the middle-class victims. Unlike past class-based horror films, Zombie’s films are relentless and offer his middle-class characters little to no vindication or redemption. As with all Splat Pack films, however, one must contend with the instability of Zombie’s films as films on DVD before speculating on their meaning. Considering the swirl of primary cinematic texts and extra texts on DVDs of Zombie’s films reveals processes at work that make these films far more complicated than mere demonisations and/or valorisations of the underclass and/or middle class.

122

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

Instead, Zombie’s films on DVD invite a curious mode of cross-class spectatorship for middle-class DVD collectors. This cross-class spectatorship is enabled by the instability of the primary cinematic text. In the case of Zombie’s films, the extra text extends this instability to identity, and presents the films as opportunities for spectators to adopt alternative identities through which one may live vicariously. The ways in which Zombie’s films allow middle-class DVD collectors to ‘slum it’ through cross-class spectatorship continue in a long line of American traditions of class and power. Rob Zombie’s ‘White Trash’ World, the Horror Film and the Question of Class Before discussing Zombie’s films on DVD and the types of spectatorship they encourage, it will be helpful to offer an overview of representations of class in Zombie’s films and how they differ from class-based horror films of the past. The issue of class materialises in Zombie’s films through the presence of a ‘white trash aesthetic’ which is ‘an aesthetic of the flashy, the inappropriate, the garish’ preferred by ‘a rural-based under-class of poor whites . . . ­marginalized socially, racially, and culturally’ (Sweeney, 1997: 249). It is an aesthetic ‘of bricolage, of random experimentation with the bits and pieces of culture, but especially the out-of-style, the tasteless, the rejects of mainstream society . . . it privileges details, brightness, presentation’ (1997: 250). This aesthetic is apparent in Zombie’s directorial approach, especially in Corpses. In this film, Zombie assaults the viewers not only with a narrative filled with violence and torture but also with a palette of loud neon colours, random cutaways to negative-image footage that illogically interrupt the narrative, and obtrusive spilt-screen shots. Zombie fills his compositions with excessive detail and popular culture detritus. Scenes that take place in Captain Spaulding’s Fried Chicken and Gasoline, a dingy roadside attraction owned by Spaulding, are filled to bursting with ‘white trash’ ephemera: velvet portraits of celebrities, photographs of freak show attractions, fried chicken, and a ‘Murder Ride’, a carnival-style attraction devoted to serial killers. If all this is not enough, the film begins with Spaulding and his friend Stucky (Michael J. Pollard) hanging out at Spaulding’s establishment and talking about an acquaintance of theirs who was caught masturbating with a Planet of the Apes action figure lodged in his rectum. Gael Sweeney explains that the excessiveness of the white trash aesthetic gives the illusion of plenitude where there is scarcity; she calls it a ‘castrated aesthetic’ (1997: 250). Practitioners of white trash aesthetic are those who lack capital, education, social status and political power. Thus, the excessiveness of white trash aesthetic ‘fills a lack, covering every empty space with stuff and effect’ (Sweeney, 1997: 250). By this token, the murderous members of the

123

selling the splat pack

Figure 6.1  An aesthetic of excess: Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) triptych from House of 1000 Corpses. © Spectacle Entertainment Group/Universal Pictures.

Firefly family replace what they lack in social status by accumulating ‘stuff’. The Firefly family’s run-down, rural house is so ornamented with Christmas and Halloween decorations and littered with toys, clothing and rubbish that it causes an investigating police officer (Walton Goggins) to exclaim: ‘God damn! These packrats throw anything away? . . . You’d think these sons of bitches would have a yard sale’. The Fireflys are different, however, from the rural poor whites whom Sweeney describes as ‘powerless to do anything but collect junk and show it off’ (1997: 250). The Fireflys’ ‘collecting’ habits become their agency as they extend their habits to kidnapping and murdering people. True to white trash aesthetics, their crimes are staggeringly excessive. They prolong the agony of their victims with torture and humiliation and, by the film’s conclusion, it is intimated that the number of their victims reaches into the thousands, hence the film’s title. In subsequent films, Zombie tones down the wild, psychedelic aspects of his visual approach, jettisoning the flashy techniques of Corpses. He retains his interest in white trash characters and aesthetics of excess, however. In fact, Zombie’s more realistic approach in Rejects – with its washed-out colours and bleak desert landscapes – makes the film’s violence, sex and profanity seem even more excessive. Predecessors to Zombie’s work are what Carol Clover calls ‘urbanoia’ films, ranging from prestige pictures, such as Deliverance, to ‘nasties’, such as I Spit on Your Grave, in which ‘two sets of politics come into play and are played off against one another: the politics of gender and the politics of the urban/ rural social class’ (1993: 160). These films feature well-to-do, middle-class

124

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

characters from the city beset by monstrous members of the underclass from the country and depict ‘a confrontation between have and have-nots, or even more directly, between exploiters and their victims’ (1993: 126). The monstrousness of the underclass ‘rednecks’ in these films proves that they are guilty for causing their own poverty (Clover, 1993: 135), and the excessiveness of their monstrousness works ‘to justify the annihilation of country people by their guilty city cousins’ (Clover, 1993: 160). The ‘redneck’ of many modern horror films is a racialised figure, an updated version of the ‘savage Indian’ from western narratives (Clover, 1993: 136). While Clover takes into consideration gender, class and racial oppression in ‘urbanoia’, she ultimately privileges a focus on sexual politics in her analysis. Clover argues that the narrative played out in many urbanoia films ‘is an economic story, but it is one that is repeatedly told as a gender story and even, indirectly or directly, as a “rape” story’ (1993: 162). The ‘country dwellers’ that populate the urbanoia films she discusses are ‘disproportionately represented by adult males’ (1993: 125), thus making the threat of rape a constant in these films. While Zombie’s movies recall other representations of the underclass in film, they differ significantly from the ‘urbanoia’ films Clover discusses. Unlike those films, the Firefly family’s gender dynamics are more varied; the Firefly family contains both a strong patriarchal figure in Captain Spaulding and a strong matriarchal figure in Mother Firefly (played in the first film by Karen Black and in the second by Leslie Easterbrook), and both Otis and Baby take leadership of the family in equal measure. Like Clover’s urbanoia films, a sexual threat is present in Zombie’s films – recall Otis’s terrible violation of Gloria Sullivan described at the beginning of Chapter 3 – but sexual violence is only one of many types of brutality practised by the Fireflys. Rape does not bring the narratives of these films to a screeching halt as it does in Deliverance and I Spit on Your Grave. Also significant is how Baby and Mother Firefly pose a feminine variation of sexual threat missing from earlier urbanoia films. Zombie’s films have more in common with the class-based horror films discussed by Annalee Newitz who grounds her analysis in critical class and race studies. Newitz examines films such as The Sadist (Landis, 1963) and The Hills Have Eyes in which ‘privileged whites are ambushed by low-class, monstrous whites’ and ‘the privileged lose their social power when they are tortured and some of their number killed’ (1997: 139). These films represent ‘fantasies about whites resolving their racial problems without ever having to deal with people of color’ (Newitz, 1997: 139). The primary problem being dealt with in these films is white, middle-class ‘guilt over having ever exercised power unfairly or with prejudice’ (Newitz, 1997: 139). Newitz’s focus on race and the racialised notion of ‘white trash’ is helpful in an analysis of Zombie’s films, as the Firefly family is heterogeneous in terms of race. In

125

selling the splat pack

Rejects, it is revealed that Captain Spaulding (played by Armenian Sid Haig) has an African American brother named Charlie Altamont (Ken Foree). The Firefly family’s miscegenation historically ties them to the origin of the term ‘white trash’ in eugenic studies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that deemed ‘rural poor whites’ as ‘genetic defectives’ often because there was ‘a person of mixed blood’ in their genealogies (Newitz and Wray, 1997: 2). Zombie’s films also differ significantly, however, from the class-based horror films Newitz discusses. Newitz argues that films depicting underclass violence against middle-class victims who are ‘forced’ to defend themselves by becoming violent themselves are ultimately pleasurable for middle-class audiences. They depict middle-class characters being ‘drained of social power and subsequently given it back’ after being absolved of their ‘elitist corruption’ through their victimisation (1997: 143). As such, the films offer the ‘perfect excuse for the middle classes to behave in outrageously cruel ways toward the lower classes’ (1997: 144). Newitz’s exploration of this middle-class response throws into relief how different Zombie’s films are from class-based horror films of the past. In past films, middle-class victims ultimately succeed against their underclass tormentors and, in the process, are absolved of abusing their middle-class privilege. Zombie’s films, however, offer no absolution to the middle-class characters who are presented as fully deserving the suffering they experience. This depiction of middle-class victims foregrounds just how different Zombie’s films are from other class-based horror films and how his films might be read as progressive or even radical. Discussing the limitations of past classbased horror films, Peter Hutchings notes that films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes fall short of being progressive political texts: ‘neither the monstrous family in The Texas Chainsaw [sic] Massacre nor the one in The Hills Have Eyes is portrayed in a positive or sympathetic light’ (2004: 121). The proletariat in these films is simply monstrous and made to be ‘as appalling, grotesque, and nasty as possible’ (Hutchings, 2004: 124). Conversely, the middle-class victims in these films ‘tend to be offered to us as “ordinary” people undeserving of their fate’ (Hutchings, 2004: 121). While they may be depicted as having flaws, ‘the remarkable violence directed against them . . . seems . . . a disproportionate response to these flaws’ (Hutchings, 2004: 121). Hutchings concludes that while these films ‘reveal the shortcomings of the middle classes’ and ‘their values and their lifestyles’, they do not do so ‘in a manner that encourages much sympathy with or understanding of the oppressed ones themselves’ (2004: 124). Hutchings summarises how both underclass and middle-class characters in these 1970s films are usually depicted. Though Zombie’s films borrow liberally from many past horror films, his ‘White Trash World’ does not play by the rules that these films set.

126

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

Sympathetic White Trash Killers, Despicable Middle-class Victims If the underclass monsters in 1970s horror films are rarely ‘portrayed in a positive or sympathetic light’ or ‘in a manner that encourages much sympathy with or understanding of the oppressed ones themselves’ (Hutchings, 2004: 121, 124), Zombie’s films deviate from these conventions. While his Firefly family films do not offer much of a critique of middle-class culture or the exploitation of the working class, they do contain an empathy for their white trash monsters that is unnerving when considered alongside their unrelenting brutality and cruelty. Additionally, almost no sympathy is reserved for their middle-class victims. Zombie’s attitudes toward his characters are both underscored and complicated by his comments in the extra texts contained on the DVDs of the films. As Zombie tells key members of his cast in the ‘30 days in Hell’ documentary, ‘The real goal, you know, is to make these shitty, horrible people lovable’ (Rejects, ‘30 days’). Zombie’s positioning for the Firefly family as the sympathetic protagonists of The Devil’s Rejects is apparent from the beginning of the film which opens with Sheriff Wydell and his police force carrying out an armed raid on the Firefly house. As Wydell boasts to his men that they are about to perform a ‘cleansing of the wicked’, the spectator is offered glimpses inside the Firefly house, one of which is a grotesque shot of Otis sleeping in his bed with his arms wrapped around the naked body of a dead woman. The grotesque nature of this scene is counterbalanced by human moments, however, such as a brief exchange between Baby and Mother Firefly that takes place before Wydell’s men open fire on the house; Mother Firefly weeps, ‘I keep thinking about . . . old times . . . like when you was a fuckin’ baby. You looked like an angel.’ When the police take over the house, only Otis and Baby get away as they crawl out through a drainage pipe, kill a woman, steal her car and make good their escape. Set to the groove of the Allman Brothers’ ‘Midnight Rider’, this sequence makes it feel as if Zombie is leading the spectator to root for the Fireflys, despite their terrible actions. As Zombie notes, the Fireflys are horrible people but many viewers ‘still like them’ (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with director Rob Zombie’). Zombie’s preference for the family comes through not only through the primary cinematic text but through the extra text as well. Zombie’s analysis of the most notorious scene in Rejects – Otis and Baby’s siege of the Banjo and Sullivan families in a dingy motel room – is telling in this regard. In the scene, Otis and Baby take two couples – Adam and Wendy Banjo (Lew Temple and Kate Norby) and Roy and Gloria Sullivan (Geoffrey Lewis and Priscilla Barnes) who are on tour as the country act Banjo and Sullivan – hostage at gunpoint. The Fireflys’ actions during this scene take depravity to levels rarely seen in mainstream films: Otis shoots their roadie Jimmy (Brian Posehn) in the head,

127

selling the splat pack

spraying blood all over the couple; he later violates Gloria with a handgun and forces her to fellate him at gunpoint; and Baby bullies Wendy and Gloria to abuse each other. Zombie’s commentary explains that the filming of these scenes ‘is where things started getting very intense . . . People started getting upset’ (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with director Rob Zombie’). He later describes the mood on set as ‘magical’, however, and that he wishes he ‘had just made the entire movie take place in this room’ (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with director Rob Zombie’), a comment that seems to contradict his earlier statement about the misery on set. Besides foregrounding the textual instability of films on DVD, the contradictory comment might reveal where Zombie’s sympathies lie. He describes Adam Banjo, who vomits after Otis murders Jimmy, as a ‘vomiting, whimpering crybaby’ (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with director Rob Zombie’); on a separate actors’ commentary, Sheri Moon Zombie refers to Adam as a ‘big pussy’ (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie’). If the extra text has any effect in this case on the primary cinematic text, it favours the Firefly family over their victims. This affection for the family is bolstered by the ways in which Zombie humanises them, even after truly terrible and horrific scenes such as Otis and Baby’s murder of the Banjo and Sullivan families. After Otis and Baby connect with Spaulding, the three of them ride in a van, and Baby pesters Otis to pull over and let her get ice cream. When Otis finally relents, Baby and Spaulding enjoy their ice cream (which they playfully refer to as ‘tutti-fucking-fruity’), Baby rubs some on Otis’s nose and they all have a good laugh. On the commentary, Zombie describes this seemingly incidental scene as a ‘pivotal moment’ (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary’). He explains: ‘in order to make the audience sway to the dark side here for a while, I . . . add[ed] in a moment we’ve all experienced: arguing with your family on a road trip’ (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary’). Despite all the violence they create and all the people they kill, the Fireflys are attractive, and the audience is left on the ‘dark side’ for the remainder of Rejects. There is no one besides them to root for as the film reveals their pursuer, Officer Wydell, is as psychopathic as the Fireflys but not as likeable. On the director’s commentary, Zombie happily notes that Wydell’s death at the hands of Tiny (Matthew McGrory), a large, deformed member of the Firefly family thought dead until the end of the film, always gets applause from audiences (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary’). The trio of Fireflys get a much more lyrical send-off at the film’s conclusion. After the Fireflys have vanquished Sheriff Wydell and their other pursuers, the trio drive across a mountainous landscape while Lynard Skynard’s ‘Freebird’ blares on the soundtrack. As they drive along, bruised, bloody and battered from their tribulations, they fantasise about one another, smiling, happy and standing in the sunlight. Their dreams are shattered, however, when they

128

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

encounter a police roadblock waiting for them. As the song’s tempo increases, the Fireflys take up arms and drive full speed towards the roadblock with guns blazing. They meet their death in a mythical manner. Zombie says of the film’s finale: It just sort of sums up the whole thing because in the end, these are bad people, but they’re played out as [pause] they’re like Bonnie and Clyde. They are . . . typical American western outlaws . . . It’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It’s Bonnie and Clyde. (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary’) Zombie not only depicts his white trash villains in a more sympathetic light than horror directors of the past but also elevates them to mythical status. Perhaps even more striking than Zombie’s heroic depiction of his white trash killers is the contempt his films have for the middle-class victims of the underclass. Hutchings argues that, in films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, the victims ‘might have more money and possessions, and a higher social position [but] they tend to be offered to us as “ordinary” people undeserving of their fate’ (2004: 121). While the torments that the middle-class victims are forced to endure in earlier horror films are always ‘a disproportionate response to [their] faults’ (2004: 121), there are many examples of how Zombie depicts his middle-class victims as irritating, privileged brats deserving of their horrendous fate in House of 1000 Corpses. The primary cinematic text of Corpses conveys an obvious disdain for the Fireflys’ victims that is again underscored by Zombie on the DVD extra text. The four young suburbanites who find themselves in the clutches of the Firefly family are obnoxious, cruel to one another, and have a condescending attitude towards those whom they consider underclass. These traits are obvious when, at the beginning of the film, they stop at Captain Spaulding’s Fried Chicken and Gasoline. The two men in the group, Bill and Jerry – ­unenthusiastically accompanied by their respective girlfriends, Mary (Jennifer Jostyn) and Denise (Erin Daniels) – jokingly peruse Spaulding’s wares, and Bill bombards Spaulding with questions about his establishment while scribbling his answers in a notebook. Bill tells Spaulding that he is ‘writing this book on off-beat roadside attractions . . . the crazy shit you see when you’re driving across the country’, to which Spaulding replies, ‘I don’t drive across country’. Bill, oblivious to the class difference implicit in Spaulding’s reply, continues his line of questioning, insisting, ‘But if you did’. Ultimately, the middle-class victims of Corpses are depicted as callous and wilfully not conscious of the fact that their entertainment and amusement are predicated upon class stratification. They consider Spaulding’s dingy gas station as kitsch, not as a sign of class difference. During these scenes, Zombie reveals on the director’s commentary:

129

selling the splat pack

There was a lot more going on here with Jerry and Mary hating each other, but Mary just turned into such a bitch. Not that she wasn’t a complete bitch throughout the movie, but we don’t want the audience to be actively rooting for her to die, at least not this early on. (Corpses, ‘Director commentary’) The primary cinematic text makes it debatable whether or not Zombie succeeded in not making these characters detestable from the start. As the middle-class characters grow more irritating, the film depicts them as deserving of their fate. On Captain Spaulding’s ‘Murder Ride’, Bill and Jerry become obsessed with Dr Satan, a local serial killer. Excited about potential material for their book, Jerry begs Spaulding for directions to the nearby tree where Dr Satan was supposedly lynched. Following these directions leads the foursome into the clutches of the Fireflys. While in the Firefly house, the demented family toy with their victims as a prelude to the violent mayhem to come. Baby taunts them by showing sexual interest in Bill – unlike urbanoia films of the past, Zombie’s films allow hillbilly women to be sexually threatening as well – much to the chagrin of Mary. Things finally reach a fever pitch when Mary shoves Baby away from Bill. Baby draws a knife and threatens, ‘I’ll cut your fucking tits off and shove them down your throat.’ On the commentary, Zombie notes, ‘Of course, we hate Mary. She must die . . . I think most of the audience would actually like to see [Baby] do that – shove them down Mary’s throat – because then Mary might stop bitching for five seconds’ (Corpses, ‘Director commentary’). Here, it is almost as if the extra text allows Zombie to join his characters in the primary cinematic text in their terrorisation of the victims. After this turning point, the rest of the film depicts the Fireflys variously torturing and killing these victims. In the process, the Fireflys also murder two police officers (Tom Towles and Walton Goggins) and Denise’s father (Harrison Young) who all arrive at the house looking for the missing victims. Later, when the victims are dressed in bunny suits, bound and gagged, Otis, wearing the skinned face and torso of Denise’s father, accosts them, screaming: ‘Maybe it ain’t a good idea to be prancing around where you don’t belong!’ The implication is that the victims in this film are asking for what they get. None of them escapes the Fireflys’ compound alive and, owing to the suburbanites’ obnoxiousness, perhaps no one would want them to survive. Their relentless brutality towards middle-class victims sets Zombie’s films apart from others of its type. Newitz argues that the ‘victimization of middleclass whites’ in class-based horror films ‘becomes their redemption’ (1997: 140–1). When the middle-class victims rise up against their white trash tormentors and survive, their survival ensures that they are ‘no longer guilty of white middle-class privilege’ because they have been ‘drained of social power’

130

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

(Newitz, 1997: 143). While Newitz’s analysis speaks to the films that she examines, it is difficult to argue that Zombie’s films perform the same function. In Rejects, one of the main confrontations between the murderous underclass and their middle-class victims occurs when Otis and Baby take the Banjo and Sullivan families hostage. These couples’ country-and-western looks may suggest that they are from the same social milieu as the white trash Fireflys but this is not the case as is made clear when Otis forces the two men to drive him out to an isolated spot so he can retrieve some guns he hid there earlier. As Roy and Adam drive Otis to the location, Otis holds a gun on them, and Elvin Bishop’s pop-hit ‘Fooled Around and Fell in Love’ plays on the radio. Otis asks Roy if he likes the song and a dazed Roy responds that he does. Otis derisively replies: ‘You like that Top 40 shit? I thought you were like some kinda true-blue-balls-earnest-kill-’em country fucker. You’re nothing but a city faggot with a cowboy hat’. Otis’s acid remarks uncover Roy’s – and, by extension, his entourage’s – middle-class status and deny them the redemption available to most middle-class victims in other class-based horror films. By reminding his victims of their class status, Otis does not allow them to be drained of their social power; they remain guilty and are punished for their trespasses. When they arrive at their destination, Roy and Adam attempt to overpower Otis but he dispatches them with relative ease. Standing over their bloody, dying bodies, Otis admonishes, ‘You know, I was going to take it easy on you boys, but you brought this down on yourself’. Before beating Roy to death and skinning Adam’s face while he is still alive, Otis ominously intones,

Figure 6.2  ‘I am here to do the devil’s work’: white trash fury in The Devil’s Rejects. © Lions Gate Films/Cinerenta.

131

selling the splat pack

‘I am the devil, and I am here to do the devil’s work’, as if Roy and Adam’s attempt to resist his white trash fury, rather than redeeming them, has served only to imbue Otis with mythological power. There is little to no middle-class redemption in these films as the Firefly family always triumphs over its victims until the family is shot down in a blaze of police gunfire. Class and Collecting: Zombie’s Films on DVD While the primary cinematic texts of Zombie’s films may seem subversive in their representations of class, the ways in which his films are linked to the rise of the DVD market problematise these representations. While Zombie’s films wallow in a ‘White Trash’ World, they are presented on a platform that appeals to middle-class notions of propriety and ownership. As Chapter 3 demonstrates, Zombie’s status as a celebrity–auteur has been buttressed by DVD, and Lionsgate traded heavily on his recognisable name with its DVD releases of Corpses, Rejects and the ‘Rob Zombie 3-Disc Collector’s Set’, a rerelease containing both films. Zombie’s films have flourished during the DVD era of Hollywood film-making due in no small part to his films’ ability to support a stream of consumer product. Writing in 2001, Christopher Sharrett laments that ‘fringe cinema’, such as underground and independent horror films, ‘that previously critiqued the mainstream’ began endorsing the same ideology as mainstream horror films (2001: 326). After the DVD revolution, it seems as if fringe cinema itself has been co-opted to be sold as a collectable commodity. Zombie’s films on DVD, loaded with commentaries, behind-the-scenes documentaries and supposedly forbidden footage, have made ideal ‘collector’s items’ on the home video market. Guins suggests that, whenever the paracinematic object is ‘officially and legally placed on the market’ and is ‘dependent on mainstream modes of promotion’ (2005: 30), the subversive film may suffer ‘a loss to the very claim of opposition’ (2005: 30). Even though Zombie’s films may contain subversive images of the underclass striking out against the middle class, the films’ oppositionality is called into question by their status as collector’s item on DVD, a format that has much in keeping with bourgeois notions of ‘art’ (Guins, 2005: 28–9). The DVD gives these ostensibly marginal films an gateway into the middle-class mainstream. This entry is practically announced on the DVD cover of The Devil’s Rejects which bears the blurb ‘Two Thumbs Up – Ebert and Roeper’. Apparently, this is a film of which even Roger Ebert, that stalwart of middle-class ‘good taste’, can approve. The ways in which Zombie’s films are presented on DVD have class connotations. According to Klinger, DVDs, with their ‘sell-through’ prices and aura of collectability, appeal to ‘a middle-class consciousness about the superiority of ownership’ (2006: 62). Zombie’s films on DVD are clearly marketed

132

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

primarily to the middle-class DVD consumer whose desire to become ‘privy to a secret world of information about filmmaking’ is fed by the extensive ‘extra features’ (such as ‘making of’ documentaries that run longer than the film itself) featured on the DVDs of Zombie’s films (Klinger, 2006: 68). Some have noted that the growth of the DVD market suggests that ‘collecting’ habits are no longer practised solely by the ‘elitist collector’ but also extend to the indiscriminate buyer (McDonald, 2007: 70). While this observation is partially true, the fact remains that DVDs are consumer products that were marketed more to ‘haves’ than to ‘have nots’. Epstein confirms the industry’s desire to sell DVDs to middle-class consumers with plenty of disposable income. He reports: unlike other stores, the big retailers view DVDs as traffic-builders, as one Wal-Mart executive put it, aimed at bringing in the relatively well-heeled, plasma-screen-purchasing customers, not the so-called LICs (or lowincome consumers). As a rueful Sony marketing executive pointed out, ‘Unfortunately, our teens are not always who they want’. (2010: 179) For the studio/distributors during DVD’s roll-out, the ideal market for their product is the middle-class consumer who can afford a DVD library and the best home cinema equipment to showcase DVD’s picture and sound quality. Studio/distributors are less concerned with selling DVDs to low-income consumers who may be able to afford a DVD but not a collection nor the expensive equipment on which to watch it. Epstein’s research reveals that retailers are so disinterested in selling DVDs to low-income consumers that they have creating an industry lingo name for them (LICs). Since middle-class consumers are the most profitable for retailers, they put pressure on the studio/­distributors to manufacture products tailored for these viewers. As the Sony executive insinuates, retailers are not interested in indiscriminate teenagers who will go to see just ‘any’ film; they want the collectors, the ‘real’ film fans to whom the Splat Pack directors’ claims to authenticity are meant to appeal. Though he deals in carnivalesque heavy metal music and horror movies, Zombie projects a public persona that endorses and encourages collecting in a manner similar to that of the studio/distributors. If Corpses begins with an obsession with the televisual, it also focuses on collecting; the narrative proper begins with Spaulding’s friend Stucky complaining that his collection of celebrity autographs is depreciated because the signatures are personalised to him. Carrying this obsession with collecting to the present, on Rob Zombie’s Facebook page, there is a photograph album entitled ‘Fan Collections’ devoted to photographs submitted by fans of their collections of Zombie gear. In this album, one can find an impressive array of photographs that document the prodigious collections of Rob Zombie memorabilia that some fans have

133

selling the splat pack

amassed. Also demonstrated by the images is Zombie’s prolific output, as these collections are a testament to Erlewine’s comment that Zombie has become a ‘cross-platform juggernaut’, with a seemingly endless stream of music, films, posters, T-shirts, toys, and other collectables released under his aegis. While some photographs feature materials which relate only to Zombie’s music career, most photos are either devoted in part or entirely to Zombie’s films. One photograph features a shrine to the Firefly family, with a Devil’s Rejects poster in the middle surrounded by autographed pictures and action figures of various characters from the films. Another photograph shows a fan’s collection of Zombie-related toys and DVDs on a shelf low to the ground and, on the wall above, a high-definition television with Corpses playing on it. The surround-sound speakers and a gaming console visible in the photo suggest that this fan is the ideal, electronic-savvy collector to which both the studios and the Zombie brand cater. The Zombie brand has supplied these collectors with a plethora of product, so much so that many of these collections of Zombie gear leave behind middleclass notions of decorum and good taste and begin to resemble Sweeney’s definition of ‘white trash’ aesthetic. These collections of Zombie merchandise may not qualify as an act of white trash ‘bricolage’ because they are not randomly grouped together but, rather, are all unified under the aegis of Zombie’s brand. Nevertheless, the piles of Zombie paraphernalia do, as is the case with the white trash aesthetic, ‘[privilege] details, brightness, presentation’ and ‘[cover] every empty space with stuff and effect’ (Sweeney, 1997: 250). Middle-class collectors’ adoption of the affectations of the underclass may begin to explain the pleasure that Zombie’s films – which champion the white trash underclass and offer no redemption of the middle class – offer for middle-class audiences. It may also provide a way of reconciling the subversive content of Zombie’s primary cinematic texts with the extra text materials – including the DVD platform itself – that elevate and inaugurate the film into the mainstream middle class. The next section of this chapter places Zombie’s films in a long cultural history of ‘slumming it’. ‘Slumming’ Spectators: Fantasies of Disempowerment Many scholars trace horror film traditions back to literary conventions of the nineteenth century. Fred Botting (1996), Laura Wyrick (1998) and others have argued that horror film traditions originate from Gothic literary conventions. The reasons are fairly obvious: both genres deal with terror, the uncanny and fear of the Other similar ways. Taking a different tack, Newitz claims that the conventions of many modern horror films, especially those dealing with class, can be traced back to ‘late nineteenth century naturalism’ (2006: 7). She cites specifically naturalist fiction’s ‘concern with yoking the surreal extremes of

134

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

human behavior with socioeconomic status’ as an influence on the ‘capitalist monster tales’ she sees in contemporary horror films (2006: 8). The reasons why Zombie’s films may appeal to middle-class audiences, however, may be found by tracing horror’s origins to another, less obvious nineteenth-century literary tradition: narratives of the gold rush. At first, Zombie’s horror films and gold rush narratives seem to have little in common. At the same time, there is some overlap when considering gold rush narratives’ obsession with western expansion that continues in The Devil’s Rejects’s employment of western iconography of the frontier. Spaulding’s brother, Charlie, even runs a brothel named ‘Frontier Fun Town’ where the family finds temporary safe haven to engage in various debaucheries: drinking, drugs and sex. More significantly, there are continuities in how Zombie’s films and gold rush narratives illustrate middle-class audiences negotiating, exploring and expanding the parameters of their identities. Writing about the gold rush, Brian Roberts debunks the popular image of the California forty-niner as a lone, rugged, uncivilised, primitive and ‘lower-class’ individual. California forty-niners were, more often than not: white-collar workers, the new breed of clerks, shopkeepers, and professionals who had emerged with industrialization . . . The eastern forty-niner was often married, usually respectable, and almost always connected to family and community . . . he was rarely a vulgarian. (Roberts 2000: 5) The image of the forty-niner as an underclass vulgarian was constructed in narratives written by middle-class men to hide how their movement west was their chance to indulge in ‘forbidden behaviors’ that fell outside the ‘proper standards of self-control’ enforced by middle-class standards (Roberts, 2000: 121). These ‘forbidden behaviors’ included ‘gambling, prostitution, and sometimes violent . . . examples of self-expression’ (2000: 121). Roberts argues, ‘Perhaps the best term to describe what they were doing in these accounts of western wickedness has a very modern resonance. In effect, these forty-niners were slumming’ which: requires a real movement, a movement out, away from ordinary life, away from the social restraints of the home, along with a movement down, down the social scale, down into the real depths and spaces occupied by lower classes and ethnic others. (2000: 219) According to Roberts, middle-class and privileged American men truly learned the joys of ‘slumming it’ during the gold rush era, and this characteristic was essential to the formation of modern American middle-class identity:

135

selling the splat pack

the primary characteristic of the American middle class may be its members’ ability to create a definition for themselves and then deny that they belong in the definition. Thus their greatest privilege, and their greatest source of power, is an ability to declare freedom from themselves. (2000: 274) Though more than a century separates gold rush narratives and Zombie’s films, Roberts’s notion of middle-class ‘slumming’ provides a useful framework with which to consider the appeal of Zombie’s films for middle-class audiences. While Roberts contends that slumming must involve a ‘real movement’ away from middle-class environments (hence, the forty-niners’ move westwards), the centrality of physical movement to notions of ‘slumming it’ was undergoing revision as early as the late nineteenth century. Eric Lott argues that blackface minstrel shows of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provided a way for white working- and middle-class audiences to ‘slum it’ as spectators by identifying, across racial lines, with blackface performers. White spectatorship of minstrel shows was predicated on ‘a destabilized structure of fascination’ and ‘a confusion of subject and object. The blackface phenomenon was virtually constituted by such slippages, positives turning into negatives, selves into others, and back again’ (Lott, 1995: 124). The slumming of these white spectators required little movement away from the comforts of home, apart from a trip to the local theatre; they could slum it, shed their inhibitions and enjoy transgressing against various social mores from the comfort of their seats in the auditorium. To theorise this mode of spectatorship at the turn of the century, Lott utilises scholarship in cinema studies by Mark Nash and Carol Clover (Lott, 1995: 124) both of whom wrote significant work on horror cinema. Nash argues that what makes horror cinema particularly thrilling is ‘a play of pronoun function’ whereby the spectator can identify with both the victim and the monster (1976: 37). Clover takes these ideas further and examines the ‘cross-gender identification’ that takes place when male horror fans stop seeing the diegetic world through the monster’s eyes and begin rooting for the ‘Final Girl’, the only person left alive to fight the monster (1996: 91). Thus, a loose genealogy can be traced from the slumming middle-class forty-niners who pretended to be underclass, when travelling west and writing about their experiences, to the slumming spectators at the minstrel show who, while watching a white body pretending to be black, imagined that they also were black, and to the male slasher film fan who receives a vicarious thrill by projecting himself into the Final Girl’s bloody, victimised, but ultimately triumphant, body. Zombie’s films adapt Clover’s ‘cross-gender identification’ to a type of ‘cross-class identification’, an exchange that enables middle-class audiences, like the middle class forty-niners Roberts describes, to slum it by travelling to

136

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

the dark spaces occupied by white trash monsters such as the Firefly family. There is now no need to travel to enter this dark world, however; this movement can be achieved in the comfort of one’s own home. DVD technology and the widespread availability of Zombie’s films at retail outlets enable middleclass spectators to engage in a multitude of ‘forbidden pleasures’ along with the Firefly family: travelling to brothels, having sex with prostitutes, partying, getting drunk, taking drugs and – perhaps the ultimate ‘forbidden pleasure’ – engaging in the torture, humiliation and murder of other people. In this light, Zombie’s films about the Fireflys perform a very different function from earlier horror films depicting an attack of the underclass. Whereas these earlier films act as a justification for ‘the middle classes to behave in outrageously cruel ways toward the lower classes’ (Newitz, 1997: 144), Zombie’s films may encourage the middle-class spectators to be outrageously cruel, full stop, by offering them an oppressed subject position and suggesting that this oppression can be solved by violence against others. This type of cross-class performance and spectatorship is not unique to Zombie’s films. One could argue that the thrill of ‘slumming it’ is intimately bound up with the origins of cinema, as W. K. L. Dixon and company staged cockfights and rat-baiting contests for early Edison films. Another example is the work of John Waters who has called his films ‘celebrations of White Trash’ (Sweeney, 1997: 250). However, ‘Waters’ films are examples of a Camp Aesthetic: they are urban, arch, and self-conscious’, while a true white trash aesthetic is ‘sincere’ (Sweeney, 1997: 250). This non-ironic, non-self-reflexive sincerity is one of the things that makes Zombie’s iteration of white trash aesthetic unique, even among these other examples of ‘slumming it’. ‘As Long as You’re Siding with Someone’: the Play of Pronoun Function on DVD This mode of ‘cross-class identification’ becomes more convincing when one considers how the primary cinematic texts of Zombie’s films blur with the extra text materials on DVD. As with the Hostel films, a new supertext emerges that tells a bigger narrative that is unstable with multiple threads and meanings. Similar to how Roth’s framing of his films as politically subversive is just one thread of many unspooled by the supertext of Hostel, Zombie’s use of the extra text to side with his white trash monsters is just a minor part of the supertext of his films on DVD. The bigger picture – what Zombie honestly focuses on for a majority of the time on his extra texts – is about transformation. Zombie greatly appreciates his actors; he spends a lot of time praising their work and reveals that he thinks carefully about the casting of every role, no matter how minor: ‘I wanted to cast a recognizable face or an interesting character actor for every single role . . . they will attempt to make their two

137

selling the splat pack

lines a scene-stealing moment, and that’s what everybody tried to do’ (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with director Rob Zombie’). Zombie also conveys his commitment to working with actors in whatever way that best suits them: ‘You got fifty actors, and you gotta treat every single one of them differently’ (Rejects. ‘30 days’). The actors corroborate Zombie’s claims and, on the extra text materials, often praise Zombie for the freedom he allows them to improvise and riff on their scenes. More germane to a discussion of the concept of ‘slumming it’ is the emphasis placed in the extra text materials on how the actors transform into people radically different from themselves. One way the actors undertake this transformation is through external elements such as make-up and costumes. The extra text features extensive discussions and materials about the weathered wardrobes of the Fireflys and other appliances such as make-up, fake teeth and wigs. On the extra texts of Corpses and of Rejects, Zombie comes across as particularly obsessed – almost to a comedic degree – with wigs. In ‘30 days in Hell’, he emphatically states, ‘A big pet peeve of mine, a big, big one, is bad wigs in movies. It drives me crazy’ (Rejects, ‘30 days’). This statement is looped over footage of Bill Moseley’s ‘Otis’ wig being prepped and fitted to his head by the film’s make-up effects artist, Wayne Toth, as Zombie closely scrutinises the wig. Taking the transformation one step further, Moseley had to shave his head completely so the thin hair at the top of the wig would look more realistic. Even more striking is how the extra text foregrounds the psychological transformations the actors undertake. Often, these transformations involve engaging in forbidden behaviour. EG Daily, the actress who plays Candy, one of the prostitutes at Charlie’s ‘Frontier Fun Town’, describes the glee with which she dived into her role: ‘I just loved it. I’m usually pretty safe because I do a lot of kids’ stuff, but for me, the crazier, the better. It’s like being released from a bottle’ (Rejects, ‘30 days in Hell’). Other transformations are less ecstatic and more dramatic and even unsettling. Perhaps the most significant example of this is Bill Moseley’s and Sheri Moon Zombie’s performances during the scene in which they torture and humiliate the Banjo and Sullivan couples. The beginning of Chapter 3 recounted the difficulty Moseley had with shooting the scene. A Yale graduate and father of two daughters, Moseley is about as far from the demented Otis Driftwood as one could be. This extreme distance from the role comes through as he, Sheri Zombie and Sid Haig discuss the scene on the actors’ commentary track. Moseley notes, ‘This was such a tough scene’ and Zombie asks him, ‘Like, how were you, were you just out of your mind and body when you were doing this?’ to which Moseley replies, ‘No, I was very present’ (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon Zombie). Moseley continues:

138

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

Figure 6.3  Rob Zombie examines Bill Moseley’s wig on the set of The Devil’s Rejects. © Lions Gate Films Home Entertainment.

You know . . . Sid, I think it was you that said, or maybe my friend Nick Mancuso, that said, ‘An actor’s job is to play society’s doubles and saints’ . . . I just thought, that . . . was one of the ways I was able to get into it was just thinking, . . . this is a devil. (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie’) Moseley’s sombre explanation of how he performs such hideous, forbidden acts demonstrates the distance between himself and Otis, and the amazing ability that one has to shed one’s identity and take up another drastically different one. The extra text of the DVD expands the reach of these performances beyond the bounds of the primary cinematic text. During one scene featuring Otis and Spaulding bickering, Zombie remarks: We always wanted to present a power struggle between these two guys, Otis and Spaulding . . . they are always, sort of, ‘who’s in charge?’ And neither wants to give it up to the other. Neither of the actors wanted to give it up to the other either, so there was always sort of a healthy competition, I think, going on here to see who the real star of this [film] was. (Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with director Rob Zombie’) Besides noting a friendly rivalry between actors, Zombie’s comments also suggest that the power of these performances extend beyond the film,

139

selling the splat pack

r­ esulting in slippages between character and actor. Along these lines, Richard Decordova writes about Jean-Louis Comolli’s observation ‘that two bodies potentially coexist in any fiction film – the body acting and the body acted (actor and character)’ (2003: 133). In most films, there is a ‘fairly unproblematical fit’ between character and actor because ‘the character, being fictional, has no existence outside of the actor’s body’ (Decordova, 2003: 133). This is no longer the situation with films such as Zombie’s, as the DVD shows the creation of the character outside of the primary cinematic text – Moseley’s performance choices, and so on – and encourages the spectator to engage in this ‘play of pronoun function’ as well. After all, Zombie’s Facebook page has a photograph album entitled ‘Zombie Film Fans’ which features around two hundred photos of fans dressed up as characters from his films. A glance through the album reveals that Zombie fans do not only dress up like the Fireflys; they dress up like their victims as well. One photograph features someone dressed up as Otis and another as Wendy Banjo complete with Adam Banjo’s skinned face strapped on to her face. In Zombie’s universe, the play of pronoun function is not limited to the family – as some aspects of the supertext may lead one to believe – but extends to the victims as well. For instance, Zombie mentions on the commentary that actor Lew Temple was so committed to making Adam Banjo a ‘vomiting, whimpering crybaby’ that he added the idea that Adam should vomit after Otis shoots Jimmy, a comment that suggests that Temple is just as far away from Adam in temperament as Moseley is from Otis. On a featurette on the Corpses DVD, Chris Hardwick, who plays Firefly victim Jerry in Corpses, explains: You either like or you don’t like the characters enough to wanna see them either die or not die. As long as you’re siding with someone in a horror film, I think . . . it’s a good film. If you’re siding with the killers or you’re siding with the victims or you’re hoping that they don’t die or you’re hoping that they die . . . anything that draws you into . . . the suspense and the terror of the film. (Corpses, ‘Making of’) Aided by their presence on the DVD platform, Zombie’s films are exemplary of the experiences – the slippages of subjectivity and the play of pronoun function – Hardwick describes. It is fitting that Zombie’s films are so obsessed with the notion of class as a marker of identity, for class as an identity marker has become incredibly fluid, especially with the recent economic recession in the United States that has painfully shown how close the middle class can be to poverty. This rage at economic dispossession may be one factor that has fuelled the home video success of Zombie’s films. His movies become a forum where multiple audiences can release their rage. On the ‘30 days in Hell’ documentary, Sid Haig philosophises:

140

the ‘white trash’ world of rob zombie

Our fantasies have got to be more extreme than our realities to maintain some sort of balance, okay? And since the reality that we’re living in today is so out there . . . the fantasies just naturally have to assume a larger role. (Rejects, ‘30 days’) DVDs containing unrated depictions of violence and sex – Rejects is the only Splat Pack film to include extra sexual material on the unrated DVD by adding extra seconds to a graphic sexual fantasy that Spaulding dreams early in the film – allow a forum for extreme fantasies to match our ‘out there’ realities. Notes 1. According to showbiz legend, one of Zombie’s first jobs in the entertainment industry was as a production designer on the surreal children’s television programme Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (1986–90). 2. Zombie’s 2009 film, Halloween II, will feature another horror television host, named Uncle Seymour Coffins (Jeff Daniel Phillips). 3. Zombie later directed a nightmarish hallucination scene for the feature film Beavis and Butt-head Do America (Judge, 1996).

141

7. SERIALITY, SUBJECTIVITY AND NEW MEDIA: CONSUMING THE SAW SERIES

Lack of ‘Authorial Voice’: the Difference of the Saw Films Directors like Roth and Zombie utilise the DVD platform to frame their films in a wide variety of ways. Roth seems preoccupied with fashioning an image for himself as an artist–provocateur on DVD, while Zombie’s DVDs emphasise the different modes of identity transformation, both in the supertext of the DVD and in the fantasies of spectators. The case with the Saw films, as they appear on DVD, is very different. Perhaps one should expect this difference with regard to the Saw films. One way in which they are dissimilar from the films of Roth and Zombie is that they have been extremely successful financially. While Roth’s and Zombie’s films have been successes for Lionsgate – especially on DVD – the seven Saw films (released between 2004 and 2010) have grossed over $750 million dollars in box office returns; this formidable figure does not even take into account DVD and other video sales. Indeed, the Saw films are the closest of all Splat Pack films to the realm of the Hollywood blockbuster. The Saw films are different in other ways as well. When Jones compiled his initial list of Splat Pack directors in Total Film in April 2006, his list did not include the Saw triumvirate of James Wan, director of the first Saw film, Leigh Whannell, writer of the first three Saw films (not to mention one of the lead actors in the first film), and Darren Lynn Bousman, the director of Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV. In fact, Jones’s article barely mentions the Saw films. Wan, Whannell and Bousman were not discursively inaugurated into the Splat Pack proper until October 2006, when Tucker and Keegan included them in their

142

seriality, subjectivity and new media

overviews of this new ‘movement’ in modern horror. Cynical observers might note that Wan, Whannell and Bousman were added to the list because of Saw’s breakout success in the United States; cynics might also note that the trio were included because Tucker’s and Keegan’s articles arrived just in time to promote the American release of Bousman’s Saw III. For whatever reason, the creative minds behind the Saw series are placed apart from other Splat Packers simply because they were late to the party. Another element that made the Saw people different from others is that they did not enjoy the auteur–rock stardom of more visible members such as Roth or Zombie: Despite the success and influence of their first film, [Wan and Whannell], somehow, do not benefit from the same brand-name recognition that their torture porn contemporaries Eli Roth, or even Rob Zombie, enjoy, despite their being film-makers whose achievements do not rival Saw’s in terms of box office impact. (Poole, 2012: 108) One reason that Wan and Whannell – and by extension, Bousman – may not enjoy this ‘brand-name recognition’ is that their collaborative personas run counter to the ‘loner’, ‘maverick’ artist with a singular vision evoked in the DVD extra texts (and in other promotional materials) of Roth’s and Zombie’s films. Conversely, the Saw films began as an openly collaborative enterprise, an attitude that continued throughout the entire series. The DVDs of the films make clear the collaborative, multi-authored nature of the films. On various DVD editions of the first film, Wan and Whannell appear on commentary tracks together. Additionally, the producers of the first film – Mark Burg, Gregg Hoffman and Oren Koules – all appear on a commentary track for the ‘Uncut edition’ DVD of the first film. On the ‘Special edition’ DVD version of Saw II, Wan and Whannell return for a commentary track to discuss their contributions as, respectively, executive producer and writer of the film. Rather than occupying his own commentary track, director Bousman shares one with production designer, David Hackl, and editor, Kevin Greutert. In keeping with the collaborative tradition of Saw, Hackl would continue the franchise after Bousman departed as director, directing Saw V while Greutert took the reins for Saw VI and Saw 3D: The Final Chapter. Also, Wan and Whannell’s auteur status is effaced precisely because of – rather than in spite of – the blockbuster status of the film franchise their modest debut spawned. This effacement is not merely a proverbial case of ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’: Part of the pleasure of movies lies in their apparent lack of an authorial voice, which makes it possible for their consumers to value them for

143

selling the splat pack

whatever they care to take from them. Viewed in this way, movies are infinitely open texts, showcases of endless incidental pleasures which encourage rather than repress consumer choice. (Maltby, 2003: 522) The lack of ‘authorial voice’ on Wan and Whannell’s part may have been an element that propelled Saw to economic success, despite its dark subject matter and violent content, both of which have been engendered by the DVD revolution. This lack may also make the basic premise of the film malleable enough to be taken up, adapted and continued by other directors such as Bousman, Hackl, Greutert and, as will be discussed later, the fans. The films in the Saw series do, to borrow Maltby’s expression, offer ‘endless incidental pleasures which encourage rather than repress consumer choice’. The ways in which they do so are intimately tied to their status as new media objects, true products of the ‘DVD revolution’. In the case of Roth’s and Zombie’s films, the lines may blur between primary cinematic text and extra text, and the dark, violent narratives of these films are encouraged by the availability of the ‘Unrated’ DVD; the aesthetics of the films, however, are primarily either filmic or televisual. Again, the Saw films stand apart from these others; the aesthetics of the Saw films are brazenly trans-media, utilising film, video and still photography, often by necessity because of mistakes in filming and lack of time. Additionally, the films draw upon new media technologies – foregrounding the role of the digital, with their rapid-fire editing, rather than hiding the digital as Roth’s and Zombie’s films do – and cyber-strategies to tell their stories. Also, the non-linearity of the DVD platform informs the films’ narrative strategies on multiple levels. The interactivity encouraged by these films on DVD both harkens back to the ‘cinema of attractions’ and engenders accelerated consumer choice. When the limited interactivity of the DVD is exhausted, Saw fans employ other new media-informed strategies to continue their engagement with the film, such as creating fan videos for sites like YouTube. It is, therefore, little wonder that auteur status was elusive for Wan, Whannell and Bousman in the DVD era, as the auteur gets lost in the large web of signification and authorship that the Saw series weaves. The Seam in the Wall: the Virtual World of Saw Most of the first Saw film takes place in a grungy bathroom where Gordon (played by Cary Elwes), a doctor, and Adam (played by writer Leigh Whannell) awake with their feet shackled to metal pipes on opposite sides of the bathroom. When they first regain consciousness, one of the first things they notice is a (presumably) dead body on the floor between them. The person appears to have committed suicide by a gunshot to the head, and the body holds a gun in one hand and a microcassette player in the other. Both Gordon and Adam

144

seriality, subjectivity and new media

find microcassettes in their pockets. After they retrieve the player from the dead body, they learn the severity of their predicament. The voice of the Jigsaw killer informs them that they will be tested and proceeds to give instructions. Gordon learns that in order to escape and save the lives of his wife and daughter (Monica Potter and Makenize Vega) – whom, Jigsaw feels, Gordon does not appreciate because he is beginning to undertake an affair with another woman (Alexandra Chun) – he must use a hacksaw to saw through his foot. After this, he must crawl to the gun located in the dead man’s hand and use that gun to kill Adam before his allotted time runs out. Through flashbacks, the film shows Dr Gordon nonchalantly going about his day as a doctor. At one point, he describes the condition of a cancer patient (Tobin Bell) on his ward to a group of medical students while Zep (Michael Emerson), an orderly, toils outside the door. After hearing Gordon’s callous way of referring to the patient, Zep interrupts him by stating, ‘His name is John, Dr Gordon. He’s a very interesting person.’ Gordon patronisingly brushes off Zep’s comment, illustrating Gordon’s lack of compassion and establishing tension with Zep. Later, the film shows Zep holding Gordon’s family hostage and suggests that Zep is the Jigsaw killer. Detective Tapp (Danny Glover), whose obsession with Jigsaw gets his partner (Ken Leung) killed and him kicked off the force, bursts into the Gordon’s apartment and gets into a gunfight with Zep. Back in the dingy bathroom, Gordon hears these gunshots over a cell phone and, thinking his family has been murdered, saws off his foot and shoots Adam. In the mean time, Zep flees the Gordons’ apartment with Tapp close behind. The two arrive at the warehouse where Gordon and Adam have been held captive. Zep kills Tapp and turns his gun on Gordon but, before he can pull the trigger, a wounded Adam bludgeons Zep with a toilet lid and beats him to death. A delirious Gordon claims he is going for help and crawls off, leaving Adam alone in the bathroom. Adam then finds a cassette tape in Zep’s pocket that reveals that Zep was not Jigsaw at all. Dramatically, the supposedly dead body in the centre of the room rises and removes some of his bloody make-up. The final moments reveal that this man, the true Jigsaw killer, is the cancer patient who was dehumanised and whose suffering was ignored by Gordon’s clinical language. He walks out of the room, ominously intones, ‘Game over’, and slams the door in Adam’s screaming face. ‘Hacking away at Saw’, a making-of documentary included on the ‘Uncut edition’ of the first film, reveals that Wan and company had to shoot Saw in a mere eighteen days in one single location, the Lacy Street Production Center in central Los Angeles. While the production facility was very versatile – at one point during a commentary for the first film Elwes marvels, ‘There were so many different rooms and warehouses within this one location’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Commentary’) – the limitations of shooting in a single l­ocation

145

selling the splat pack

Figure 7.1  James Wan directs Cary Elwes on the set of Saw. © Lions Gate Films Home Entertainment.

often show through in the film. In some regards, these limitations enhance the claustrophobia of the narrative, lending a paranoiac mood to a film about the dangers of being seen, caught, and trapped. In other ways, however, the sets betray the film’s low budget and brief shooting schedule. On a commentary track with Whannell and Elwes, Wan discusses the set for Gordon’s girlfriend and laments that, even though the crew did a good job of hiding the ‘cheapness’ of the set, he is still let down by how ‘fake’ it is and ‘how much it looks like a set’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Commentary’).While Bousman and company had a little more time and money for Saw II, they ran into similar problems. In the commentary for the ‘Special edition’ DVD of Saw II, Bousman points out that they had to remove digitally a seam in the wall of one of their sets because it gave away the set’s fakeness (Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Audio Commentary’). Indeed, the sets of Saw and Saw II do often seem flat, almost like cardboard at times. When compared to the scenic European location shooting of Roth’s Hostel films or Zombie’s Rejects, shot under the blistering sun against the open, bleak and unforgiving vistas of the Antelope Valley just north of Los Angeles, the often banal Saw sets seem even more phoney.

146

seriality, subjectivity and new media

This ‘flatness’ of the mise en scène, however, ironically makes the Saw films an immersive experience for digital-age viewers. As Henry Jenkins explains, in the era of media convergence, ‘The film need not be well made’, but instead offer the viewers many means of access into the text: ‘the more directions it pushes, the more different communities it can sustain and the more different experiences it can provide, the better’ (2006: 97, 98). Accordingly, the sets of Saw and Saw II look like the flat, ‘clickable’ environments of cyberspace and other interactive digital domains such as DVDs. The content of the films themselves encourage this type of interactivity, because they are very much products of the clickable, multitiered, non-linear experience offered by the DVD format. In the DVD age, films are no longer things recorded on to a linear, analogue strip but, instead, are burned digitally on to a media object that allows access to any scene at any given moment with the click of the remote. In this way, films on DVD resemble the experience of exploring the Internet; various passageways are all assembled in one virtual ‘space’ that is accessible by clicking. The opening moments of the first Saw film, that take place in the dingy bathroom, demonstrate an acute awareness of clickable space, and it responds by integrating these concepts into the storytelling. The pervasive influence of virtual, ‘clickable’ culture is embedded in the conceptualisation of the room in which Gordon and Adam are trapped. The filthy bathroom is like a piece of digital media and operates in a manner similar to a DVD menu or a website. Hidden all about the room are clues to Gordon’s and Adam’s predicament. Imperative to their survival is finding clues and correctly interpreting the meaning hidden within the clues. That process is similar to the way in which one clicks a hyperlink in a virtual environment to obtain data secured ‘just beyond’ the link. For example, one of the clues that Jigsaw shares with Gordon and Adam is the trite-sounding advice: ‘Follow your heart’. The duo notice that, on Adam’s side of the room, there is a lavatory with a heart painted on the cistern. Gordon anxiously implores Adam to look in the lavatory basin, filled with dirty brown water, for a clue. After sifting through the swill and fighting his gag reflex, Adam comes up empty-handed and looks in the cistern next. There, he finds what Jigsaw intended: a plastic bag containing two hacksaws. After furiously and futilely trying to saw through their leg shackles, Gordon finally realises that they must use the saws to cut through their feet if they want to escape. In Jigsaw’s clue-filled trap for Gordon and Adam, the two victims must successfully ‘click on’ the evidence and correctly interpret it to survive. This pattern continues throughout the primary cinematic text. At one point, Gordon throws Adam his wallet so that Adam can look at pictures of his daughter. Gordon informs him that his favourite photograph with his family is tucked beneath the one Adam is currently looking at. Adam digs to find the photograph and, instead, comes up with a chilling clue. In place of the ­photograph

147

selling the splat pack

is a Polaroid image of Gordon’s wife and daughter, bound, gagged and wide eyed, obviously under dire threat. Written on the back of the Polaroid is the clue ‘X marks the spot’ which alludes to a hidden X that Jigsaw has painted on the wall and which is visible only in the dark. Beneath this X is a hidden hole in the wall that contains even more perplexing objects and vague clues. Thus, many objects in Jigsaw’s trap for Gordon and Adam are like hyperlinks. When ‘clicked on’ or uncovered, they reveal a seemingly infinite amount of data. Bousman’s aesthetic choices in his direction of Saw II foreground the notion of ‘clickable’ space even further. On the commentary for Saw II, Bousman discusses his fondness for transitions that deviate from traditional transitional edits between scenes, such as cuts, fade outs, dissolves and wipes (Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Audio Commentary’). One method that Bousman is particularly fond of is moving a character from one location to another without an edit. He achieves this effect with a tracking camera and ‘wild’ walls that can be quickly moved and repositioned. An example of this technique appears early in Saw II. Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Walberg), a burned-out police officer with anger issues who is on Jigsaw’s trail, sits in his apartment worrying over his estranged son when the phone rings. On the other end of the line is Kerry (Dina Meyer), a fellow police officer, Eric’s former love interest and resident Jigsaw expert after the death of Tapp in the first film. Kerry informs Eric that there has been another Jigsaw murder and asks that he come to the crime scene. Eric throws on his jacket and walks to the right as the camera tracks with him. The camera continues to track with Eric, and he seemingly walks through the wall of his bedroom and meets up with Kerry at the crime scene, all in one shot. The technique of the shot is fairly simple: the sets for Eric’s apartment and the crime scene are separated by a wild wall that retracts to allow Eric to walk seamlessly from one environment to the other. While the method is simple, the effect is striking, as it resembles viewers’ increasingly fluid notions of space and time in an era of downloads and instant streaming. The Saw films seem to be acutely aware of media convergence during an era that has seen rapid changes in the ways viewers perceive and use media to navigate through various mediascapes. The creative use of mixed media helps Jigsaw to self-fashion an identity through serial killing. Jigsaw’s traps reveal the character’s multimedia flair. First, the victim wakes up in an elaborate trap of Jigsaw’s design which always evinces his almost artistic talent for construction and engineering.1 Next, the victim is informed about her or his situation, how her or his trap works, and how she or he can survive the ordeal. All this information is delivered by a puppet with a white face, bright red lips and cheeks, and stringy black hair, wearing a black tuxedo. The puppet appears on a television screen and speaks in a voice that has been slightly distorted.

148

seriality, subjectivity and new media

So, in addition to his construction skills, Jigsaw exhibits a talent for puppetry, camera/video work and audio manipulation. He also blurs the line between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media with his digital videos, his voice distorted using analogue equipment and magnetic audiotape, his puppetry and his rusty, gnarly deathtraps. Jigsaw also dabbles in theatre and performance with his work. In a scene from Saw III, the audience, through a flashback, is presented with a ‘behindthe-scenes’ look at the process Jigsaw and Amanda (Shawnee Smith), a former Jigsaw victim turned accomplice, undertake in preparing the elaborate trap for Gordon and Adam seen in the first film. As Amanda pulls Adam’s body in on a dolly, Jigsaw, looking in a mirror, prepares his make-up, applying fake blood and a fake wound prosthetic to his head to make it look as if he has been fatally shot. After he and Amanda place all the ‘props’ in their assigned locations, Jigsaw takes his place on the floor, Amanda shuts the door and Jigsaw’s drama is ready to begin. This flashback from Saw III, that dispenses narrative information preceding the first film, points to another way in which the Saw films seem acutely aware of their mediation. The Saw films follow in a long tradition of horror franchises with numerous sequels, such as Friday the 13th, which boasts a total of eleven films (not counting the 2009 remake), and A Nightmare on Elm Street which boasts eight (again, not counting the remake). Even though the popularity of these films long outlasted the VHS, they remain products of this era. Like a videotape (or strip of celluloid film, for that matter), their narratives unfold in a linear fashion. A few flashbacks aside, these sequels are obsessed with linear progression, with narratives that begin five or ten years or immediately after the previous film. True products of the DVD-era, the Saw films are audaciously non-linear. As Benjamin Poole observes, ‘The Saw spin-offs have the distinction of being both sequels and prequels to the original films . . . each installment offers new narrative information that supplements our understanding of the original plot’ (2012: 90). The narratives of the Saw sequels move both back and forth in time and often do so simultaneously; one of the twists of Saw IV is that, in the final moments of the film, it is revealed that the events of the film are not happening after the previous film – as the misleading opening of the film suggests – but, instead, are happening at the same time as the events of Saw III. The films obsessively return to the same events and spaces of previous films – for instance, the scene in Saw III of Jigsaw and Amanda setting the trap for Gordon and Adam depicted in the first film – and, Rashomon-style, show these scenes from another character’s perspective. While many examples of this type of film narration obviously predate DVD technology, the DVD as a consumer product popularised this non-linear, dual-layered mode of filmic narration. This mode of narration is consistently employed for Saw, one of the most popular horror franchises of the DVD era.

149

selling the splat pack

‘I Want to Play a Game’: Saw, the ‘Dvd of Attractions’ and the Digital Theme Park Given that the Saw films employ storytelling techniques shaped by new media, these films are uniquely suited for the DVD platform, where their cyberintimations are given full digital expression. Tom Brown’s work, which draws from Tom Gunning’s notion of ‘cinema of attractions’ helps address the functions of the Saw films on DVD. Brown’s work is especially apt for a conversation about the Saw films, given the Jigsaw killer’s predilection for mixing ‘new’ media with ‘old’; similarly, in using the idea of ‘cinema of attractions’ to analyse DVDs and how they address their viewers, Brown attempts to ‘[understand] “new media” in the light of the “old” ’ (2008: 81). As Brown explains, Gunning’s ‘cinema of attractions’ refers to the ‘dominant cinematic mode until about 1906–1907’ (2008: 82). This mode was ‘more concerned with showing off the technological possibilities of the cinematic apparatus than the subsequent, more narrative-driven material’ (Brown, 2008: 82). Gunning called the ‘cinema of attractions’ an ‘exhibitionist cinema’ (quoted in Brown, 2008: 82): This performative exhibitionism is manifest in the predominance of direct address in the cinema of attractions . . . Direct address is not only intrinsic to the cinema of attractions through the on-screen actor, conjurer or illusionist, but is also, importantly, a feature of the film’s exhibition by an exterior showman . . . Indeed, in the cinema of attractions, the exhibition of the film and the film itself were not easy to distinguish; the notion of the film text as discreet entity did not exist. (Brown, 2008: 82) This mode of film-making and exhibition began to fall out of favour around 1908 as directors such as D. W. Griffith steered cinema more towards ‘narrative integration’ than spectacle (2008: 82). To a degree, however, the DVD brought back the cinema of attractions’ blurring of lines between the ‘film itself’ and the context in which it is shown. As the previous two chapters illustrate, the primary cinematic text and extra text on DVD are explosively unstable, just as they were during the cinema of attractions era. Attending the resurrection of a cinema of attractions are a decreased focus on narrative and the increased importance of spectacle which, in the case of the Saw films, involves Jigsaw’s victims being dispatched in various, gruesomely gory ways by Jigsaw’s elaborate Rube Goldberg traps. The DVD, with its methods of direct address and its ‘not-so-linear’ tendency to wrest moments of spectacle from their narrative context, represents a return to the cinema of attractions (Brown, 2008: 86). Early on, the Saw films were already heading in this direction. The star of the first film, Cary Elwes, is clearly fond of Wan and Whannell and enjoyed

150

seriality, subjectivity and new media

working on the film, judging by his contribution to the DVD commentary track of the film. Nevertheless, as the old saying goes, he damns the film with faint praise on the commentary track when he laughingly remarks that the film ‘is very easy to understand. Even if you do go to the bathroom for a long period of time and miss some important plot points, you can pick it up pretty quickly with this movie’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Commentary’). Though Elwes does not make this comment maliciously, implicit in his remark is the idea that the plot and story of Saw are uncomplicated, incidental and of secondary importance. On his and Whannell’s commentary for Saw II, Wan himself seemed to despair a bit at the idea that spectacle had won out over narrative in Saw. Whannell reveals that he decided to begin the screenplay for the sequel with a gruesome trap that involves a victim (Noam Jenkins) who, to unlock a spike-filled trap around his neck that will snap closed and crush his head, has to dig out a key that has been surgically placed behind his eyeball. According to Whannell, he began the screenplay in this manner because ‘The producers said, “Come on, these traps, people love them, and if people love them, we’ll make more money! So, you should put more in!” ’ (Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Audio Commentary’). Wan reacts by saying, ‘I just thought it’s interesting that you put all this hard work into the philosophy of Jigsaw and what he does and you try to be smart about it, but ironically the thing that most people seem to remember from the film is . . . Death! Killing machines!’ (Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Audio Commentary’). The ‘DVDs of attractions’ of the Saw films that followed continued to play down the narrative and foreground the carnival elements of the films. Both Wan and Bousman take advantage of the format of the ‘Unrated’ DVD to insert shots of extra gore and various other viscera into the film that had to be cut for the film’s cinema release. During a scene with added gore in the first film, Whannell, on the commentary, marvels at what a difference adding ‘just a few seconds of footage’ can make with a gory scene (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Commentary’). Another excellent example of how the ‘DVD of attractions’ foregrounds spectacle is on the extras disc of the ‘Director’s cut’ release of Saw III. This disc’s feature titled ‘Choose the death’ is a clear illustration of the DVD’s capacity to separate and foreground moments of spectacle from the film’s narrative; no longer ‘molded and contained by narrative’, these moments are allowed to stand alone on the ‘DVD of attractions’ (Brown, 2008: 84). As the title suggests, the ‘Choose the death’ feature allows the viewer to jump directly to the deathtraps in Saw III and, added for good measure, a few of the traps from Saw II as well. The ‘Choose the death’ feature shows ‘the importance of connecting promotional discourses’ on DVD (Brown, 2008: 84). The feature does not merely let the viewer jump directly to their favourite grisly death, it also allows them to hear production designer David Hackl talking over the traps, discussing how

151

selling the splat pack

they were constructed and how they worked and sharing storyboards and other early design sketches for the traps. Brown notes that moments of spectacle, such as the deaths Jigsaw’s victims suffer in his elaborate traps, are moments that ‘encourage [the spectator] to ask: “Wow, how did they do that?” ’ (2008: 84). However, ‘Within the DVD intratext, this question is no longer merely symbolic of the awe experienced by the spectator, but is answered explicitly by the extra materials’ (Brown, 2008: 84). The promotion of the attraction, the attraction itself and the explanation of the attraction are all wrapped up into one on the ‘DVD of attractions’. Even features such as ‘Choose the death’, which represent the epitome of carnival barker hard selling – at one point, Hackl notes that the film-makers wish ‘to get as gross as we could possibly get’ (Saw III: Director’s Cut, ‘Choose the death’) – also allow the film-makers a platform for bolstering their artistic aspirations, an extra-textual aspect that matches Tim Palen’s ‘artistic’ packaging of the films. For instance, one of the traps Hackl discusses on ‘Choose the death’ is the ‘Angel trap’ that kills Inspector Kerry near the beginning of Saw III. The trap is one of the series’s most brutal. Kerry is suspended several feet above the ground, and spiked plates have been plunged into the left and right sides of her abdomen. If she does not retrieve a key from the bottom of a vial of acid and unlock the mechanism, the plates will open, eviscerating her. Kerry completes the task but Amanda, Jigsaw’s vengeful accomplice, specifically designed the trap not to work, giving the victim no chance of escape. The ‘Angel trap’ rips Kerry open in a moment of spectacle enhanced by DVD into two ways. First, the ‘Unrated’ DVD allows the film-makers to add gore to make the scene more graphic; this way, the audience sees Kerry’s organs and intestines ripped from her body, a mutilation that is only suggested in the cinema cut. Secondly, the ‘Choose the death’ feature gives Hackl an opportunity to point out the artistry of the contraption: Something Darren [Bousman] and I had talked about very early on in preproduction [was] we wanted the traps in Saw III to all be very elegant, to be something that created almost like an incredible portrait, almost like art portraits. (Saw III: Director’s Cut, ‘Choose the death’) These aspirations to ‘art’ must contend, however, with the tendency of the DVD of attractions to transform into what Brown calls a ‘digital theme park’: In DVDs aimed at children or a family audience, the attractions of theme parks and roller coasters are also recreated in a variety of extra activities, particularly in ‘set-top games’. This helps to reformulate previous links between cinematic spectacle and the thrills of the theme park. (2008: 87)

152

seriality, subjectivity and new media

To explore this notion of the ‘digital theme park’ present on DVDs of kids’ films, Brown looks at Disney, the premier global supplier of transmedia children’s entertainment, and primarily analyses Disney’s DVD release of their blockbuster hit The Lion King (Allers and Minkoff, 1994). Brown considers this ‘digital theme park’ as mostly confined to the realm of children’s and family films but notes that DVDs for films such as Gangs of New York (Scorsese, 2002) also draw upon this idea of the digital theme park (2008: 88). The Saw DVDs move the digital theme park even further into the realm of adult viewers. As Chapter 4 demonstrates, sales for Saw DVDs brought ‘Unrated’ horror into the mainstream with numbers that rivalled those of children’s and family films. Chapter 4 also recalls Roth’s claim that Hostel was outselling the first Narnia film at Wal-Mart. Just as Saw DVDs were cutting into the market share of family films, they were stealing a few of their tricks as well, such as incorporating ‘set-top games’ into the extra texts of their DVDs. The content of the primary cinematic texts of the Saw films lends itself to adaptations and reconfiguration as multiple premises for games in the extra texts. The Saw films are already replete with ‘games’, with each Jigsaw trap conceptualised as its own discrete contest complete with a set of rules. Jigsaw’s games range from simple to complex. A simple trap from the first film features a victim (Mike Butters) who must climb through a maze of razor wire in the allotted amount of time if he wants to survive. A more complicated trap is Saw II’s centrepiece which features Detective Eric Matthews’s son (Erik Knudsen) trapped in what appears to be a dilapidated house with a group of criminals that his father had jailed in the past using planted evidence; the film later reveals that the dilapidated house is merely a set in Jigsaw’s warehouse, complete with the dingy bathroom from the first film located just below the house trap. Whether they are simple or complex, Jigsaw’s games always begin with Jigsaw, via the puppet on a television screen or a recorded microcassette, announcing, ‘I want to play a game’. Thus, the primary cinematic texts of the Saw films provide ample material that can be adapted and translated into ‘games’ for the ‘digital theme park’ of the DVD. The extra features disc of the ‘Special edition’ version of Saw II features menus that digitally replicate the entire house trap from the film. By clicking on various objects, the viewer is led to different parts of the house where clicking on more objects takes the viewer to a randomly chosen starting point of a ‘Behind the scenes’ documentary on the making of Saw II. In this way, the extra text is placed on equal footing with the primary cinematic text that the DVD of attractions has already diced into sections via ‘chaptering’ (Brown, 2008: 85); like Gabriel Roth’s cameo at the beginning of Hostel, this signals that the extra text is just as important as the primary cinematic text. If the viewer explores all parts of the virtual house trap and watches all parts of

153

selling the splat pack

the ‘Behind the scenes’ in the random order in which they are found, the viewer is given a secret code which unlocks a ‘vault’ on the main menu that gives the viewer access to even more extra footage. While the ‘Behind the scenes’ documentary is also available to watch in a linear fashion, the promise of more material for the viewer who plays the game by searching the house for all the pieces privileges a non-linear viewing of the documentary. The games continue and grow more elaborate with the extra features disc of Saw III’s ‘Director’s cut’ edition. This disc contains a feature called ‘Jigsaw’s plan’ which is an interactive quiz. When choosing this option, the viewer is shown a frame from one of the films that is, quite literally, clickable; taking the visual logic of the films’ environments one step further, the reproductions of these scenes make an element in the mise en scène a link. For example, a frame from Saw II of John Kramer (aka Jigsaw) sitting in a hospital waiting room is reproduced with a part of the wall behind him highlighted, prompting the viewer to click on it. Doing so takes the viewer to another virtual space where a scene from one of the films is replayed (sometimes only the audio is played); then, the viewer is asked to answer a multiple-choice question about the clip (‘Which hand was Jigsaw holding the gun in?’). Like Jigsaw’s victims in the films, the viewer is given a limited amount of time in which to answer the question as a clock ticks off valuable seconds in the bottom right-hand side of the screen. These examples demonstrate that DVDs of the Saw films, like children’s and family movies, have embraced the idea of the ‘digital theme park’ on DVD. Further, the Saw series has stolen another page from Disney’s playbook by moving, albeit modestly, into the realm of bricks-and-mortar attractions. In 2009, a Saw-themed roller coaster, named Saw – The Ride, opened in the Thorpe Park theme park in Surrey in England. In 2010, Thorpe Park added another Saw-based attraction named Saw – Alive, a live-action maze that places participants physically into real-life recreations of scenarios from the films. Anchoring two theme park attractions is impressive for a franchise spawned by a modest film that could easily have ended up a direct-to-video release without the ‘Unrated’ DVD and Lionsgate’s marketing acumen. Lionsgate’s marketing of the film becomes a significant factor in considering the ‘DVD of attractions’ and ‘digital theme park’ of the Saw DVDs. At the end of his analysis of The Lion King DVD, Brown wishes to avoid economic and technological determinism: Where the concept of a ‘DVD of attractions’ may appear less useful is in relation to the more pessimistic portrayal of a particular DVD like The Lion King as a carefully managed intratextual whole. Rather than an emergent medium at play with its own conventions, the DVD seems to have come fully formed as a tool for the (multi)media conglomerate. (2008: 96)

154

seriality, subjectivity and new media

Brown hopes that ‘future’ studies of the DVD will consider ‘the format’s alternative, more open potentialities’ (2008: 96). In some ways, this analysis of the Saw DVDs is this type of study; in other ways, however, it is not. A thoroughgoing exploration of the Saw series would be incomplete without paying attention to Lionsgate’s marketing. The centrality of Lionsgate’s marketing is made clear by the numerous tributes paid to it in the extra texts on the Saw DVDs. In the ‘Hacking away at Saw’ documentary included with the ‘uncut edition’ of the first film, Daniel Jason Heffner, co-producer and first assistant director on the film, discusses how Lionsgate picked up the film for distribution just before its premier at Sundance in early 2004 and heaps praise on the distributor: ‘Lionsgate is amazing with their publicity machine, and they do a lot of work on the Internet, so by the time the movie came out, there was just this huge built-in audience’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Hacking away’). Given the films’ play with virtual spaces, it is only fitting that the Internet would be an excellent way of selling the film. On his commentary for Saw II, Bousman refers to Lionsgate as ‘marketing geniuses’ (Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Audio Commentary’). Whannell, on a commentary track for the first film, corroborates Bousman’s claims about Lionsgate’s marketing acumen, citing Tim Palen’s work in particular: Tim Palen over at Lionsgate did some great work for the posters . . . I mean, when you’re a film with a budget this small competing with studio films, you really need to hit people over the head. You need to grab their attention. (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Commentary’) Whannell’s comments foreground how this analysis of Saw DVDs both fulfils and does not fulfil Brown’s hopes for future studies of the DVD. On one level, Saw DVDs are not ‘fully formed tools of (multi)media conglomerates’. As Chapter 1 explains, Lionsgate is an independent studio/distributor in a highly collusive corporate Hollywood environment. Major studio/­distributors can afford that their films do not break even at the global box office (few do) because they control the ancillary markets through which their products travel. Therefore, their films will make money eventually. Even if their films do not ‘break even’, the major studio/distributors have capital supplied by their corporate parents to cushion the blow: ‘the overwhelming power of corporate capital . . . [represents] the only type of safety net for the extremely precarious nature of the film business’ (Tzioumakis, 2006: 239). An independent studio/ distributor such as Lionsgate has limited access to corporate capital. As mainly a producer and distributor of filmed entertainment, Lionsgate needs its films to turn a profit in the cinema or on home video for the company to survive. It is largely independent of the majors and, while this independence grants the company a certain amount of autonomy, it also puts it in a difficult

155

selling the splat pack

position in which everything is riding on the success or failure of its media products. For this reason, to compete, Lionsgate has to take advantage of every opportunity. Often, taking advantage of opportunity comes across as audacious. For instance, in Lionsgate’s case, their embrace of the ‘Unrated’ DVD was a risky move that could have put them at odds with the studios and with the exhibitors (see NATO president Fithian’s angry comments about ‘Unrated’ DVDs in Chapter 4). Sometimes, however, capitalising on opportunities involves mimicking the practices of the mainstream in order to survive and, as the old adage says, beating them at their own game. This was the approach that Lionsgate took with their Saw DVDs. So, in this way, this analysis does fall into the category of DVD studies that Brown is less interested in seeing. As Brown himself says, however, it is ‘difficult, indeed inappropriate, to extricate the film from the context in which it is presented’ (2008: 82). In the DVD era, the primary cinematic text is nearly impossible to extricate from the extra-textual material grafted on to it. By this token, however, if the extra textual must be considered on equal terms with the primary cinematic text – or if the two grow ever more indistinguishable from one another – it is also difficult and inappropriate to separate the extra text of the ‘DVD of attractions’ or ‘digital theme park’ from the cultural and industrial conditions that give rise to it and attempt to use it for various means. Put more specifically, the ultimate goal of the ‘digital theme park’ that Lionsgate builds with their Saw DVDs is to sell more Saw merchandise. After the initial sleeper success of the first film – because, as people like Heffner note, of Lionsgate’s savvy marketing and use of the Internet – nearly every piece of Saw merchandise released on the marketplace is meant to serve as a prelude for the next piece of Saw merchandise. For instance, in the United States, the first DVD release of Saw was a single-disc, R-rated theatrical cut of the film. This release was a mere teaser for the two-disc ‘Uncut edition’ that followed containing an extended, ‘Unrated’ cut of the film and more commentaries and featurettes. Lionsgate employed a similar strategy with the subsequent DVD releases of Saw II, putting out an R-rated cut of the film followed by a ‘Special edition’ with, of course, an ‘Unrated’ cut of the film and more commentaries and featurettes. Lionsgate then shot the works with Saw III, releasing an R-rated cut, a separately released ‘Unrated’ edition, and then a third edition labelled the ‘Director’s cut’. This ‘Director’s cut’ version was packaged with a rerelease of the ‘Uncut edition’ of Saw and the ‘Special edition’ of Saw II for a whopping six-disc set, titled ‘The Saw trilogy’. Leaving this trail of breadcrumbs, that lead from one commodity to the next, is at first embraced by Bousman who concludes his commentary for the ‘Special edition’ of Saw II by announcing ‘we hope that you go to theaters on October 27th of 2006 to see Saw III and find out what happens next in the wacky world of Jigsaw and

156

seriality, subjectivity and new media

friends!’ (Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Audio commentary’). When the time came, however, for Bousman to record commentary for the ‘Director’s cut’ of Saw III – a film for which he has already recorded two commentaries – even he seems to be sick of the process, cynically beginning his commentary: This is, like, the eighteenth commentary for this exact movie . . . on the last disc, I was joking around that they were going to come out with a fourteen-disc ‘Precipice edition’. That’s the next one to come, and I’m sure I’ll be back doing commentary for that one as well. (Saw III: Director’s Cut, ‘Audio commentary’) This commodity fatigue suggests that the multiple editions of Saw films on DVD had been stretched almost as far as they could go. It is difficult to argue that the function of the flood of extra text is much more than cash-grabbing advertising when the people who are supposed to be selling the wares cannot get excited about them. Bousman’s exhaustion is even more understandable when one looks closely at many Saw extra texts and realises that their primary function is to sell the next Saw item. The menu options and material on the bonus disc of the ‘Uncut edition’ of the first film exemplify this hard-sell approach. The main menu of the disc is divided up into three sections: ‘Dissection’, ‘Further’ and ‘Cut media’. As the title implies, the ‘Dissection’ section is comprised of materials that offer further analysis of the film: a making-of documentary, the original short film that Wan and Whannell made to interest financers in the film, and a storyboard sequence by Wan which shows a more elaborate version of an action-filled sequence of the film that Wan had to simplify because of time and money restrictions. Given the materials in the ‘Dissection’ portion of the disc, the title of the ‘Further’ section may imply that its materials are going to dig even deeper into the film. In this case, however, the ‘Further’ of the section’s title means that these materials are meant to direct the consumer ‘further’ away from the cinematic commodity of the first film on DVD and towards the next commodity for sale, Saw II. Accordingly, one of the features under ‘Further’ is the first scene of Saw II, included here because it is hoped that it will interest the viewer in the sequel. More elaborate and subtle in its invitation to peruse the next film is another feature entitled ‘Full disclosure report: Piecing together Jigsaw’. This special feature is formatted like a news programme from the diegetic world of the Saw film. On-camera reporters detail Jigsaw’s crimes, offering an alternative perspective of several of the murders in the first film. The programme is complete with realistically crafted crime scene photographs and interviews with people associated with Jigsaw’s victims. The featurette not only offers a look at the past – that is, at the film that the DVD consumer has already watched – but

157

selling the splat pack

it also offers a glimpse into the future. At one point, reporters attempt to get a statement from officer Eric Matthews (played here, as he is in the films, by Donnie Walberg). In his characteristic manner, Matthews violently rebukes the reporters, even pulling his gun on them. Matthews does not appear in the first Saw film but his character is central in Saw II as Jigsaw sets an elaborate trap for the detective to test his anger and patience. Thus, Walberg’s appearance as Matthews in this extra feature acts as yet another digital attraction to entice viewers into seeing Saw II, offering a glimpse not only at a forthcoming character but also at the character’s flaw that will be tested by Jigsaw. Another element of the ‘Full disclosure report’ is, like an actual television programme, that it features a ‘commercial break’. At the midpoint, the news programme pauses for a commercial break which is a trailer for Alexandre Aja’s film, Haute Tension, distributed in the United States by Lionsgate under the title High Tension and released in the cinema in June 2005 (more about this film in Chapter 8). The ‘commercial’ advertises Haute Tension’s DVD release and illustrates how Lionsgate cunningly uses the extra text of DVD material to build loyalty not only for the Saw brand but for a distributor-wide Lionsgate ‘brand’ as well. The building of the Lionsgate brand is underscored by another feature on the extras disc for the Saw ‘Uncut edition’ release. After the ‘Dissection’ and ‘Further’ sections of the disc, there is a third section entitled ‘Cut media’. While the title of this section suggests that it may be made up of deleted scenes or other materials ‘cut’ from the film, the ‘Cut Media’ instead contains trailers for other horror films distributed on video by Lionsgate. The trailer for Haute Tension reappears here, this time around foregrounding the fact that the film is available in both R and ‘Unrated’ versions on DVD. The rest of the trailers are for extremely low-budget films that Lionsgate released direct to video. A glimpse at the trashy titles advertised in these trailers offers an example of why Lionsgate attempted to raise the pedigree of their horror output via ‘artistic’ promotional materials crafted by people such as Tim Palen, a strategy that reflects Jonathan Gray’s claims that the ‘aura’ of DVD can be used to elevate devalued cultural forms such as serial television (2010: 105). Lionsgate also strove to acquire films more appropriate for cinema release – even if the lion’s share of the money was going to be made on DVD sales – and to connect their film-makers to ‘serious’ film-making ‘movements’ such as the Splat Pack. Nevertheless, the Saw films – and by extension, Wan, Whannell and Bousman – occupy an uneasy position among other Splat Pack films and more ‘brand-name’ directors such as Roth and Zombie. Wan and Whannell’s uneasy place in the gore-oriented Splat Pack ‘movement’, however, may play to their advantage and aid them in ‘breaking away from the pack’. This ‘breaking away’ may lead Saw fans to break out of the cycle of mere consumption encouraged by the serial nature of Saw products.

158

seriality, subjectivity and new media

Breaking from the Pack: Saw Fandom and DIY Film-making Wan’s and Whannell’s uneasy affiliation with the gore-happy Splat Pack is forecasted in their commentary for the first film on the ‘Uncut edition’ DVD. At the outset, Wan promises, ‘A lot of the things that were put back in for this version were just, you know, a lot of the more graphic stuff. More graphic shots’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Commentary’). Whannell quickly chimes in, however, adding, ‘But everybody should know . . . it’s not like there’s twenty minutes of extra gory footage . . . the film wasn’t initially, it wasn’t a very gory film, was it?’, to which Wan responds: No, it was never meant to be like that. From the very start, I think we wanted to make . . . a very controlled film very much like the films Hitchcock would make, but we realized with the time constraints and the restrictions that we had . . . that method was just not going to apply for this because to make a film that was really controlled you need time and preparation and rehearsal, and there was just none of that. (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Commentary’) This exchange between Wan and Whannell suggests they are not comfortable with their film being labelled as a ‘gore’ film. They elaborate on this point on their executive producers’ commentary for Saw II. Wan complains, ‘You know what I hate, Leigh? I hate being known as the guy who kind of kicked off all the blood-and-guts thing.’ Whannell asks, ‘The gore porn thing?’ Wan corrects him, saying, ‘Torture porn, as they call it. I’m like “That’s not me” ’ (Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Audio Commentary’). Beyond their mutual discomfort with excessive gore and with being associated with the ‘torture porn’ wave – and perhaps the Splat Pack as well – their comments offer a frank look at Saw’s less-than-ideal production circumstances. The duo openly admit that gore and violence were used in the film to shock and grab audiences’ attention because they did not have the time or the means to produce a ‘very controlled’ film that could scare audiences by way of suggestion in the august fashion of a film-maker such as Hitchcock. The rigorous shooting schedule for the film, the limited budget, and the relative inexperience of the director and some of the crew made for a film that may have been a financial hit but, for Wan and Whannell at least, is riddled with errors. Wan talks about these gaffes in the ‘Hacking away at Saw’ documentary as he explains how he used ‘Quick editing’ to ‘hide some of the flaws in production’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Hacking away’). To cover other mistakes, Wan used a makeshift, multimedia approach to fill in the gaps, inserting photographs taken by the film’s still photographer to tie some scenes together and, to cover shots that he missed, pulling shots from a video camera that was originally

159

selling the splat pack

meant to provide a few shots from the surveillance camera monitoring Gordon and Adam as they are chained in the bathroom (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Hacking away’). At one point in the documentary, Wan laughs about the many flaws in the film that resulted from his first time directing a feature: ‘I love spotting mistakes in films, and boy, are there a lot in Saw’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Hacking away’). Rather than lamenting about these mistakes, however, Wan and Whannell utilise digital technologies to frame these errors, mistakes and oversights as pathways for fans to interact with the film. By emphasising the adverse conditions of the film’s production on the DVD’s extra features, they fold the film’s trials and tribulations into the supertext of the film. In the ‘making-of’ documentary, co-producer and assistant director Heffner, when discussing the cramped conditions of the sets, instructs the viewer, during the scenes with Gordon and Adam in the bathroom, to ‘Just picture fifteen of us standing on each others’ shoulders back behind the camera in this little corner’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Hacking away’). By broadening the scope of the film to include its production circumstances, the DVD makes the low-budget, DIY-style production of the film a part of the ‘story of the film’. Further, Whannell encourages fans to engage with the film via repeat viewings and ‘take ownership’ of it. Reacting to Wan’s observation about the number of errors in Saw, Whannell explains: But that’s great. That’s actually been one of the best things for James and I [sic] . . . watching people take ownership of the film and argue about it. You’re thinking, ‘Oh my god, they’re discussing, heatedly, something I thought up and James thought up.’ So, that’s just an honor as well. (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Hacking Away’) The ‘heated’ discussions that Whannell mentions mostly take place on the message boards of the ‘House of Jigsaw’ website, a site maintained by Lionsgate. The ‘Hacking Away at Saw’ documentary shows a shot of the site’s homepage as Whannell explains that ‘The fans are great to us. The House of Jigsaw website has been a great forum for meeting some of these guys. We try and stay in touch with them and talk to them, kind of cultivate them, I guess’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Hacking Away’). Whannell’s comments about ‘cultivating an audience’ online unintentionally hark back to the sometimes crass commercialism of Lionsgate’s steady and seemingly endless stream of Saw products on DVD, commodities that inevitably lead consumers to the next commodity. The homepage of the ‘House of Jigsaw’ website again reflects Lionsgate’s attempts to build brand loyalty; along with links to message boards for Saw and Saw II, there are also links to information about other edgy fare that was currently being offered by

160

seriality, subjectivity and new media

Figure 7.2  ‘Cultivating an audience’: Lionsgate’s Saw message board. © Lionsgate Films Home Entertainment.

Lionsgate, such as fellow Splat Packer Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects and Hard Candy (Slade, 2005). Considered in this light, the types of ‘ownership’ that fans take over the Saw films on the ‘House of Jigsaw’ is a controlled, sanctioned ownership, monitored not only by the distributor of the film but also by the film’s creators, as Wan and Whannell often interact with the fans on the site. The ‘House of Jigsaw’ website, however, was not the only digital forum through which Saw devotees could express their fandom for the series. After repeated viewings of the Saw films on DVD and endless discussions of Saw minutiae on message boards and forums, some online fans took their devotion to the franchise further. Perhaps inspired by the DIY film-making approach of the Saw production team, some engaged in making Saw fan videos and sharing them via social networking sites such as YouTube. It is understandable that the Saw films have inspired this DIY approach, given that the DVDs of the films foreground the low-budget production circumstances that spawned mistakes because of the lack of funds, time and experience. These types of production circumstances are what give some marginal films their appeal: . . . [the] conditions of production [of many low-budget films] suggest just the sort of bricologe that characterizes these films, a catch-as-catch-can approach toward production that seems more their rule than an exception. Perhaps the forthrightly ‘crude’ look that often results . . . [makes] us aware of [cinematic] illusion. (Te1otte, 1991: 10–11)

161

selling the splat pack

Similarly, Timothy Corrigan notes that the ‘material scars’ of a low-budget film’s less than ideal production ‘let the viewer remake the film as what it might have been’ (1991: 30). Encouraged by the Saw DVD’s emphasis on low-budget film-making and Wan and Whannell’s invitation to focus upon the ‘material scars’ of their low-budget film, fans have taken to making their own Saw videos and posting them on sites such as YouTube. The migration of Saw from DVD to YouTube is fitting because both platforms represent ‘new’ media versions of Gunning’s turn-of-the-century ‘cinema of attractions’. Similar to how Brown argues that DVDs represent a reiteration of the cinema of attractions as a digital theme park, Teresa Rizzo observes that YouTube is another new media version of the cinema of attractions. The cinema of attractions ‘was a cinema based on spectacle, shock and sensation’ and explains that YouTube ‘[bears] a remarkable similarity to these early films. They too address the audience directly, are exhibitionist and are frequently sensational and shocking’ (Rizzo, 2008). Another similarity between the cinema of attractions and YouTube is that ‘a large amount of material found on YouTube is not about telling stories’ but is more concerned with presenting ‘unique attractions’ (Rizzo, 2008). In this way, fan-made Saw videos on YouTube continue the logic of the digital theme park established on Saw DVDs. The various ‘chopping up’ of the primary cinematic text on the Saw DVDs – via chaptering and extra features that allow viewers to jump directly to Jigsaw’s traps doling out gruesome deaths – already subordinates narrative to spectacle in the film’s remediation on DVD. Following suit, many fan video-makers put together Saw videos that edit together their favourite traps; YouTube is replete with dozens of fan-made videos of fans’ top ten, top fifteen, or top twenty ‘best’ Jigsaw traps. There are even a few videos dedicated to the top ten most ‘pathetic’ Jigsaw traps. Videos of this nature are clearly in the vein of the digital theme park, an attitude made clear in the comments section on a video called simply ‘Saw fan video’. The video, posted by user TheHardStyleChampion, features flashes of intense and grisly images from all seven Saw films condensed into a rapid-fire montage – using the same ‘quick cut’ editing techniques that Wan claims he used to hide faulty, quickly done film-making in the first film – lasting only about forty-five seconds. In the comments section, a user named eraserchewer writes, ‘If anyone really likes watching People be [sic] cut in half . . . or enjoys watching them be ripped open, or cut, or sliced, or sawd [sic] . . . or murdered in any kind of way [this person] has a PROBLEM!’ A user named MrsChocloateCream replies to this comment: ‘no, I think they only need the adrenaline. It’s like a ride on the rollercoaster . . . if you know what I mean ;).’ This user seems to be aware of the digital theme park created by the digital remediation of Saw on DVD and on the ‘YouTube of attractions’. Not all Saw fan video-makers eschew narrative in favour of the roller

162

seriality, subjectivity and new media

coaster ride, however, electing instead to create their own new narratives. Many of these new narratives manifest themselves in ‘the thriving form of fan vidding’ (2010: 154): Vids are music videos, usually made with a selection of clips from a given film or program that the vidder painstakingly juxtaposes with the lyrics of a background song in order to offer an interpretation of and/or argument regarding that show. (Gray, 2010: 154) The purpose of vids is ‘to comment upon the show, not sell it per se’ (Gray, 2010: 154), so the fans who make these vids break from the commercialism established by Lionsgate in their stream of saleable Saw commodities. These fans are also different from fans who are content just to purchase, rent or download the Saw films and watch them. They have chosen to ‘“highlight” their path’ through the margins of the Saw universe and construct readings of the films that may veer towards the unsanctioned (Gray, 2010: 154). As Jenkins argues, more important than being ‘well made’ is the media text’s capacity for ‘provid[ing] resources consumers can use in constructing their own fantasies’ (2006: 97). An example of this type of video is one posted by user NotoriousStiffy called ‘The Reason’. In this video, Notorious reimagines Adam and Gordon’s relationship from the first film as one of homosexual longing, at least on Adam’s part. Set to Hoobastank’s pop song ‘The Reason’, in which the speaker begs his partner for forgiveness for past transgressions and asks his partner to take him back, the video recuts the film to posit Adam as in love with Gordon. In keeping with the song, Adam regrets that he ‘betrayed’ the object of his affection by spying on him – in the film, Detective Tapp paid Adam to do this but the video insinuates that Adam may have been spying on him out of jealousy – and begs Gordon for forgiveness. Gordon apparently cannot forgive him and crawls away from Adam with the only hope being, like that of the speaker in the song, that Adam has learned something from the experience and has become a better person because of it. Thus, just as Wan and Whannell’s ambivalence towards gore and viscera separates them from the pack, their willingness to detach their authorial presence from their film and allow fans to reconfigure their text separates them from Splat Pack directors such as Roth and Zombie who take great pains to assert their directorial presence via extra text and other extra-cinematic materials. Roth’s and Zombie’s efforts may have paid off in making them more ‘house-hold’ names in horror (Poole, 2012: 108) but, to return to Maltby’s claim, the ‘lack of authorial voice’ may enhance viewers’ enjoyment of the Saw films, helping make these films, by far, the most profitable of all Splat Pack films. As Wan points out in the ‘Hacking away at Saw’ documentary,

163

selling the splat pack

Figure 7.3  A moment reinterpreted: Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell in Saw. © Evolution Entertainment/Twisted Pictures.

‘It’s like once the film is out there, it’s no longer yours. You kinda just have to let it go’ (Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Hacking away’). The Saw films are certainly ‘out there’ circulating in popular and media culture, and various audiences have taken ownership of them in a myriad of ways. This appropriation is not limited to fandom, as many academic viewers have looked into the Saw films to see reflections of the current historical moment: post 9/11 trauma, the ‘war on terror’, debates over torture and so on (see Hills, 2011). Benjamin Poole argues, ‘It is impossible to extricate Saw from its post-9/11 context’ (2012: 63) but it is equally impossible to extricate Saw from the commercial conditions of its production and distribution and from its varied receptions – from digital thrill ride to film filled with homoerotic subtext. Like Caligari, the Saw films are full of torment while also representing the economic power of consumer choice. Note 1. Later films in the series reveal that John Kramer, the Jigsaw killer, was a civil engineer before being diagnosed with cancer and beginning his career as a criminal mastermind.

164

8. SCARS, BOTH MATERIAL AND CYBER: HAUTE TENSION AND THE DESCENT ON DVD

Aja and Marshall: the Odd (European) Men Out Amid the celeb–auteur presence of Eli Roth, the rock-star persona of Rob Zombie and the seemingly endless stream of Saw media products, two names that seem to get drowned out in the Splat Pack clamour are Alexandre Aja and Neil Marshall. Ironically, Aja and Marshall loomed large in Jones’s original article about hot young horror directors, with just as much ink devoted to Aja’s and Marshall’s observations on horror and its relationship to the current historical moment as to Roth’s and Zombie’s. When the term ‘Splat Pack’ migrated to the United States, however, Aja and Marshall seemed to fade into the background. Their films would be mentioned alongside Roth’s and Zombie’s films and the Saw movies but rarely would much attention be lavished on Aja and Marshall by interviewers or reporters. One possible reason Aja and Marshall may have become lost in the shuffle when Splat Pack articles began to emerge in the United States is that they were non-American members of the Splat Pack, with Aja hailing from France and Marshall from Scotland. While Wan and Whannell were from Australia, perhaps the financial success of the Saw films made the two seem more ‘home-grown’ than Aja and Marshall, whose lower-grossing films could be quite challenging. Their European origins are not the only similarity that Aja and Marshall share. In Jones’s article, both film-makers profess an admiration for hardhitting, survivalist horror films of the past, from Craven’s Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes to Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs and Boorman’s

165

selling the splat pack

Deliverance. Accordingly, both of their breakthrough films – Aja’s Haute Tension (released in France in 2003 and in the United States as High Tension in 2005) and Marshall’s The Descent (released in Britain in 2005 and in the United States in 2006) – are metacinematic exercises in horror film-making. Aja’s and Marshall’s allusion-heavy films have made them darlings of more film-literate, ‘hardcore’ horror fans, a group of fans who have not necessarily embraced the rest of the Splat Pack. Indeed, while Roth and Zombie have gained more mainstream attention and the Saw films have made more money, their success has caused them to be held in less esteem than film-makers such as Aja and Marshall. For instance, Roth’s auteur status has been given a boost from Tarantino’s mentorship but Tarantino’s tutelage has caused some fans to regard Roth as an attention-hungry hack unable to ‘make it’ without Tarantino’s help. An example of this attitude can be found on Xixax, a website that describes itself as ‘film talk for cinephiles’ and hosts various message boards and forums where ‘cinephiles’ can discuss the work of their favourite directors. A select few directors are given forums of their own (Roth is not one of them), and the links to each director’s forum gives the director’s name with a short, witty description underneath. For instance, Stanley Kubrick is labelled ‘Still the one’ at the head of his forum, while Martin Scorsese’s reads ‘Eyebrows. Oscar. Why try harder?’. Quentin Tarantino’s description is ‘Still committed to making Eli Roth happen’, a barb that summarises the way in which many ‘cinephiles’ feel about Roth, namely, that he is simply a ‘hangeron’ whom his marketing mentor tries to force on the film-going world. While these types of barbs have haunted Roth’s career from its beginning, Zombie was once generally accepted among hardcore horror fans. The Devil’s Rejects was almost uniformly adored among horror fans. On the fan forums at Bloody Disgusting, a top horror fan website, a fan posted a poll soliciting forum members’ opinions of the movie. Zombie’s film received 469 ‘thumbs up’ votes and only 96 ‘thumbs down’, a resounding victory for the film (‘Online Poll’, 21 October 2006).1 Fans began to turn against Zombie, however, when he remade John Carpenter’s Halloween, a film much loved by horror aficionados. Fan dissatisfaction with Zombie is exemplified by a scathing review of the film by ‘Moriarty’, one of the reviewers and west coast editor for Harry Knowles’s Ain’t It Cool News, a massive online hub for movie fans.2 Moriarty decried Zombie’s film as ‘creatively bankrupt from the start. It’s a fairly awful, laden film, regardless of whether it’s a remake or a sequel or an original’ (Moriarty, 2007). Even though Zombie’s Halloween went on to be a moneymaker, the fan reaction was poor, as Moriarty’s disapproval was echoed in the reader comments on his review, with fans crying foul over Zombie’s reimagining of one of horror cinema’s icons (Moriarty, 2007). The howls of indignation only grew with the 2009 release of Halloween II which was loathed by many horror fans and, unlike its predecessor, did not have big

166

scars, both material and cyber

box office to fall back on (the film grossed only $33.3 million compared to the first film’s $58.2 million). Similarly, the massive financial success of the Saw films virtually guaranteed that the films would not gain serious acceptance among hardcore horror fans. The average horror fan’s opinion of the Saw films can been seen in a post on Bloody Disgusting’s message board titled ‘series that have gone on for way too long’. The poster expresses disdain for franchises spawned from films like Hellraiser (Barker, 1987), The Howling (Dante, 1981), and Puppet Master (Schmoeller, 1989). The fan admits, however: ‘I actually have fun watching the saw [sic] movies and look forward to them every year, yeah I know the twists and acting are laughable, I like the dumb cheesiness’ (‘Message board’, 10 October 2008). This quote is echoed by other fans on the thread and illustrates that, while the Saw films are profitable – horror fans may go to see them even though they know the films are ‘laughable’ and ‘dumb’ – they are not valued by real horror aficionados.3 Monstrous Femininity and Intertextuality In seeming opposition to the relatively mainstream Saw movies, the films of Aja and Marshall contain many pleasures for the well-versed horror fan. Aja’s Haute Tension, which he co-wrote with his writing partner GrégoryLevasseur, resurrects many conventions of American slasher films from the 1970s and 1980s as it tells of the peril that befalls two female college students, Marie (Cécile De France) and Alex (Maïween Le Besco), as they spend a weekend in the country at the isolated home of Alex’s parents (Andrei Finti and Oana Pellea). In the middle of the night, a stranger (Philippe Nahon) forces his way into the house, brutally murders Alex’s parents and little brother (Marco Claudiu Pascu), and kidnaps Alex. Marie evades the killer and gives chase when he leaves with Alex bound and gagged in the back of his truck. Marie eventually confronts the killer and is able to overcome him but, when Marie attempts to free her friend, Alex is terrified of her. It is then revealed that Marie has multiple personality disorder and is, in fact, the murderer of Alex’s family. Apparently, her lesbian desire for Alex drove her to kill Alex’s family, take Alex hostage, and then ‘save’ her. Though this last-minute plot twist jettisoned the verisimilitude of Haute Tension’s narrative, it did suggest that Aja was both familiar with the conventions of the slasher movie and interested in playing with the gender politics of these conventions, especially those discussed in Carol Clover’s influential 1987 essay ‘Her Body, Himself’. Neil Marshall’s The Descent is less audacious than Aja’s Haute Tension but the ways in which Marshall’s film plays with genre and gender conventions are no less ambitious. The film tells the story of six female outdoors enthusiasts who go on a potholing adventure in a remote cave in the Appalachian

167

selling the splat pack

Mountains a year after the unexpected deaths, in a car accident, of the husband and daughter of Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) one of the members of the group. Unfortunately for the women, the cave turns out to be the dwelling place for a breed of savage, subhuman predators that begin ruthlessly to kill and consume the women when they get lost in the cave. To survive, the women must become as brutal as the subhuman ‘Crawlers’ (as the film’s closing credits call them), with Sarah slipping further into brutality and, ultimately madness, than the others. Like Aja, Marshall draws heavily from horror films of the past. For instance, there are clear parallels between Deliverance and Marshall’s film in that they both deal with a group of suburban thrill-seekers being supremely tested in the wilderness. The most striking urtext to Marshall’s film, however, is John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of The Thing. The Descent and Carpenter’s The Thing have much in common. An isolated group is faced with a monstrous, undefeatable threat; there is an apocalyptic ending in which no one from the group survives; and the group of protagonists is made up entirely of members of the same sex, men in The Thing and women in The Descent. The work of Aja and Marshall is especially well suited to the DVD era, when consumers were encouraged to own films, and the well-versed horror fan would have all the films referenced by Aja and Marshall easily at hand on the DVD shelf. There are advantages and rewards, beyond mere pleasure, for the hardcore horror fan who can recognise the intertextuality of these films and get their allusions. These films’ metacinematic elements are closely connected with how these films explore gender, particularly femininity. Both Haute Tension and The Descent feature women in leading roles. Moreover, femininity is not incidental to these films’ stories, as the potential monstrosity of female desire is central to both films. In Haute Tension, Marie’s desire for Alex causes the killer to be released from Marie’s subconscious. Shortly after the Crawlers besiege the group of female cavers in The Descent, Sarah learns that, before her husband died, he was having an affair with one of her fellow cavers, her best friend, Juno (Natalie Mendoza). The Crawlers eventually kill off everyone in the group, leaving only Sarah and Juno. After the duo fight together and kill a group of the savage mutants, Sarah turns on Juno, ripping into her knee with a sharp pickaxe and leaving her, alone and wounded, to fend for herself against a looming onslaught of Crawlers. Juno is thus punished for violating Sarah’s desire with her own. One could argue that these depictions of female desire do not essay a progressive perspective. Indeed, both Haute Tension and The Descent offer representations of female desire that are at times horrendous. These depictions of monstrous feminine desire, however, are embedded within metacinematic, intertextual films that, through their citations of other filmic texts, foreground their own constructedness and present their representations as just that: rep-

168

scars, both material and cyber

resentations. Aja’s film does this through the subtle use of a frame story that undermines the verisimilitude of the embedded narrative. Marshall employs an intertextual, allusion-heavy style that makes his film, at times, resemble ideological parody. The representations of monstrous women in Aja’s and Marshall’s films draw so heavily and overtly from images of monstrous women from past horror films that their films seem to interrogate, rather than substantiate, the idea of woman as monstrous. This exploration of representation is intimately tied to the commodity status of these films. As metacinematic intertextual exercises, these films foreground their status as fiction. Further, the films’ journeys through the marketplace as commodities also tell us a great deal about the DVD era. For Aja and Marshall share one final, crucial similarity as well as their European origins and their films’ concerns with intertextuality and gender: both of their key films faced obstacles and underwent significant changes when Lionsgate brought them to the United States. As such, this chapter will first consider the films’ ‘tamperedwith’ status on DVD, illustrating how this unstable intratext creates a reception context that encourages critical interaction with the films. The ‘Tampered-with’ Film on DVD: Foregrounding Commodity and Process The most infuriating business decisions were visited upon Haute Tension. After the film was released to minor success in France in 2003, and in Britain in 2004 (where it was released under the title Switchblade Romance), Lionsgate acquired rights to distribute it in the United States under the title High Tension. Bolstered, no doubt, by the sleeper successes of Roth’s Cabin Fever and Wan’s Saw, Lionsgate decided to release Aja’s film on 10 June 2005, at the height of the highly competitive summer film season. Even as Lionsgate made this bold decision, however, they hedged their bets. To improve the film’s chances of success in the United States, they decided to dub a great deal of the film’s spoken dialogue rather than releasing the film in French with English subtitles. They dubbed the film’s first half, and the film’s later sequences, which are light on dialogue, were subtitled. This hybridised dubbed/subtitled version of the film could have caused confusion if audiences had shown up for the film but they mostly did not. The film grossed only $1.8 million in its opening weekend and grossed a total of only $3.6 million during its meagre three-week cinema run. Still, the true Haute Tension release of interest for horror fans was on DVD, handsomely packaged in Tim Palen’s designs, following a few months later in October 2005, just in time for Halloween. Lionsgate’s American version of the Haute Tension DVD included extras that were expected and required by fans: feature commentary, a making-of documentary and, for the DVD’s ‘Unrated’

169

selling the splat pack

version, the restoration of over a minute of gore that was cut from the film’s international version for release in the United States. The DVD release of Haute Tension differs from other films that had been ‘restored’ on DVD, however, in that it still bears what Corrigan calls the ‘material scars’ of the film’s confused American release (1991: 30). The DVD’s main menu features four options: ‘Play’, ‘Set up’, ‘Scene selections’ and ‘Special features’. If the viewer selects the ‘Play’ option, the DVD defaults to playing the film with the first half dubbed in English, just as the film was presented in cinemas in the United States. If the viewer wants to watch the film with English subtitles and French audio or with just French audio, she/he has to select ‘Set up’ from the main menu and turn off the English dubbing and select the preferred subtitles or audio. The ability to watch the film in either the ‘Original French language director’s cut version’ or the ‘US English language dubbed version’ is touted on the DVD’s sleeve as a special feature of the DVD. Thus, the film’s aurally circuitous path to release as a commodity in American cinemas is also a vital part of the film’s status as a DVD commodity. The case of Neil Marshall’s The Descent is similarly confusing. After the film was released in Britain in August 2005 to moderate box office and solid reviews, Lionsgate acquired the rights to distribute it in the United States. Lionsgate did not have a language barrier to overcome with the release of The Descent and, perhaps learning a lesson from their release of Haute Tension, they gave the film a better release date than was afforded to Haute Tension. The Descent opened in August – falling between the summer film season and the autumn award season – a good time for sleeper hits. The Descent fared better than Haute Tension; it earned a solid $8.9 million over its opening weekend and went on to gross a respectable $26 million during the course of its ten-week cinema run. The Descent did not achieve this moderate box office success without corporate tampering, however. The changes made to The Descent mostly had to do with the film’s conclusion. The ending of the film that Marshall wrote, shot, and edited for the British and European release of the film was extremely downbeat. After Sarah breaks Juno’s knee and leaves her to the Crawlers, Sarah attempts to find an exit from the cave. She slips, falls through a narrow pipe of the cave, falls on a huge pile of bones and is knocked unconscious. The situation is not as bleak as it seems, however, as a shaft of sunlight illuminates Sarah’s surroundings. She regains consciousness and begins desperately climbing the pile of bones in an attempt to reach the sunlight. After a long, excruciating climb, Sarah, blood covered and gasping for breath, breaks the surface, as orchestral music swells on the soundtrack. Sarah then runs screaming to one of the SUVs, that she and her friends had taken to the cave, jumps in and drives away at top speed. She eventually pulls over by the side of the road and weeps uncontrollably. After being startled by a passing articulated lorry, Sarah hangs her head

170

scars, both material and cyber

out of the driver’s window of the SUV and vomits. When she swings her head back into the SUV, she – and the viewer – is startled by the sight of Juno, pale skinned and with blood coming from her eyes, sitting in the passenger seat. Sarah screams, and the film cuts back to the cave, just as Sarah regains consciousness after her earlier fall. The pile of bones, the sunlight and Sarah’s escape were all merely a dream. Sarah hears the screams of the Crawlers in the distance and begins to rise but, as she does so, she is stopped by the sound of her dead daughter whispering, ‘Mummy’. Sarah peers into the darkness and sees, improbably, sitting in front of her in the cave her daughter Jessica, alive and well, and a birthday cake with illuminated candles. At various points throughout the film, Sarah has had visions of Jessica, posed behind this birthday cake and ready to blow out the candles. When Jessica and the cake appear at this point, with a blood-soaked Sarah gazing lovingly at them, it is clear that Sarah has gone insane, retreating completely into her mind to avoid the trauma surrounding her. The point of Sarah’s insanity is punctuated by the film’s final shot, as Sarah is shown staring off into the darkness of the cave at nothing while the howls of the Crawlers fill the soundtrack, insinuating that they will soon close in on Sarah. According to Marshall, this was the ending that he had always planned for The Descent. Marshall explains that, at one point during post-production, he grew frustrated with the difficulty of editing the ending with Sarah back in the cave and, in anger, threatened to end the film with Sarah in the SUV being startled by the ghost of Juno (The Descent, ‘DescENDING’). Nevertheless, he solved the editing problems, and the film was released in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe with his intended ending. When Lionsgate acquired the distribution rights for the movie in the United States, however, they held test screenings with both endings: Marshall’s original and the truncated version that ends with Sarah seeing Juno’s ghost. Ultimately, the truncated version of the ending scored higher with viewers, so Lionsgate approached Marshall about releasing the film in the United States with the ghost ending. Marshall agreed, explaining in a later interview, ‘We only agreed to [release the film with the shorter ending] on the basis that they were going to give us a wide release’ (quoted in Turek, 2008). While many may expect an auteur like Marshall to be upset about the ending of his film being tampered with in such a substantial manner – in effect, one ending depicts the lead character as surviving whereas the other does not, a significant difference in the film’s narrative – Marshall was not troubled by Lionsgate’s mandate, claiming, ‘From my point of view, I got what I wanted which was to get a maximum release and I knew the other ending was going to be seen on the uncut DVD anyway’ (quoted in Turek, 2008). Marshall’s blasé attitude towards changing the ending of The Descent for its cinema release is a testament to how the DVD market had changed attitudes towards ‘final cut’ and the stability of film commodities. The cinema

171

selling the splat pack

release is more of a ‘rough draft’ for the film-maker and, for the distributor, it is effective marketing for the forthcoming DVD release. Sure enough, when Lionsgate released The Descent on DVD as an ‘Original unrated cut’ edition in December 2006, Marshall’s original ending for the film’s initial British release was restored. The changes that the film underwent for its American release remain at issue, however, as one of the DVD release’s extra features is a short filmed interview titled ‘DescENDING – Interview with Neil Marshall’. In this interview, Marshall explains the original problems that he had with editing the ending and how Lionsgate suggested that he go with the shorter ending in the United States because, when tested with audiences it rated higher. Of course, considering that this DVD is a product of Lionsgate, Marshall is very diplomatic when describing the scenario of the film’s United States release and the test screenings the film underwent. He says that it was his idea to test the two different endings with American audiences. Additionally, he does not claim that Lionsgate made him change the ending and remarks only that they were ‘happier to go with the shorter ending because it tested better’ (The Descent, ‘DescENDING’). Regardless, similar to the situation with Haute Tension, the ‘tampering-with’ that The Descent underwent on its journey to cinema showing in the United States remains a part of the product as a film-on-DVD commodity. Thus, if Haute Tension and The Descent are films that, to a certain extent, wear their intertextual references on their sleeves, they have also been forced, owing to the circumstances of their American releases and the reception contexts created by these releases, to wear their commodity status on their sleeves as well, both metaphorically and literally in the case of their DVD packaging. After all, the changes made to these films were made in the hope that they would gross more box office dollars. Rather than bemoaning this situation, however, it is more interesting to consider how the ways these films exist at the intersection of cinematic ‘art’ and commercial product make them especially useful in understanding issues of power and, in the specific cases of these two women-centred films, gender. The type of cinematic bricolage practised by film-makers such as Aja and Marshall opens up a space to interrogate these representations; the films’ conscious self-reflexive depiction of women has an alienation effect and opens up a space in which representations can be more easily recognised as representations. Moreover, these self-reflexive cinematic representations are made available on a material base – the DVD – that further opens up the films to interrogation. Here, it is useful to adduce work by J. P. Telotte and Timothy Corrigan on the appeal of the ‘cult movie’. According to Telotte: [the] conditions of production [of many cult films] suggest just the sort of bricolage that characterizes these films, a catch-as-catch-can approach

172

scars, both material and cyber

toward production that seems more their rule than an exception. Perhaps the forthrightly ‘crude’ look that often results [in cult movies] . . . [makes] us aware of [cinematic] illusion. (1991: 10–11) Telotte argues that the low budgets, shoddy production values and the amateurish film-making of many cult films make the audience overtly aware that they are watching a film and invite them to engage actively in the meaningmaking of the film. While these may have been the conditions of the production of the first Saw film – as Wan and Whannell readily admit on the DVD special features of that film – one would be hard pressed to call either Haute Tension or The Descent crude or shoddily made. Both films are slickly and professionally produced and backed by substantial budgets. Regardless, the changes to which these films were subjected for their cinema releases – changes that are well documented on their DVD releases – seem to foreground the behind-thescenes processes it took to produce these films and, especially in the case of the dubbing job done on Haute Tension, could come across as rather crude, thus opening up these films to a more participatory spectatorship than usual. Similarly, Timothy Corrigan claims that many films that achieve cult status do so because they bear the ‘material scars’ of a less than ideal production (1991: 30). These material scars can include: noticeably fake cardboard sets; faulty line deliveries by the actors that had to be left in because of a lack of time or budget to do reshoots; continuity errors made for similar reasons; and mismatched wardrobes. According to Corrigan, material scars can also include problems with studio interference; a specific example of this is Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and ‘the harsh cuts and breaks which resulted from the studio’s taking the film’s editing out of Welles’s hands’ (Corrigan, 1991: 30). Corrigan feels that these material scars ‘provide . . . crucial openings’ into the film that ‘let the viewer remake the film as what it might have been’ (1991: 30). The viewer becomes aware of the cinematic apparatus and is better able to participate in the film’s meaning-making process. Again, while Haute Tension and The Descent were decently budgeted films and not necessarily plagued with production problems, they were subjected to changes by their distributor, and the DVD releases of these films make this tampering a vital part of the product. If noticing material scars enables one, in Corrigan’s words, to ‘remake the film as what it might have been’, then an extra feature, such as ‘DescENDING’ on the DVD release of The Descent, provides an obvious example for viewers of how a film’s meaning can be interacted with and remade. Thus, the ability to read these films in ways that highlight how they interrogate the representation of gender in horror is intimately tied to their intratextual status as a tampered-with film commodity on DVD. The interactivity encouraged by Aja’s and Marshall’s films on DVD is crucially different from the interactivity encouraged by the Saw films. As

173

selling the splat pack

Chapter 7 illustrates, the Saw extra text’s focus on the low-budget, ‘catch-ascatch-can’, DIY approach to making the film folds a romanticised version of this mode of film-making into the Saw supertext. In turn, the inclusion of this mode of film-making in the film’s supertext can inspire some tech-savvy fans to make their own DIY fan productions that either recreate the theme park thrills of the Saw films or, as Jonathan Gray would put it, sketch their own ‘highlighted’ pathway through the ‘peculiarities’ of the text to create new narratives (2010: 154). The ‘tampered-with’ DVDs of Haute Tension and The Descent foreground the text’s malleability on a level of reception. Thus, while fans may not be as inspired by Aja’s and Marshall’s films to create their own fan productions from these films, cine-literate fans are encouraged, by the reception context of the films coupled with Aja’s and Marshall’s privileged place among ‘true’ horror fans, to interact with these films on a level of reception and interpretation. This scenario with Haute Tension and The Descent is somewhat similar to some of those that Egan observes with ‘video nasty’ collecting and fan expertise in Britain. Many ‘video nasty’ fans and collectors accumulate a vast amount of knowledge concerning different versions and cuts of ‘nasties’ on videotape (2007: 162). These collectors ‘have to build up knowledge not only about the history of particular video distribution companies, but also their historical and commercial relationship with each other and to versions of particular nasty titles’ (Egan, 2007: 163). These various bodies of knowledge accumulated by nasties fans as they build their collection of nasties on videotapes create the possibility of a more ‘active and interrogative relationship’ between the nasties and their viewers (Egan, 2007: 163). Later in her study, Egan speculates what effect rapidly evolving digital technologies – such as pristine DVDs easily available via Internet retailers – will have on video nasty collectors. While that debate may still be open, the DVD releases containing multiple cuts and versions of a film on a single- or multidisc release of a film have, in some situations, compressed the process that Egan discusses. Now the curious horror fan can explore various cuts of a film with relative ease on a single disc (both Haute Tension and The Descent were single-disc releases in the United States that contained both versions of the film on one disc). The fact that the process of acquiring multiple versions of a film has become easier, however, does not negate the possibility of a fan’s potentially rich interactivity with the inter- and intratextuality of metacinematic films such as Haute Tension and The Descent. The case of these two films becomes more interesting when one considers that the multiple versions available on their DVD releases are not merely a ‘cash-in’ meant only to sell more DVDs; instead, the corporate interference that created the multiple versions of these films directly points to, as Egan might say, the various ‘commercial and historical relationships’ that these films have with the context of their releases and

174

scars, both material and cyber

r­ eception, a self-reflexive process that enlivens the primary cinematic texts of these films that are so obsessively about the experience of watching, consuming and interpreting ‘the horror film’. If the ‘material scars’ of low-budget films such as Saw encourage fans to ‘complete’ or ‘remake’ the film as ‘what it could have been’ through fan production, the ‘cyber scars’ of Haute Tension and The Descent invite the viewer actively to engage and interface with the multiple texts of both the film and its influences.

Haute Tension: Framing Monstrous Feminine Desire Aja’s Haute Tension seems, at first, to represent female desire – more specifically, homosexual feminine desire – in the worst possible light. Further, the film’s representation of feminine desire, as embodied by the character of Marie, appears to follow a tradition of troubling representations in Hollywood film, horror and otherwise. Linda Williams analyses some of these depictions of feminine desire in Hollywood cinema. Following Laura Mulvey, Williams notes, ‘In the classical narrative cinema, to see is to desire’ and then points out that women in classical narrative cinema are often denied mastery of vision and, as a result, the ability to desire (1996: 15). Marie’s vision and her desire drive the narrative of Haute Tension. This emphasis is clear from the beginning. The film opens with a dream sequence (intercut with an opening credits sequence) in which a bruised, battered and bloodied Marie limps through the woods, presumably pursued by an unseen assailant. When the dream ends, the film cuts to a close-up of Marie’s eye opening. It is soon revealed that she had been sleeping in the back of the car while Alex takes a turn driving to her parents’ house in the country. The opening of Marie’s eye, shown in a close-up that emphasises the importance of her vision, is what activates the film’s narrative. Marie’s vision and her power to activate the film’s narrative are linked specifically to her desire in a corollary scene that takes place after Marie and Alex arrive at Alex’s parents’ home. As Alex’s parents settle in for bed and the house grows dark and silent, Marie, who has seemed uncomfortable in these surroundings since they arrived, goes outside to smoke a cigarette. She walks a good distance from the house and sits down on a swing that gives her a view of the entire house. From here, she sees Alex in an upstairs window. Alex, not suspecting Marie’s voyeurism, is naked in the shower. Afterwards, Marie comes back into the house, goes to her room, and, still fully clothed, gets into bed. Next, she puts on earphones, listens to music and, supposedly aroused by the sight of Alex in the shower, slides her hand down the front of her jeans and begins to masturbate. Her masturbation is intercut with shots of the killer approaching the house in his beat-up truck. As Marie begins to reach a climax, the killer arrives at the house to begin his/her killing

175

selling the splat pack

spree. This sequence suggests that the monster is a product of Marie’s desire which is activated through her vision. This is why women in the cinema who look and desire always ‘must be punished in the end’ (Williams, 1996: 17). As Williams explains it, there is often ‘a surprising . . . affinity between monster and woman’ (1996: 18); in the horror film, the woman’s ‘look at the monster recognizes their similar status within patriarchal structures’ (1996: 18). Williams argues that cinema often both conflates women and monsters and ‘demonstrate[s] how monstrous female desire can be’ (1996: 33). Haute Tension continues in this tradition as Marie’s vision of Alex in the shower and her desire for Alex combine to unleash the monstrousness that destroys Alex’s family with a bloody ferocity. Moreover, Marie and the monster of Haute Tension share more than their ‘status within patriarchal structures’: they are the same person, existing in a state of split subjectivity. Marie seems to be the stereotypical female monster when considered in the light of Barbara Creed’s feminist framework for approaching the horror film. Like Williams, Creed argues that horror films – and patriarchal culture – have consistently conflated women and monsters and constructed ‘the maternal figure as the monstrous-feminine’ (1996: 42). Adapting the work of Julia Kristeva, Creed explains that these maternal, female figures in horror films are abject: ‘One of the key features of abjection is the mother who becomes abject at that moment when the child rejects her for the father who represents the symbolic order’ (Creed, 1996: 36). When the abject returns in the form of a woman in the horror film, however, she ‘threaten[s] a subject that is already constituted, in relation to the symbolic, as “whole and proper” ’ (Creed, 1996: 43). The threat is often accompanied by ‘Images of blood, vomit, pus, shit, and so forth’ that are ‘central to our culturally/socially constructed notions of the horrific’ (Creed, 1996: 43). One aspect of Marie’s character that makes her an abject figure is her aforementioned spilt subjectivity. If the symbolic order insists that one’s subjectivity be constructed as ‘whole and proper’, Marie’s fractured subjectivity is a threat to this order. It is certainly a threat to Alex’s parents whom Marie murders in particularly gruesome ways. Alex’s father is slashed in the face with a razor, and after he falls to the floor, she drags him to a staircase and wedges his head between two rails of the staircase’s banister. Then, she forcefully shoves a large, wooden bureau into his trapped head, decapitating him. The murder of Alex’s mother is similarly excessive: her throat is slashed open and her hand is chopped off. Significantly, both murders involve dismemberment, a clear indication that Marie is violently casting her fractured subjectivity upon those she sees as standing in the way of the consummation of her desires. Additionally, just as Creed argues that the threat of the abject is usually accompanied by images of abjected fluids like blood, Marie appears early in the film, in the dream sequence mentioned earlier, covered in blood and limping through the

176

scars, both material and cyber

woods. Most of the blood is pouring from an open wound in her side, a wound that, it is later revealed, she receives when Alex stabs her in self-defence. Thus, the horrific violence that Marie is about to unleash upon Alex and her family is announced in Marie’s prophetic dream, by blood, a disgust-inducing fluid that positions Marie as abject, both victim and killer. In these ways, Marie is depicted as another iteration of the abject monstrous feminine, a construct of patriarchal culture. Marie’s character seems not only to reflect discriminatory depictions of women but homosexuals as well. In fact, Aja’s film seems to participate in what Kent L. Brintnall terms ‘Christian rhetorics regarding sexual deviance and the perversity of queer desire’ (2004: 146). It may seem odd to find Christian rhetoric in a slasher film but Brintnall argues that conservative Christian writings and beliefs on homosexuality often overlap with how queer desire is depicted in horror films. This is certainly the case with Haute Tension, as Marie’s character embodies many of the characteristics Christian rhetoric and horror films ascribe to queer desire. More specifically, Marie’s queerness falls in line with Christian rhetoric and horror film convention in her decadence and in how her desire is depicted as a threat not just to an individual but to the social fabric as well. When she is introduced in the film’s opening scenes of Marie and Alex in the car, Marie possesses many of the stereotypical visual markers of lesbianism, such as a short, ‘butch’ haircut and an athletic build, that set her apart from the more ‘feminine’ Alex who has long hair and talks about a man she hopes to date. Marie’s and Alex’s opinions differ on their destination. Alex seems to be excited about the prospects of some quiet time out in the country and temporarily leaving behind the pleasures of city and college life. Marie, seemingly dissatisfied, wonders if there are any ‘cool clubs’ they could go to. Here, Marie’s fixation on clubbing and partying seems in line with the insistence in Christian rhetoric that queer desire ‘is a sexual sin that stems from disordered desire resulting from an excessive attachment to material and bodily pleasures’ (Brintnall, 2004: 148). This belief that queer desire is caused by a combination of excessive love for ‘material and bodily’ pleasure is present in the scene when Marie conjures the killer by masturbating while listening to music on her headphones. This conjuring is made possible by her ‘excessive’ love of the material (symbolised by her MP3 player and the music it produces) and the bodily (symbolised by her masturbation and her queer desire for Alex). The film also makes Marie’s queer desire monstrous by depicting it as ‘dangerous not only to the individual, but to the fate of the larger social order’ (Brintnall, 2004: 148). Marie unleashes a monster with her queer desire that harms not only herself and Alex but those around her as well. Further, the harm that Marie’s queer desire unleashes upon others is markedly excessive: the deaths of Alex’s father and mother are horrendous, gruesome and gory,

177

selling the splat pack

and her murder of Alex’s little brother is chilling. Accordingly, while Marie’s brutal violence against the family can be read as Marie inflicting her fractured sense of self upon the bodies of others, the excessive violence unleashed by Marie’s queer desire for Alex is also apocalyptic and seemingly threatens to end the world by destroying the heterosexual home, an ideological warehouse for generating gender roles in patriarchal culture. The character of Marie seems to fit negative stereotypes of women and homosexuals, and this preponderance of evidence may understandably lead one to label Haute Tension a horror film of the most misogynistic and homophobic stripe. Before coming to such a conclusion, however, one must contend with the film’s self-reflexive nature. True, while the depiction of Marie in the film may possess many of the hallmarks of negative representations of women in past horror films, this representation is framed as just that, a representation, the constructed nature of which is made apparent not only by clues in the cinematic text but also the film’s status as a commodity which is emphasised by its DVD release. Both the beginning and the final moments of Haute Tension are significant in discerning the metatextual work at stake in the film with regard to the depiction of Marie’s character. The first few moments of the film – before the opening of Marie’s eye that begins the narrative proper, with its troublesome ability to see and desire, and before the dream sequence that positions Marie as abjected monster – are vitally important. As the credits begin, Marie’s voice, repeatedly whispering, ‘I won’t let anyone come between us anymore’, can be heard before anything is shown. Next, there is a shot of Marie’s hands folded on her lap, as if in prayer. The next image is a close-up shot midway up Marie’s back, revealing she is wearing a hospital gown, loosely tied and exposing a great deal of her back. As the camera moves up, it shows her back ravaged with deep cuts with jagged edges, large, discoloured bruises and protruding metal staples on one of her wounds. As the camera reaches the back of Marie’s head, the viewer can see that there is a camera, blurry in the background, pointed at her. Marie has her head down and is not paying attention to the camera until it makes a noise. The camera’s noise prompts her to raise her head, face the camera, and ask, ‘Are they recording?’ The film then dissolves quickly into Marie’s dream sequence. The fact that Marie is being held and observed in a mental hospital is not made explicit in these opening shots – making that obvious would ruin the film’s twist ending. But the exact setting is not necessarily significant to the film’s thematic. From the outset, it is made clear that Marie’s story is one being told on camera. Her story and the images of her are constructed for the camera. The conclusion of the film answers the beginning: it is revealed that Marie has been captured and is being held for observation at an institution. As Marie rocks back and forth on a bed, still repeating the phrase from the film’s

178

scars, both material and cyber

opening, Alex looks on from the other side of a one-way mirror. Made nervous by the sight of Marie, Alex asks an unseen hospital worker: ‘She can’t see me, right?’ Just at that moment, inside the room, Marie turns to the one-way mirror, smiles and thrusts her open arms towards the mirror, providing the film with a last-minute shock for Alex and the audience, both of whom have been spying on Marie’s story. This scene, with the mirror acting as a ‘frame-within-a-frame’ that recalls the experience of watching a film on screen, foregrounds Marie’s character and the monstrous femininity and homosexuality that her character seems to embody as a construct of the homophobic, patriarchal culture that produced her (and this film). The cinematic frame tale provides an apt way of telling this type of story: A frame tale . . . produce[s] convolutions in the narration, by withholding and yet underlining information: mechanisms necessitated by the contradictory emotions of remorse, anxiety, and desire attached to the dramatic predicaments . . . They allow simultaneously both affirmation and denial, camouflaging what needs to be there but cannot be said out loud or openly endorsed. The framing device acts as a barrier or bar, an instance of narrational self-censorship, becoming the sign of a contradiction that the layered narration is called upon to repair. (Elsaesser, 2000: 87) Within the jumbled and confused storylines and emotions at play within a framed narrative, the frame can undermine or contradict what the nested narrative attempts to assert. In the case of Haute Tension, the frame story depicting Marie as a being conjured up by the cinematic apparatus – cameras, screens and so on – forces one to pause before coming to any easy conclusions about the film’s main narrative. Further, the film’s DVD release creates yet another frame around the nested narrative in Haute Tension. Not only does the DVD format make it possible to show the extremely bloody murders committed by Marie (reportedly over a minute of the film was cut so it could obtain an R rating in the United States) but the DVD’s language default settings and selections implicitly tell the story of Lionsgate’s uncertainty about how to release the film to American viewers. This uncertainty of how to market the film further reveals Marie to be a filmic construct, a character in a nervous commodity. The metacinematic elements of Haute Tension meld with the intratextual commodity form of the film on DVD to make this film a dynamic exploration of the feminine and how it is often depicted by mainstream media as something monstrous. Fittingly, media play an important role in one of the film’s key scenes when it is revealed that Marie is the killer. While Marie is supposedly battling the killer for Alex’s life, the police arrive at a convenience store where, earlier in

179

selling the splat pack

Figure 8.1  Video reveals the monstrous feminine in Haute Tension. © Alexandre Films/EuropaCorp.

the evening, the killer murdered Jimmy (Franck Khalfoun), a clerk who was working the night shift. The viewer is initially led to believe that the male killer murdered Jimmy. When the police captain (Jean-Claude de Goros) reviews the convenience store’s security tapes, however, they reveal that Marie, not the imagined killer, murders Jimmy with an axe. The ‘truth’ of the film’s surprise twist is revealed via videotape played back on a television. Thus, Marie is again ‘framed’, this time by a media screen, as monstrous. In this scene, Aja’s film begins to venture into the stylistic territory of The Descent, a film that also explores representations of monstrous femininity, not through a frame story but through intertextual allusions and the placement of media within the mise en scène. Playing with Gender and Representation: the Intertextuality of The Descent The intertextual aspects of The Descent highlight the often troubling aspects of how film represents women and turn these representations into an exploration of how women suffer under patriarchy. Admittedly, like Haute Tension, The Descent includes some representations of women that are problematic, as the film’s narrative is replete with women who variously gaze, desire and are punished for it. For instance, the film begins with Sarah, Juno and Beth (Alex Reid) concluding a white-water rafting excursion as Sarah’s husband, Paul (Oliver Milburn) and her young daughter, Jessica (Molly Kayll), watch from the riverbank. When the three women come ashore, the tension is immediately apparent. As Sarah runs to Jessie and showers her with motherly affection, Paul slowly and lovingly removes Juno’s helmet. Beth notes this gesture, and

180

scars, both material and cyber

the look on her face signals that she knows something is going on between Juno and Sarah’s husband. One year later, after the deaths of Paul and Jessie in a car accident, Sarah, Juno, Beth and three other friends embark on the caving adventure where they encounter the Crawlers, and their ghastly fates could be read as punishment for their gazing and desiring. It is Sarah’s gaze that first brings the Crawlers into the field of vision. Beth, the person whose sight gave her knowledge of Juno’s relationship with Sarah’s husband, is killed by Juno during an attack by the Crawlers; Juno hears someone approaching her from behind in the darkness and blindly swings around, planting a pickaxe through Beth’s throat. Though the strike was an accident, one wonders if the reason that Juno slinks off – leaving Beth to die – and tells the others that a Crawler killed her is because Beth knew about her affair with Sarah’s husband. More obvious is that Juno is punished for her desire, as Sarah who learns about the affair from Beth in her dying moments, wounds Juno and leaves her behind to be ripped apart by the Crawler’s jagged claws and hungry mouths. There is no shortage of women who see, desire and are punished for it in The Descent. Further, Creed’s theories on abjection, the maternal and women in horror films are applicable to The Descent. Marshall clearly evinces his intention to depict these women’s journey into the cave as a journey into the womb, and Sarah is nearly a textbook example of the monstrous feminine that Creed describes. First, she is a mother who feels rejected and dejected by the untimely demise of her daughter. Secondly, and more importantly, Sarah, more than all the other women, is abject, troubling borders the most; she is the one who falls into the pool of blood, bile and shit and emerges, covered in this waste, as an abjected feminine monster. These frameworks do not do justice to the complexity of Marshall’s film, however, nor do they adequately analyse the ways in which Marshall explores and plays with the issue of gender. To delve further into what the film is saying about gender, it is useful to consider the film’s intertextuality and metacinematic nature. While Marshall’s film might at first seem rather straightforward in the presentation of its narrative, the primary cinematic text serves as a complex intertext that liberally borrows or quotes from other films. These citations ultimately open up a space for the spectator to ‘see through’ the representational apparatus of the film and question the film’s representation of femininity. A consideration of how Marshall chooses to present – and represent – Sarah’s and Beth’s fateful journey into the mountains a year after Sarah’s car accident illustrates how Marshall utilises a film-making style dependent upon filmic citations. After The Descent’s title card, the camera fades in on an aerial shot of the mountains while a title reads, ‘Appalachian Mountains, USA’. This aerial shot dissolves into another image of the mountains and another title that

181

selling the splat pack

reads ‘One Year Later’, and this shot then dissolves into a third aerial shot of Beth and Sarah’s tiny car travelling along a deserted mountain road. Marshall notes that these shots are his ‘little homage to The Shining [Kubrick, 1980]’ (The Descent, ‘Audio commentary’), referring to the celebrated aerial shots depicting the Torrance family’s journey into the Rocky Mountains that open Kubrick’s film. After these images, the film cuts to inside the car, with Beth complaining that the only radio stations in the American South area are ‘mud, blood, and beer or sweet Jesus’. Beth and Sarah then drive by a sign that reads ‘Welcome to Chatooga National Park’. Marshall notes on the commentary that Chatooga is ‘the name of the river that [Burt] Reynolds and company raft down in Deliverance’ (The Descent, ‘Audio Commentary’). From the start, it seems as if Sarah and her friends are journeying into a veritable ‘movie land’, a landscape made up of a bricolage of elements from other cinematic texts and annotated by the extra text of Marshall’s commentary track. The storytelling techniques Marshall uses in these scenes and throughout The Descent resemble the bricolage style that Timothy Corrigan sees in cult movies. For Corrigan, cult film-makers and audiences are ‘cultural revisionists. What they do is wrench representations from their naturalized and centralized positions and create . . . “glorious incoherence” ’ (1991: 28). Corrigan argues that amid this incoherence ‘any sense of legitimacy or true place for the original representations becomes exactly what is under attack’ (1991: 28). With its combinations of already seen representations, bricolage foregrounds the constructedness of representation and invites the audience to question the representation. These moments from The Descent, with their allusions to The Shining and Deliverance and the exaggerated notion of the South as a milieu of mud, blood, beer and Jesus, set up the world of the film as a deliberately phoney environment and invite the spectator to interrogate it. The world underground in the caves is no less metacinematic than the world above. One of the women, Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), brings along a digital video camera with which she captures the various sights and sounds that the women encounter in the cave before the attack of the Crawlers. Holly’s video camera serves as a self-reflexive reminder that what is being shown is, in fact, a movie, a constructed representation. Tellingly, the first time one of the Crawlers is clearly seen is through the camera’s lens when Sarah is using its infrared capabilities to see in the absolute dark of the cave. Later, Sarah, while hiding, sees the Crawlers bloodily and greedily consume Holly’s dead body through the lens of the camera. The Crawlers are cinematic monsters in the ways they are framed and brought to life on a screen within a screen. Thus, The Descent allows the spectator to notice and contemplate not only the constructedness of representation but also how our culture digitally captures and envisions the monstrous. Marshall mediates the construction and cinematic representation of the

182

scars, both material and cyber

Figure 8.2  Video conjures the monstrous in The Descent. © Celador Films/Pathé.

monstrous in a scene in which Sarah falls into a pool of blood and waste in the Crawlers’ lair. Sarah’s face first surfaces in the pool in a shot that recalls Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979). When she fully emerges, covered in blood, she looks like Sissy Spacek’s eponymous character from Carrie (De Palma, 1976). If one fails to consider the intertextual in this scene, the blood-soaked Sarah can be taken to represent either the breakdown of distinctions between normality and the monstrous or as the ultimate epitome of the abjected monstrous feminine. The overt references to two iconic moments from two well-known films, however, make obvious this pastiche of textual citations, a bricolage that, as Corrigan argues, interrogates ‘any sense of legitimacy or true place for the original representations’ (1991: 28). Thus, if De Palma’s film is ‘a masculine fantasy in which the feminine is constituted as monstrous’ (Lindsey, 1996: 281), then Marshall’s citation of its imagery questions the legitimacy of the masculine construction of the feminine as monstrous. This sort of interrogation is made possible by The Descent’s intertextuality. In this way, The Descent’s intertextuality resembles ideological parody. Citing Linda Hutcheon’s definition of parody as ‘a repetition with a difference [that] can range from scornful ridicule to reventual homage’ (quoted in Kinder, 1990: 73), Marsha Kinder describes postmodern ideological parody as a discourse that takes as ‘its primary target not the artistic works or dead styles being imitated but the ideological inscription they carry’ (1990: 73). Marshall’s citation of Carrie is not merely a homage to De Palma but, within the intertextual play established in the film, an interrogation of the ­problematic

183

selling the splat pack

ways in which patriarchal horror films of the past have depicted women as monstrous. Kinder argues that ‘ideological parody demonstrates that such stories and genres can be rewritten and revitalized to show how the inscription of patriarchal capitalism constructs subjectivity in individual characters’ (1990: 73). At the moment when Sarah emerges from the blood pool, her character epitomises Kinder’s claim that in an ideological parody, the characters are often ‘presented both as victim and embodiment of the destructive ideological forces to be resisted’ (1990: 74). More precisely, Sarah seems like the monstrous feminine of patriarchal culture but the film’s foregrounding of the representational apparatus makes it apparent that Sarah is actually a victim of the film’s signifying system. Perhaps the most radical statement, however, at least in terms of gender, that The Descent makes through its intertextuality is how it subverts the signifying system of Carpenter’s version of The Thing. The Descent and The Thing have much in common: a seemingly unbeatable threat, an apocalyptic ending and a group under threat that is made up entirely of same-gender members, men in The Thing and women in The Descent. Some have argued that the extraterrestrial monster that threatens the all-male personnel of the Antarctic base in The Thing is actually a monstrous woman in disguise: One . . . reading of The Thing is of the monster as the eternal female. Viewed in this context, the entire film becomes the story of man’s desperate attempts to preserve the beleaguered masculine identity that is constantly under siege from predatory women, the female gender being a breed apart, considered as somehow not quite human. (Billson, 1997: 37) Hutchings concurs with this reading, remarking that ‘The alien [in The Thing] is amorphous, without fixed form, and it multiplies through the physical absorption and incorporation of its male victims. In this, it can be seen as exhibiting characters of the pre-Oedipal, maternal figure’ (1993: 90). Carpenter’s The Thing is certainly not unlike other horror films in how its monster is depicted as femininity run rampant. Unlike many other horror films that are consumed then quickly forgotten, however, The Thing has gained a massive, devoted following and is ‘precious to many fans’ (Conrich, 2004: 103). Ian Conrich argues that fans of The Thing have a tendency to be ‘active as consumers and textual poachers’ who ‘[borrow] from the mass media and [construct] new meaning from favored sources of fiction’ (2004: 103). Marshall, an admitted fan of both Carpenter and The Thing, performs a similar ‘poaching’ of The Thing in The Descent and creates new meaning from the text by inverting and subverting its gender dynamics. More specifically, if the monster in The Thing is the ‘eternal female’ in opposition to the all-male group of victims, then perhaps, because the group

184

scars, both material and cyber

of victims in The Descent is all female, the Crawlers represent the ‘eternal male’ or, more specifically, the monstrousness of patriarchy. Marshall’s film gestures towards the possibly of this reading several times throughout the film. When Sarah first catches a brief glimpse of a Crawler in the dark, she returns to tell the group. When asked what she saw, she says, ‘A man. I saw a man.’ Hence, the first description that the spectator gets of the monsters is one decidedly gendered as male. Perhaps even more striking is the scene in which Sarah kills her first Crawler. After she beats the Crawler to death, a female Crawler with long hair and breasts emerges from the darkness and whimpers over the dead body of what could very well have been her ‘husband’. Until this point, all the Crawlers who have been actively hunting and attacking the women have not had long hair or breasts, insinuating that the male Crawlers are the hunter-gatherers while the female Crawlers watch over hearth and home. The moment with Sarah and the female Crawler registers as uncanny because it is both disturbing and familiar, suggesting that the economy of the Crawlers in the caves down below is not so different from the dominant patriarchal economy of people who live above. Unlike the slimy, amorphous, abjected, ‘feminine’ monster of The Thing, the Crawlers in The Descent have a shape, structure and order – a distinctly patriarchal order. This reading of the Crawlers as representing the monstrousness of patriarchy could not come into clear view without considering Marshall’s The Descent as a complex intertext and a metacinematic exercise, citing and subverting The Thing and Carrie among others. By extension, evaluating The Descent as intertextual and metacinematic helps to retain the film’s capacity for a progressive political reading while not eliding the problematic connections that the film and our patriarchal culture make between femininity and monstrousness. In The Descent, the female characters appear and act monstrously because patriarchy, as represented by the Crawlers, forces them to, just as patriarchal culture has often constructed femininity as monstrous and has rarely been able to understand and represent women’s desire as anything other than horrifying. Marshall’s radical bricolage in The Descent foregrounds the constructedness of representation and allows the spectator to notice these constructions and, perhaps, question them. The Descent ends in a moment that seems to be ‘real’ and ‘sincere’: Sarah reunited in fantasy with her deceased daughter while the Crawlers encircle her. But this is actually another filmic quotation, Marshall notes, ‘kind of borrowed from Terry Gilliam’s original ending for Brazil [1985]’ (The Descent, ‘DescENDING’). There is no need for Marshall to fret about his textual quotations or feel that they make his film lack ‘seriousness’, however, as they offer the spectator a way to interact with the primary cinematic text which has been made unstable through its DVD release. While psychoanalytically informed

185

selling the splat pack

readings of the film can produce insightful interpretations, they simply cannot do justice to the complex interfacing of texts in The Descent and its extra texts nor can they adequately address how the spectator, living in a media-saturated world, encounters the film as alongside, or in dialogue with, other films that may be lined up on the spectator’s shelf. Back to the DVD Shelf: the Disappearing Director The multiple endings of Marshall’s film discussed on the film’s DVD release emphasise the malleability of this text and its status as a commodity, further adding to the film’s obvious constructedness. While other DVD releases attempt to look and feel like an ‘authored original’ and to ‘place their directors on the market as auteurs in order to invoke value statements that valorize the director’s work as an art-object’ (Guins, 2005: 29), the DVD releases of Aja’s Haute Tension and Marshall’s The Descent restore the ‘director’s vision’ on the one hand while, on the other, also showing how it was taken away. The DVD releases of these films do not attempt to place these films in the realm of ‘art’, and the American DVD releases of Haute Tension and The Descent do not feature the directors’ names anywhere on the covers. The descriptions of Aja’s and Marshall’s films on their DVD jackets further de-emphasise the directors. By comparison, the DVD jacket for Roth’s Hostel bears a banner reading ‘Director’s cut’, and a banner on the cover of the Hostel: Part II DVD reads ‘Unrated director’s cut’. The front cover of the DVD jacket for Haute Tension, however, reveals only that this is an ‘Unrated’ cut of the film. Similarly, The Descent’s DVD cover reads ‘Original unrated cut’. Because these films are not placed on the market as ‘authored originals’, they remain closer in tenor to oppositional paracinema rather than the safe ‘art-object’ on DVD. They encourage partial authorship on the viewer’s part by exposing the films as dependent upon other films for their content and on market forces that may distort them for their own purposes. Equally as important, the fact that Aja’s and Marshall’s names are not prominently plastered all over these DVD sleeves gives these directors the aura of being unknown and unappreciated auteurs which further endears them to marginal audiences looking for the ‘authentic’ horror experience. Beyond the DVD being crucial in approaching these films as commodities and stressing their interactivity, Haute Tension and The Descent, as highly metacinematic exercises, are definitely products of the DVD era. The American DVD release of The Descent even offers on the cover of the ‘Original unrated cut’ DVD the promise of intertextual play; the DVD’s cover features a shot of Sarah emerging, bloody and screaming, from the blood pool, the image that recalls both Carrie and Apocalypse Now. While the type of postmodern pastiche exhibited in these films is certainly not new, these films are perfectly suited

186

scars, both material and cyber

to the era of DVD ownership; their ideal viewer is the DVD collector who has readily at hand – and has repeatedly watched – Boorman’s Deliverance, De Palma’s Carrie, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Kubrick’s The Shining and Carpenter’s The Thing. Again, issues of class and ownership come into play in a manner similar to that of Rob Zombie’s films, as Aja’s and Marshall’s work appeals most to the well-to-do white, male horror fan who gets to ‘slum it’ by watching these films about women in peril and, as Carol Clover famously suggests, indulging in cross-gender spectatorship. Or the metacinematic elements of the films may be enough to disrupt this masochistic fantasy and force the viewer to contemplate the ways in which women are represented in these movies. This type of reading is probably specific, however, to the ‘hardcore’ horror fan who ‘gets’ all the allusions and can thus read the films in a specific way. While DVD may have mainstreamed the work of Roth and Zombie and established the Saw films as digital theme parks, Aja’s and Marshall’s films on DVD retain a sliver of oppositionality. Notes 1. These figures are from early October 2013. Voting remains open, so numbers may change. 2. ‘Moriarty’ is a pseudonym for critic and screenwriter Drew McWeeny, who now mostly writes for the pop culture website HitFix. 3. See Hills, 2011 for more examples of how the Saw films have been variously devalued.

187

AFTERWORD

The Beginning of the End: Netflix, Redbox and Paranormal Activity At first, the summer of 2007 seemed to be a time of celebration for the Splat Pack. Box office grosses had been strong, DVD sales for titles such as the Saw movies were healthy, and the ‘It’s only a Movie’ film series at the Museum of the Moving Image seemed to cement the Splat Packers as the premier horror film-makers of their time. Just as this apex of credibility was attained, however, their position began to erode. The New York premier of Roth’s Hostel: Part II may have started the series off with a bang but the film fizzled at the box office when it was given wide release two days later. Grossing $8.2 million on its opening weekend, the film struggled to gross an underwhelming $17.5 million domestically during the course of its month-long cinema run, significantly less than the previous film’s $47 million domestic haul. Still, some commentators observed that Hostel: Part II was technically a success because it was made on a mere $10 million budget. Critics Nathan Lee and Maitland McDonagh assured people at the ‘Considering Horror’ panel at the film series that the film ultimately would be a success; McDonagh added that Roth’s film would ‘clean up on DVD’ (anon., 2007b). Nevertheless, it is difficult to wash off the taint of box office defeat which has profound discursive implications for how a film will cycle through ancillary markets. There were other signs that the Splat Pack cycle was nearing its end. Even the commercial juggernaut of the Saw series began to slow down. That autumn’s Saw IV grossed just over $63 million, which was a healthy take, but

188

afterword

only the most optimistic in the industry could ignore that this gross was down almost $20 million from Saw III’s $80 million take the previous year. This decline was also reflected on the DVD sales side, as Saw IV sold around 1.8 million copies on DVD, about a million less than Saw III’s 2.8 million. As the series wore on, the numbers continued to decline. In the autumn of 2008, Saw V’s box office crawled to a $56 million domestic take, and a year later, with the release of Saw VI, domestic box office went into freefall, grossing only $27 million. Again, this decline could also be observed on the DVD sales side, as Saw V moved 1.4 million units compared to Saw IV’s 1.8 million. If the rise of the Splat Pack was directly linked to the DVD revolution, their decline was inextricably bound to DVD’s decline. The year 2007 was a difficult one for DVD that brought many significant changes to the home video industry and how viewers watched films at home. One of these changes was the format war between two new disc-based formats: Toshiba’s High-Definition/ Density DVD (HD DVD) and Blu-ray, a high-definition format developed by representatives from nine electronics companies, spearheaded by Sony. Both these formats resembled DVD, but their manufacturers assured consumers that the upgrade from DVD was worth it because of the higher-quality picture available on the HD DVD and Blu-ray formats, which could take advantage of the picture capabilities of high-definition television sets. Blu-ray won the format war in early 2008, and the push to sell Blu-ray players and film titles on Blu-ray began in earnest. As retailers attempted to clear their shelves to make room for Blu-rays, DVD prices fell. In a way, DVD became a devalued object, dumped into bargain bins at major retailers, such as Wal-Mart, inviting consumers to dig and find a deal. The advent of Blu-ray, however, did not cause enough of a change to overturn the industry trends that aided the success of the Splat Pack. Blu-ray is ultimately a glorified DVD, the only real differences being a higher-resolution picture and an ability to connect to the Internet to download more content. All the other trappings of the DVD – being priced to own, the artwork, the extras, the ability to add material for an ‘Unrated’ or ‘Director’s cut’ edition – are still there. Blu-ray did not represent the death of DVD inasmuch as it represented an evolution of it. An event that signalled a more significant change in home video happened in December 2007, when Netflix, the giant online rental company, began experimenting with offering ‘instant’ films to their customers. Before this, the web-based business had already been chipping away at the characteristics of DVD that the industry had been attempting to promote for several years. For instance, Netflix was not a DVD retailer; for the most part, it has adhered strictly to a rental-only model which makes Netflix’s business model a throwback to the days of VHS and its focus on rental. In this way, Netflix bucked the industry trend of pushing the ‘priced to own’ mandate that the majors set for DVDs. Redbox, another video rental success story, has mimicked this ‘rent

189

selling the splat pack

only’ approach, with its kiosks outside retailers such as Wal-Mart, supermarkets and filling stations appealing to less tech-savvy, more casual film-watchers. Netflix initiated a much bigger change with their ‘Watch instantly’ feature. In December 2007, Netflix began testing a service that would allow Netflix subscribers to stream selected films – about six thousand of the ninety thousand titles in Netflix’s holdings at the time – on Netflix’s website without having to deal with a physical disc being sent to their homes (Electronista Staff, 2007). Netflix’s ‘Watch instantly’ feature was a smash success, with more titles immediately added to their collection of films available to stream instantly. Netflix vigorously expanded this programme, and now consumers can access Netflix Instant through devices such as Blu-ray players, Roku Boxes, or Sony PlayStations. Thus, Netflix made many elements of the DVD market – buying and collecting, packaging and so on – passé for their ten million customers. The packaging and aura of the DVD collectable are not emphasised. Also, extra features such as director’s commentary are eschewed in favour of the convenience of instantly streaming the film. When streamed online, the primary cinematic text shrugs off encrusted extra text material. Netflix and Redbox have created an alternative to the ‘sell-through’ mandate that the industry set for DVDs. In a February 2010 Variety article, Marc Graser observes, ‘DVD sales continue to decline at a rapid rate, as consumers switch over to rental. Other distribution platforms, especially digital video-on-demand, are emerging as lucrative platforms’ (Graser, 2010). The types of home video consumption promoted by Netflix and Redbox are currently holding sway in the changing home video market and, as businesses such as Netflix and Redbox continue to lead the way, they will influence how consumers encounter and receive home video product. Because neither of these businesses stress the elements of DVD that were instrumental in the Splat Pack’s success, it is not surprising that the Splat Pack’s stock began to go down as Netflix’s and Redbox’s increased. Changes in cinema showing have also conspired to drive down the Splat Pack’s status as a hot commodity. In 2007, the United States’s economy began to weaken, and Hollywood prepared for the worst. Studios began pushing productions such as 3-D movies with higher ticket prices that encouraged spectators to travel to the cinema rather than wait for video. When the economic meltdown happened in autumn 2008, Hollywood was ready, and box office numbers for that year dropped off only a negligible 3/10 of a per cent, due mostly to the majors populating the cinemas with mega-budgeted spectacles that ‘had to be seen in the theatre’. The ultimate example of this type of film would be James Cameron’s much-publicised 3-D spectacular, Avatar (2009). Buoyed up by Avatar, which had already earned $400 million in United States box office by the end of 2009, box office receipts for 2009 were up a massive 10 per cent from 2008. In the face of economic crisis, Hollywood pushed big

190

afterword

films for which they could charge higher ticket prices. It thus had little time to focus on low-budget horror films, such as those made by the Splat Pack, which attracted a majority of their viewers with ‘Unrated’ DVDs. Low-budget horror films could undoubtedly have existed alongside giant, megabudgeted blockbusters, just as they had in the past. The studios’ bigbudget, ‘gotta see it in the theatre’ approach, however, moved into low-budget horror territory with Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2007), a film reportedly made for a mere $15,000 dollars by film-maker Oren Peli in 2007 and acquired by Paramount. The found-footage film tells the allegedly true story of a young couple (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) being tormented by a malicious, unseen demon, a narrative bereft of blood, gore or special effects. In the late summer and early autumn of 2009, Paramount began a giant promotional wave for the microbudgeted film that was constructed to look like a small grassroots campaign. The teaser trailer for the film, released to cinemas and the Internet in September 2009, listed the cities where the film would be playing and ended with the words: ‘Paranormal Activity not playing in your area? Demand it! Bring it to your city by visiting Paranormalmovie.com’. It was an ingenious, low-risk venture for Paramount that paid off handsomely, as Paranormal Activity ended up grossing $107 million in domestic box office. The ‘grassroots’ campaign to ‘bring Paranormal Activity to your town’ was not the only noteworthy aspect of the teaser trailer that Paramount put together for the film. The trailer also featured an audience watching the film in the cinema. The trailer begins with a shot of a large group of people standing in line, followed by shots of the crowd entering a cinema and taking their seats. Words on the screen inform the viewer that these are shots from a preview screening of Paranormal Activity that was held in Hollywood in September 2009. As the cinema’s lights dim and the film begins, the trailer offers night vision shots of the audience watching the film, intercut with the parts of Paranormal Activity that they are supposedly watching. As the scenes from the film grow more tense, the audience appears more on edge. Finally, the trailer insinuates something scary happening onscreen, and audience members are shown jumping in their seats, emitting loud screams in terror or hiding their eyes. What the trailer for Paranormal Activity makes clear is that this is a film that has to be seen with an audience in a cinema setting. In this way, the supposed appeal of a film like Paranormal Activity is not very different from the appeal of Cameron’s Avatar. Further, the appeal of Paranormal Activity is the exact opposite of the appeal of the Splat Pack’s movies which contained graphic violence, some of which the viewer would have to wait for the DVD release to see. Conversely, all the charms of Paranormal Activity – the jumps, the sudden scares – can be enjoyed in the cinema. Owing, no doubt, to the film’s ultra-low

191

selling the splat pack

budget, the film relies mainly on suggestion to scare audiences and features little blood, gore or graphic violence. The case of Paranormal Activity exemplifies two things. First, the ‘gotta see it at the theatre’ promotional mentality is used not only to sell megabudgeted, 3-D spectacle-laden blockbusters but also low-budget horror. Second, the haunted-house, scare-by-suggestion methodology of Paranormal Activity is the opposite of the Splat Pack’s bloody, gory, wait-for-‘Unrated’ ethos. After the diminishing returns of the Saw series, Lionsgate decided to send out the series with a bang and ventured into 3-D territory themselves with Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (Greutert, 2010). The release of this film directly pitted the gory old guard – represented by Lionsgate and the Saw films – with the new guard of Paramount’s burgeoning Paranormal Activity series. The battle took place on a couple of fronts. First, when Paramount tapped Saw VI director Kevin Greutert to direct the second Paranormal Activity film, Greutert agreed, but Lionsgate contractually forced Greutert to direct Saw 3D. The bad blood did not end there, as both films targeted 22 October 2010 for their release date. In the end, Lionsgate backed off and released Saw 3D a week later on 29 October, and Paranormal Activity 2 (Williams, 2010) was able to keep the coveted 22 October spot. The new franchise clearly won the day, as Paranormal Activity 2 went on to gross $84 million domestically, almost double Saw 3D’s $45 million domestic take. Adding insult to injury was the fact that Saw 3D’s inflated 3-D ticket prices could not get them close to the box office take of Paramount’s franchise. Splat Pack Post-mortem: Where are They Now? It is unlikely that Lionsgate was too upset about the twilight of the Saw series because the independent distributor was in the process of recalibrating its corporate strategy to compete in the cinema market on a new level. As the DVD market shrank, Lionsgate began focusing more on films with the potential for sleeper success at the domestic box office and for profitable appeal to international audiences. These films could be described as mid-range blockbusters, with budgets much higher than those of Splat Pack films but still modest compared to big studio fare. Lionsgate devoted a great deal of energy at NATO’s ShoWest convention in March 2010 to hyping films such as the darkly comic superhero film Kick-Ass (Vaughan, 2010) and Sylvester Stallone’s bonanza The Expendables (Stallone, 2010), the action-star-studded cast of which would, Lionsgate hoped, make it a big international hit. Despite some internal struggles throughout 2011, Lionsgate remained healthy and, in early 2012, acquired Summit Pictures, the independent distributor of the blockbuster Twilight films based on a series of young adult novels by Stephenie Meyer. Lionsgate scored its biggest box office coup when they secured the rights to

192

afterword

adapt to the big screen the bestselling young adult series The Hunger Games, a trilogy of novels written by Suzanne Collins. The first film in the series, The Hunger Games (Ross, 2012), was released in the United States on 23 March 2012 and eventually grossed an astounding $408 million in domestic box office. With future Hunger Games films ahead, and with successful and critically acclaimed television series such as AMC’s Mad Men under its belt, the forecast seems good for Lionsgate. Despite this mainstream success, Lionsgate did not completely abandon low-budget horror, though its approach to this mode of film-making changed. One can observe this change by looking at Eli Roth’s work with Lionsgate. After the disappointment of and perceived ‘failure’ of Hostel: Part II, Roth’s follow-up, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 2006 novel Cell, fell through, and Roth took a step back from directing. Nevertheless, he found success in other endeavours such as acting and producing. Roth played a lead role in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which won the Screen Actor’s Guild’s 2009 award for Best Ensemble.1 Roth also helped produce the film The Last Exorcism (Stamm, 2010), released in the United States by Lionsgate in August 2010. A found-footage film about a phoney exorcist’s fatal encounter with a real demon, The Last Exorcism signals the sea change that had taken place in the couple of years since the Splat Pack’s heyday. The film features virtually no gore and even received the family-friendly rating of PG-13. With the production of this film, Roth seemed to be following a trend established by Paranormal Activity. A sequel followed in March 2013 that shed the foundfootage form but retained the ‘PG-13’ rating. This is not the only industry trend Roth would follow. After several years of success with its ‘Watch instantly’ feature, Netflix branched out into television production, creating shows available exclusively on Netflix. As a producer, Roth helped oversee the development of Hemlock Grove, Netflix’s third original series and their first horror-themed one. Roth returned to the director’s chair to direct the first episode of the series. Debuting in April 2013, Hemlock Grove received mixed reviews but has been a hit for Netflix and was nominated for two Emmy awards. The year 2013 also saw Roth return to feature film directing, as his latest film The Green Inferno, a throwback to Italian cannibal ‘nasties’, such as Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox (Lenzi, 1981), debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013. Though Roth and the film’s producers announced a sequel immediately after the film’s debut at TIFF, at the time of writing, it remains to be seen if the film will be a hit and usher in another wave of violent and gory horror films. Some of Roth’s fellow Splat Packers have not adapted so well, as the cinema market for hardcore, gory horror has dried up and diminished from even the modest heights it achieved during the Splat Pack’s heyday. For instance, after successfully shepherding the Saw series through its first three sequels, Darren

193

selling the splat pack

Lynn Bousman has been toiling away on the margins of the film industry for the last few years. Lionsgate released Bousman’s strange dystopian sci-fihorror-musical Repo! The Genetic Opera on only seven screens in 2008. His follow-ups, Mother’s Day (2010) and 11-11-11 (2011), have received similar limited releases, and his 2012 film, The Barrens, was released direct to video. Bousman’s Mother’s Day and The Barrens were distributed by Anchor Bay, the speciality label that, as Chapter 3 discusses, released a number of classic horror films on DVD and, now, on Blu-ray. After being acquired by Starz Media, Anchor Bay has tried to break into cinema distribution without much success. Anchor Bay’s inability to make headway in the cinema market is illustrated by the paltry cinema performance of Splat Packer Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem, which the distributor released in the United States in April 2013. In 2007, Zombie seemed poised for continuing success as a film-maker. His remake of Halloween, released in the United States at the end of August 2007, set the record for highest Labour Day weekend debut by grossing $30.6 million over the four-day weekend. The film went on to gross $58.2 million domestically during its cinema run. Zombie’s film drew mixed reactions from critics and from fans, however, mostly for the ways in which Zombie veers a long way from Carpenter’s original. Thus, when Zombie strayed even further from Carpenter’s vision with his surreal and hallucinogenic Halloween II two summers later in 2009, box office slumped to a $33.3 million domestic total. After the Halloween films, Zombie continued recording music and touring, and did not return to film-making until 2012 with the even more unrelentingly surreal and hallucinogenic The Lords of Salem, the strange tale of persecuted witches returning centuries later to Salem to exact their revenge on the descendants of the witch-finders who killed them. Anchor Bay picked up the film for distribution but was only able to give the film a scant release in 354 cinemas. While the film cost only $1.5 million to make, it did not even make back this tiny amount of money during its cinema run, grossing only $1.1 million. In an interview to promote The Lords of Salem’s release on DVD and Bluray, Zombie speaks about the changing landscape for low-budget genre films and discusses the growing trend of giving low-budget genre films a simultaneous limited cinema release and a Video on Demand (VOD) release: At first, there were some talks about doing The Lords of Salem that way, and then we changed our minds. But I think that’s going to be a standard thing . . . if we went to VOD, it could have been easier. You can make more unconventional films by releasing them On Demand, because they’re more cost effective. I think in the future, that’s how anything besides blockbusters will be released . . . The theaters are only going to be reserved for big movies after a certain point. (Benardello, 2013)

194

afterword

While Zombie seems to find this new method of distribution promising and wishes that the distributor had gone in this direction with his film, he also has a few reservations about the change. He explains: ‘there’s a certain stigma that if something goes straight-to-video, it’s because the movie’s not good. But there are so many good movies on VOD’ (Benardello, 2013). Indeed, there is currently a good number of quality, low-budget genre films available on VOD because some distributors have embraced this method of distribution. One such distributor is Magnet Releasing, a subdivision of Magnolia Pictures, the company that experimented with collapsing exhibition windows as early as 2006 with their simultaneous cinema, DVD and VOD release of Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble. In recent years, Magnet has had incredible success with giving genre titles a simultaneous limited cinema run and VOD release. They then pull the title for a brief window and release it again on DVD, Blu-ray and Netflix Instant. This release strategy allows Magnet to keep costs down by avoiding a costly, wide cinema release. Additionally, the films are not as burdened with the ‘direct-to-video’ stigma because they do get a cinema release – albeit limited – that can drum up positive publicity for the title. Also, audiences interested in seeing the film during its cinema release do not have to hope they live near a major city where the film is playing in limited release; if they hear good things about the film, they can simply download it. Notable genre titles which Magnet has released in this manner include Trollhunter (Ovredal, 2010), I Saw the Devil (Kim Jee-Woon, 2010), The Innkeepers (West, 2011) and Hobo with a Shotgun (Eisener, 2011). Splat Packer Neil Marshall’s last feature-length film was released through Magnet. After his post-apocalyptic action film Doomsday (2008) bombed with Universal, grossing only $11 million domestically, Magnet released Marshall’s bloody neo-sword-and-sandal Centurion (2010). Of late, Marshall has kept a low profile, directing a couple of episodes of the hit HBO series Game of Thrones while developing several projects. Marshall’s fellow European Splat Packer Alexandre Aja has kept a relatively higher profile. In an industry dependent on sequels, remakes and ‘reboots’, Aja has proven adept at directing profitable remakes. His remake of Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes was making a splash when Jones’s initial Splat Pack article came out in 2006. Since then, Aja has directed Mirrors (2008), a remake of South Korean horror film Into the Mirror (Kim Sung-ho, 2003), and Piranha 3D (2010), a spectacle-heavy remake of Joe Dante’s 1978 drive-in favourite. He also produced and co-wrote the screenplay for Maniac (Khalfoun, 2012) – a remake of Bill Lustig’s notorious 1980 grindhouse slasher – that was distributed by IFC Midnight, the genre label of IFC Films that utilises distribution methods similar to those of Magnet Releasing. While Aja has worked consistently, none of his subsequent films has grossed higher than The Hills Have Eyes’s $41.4 million domestic total.

195

selling the splat pack

By far the most successful of Splat Pack alumni have been James Wan and Leigh Whannell who happened to produce the most profitable Splat Pack titles as well. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Wan and Whannell were best able to break away from the gore-heavy ethos of the Splat Pack, considering how, as Chapter 7 illustrates, the two were uncomfortable with the gore of the Saw films and were not happy about being tied to the ‘torture porn’ controversy. Their success was not a given, however, as their post-Saw career got off to a shaky start. The more Gothic but still gory Dead Silence, the duo’s follow-up to Saw, was released by Universal in 2007 and earned only $16 million domestically. Later that year, Fox released Wan and Whannell’s next effort, Death Sentence, a gritty action picture starring Kevin Bacon, that did about the same languid business as their previous film, also grossing around $16 million at the domestic box office. Wan and Whannell dropped out of sight for the next couple of years but re-emerged with a vengeance in 2011. Joining Blumhouse Productions, the production house behind Paranormal Activity,2 Wan and Whannell made Insidious, a PG-13 rated paranormal thriller. The film was reportedly made for only $1.5 million and was released in the United States by independent distributor FilmDistrict in April 2011. Some may have been doubtful that the creators of the gory and violent Saw could cross over into paranormal PG-13 territory but Wan’s passion for Gothic suggestion and restraint held him in good stead on the microbudgeted film. Insidious was a sleeper hit, grossing $54 million domestically. The biggest surprise – and success – of Wan’s career was still to come, however. Wan shot his next film (and his first without Whannell), The Conjuring (2013), another ghost story heavy on suggestion and low on gore, for Warner Bros. When the film tested strongly after early screenings, Warner Bros. confidently moved the film to the summer film season, opening it in the United States on 19 July 2013. Bolstered by good reviews and word of mouth, The Conjuring became another modestly budgeted success for the director. Made for $20 million, the film has, to date, grossed $137 in domestic box office with a guaranteed long life in ancillary markets ahead. At the time of writing, Wan’s hot streak has yet to end. His next film, the sequel, Insidious Chapter 2, teamed the director with Whannell again. Produced with Blumhouse for $5 million and distributed by FilmDistrict, the film has, to date, grossed $74 million domestically. While it may not be ironic that Wan and Whannell have been the most successful Splat Pack alumni, considering that their Saw films were the biggest moneymakers of all the Splat Pack films released through Lionsgate, it is ironic that Wan, who once lacked the pre-eminence of Roth and Zombie (Poole, 2012: 108), has become the most bankable auteur to emerge from the Splat Pack. Tellingly, a few days after the release of Insidious Chapter 2, horror movie website Bloody Disgusting published an article entitled ‘James

196

afterword

Wan’s 6 Steps to the A-List!!’, detailing the director’s rise to the top of the Hollywood pile (Dickson, 2013). While his place in the Splat Pack was uneasy, Wan’s vision gelled with Hollywood’s horror trends post-Splat Pack. It’s Only a Movie: ‘What this Period in Film Is’ The post-Splat Pack period was clearly underway by 2010 when Eli Roth went PG-13 with The Last Exorcism and small independent company Wyrd Studios produced their documentary The Splat Pack (Henry and Woodward, 2010) which was given a digital download release in 2011. The brief documentary features all the Splat Pack directors except Zombie and – perhaps unsurprisingly – Wan and Whannell. The documentary ushers Australian ­ director Greg McLean back into the Splat Pack for one of the first times since Alan Jones’s article. Director Adam Green is added to the Pack because of his ultraviolent slashers Hatchet (2007) and Hatchet II (2010), of which the latter was given a limited but splashy ‘Unrated’ release in selected cinemas in an attempt to bring home video viewing practices back to the cinema. Also featured in the documentary is a handful of critics, such as Alan Jones, website Horror.com’s Stacy Layne Wilson, and Harry Knowles who, by this point, had lost some of his ‘cool’ credentials having been suspected of being an accomplice to the viral marketing of several films (Mathijs and Sexton, 2011: 55). In the documentary, Jones again connects the Pack to the video nasties, a clear indication of why, coming from Britain, he found these film-makers so subversive. The documentary also clarifies that it was Roth who, according to Jones, ‘took the Splat Pack name abroad’. According to Wilson, Roth began ubiquitously using the term in interviews and on his MySpace blog, and Jones explains that all of a sudden, this name was a ‘big thing’ and that the term appeared in the production notes for Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes. Roth boasts that the Splat Pack was ‘what this period in film is’, suggesting the group of films and film makers were a bona fide movement. Jones’s observation implies, however, that his critical grouping of these film-makers was quickly appropriated by the Hollywood film industry as a way to sell the films. Noticeably absent from the documentary were claims to political subversion or ‘reflecting’ the times in which the films were made. Indeed, two years after the ‘It’s only a Movie’ film series lent validity to these films by marrying them to their historical moment, horror historian Kim Newman divorced them in a 2009 essay. While allowing that the films from horror’s ‘Golden Age’ possessed ‘a sense that [they] were really “about” Vietnam or social class in America’, Newman argues that recent Splat Pack films reveal that the 2000s ‘is not an era that cares for films which are “about” anything’ (2009: 37). Perhaps after Newman’s polemic, these films were back to being ‘only Movies’. Located amid a swirl of industry discourse, promotion and hype, however,

197

selling the splat pack

not to mention changes in technology and distribution methods, industry selfregulation and notions of authorship, being ‘only Movies’ certainly does not make the films of the Splat Pack any less complicated. Notes 1. For Basterds, Roth also directed the Nazi propaganda film-within-the-film Nation’s Pride. 2. Blumhouse Productions also produced Zombie’s The Lords of Salem.

198

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acland, Charles R. (2003), Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture, Durham: Duke University Press. anon. (2001), ‘Universal kills Zombie’, Killer Movies, 8 March, (last accessed 21 April 2008). anon. (2007a), ‘It’s only a Movie: Horror films from the 1970s and today’, Museum of the Moving Image, n.d, (last accessed 22 April 2010). anon. (2007b), ‘Transcript: Considering horror: Panel discussion’, Museum of the Moving Image, 17 June, (last accessed 22 April 2010). Balio, Tino (1990), ‘Introduction to part I’, in T. Balio (ed.), Hollywood in the Age of Television, Cambridge: Unwin Hyman, pp. 3–40. Balun, Chas (1987), The Gore Score, Albany: FantaCo Books. Barker, Martin (1984), ‘Nasty politics or video nasties?’, in M. Barker (ed.), The Video Nasties: Freedom and Censorship in the Media, London: Pluto Press, pp. 7–38. Baron, Cynthia (2002), ‘Buying John Malkovich: Queering and consuming millennial masculinity’, The Velvet Light Trap, 49, pp. 18–38. Benardello, Karen (2013), ‘Interview: Rob Zombie talks The Lords of Salem Blu-ray and DVD’, Rob Zombie Official Website, 3 September, (last accessed 6 October 2013). Bennett, James and Tom Brown (2008), ‘Introduction: Past the boundaries of “new” and “old” media: Film and television after DVD’, in J. Bennett and T. Brown (eds), Film and Television After DVD, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–18. Berman, A. S. (2009), The New Horror Handbook, Duncan, OK: Bearmanor. Billson, Anne (1997), The Thing, London: British Film Institute.

199

selling the splat pack

Black, Gregory D. (1994), Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Botting, Fred (1996), Gothic, New York: Routledge. Bracke, Peter (2005), Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th, London: Titan Books. Brintnall, Kent L. (2004), ‘Re-building Sodom and Gomorrah: The monstrosity of queer desire in the horror film’, Culture and Religion, 5.2, pp. 145–60. Brookey, Robert Alan and Robert Westerfelhaus (2002), ‘Hiding homoeroticism in plain view: The Fight Club DVD as digital closest’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19.1, pp. 21–43. Brown, Tom (2008), ‘“The DVD of attractions?”: The Lion King and the digital theme park’, in J. Bennett and T. Brown (eds), Film and Television After DVD, New York: Routledge, pp. 81–100. Butler, Judith (2004), Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, London: Verso Books. Clover, Carol (1993), Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Clover, Carol (1996), ‘Her body, himself: Gender in the slasher film’, in B. K. Grant (ed.), The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 66–113. Cohen, David S. (2005), ‘Back to the old grind’, Variety, 31 May, p. 4. Conrich, Ian (2004), ‘Killing time . . . and time again: The popular appeal of Carpenter’s horrors and the impact of The Thing and Halloween’, in I. Conrich and D. Woods (eds), The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of Terror, London: Wallflower, pp. 91–106. Cook, David A. (1998), ‘Auteur cinema and the “film generation” in 1970s Hollywood’, in J. Lewis (ed.), The New American Cinema, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 11–37. Cook, David A. (2000), Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970–1979, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Cook, David A. (2004), A History of Narrative Film, 4th ed., New York: Norton. Corrigan, Timothy (1991), ‘Film and the culture of cult’, in J. P. Telotte (ed.) The Cult Film Experience: Beyond All Reason, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 26–37. Corrigan, Timothy (1998), ‘Auteurs and the New Hollywood’ in J. Lewis (ed.), The New American Cinema, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 38–63. Creed, Barbara (1996), ‘Horror and the monstrous-feminine: An imaginary abjection’, in B. K. Grant (ed.), The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 35–65. Davis, Blair and Kial Natale (2010), ‘“The pound of flesh which I demand”: American horror cinema, gore, and the box office, 1998–2007’, in S. Hantke (ed.), American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 35–57. Decordova, Richard (2003), ‘Genre and performance: An overview’, in B. K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader III, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 130–40. Dickson, Evan (2013), ‘James Wan’s 6 Steps to the A-List!!’, Bloody Disgusting, 16 September, (last accessed 6 October 2013). Dickstein, Morris (1984), ‘The aesthetics of fright’, in B. K. Grant (ed.), Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, pp. 65–78. Draper, Ellen (1999), ‘“Controversy has probably destroyed forever the context”: The Miracle and movie censorship in America in the 1950s’, in M. Bernstein

200

bibliography

(ed.), Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 186–205. Egan, Kate (2007), Trash or Treasure?: Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Electronista Staff (2007), ‘Netflix offers unlimited “instant” viewing for movies’, Electronista, 28 December, (last accessed 6 October 2013). Elsaesser, Thomas (2000), Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary, New York: Routledge. Epstein, Edward Jay (2006), The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood, New York: Random House. Epstein, Edward Jay (2010), The Hollywood Economist 2.0: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies, New York: Melville House. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2007), ‘Review of Zombie Live’, Allmusic, 23 October, (last accessed 5 October 2013). Fithian, John (2007), ‘Comments by John Fithian’, NATO, 13 March (last accessed 6 October 2013). Friedberg, Anne (2002), ‘CDs and DVDs’, in D. Harries (ed.), The New Media Book, London: British Film Institute. Goldstein, Patrick (2007), ‘Those “Hostel” ads test squirm factor’, Los Angeles Times, 5 June, (last accessed 28 September 2013). Grant, Barry Keith (1996a), ‘Introduction’, in B. K. Grant (ed.), The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 1–12. Grant, Barry Keith (1996b), ‘Taking back the Night of the Living Dead: George Romero, feminism, and the horror film’, in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 200–12. Grant, Barry Keith (2003), ‘Experience and meaning in genre films’, in B. K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader III, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 115–29. Grant, Catherine (2008), ‘Auteur Machines?: Auteurism and the DVD’, in J. Bennett and T. Brown (eds), Film and Television After DVD, New York: Routledge, pp. 101–15. Graser, Marc (2010), ‘Buyers confront dropping value of film libraries’, Variety, 12 February, (last accessed 6 October 2013). Gray, Jonathan (2010), Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, New York: New York University Press. Greenberg, Josh (2008), From Betamax to Blockbuster: Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Gross, Daniel (2004), ‘Blockbust: why no one wants to buy Blockbuster’, Slate, 10 February, (last accessed 5 October 2013). Grove, David (2005), Making Friday the 13th: The Legend of Camp Blood, Godalming: Fab Press. Guins, Raiford (2005), ‘Blood and black gloves on shiny discs: New media, old tastes, and the remediation of Italian horror films in the United States’, in S. J. Schneider and T. Williams (eds), Horror International, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, pp. 15–32. Guins, Raiford (2009), Edited, Clean Version: Technology and the Culture of Control, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

201

selling the splat pack

Haberski Jr, Raymond (2001), It’s Only a Movie! Films and Critics in American Culture, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Harris, Dana (2004), ‘Lions Gate’, Variety, 8 September, (last accessed 5 October 2013). Hawkins, Joan (2000), Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Heffernan, Kevin (2004), Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953–1968, Durham: Duke University Press. Hills, Matt (2011), ‘Cutting into concepts of “reflectionist” cinema? The Saw franchise and puzzles of post-9/11 horror’, in A. Briefel and S. J. Miller (eds), Horror after 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 107–23. Hinds Jr, Harold E. (2006), ‘A holistic approach to the study of popular culture: Context, text, audience, and recoding’, in H. E. Hinds Jr, M. Motz, and A. M. S. Nelson (eds), Popular Culture Theory and Methodology: A Basic Introduction, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 163–80. Hoberman, J. and Jonathan Rosenbaum (1991), Midnight Movies, New York: Da Capo Press. Hutchings, Peter (1993), ‘Masculinity and the horror film’, in P. Kirkham and J. Thumim (eds), You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies, and Men, New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 84–94. Hutchings, Peter (2004), The Horror Film, Harlow: Pearson Education. Jenkins, Henry (2006), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York: New York University Press. Jones, Alan (2006), ‘The new blood’, Total Film, 113, pp. 100–6. Juarez, Vanessa (2006), ‘Sweet torture’, Entertainment Weekly, 13 October, 11–12. Kawan, Bruce F. (1987), ‘The Funhouse and The Howling’, in G. Waller (ed.), American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 102–13. Keegan, Rebecca Winters (2006), ‘The Splat Pack’, Time, 22 October, (last accessed 23 September 2013). Kinder, Marsha (1990), ‘Ideological parody in New German Cinema: Reading The State of Things, The Desire of Veronika Voss, and Germany Pale Mother as postmodernist rewritings of The Searchers, Sunset Boulevard, and Blonde Venus’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 12.1 & 2, pp. 73–103. Klinger, Barbara (2006), Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home, Berkeley: University of California Press. Kooyman, Ben (2010), ‘How the masters of horror master their personae: Selffashioning at play in the Masters of Horror DVD extras’, in S. Hantke (ed.), American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, pp. 193– 220. Kracauer, Siegfried (1947), From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lewis, Jon (2000), Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the Modern Film Industry, New York: New York University Press. Lewis, Jon (2001), ‘Those who disagree can kiss Jack Valenti’s ass’, in J. Lewis (ed.), The End of Cinema as We Know It: American Film in the Nineties, New York: New York University Press, pp. 23–32. Lewis, Jon (2003), ‘Following the money in America’s sunniest company town: Some notes on the political economy of the Hollywood blockbuster’, in J. Stringer (ed.), Movie Blockbusters, New York: Routledge, pp. 61–71. Lindsey, Shelly Stamp (1996), ‘Horror, femininity, and Carrie’s monstrous puberty’,

202

bibliography

in B. K. Grant (ed.), The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 279–95. Lott, Eric (1995), Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lowenstein, Adam (2005), Shocking Representations: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film, New York: Columbia University Press. McCarty, John (1989), The Official Splatter Movie Guide, New York: St. Martin’s Press. McClintock, Pamela (2006), ‘Blood brothers: The Splat Pack support group bonds horror directors’, Variety, 26 December, p. 1. McDonald, Paul (2007), Video and DVD Industries, London: British Film Institute. Maltby, Richard (2003), Hollywood Cinema, 2nd ed., Malden, MA: Blackwell. Martin, John (1993), The Seduction of the Gullible: The Curious History of the British ‘Video Nasty’ Phenomenon, Nottingham: Procrustes Press. Mathijs, Ernest (2003), ‘The making of a cult reputation: Topicality and controversy in the critical reception of Shivers’, in M. Jancovich, A. L. Reboll, J. Stringer and A. Willis (eds), Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 109–26. Mathijs, Ernest (2008), David Cronenberg: From Baron of Blood to Cultural Hero, London: Wallflower Press. Mathijs, Ernest (2013), ‘Cronenberg connected: Cameo acting, cult stardom and supertexts’, in K. Egan and S. Thomas (eds), Cult Film Stardom: Offbeat Attractions and Processes of Cultification, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 144–62. Mathijs, Ernest and Jamie Sexton (2011), Cult Cinema: An Introduction, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ‘Message board’, (2008), Bloody Disgusting, 10 October, (last accessed 10 October 2013). Molloy, Claire (2010), Memento, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Moriarty (2007), ‘Moriarty pulls a knife on Rob Zombie’s Halloween and talks about Hatchet and Poughkeepsie and S&Man and more!’, Ain’t It Cool News, 31 August, (last accessed 6 September 2013). Mosco, Vincent and Lewis Kaye (2000), ‘Questioning the concept of the audience’, in I. Hagen and J. Wasko (eds), Production and Reception in Media Research, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pp. 31–46. Nancarrow, Clive, Pamela Nancarrow and Julie Page (2001), ‘An analysis of the concept of cool and its marketing implications’, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 1.4, pp. 311–22. Nash, Paul (1976), ‘Vampyr and the Fantastic’, Screen, 17.3, pp. 29–67. Neale, Steve (2003), ‘Questions of genre’, in B. K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader III, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 160–81. Newitz, Annalee (1997), ‘White savagery and humiliation, or a new racial consciousness in the media’, in A. Newitz and M. Wray (eds), White Trash: Race and Class in America, New York: Routledge, pp. 131–54. Newitz, Annalee (2006), Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Popular Culture, Durham: Duke University Press. Newitz, Annalee and Matt Wray (1997), ‘Introduction’, in A. Newitz and M. Wray (eds), White Trash: Race and Class in America, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–12. Newman, Kim (2009), ‘Horror Will Eat Itself’, Sight and Sound, 19, pp. 36-8. Nigro, Tony (2008), ‘House of 1,000 Corpses’, Flak Magazine, n.d., (last accessed 21 April 2008). Nowell, Richard (2011), Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle, New York: Continuum.

203

selling the splat pack

‘Online Poll’ (2006), Bloody Disgusting, 21 October, (last accessed 10 October 2013). Palen, Tim (2007), GuTS, Los Angeles: Baby Tattoo. Prawer, S. S. (1980), Caligari’s Children: The Film as Tale of Terror, New York: Da Capo Press. Poole, Benjamin (2012), Saw, Leighton Buzzard: Auteur. Rizzo, Teresa (2008), ‘YouTube: The new cinema of attractions’, Scan: Journal of Media, Arts, Culture, n.d., (last accessed 24 September 2013). Roberts, Brian (2000), American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Roth, Eli (2007), ‘Eli Roth diaries: Lessons learned from David Lynch’, MTV Movies Blog, 24 May, (last accessed 28 September 2013). Sandler, Kevin S. (2007), The Naked Truth: Why Hollywood Doesn’t Make X-Rated Movies, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Schaefer, Eric (1999), ‘Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!’: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919– 1959, Durham: Duke University Press. Schatz, Tom (2008), ‘The studio system and conglomerate Hollywood’, in P. McDonald and J. Wasko (eds), The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry, Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 13–42. Sconce, Jeffery (2007), ‘Introduction’, in J. Sconce (ed.), Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 1–16. Sharrett, Christopher (2001), ‘End of story: The collapse of myth in postmodern narrative film’, in J. Lewis (ed.), The End of Cinema as We Know It: American Film in the Nineties, New York: New York University Press, pp. 319–31. Skal, David J. (1993), The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, New York: Norton. Smoodin, Eric (2007), ‘Introduction: The history of film history’, in J. Lewis and E. Smoodin (eds), Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 1–33. Spadoni, Robert (2007), Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound Film and the Origins of the Horror Genre, Berkeley: University of California Press. Stam, Robert (2000), Film Theory: An Introduction, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Sweeney, Gael (1997), ‘The king of white trash culture: Elvis Presley and the aesthetics of excess’, in A. Newitz and M. Wray (eds), White Trash: Race and Class in America, New York: Routledge, pp. 249–66. Taylor, Diana (2007), ‘Double-blind: The torture case’, Critical Inquiry 33, pp. 710–33. Taylor, Greg (1999), Artists in the Audience: Cult, Camp, and American Film Criticism, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Telotte, J. P. (1991), ‘Beyond all reason: The nature of the cult’, in J. P. Telotte (ed.), The Cult Film Experience: Beyond All Reason, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 5–17. Tucker, Reed (2006), ‘Horrors!’, New York Post, 22 October, (last accessed 9 February 2009). Tudor, Andrew (1989), Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie, Cambridge: Basil Blackwell. Turek, Ryan (2008), ‘EXCL: Doom-sayer Neil Marshall’, Shock Till You Drop, 10 March, (last accessed 6 October 2013).

204

bibliography

Tzioumakis, Yannis (2006), American Independent Cinema: An Introduction, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Ulin, Jeff (2009), The Business of Media Distribution: Monetizing Film, TV, and Video Content in an Online World, New York: Focal Press. Vasey, Ruth (1997), The World According to Hollywood, 1918–1939, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Wasko, Janet (2003), How Hollywood Works, London: Sage. Wasser, Fredrick (2008), ‘Ancillary markets – video and DVD: Hollywood retools’, in P. McDonald and J. Wasko (eds), The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry, Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 120–31. Weaver, Tom, Michael Brunas and John Brunas (2007), Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931–1946, 2nd ed., Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company. Williams, Linda (1996), ‘When the woman looks’, in B. K. Grant (ed.), The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 15–34. Williams, Linda (2003), ‘Film bodies: Gender, genre, and excess’, in B. K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader III, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp.141–59. Williams, Tony (1996), Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film, Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses. Wood, Robin (2003), Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan . . . and Beyond, New York: Columbia University Press. Worland, Rick (2007), The Horror Film: An Introduction, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Wu, Harmony H. (2003), ‘Trading in horror, cult and matricide: Peter Jackson’s phenomenal bad taste and New Zealand fantasies of inter/national cinematic success’, in M. Jancovich, A. L. Reboll, J. Stringer and A. Willis (eds), Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 84–108. Wyatt, Justin (1999), ‘The stigma of X: Adult cinema and the institution of the MPAA ratings system’, in M. Bernstein (ed.), Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 238–63. Wyrick, Laura (1998), ‘Horror at century’s end: Where have all the slashers gone?’, Pacific Coast Philology, 33.2, pp. 122–6. Zinoman, Jason (2007), ‘A bloody cut above your everyday zombie film’, New York Times, 10 June, (last accessed 10 May 2010). Zinoman, Jason (2011), Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, New York: The Penguin Press.

205

FILMOGRAPHY

Angel Heart, film, directed by Alan Parker. USA: Carolco, 1987. Apocalypse Now, film, directed by Francis Coppola. USA: Zoetrope, 1979. Brazil, film, directed by Terry Gilliam. USA: Embassy International, 1985. Cabin Fever, film, directed by Eli Roth. USA: Tonic Films, 2003. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, film, directed by Robert Wiene. Germany: Decla-Bioscop, 1920. Carrie, film, directed by Brian De Palma. USA: United Artists, 1976. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, film, directed by Adam Adamson. USA: Disney, 2005. Deliverance, film, directed by John Boorman. USA: Warner Bros., 1972. The Descent, film, directed by Neil Marshall. UK: Celador Films, 2005. The Devil’s Rejects, film, directed by Rob Zombie. USA: Lionsgate, 2005. Dracula, film, directed by Tod Browning. USA: Universal, 1931. Dressed to Kill, film, directed by Brian De Palma. USA: Filmways, 1980. Eyes Wide Shut, film, directed by Stanley Kubrick. USA: Warner Bros., 1999. Fight Club, film, directed by David Fincher. USA: 20th Century-Fox, 1999. Frankenstein, film, directed by James Whale. USA: Universal, 1931. Freaks, film, directed by Tod Browning. USA: MGM, 1932. Friday the 13th, film, directed by Sean S. Cunningham. USA: Georgetown Productions, 1980. Halloween, film, directed by John Carpenter. USA: Compass, 1978. Halloween, film, directed by Rob Zombie. USA: Dimension, 2007. Halloween II, film, directed by Rob Zombie. USA: Dimension, 2009. Haute Tension, film, directed by Alexandre Aja. France: EuropaCorp, 2003. The Hills Have Eyes, film, directed by Wes Craven. USA: Blood Relations Company, 1977. The Hills Have Eyes, film, directed by Alexandre Aja. USA: Fox Searchlight, 2006. Hostel, film, directed by Eli Roth. USA: Hostel LLC, 2006.

206

filmography

Hostel: Part II, film, directed by Eli Roth. USA: Lionsgate, 2007. House of 1000 Corpses, film, directed by Rob Zombie. USA: Spectacle Entertainment, 2003. Inglourious Basterds, film, directed by Quentin Tarantino. USA: Weinstein Company, 2009. Insidious, film, directed by James Wan. USA: Blumhouse Productions, 2011. I Spit on Your Grave, film, directed by Meir Zarchi. USA: Cinemagic Pictures, 1978. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, film, directed by Adam Marcus. USA: New Line, 1993. The Last Exorcism, film, directed by Daniel Stamm. USA: Strike, 2010. The Last House on the Left, film, directed by Wes Craven. USA: Lobster Enterprises, 1972. The Lion King, film, directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. USA: Disney, 1994. The Lords of Salem, film, directed by Rob Zombie. USA: Blumhouse Productions, 2013. A Nightmare on Elm Street, film, directed by Wes Craven. USA: New Line, 1984. A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, film, directed by Stephen Hopkins. USA: New Line, 1989. Night of the Living Dead, film, directed by George A. Romero. USA: Image Ten, 1968. Paranormal Activity, film, directed by Oren Peli. USA: Blumhouse Productions, 2007. Paranormal Activity 2, film, directed by Tod Williams. USA: Paramount, 2010. The Sadist, film, directed by James Landis. USA: Fairway International, 1963. Saw, film, directed by James Wan. USA: Twisted Pictures, 2004. Saw II, film, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. USA: Twisted Pictures, 2005. Saw III, film, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. USA: Twisted Pictures, 2006. Saw IV, film, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. USA: Twisted Pictures, 2007. Saw V, film, directed by David Hackl. USA: Twisted Pictures, 2008. Saw VI, film, directed by Kevin Greutert. USA: Twisted Pictures, 2009. Saw 3D: The Final Chapter, film, directed by Kevin Greutert. USA: Twisted Pictures, 2010. Scream, film, directed by Wes Craven. USA: Dimension, 1996. The Shining, film, directed by Stanley Kubrick. USA: Warner Bros., 1980. Shivers, film, directed by David Cronenberg. Canada: Canadian Film Development Corporation, 1975. Silence of the Lambs, film, directed by Jonathan Demme. USA: Orion Pictures, 1991. Son of Frankenstein, film, directed by Rowland V. Lee. USA: Universal, 1939. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, film, directed by Nicholas Meyer. USA: Paramount, 1982. Straw Dogs, film, directed by Sam Peckinpah. USA: ABC Pictures, 1971. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, film, directed by Tobe Hooper. USA: Vortex, 1974. The Thing, film, directed by John Carpenter. USA: Universal, 1982. Wolf Creek, film, directed by Greg McLean. Australia: Australian Film Finance Corporation, 2005.

207

DVD SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL REFERENCED

The Descent, ‘Audio Commentary with Director and Crew’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2006. The Descent, ‘DescENDING – Interview with Neil Marshall’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2006. The Devil’s Rejects, ‘30 days in Hell: The making of The Devil’s Rejects’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2005. The Devil’s Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with director Rob Zombie’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2005. The Devil’s Rejects, ‘Audio commentary with Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2005. House of 1000 Corpses, ‘Director’s commentary’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2003. House of 1000 Corpses, ‘Making of featurette’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2003. Hostel, ‘Director’s & executive producers’ commentary’, Culver City: Lionsgate/Sony, 2006. Hostel, ‘Director’s & guests’ commentary’, Culver City: Lionsgate/Sony, 2006. Hostel, ‘Director’s commentary’, Culver City: Lionsgate/Sony, 2006. Hostel, ‘Hostel dissected’, Culver City: Lionsgate/Sony, 2006. Hostel: Director’s Cut, ‘Hostel dismembered’, Culver City: Lionsgate/Sony, 2007. Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth’, Culver City: Lionsgate/Sony, 2007. Hostel: Part II, ‘Commentary with Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino & Gabe Roth’, Culver City: Lionsgate/Sony, 2007. Hostel: Part II, ‘A legacy of torture’, Culver City: Lionsgate/Sony, 2007. Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Commentary with writer/actor Leigh Whannell, director James Wan, and actor Cary Elwes’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2004. Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Full disclosure report: Piecing together Jigsaw’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2004. Saw: Uncut Edition, ‘Hacking away at Saw’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2004. Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Audio commentary with director Darren Lynn Bousman, pro-

208

dvd supplemental material

duction designer David Hackl, and editor Kevin Greutert’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2005. Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Audio commentary with executive producer James Wan and writer/executive producer Leigh Whannell’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2005. Saw II: Special Edition, ‘Behind the scenes’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2005. Saw III: Director’s Cut, ‘Audio commentary with director Darren Lynn Bousman and J Larose’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2006. Saw III: Director’s Cut, ‘Choose the death’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2006. Saw III: Director’s Cut, ‘Jigsaw’s plan’, Santa Monica: Lionsgate, 2006.

209

INDEX

9/11, 2, 3, 5, 8, 16, 25, 60, 71, 107–8, 118, 164 Abu Ghraib, 9, 21, 101, 106 Afghanistan war, 2, 107 Aja, Alexandre, 10, 13, 15, 22, 25, 26, 27, 166, 167, 168–9, 173–4, 195, 197 member of the Splat Pack, 1, 16, 17, 165 representation of women see Haute Tension Anchor Bay, 58–61, 63, 79n, 194 Arbus, Diane, 67 Argento, Dario, 59 auteurism, 7, 49 academic approaches, 38–9, 40, 49 ‘active auteur’, 97–100 marketing tool, 7, 39, 40, 59, 63–6, 101–2, 113, 114 Balun, Chas, 79–80, 84, 85 Beavis and Butt-head, 119, 121, 141n Betamax, 51, 53 Blockbuster Video, 53, 55, 72, 74, 88–9 Blu-ray, 189 Bousman, Darren Lynn, 9, 26n, 143, 144, 193–4

210

DVD extra features, 146, 148, 151–2, 155, 156–7 member of the Splat Pack, 17, 18, 20–1, 142–3, 158 Cabin Fever, 14, 89, 97, 114, 117, 169 DVD release, 63–4 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 28–31, 164 Carpenter, John, 2, 19, 39, 77, 166, 168, 187, 184, 194 Carrie, 183–5, 186–7 ‘cinema of attractions’, 9, 144, 150 Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) see film ratings The Conjuring, 196 Corman, Roger, 36 Craven, Wes, 2, 7, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 25, 45, 83, 85, 86, 165, 195 Cronenberg, David, 49, 97 Deliverance, 15, 124, 125, 166, 168, 182, 187 Demme, Jonathan, 106 The Descent, 15, 22, 166 DVD extra features see Marshall, Neil DVD release, 10, 172, 173, 174–5, 186, 187 intertextuality, 168–9, 181–5

index

multiple endings, 170–1 representation of women, 167–9, 180–1, 182–5 The Devil’s Rejects, 3, 14, 34, 48, 49, 89, 120–1, 124, 134, 146, 161, 166 DVD extra features see Zombie, Rob DVD release, 6, 63, 90, 132, 141 representation of class, 125, 126, 127–9, 131–2, 135 Dixon, W. K. L., 137 Dracula, 32–3, 34, 47n, 81 DVD, 6, 7, 8–10, 25, 49, 53–4, 61–6 academic studies, 92–3, 100–1, 113, 114, 117, 118 collecting and class, 50, 57, 68, 69, 132–3 decline, 189 ‘DVD revolution’, 28, 54 early development at MCA, 53 industry rollout, 53–5, 71–2 remediation, 59–60 sell-through pricing, 8, 55–6, 57–8 ‘Unrated’ DVDs, 6, 25, 70, 71, 72, 86–92 exhibition, 36, 37, 45, 47n, 73–5, 93n, 195 Facebook, 133–4, 140 Fangoria, 81–3, 114 film ratings, 7, 8, 18, 20–1, 24, 28, 40–6, 47, 54, 72–6, 88, 92, 102 ‘Unrated’ DVDs see DVD ‘Unrated’ videotapes see VHS era Fithian, John, 90, 156 Frankenstein (franchise), 32–3, 34, 43, 47n, 81, 120 Friday the 13th (franchise), 34, 57, 76–81, 84, 85, 92, 93n, 118n, 149 gold rush narratives see ‘slumming it’ Green, Adam, 69n, 197 Greutert, Kevin, 143, 144, 192 Grindhouse, 71 Gunn, James, 68 Hackl, David, 143, 144, 151–2 Haig, Sid, 62, 138–9, 140–1 Halloween (1978), 19, 44, 77, 93n, 166 Halloween (2007), 19, 63, 122, 166, 194 Halloween II, 122, 141n, 166, 194 Hammer Films, 36, 43

Haute Tension, 15, 22, 158, 166 American release as High Tension, 169 DVD release, 90, 169–70, 172, 173, 174–5, 179, 186, 187 metacinema, 168–9, 178–80 representation of queer desire, 175, 177–8 representation of women, 167–9, 175–7 High Tension see Haute Tension The Hills Have Eyes (1977), 13, 15, 16, 38, 125, 126, 129, 165 The Hills Have Eyes (2006), 13, 15, 16, 25, 195, 197 horror film academia, 4–5, 28–9, 31–2, 35, 38–40 economic approaches, 29–31, 32–4, 35–6, 38, 40 literary predecessors, 134–5 psychoanalytical approaches, 31–2 representations of class, 124–6 theories of spectatorship, 136, 140 ‘urbanoia’, 124–5 Hostel, 3, 9, 13, 21, 22, 23, 24, 34, 56, 101, 107, 108–10, 115–16, 153 DVD extra features see Roth, Eli DVD release, 19, 64–5, 71, 90, 92, 98, 101, 186 DVD sales, 6, 71, 153 torture porn, 67, 101, 103 Hostel: Part II, 3, 9, 25, 66, 71, 107, 110–12, 188 box office disappointment, 188, 193 DVD extra features see Roth, Eli DVD release, 186, 188 House of 1000 Corpses, 14, 26n, 89, 119–20, 121, 133, 134 DVD extra features see Zombie, Rob DVD release, 6, 61–3, 120, 121, 132 representation of class, 123, 124, 125, 129, 130 I Spit on Your Grave, 82, 124, 125 independent cinema, 7, 23–4, 34, 44–6, 53, 76, 132 discourse, 20, 22, 23, 56, 92 FilmDistrict, 196 Lionsgate, 6, 20, 22–3, 56, 61, 69, 89, 155, 192 marketing, 23–4, 50, 56, 68, 92, 155 ratings system, 45, 74–5, 82 relationship with the majors, 27, 74–5, 36, 37–8, 40, 42–3, 53

211

selling the splat pack

Inglorious Basterds, 193, 198n Insidious, 196 Insidious Chapter 2, 196 Iraq War, 2, 9, 16, 21, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108 Jackson, Peter, 63–4 Jones, Alan, 13–17, 18, 19, 22, 25–6, 68, 69, 70–1, 142, 165, 195, 197 Keegan, Rebecca Winters, 17–20, 142–3 Knowles, Harry, 98, 99, 100, 102, 166, 197 The Last Exorcism, 193, 197 The Last House on the Left 2, 15, 16, 19, 26n, 38, 45, 83, 104, 165 Lewton, Val, 43 Lionsgate, 6, 8, 10, 10n, 14, 15, 17, 20, 120, 142, 158, 163, 169, 179, 192, 194, 196 corporate strategy, 22–3, 56, 89, 192–3 DVDs, 6, 50, 56, 61–5, 68–9, 70, 71, 90–2, 120, 121, 132, 156, 169–72 marketing, 23–4, 66, 68–9, 154–6, 158, 160–1 Lynch, David, 64, 69n Magnet Releasing, 195 Marshall, Neil, 10, 15, 22, 166, 167–9, 170, 173–4, 195 DVD extra features, 172, 173, 182, 185, 186 member of the Splat Pack, 16, 17, 27, 165 representation of women see The Descent thoughts on the American release of The Descent, 171 McCarty, John, 79–80, 84, 85 McClintock, Pamela, 19–21, 22, 23, 25, 46, 56, 60, 66, 78 McLean, Greg, 16–17, 68, 197 Moseley, Bill, 48, 62, 138–9, 140 Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) see film ratings Museum of the Moving Image, 1–3, 5, 8, 10, 25, 188, 197 Music Television (MTV), 14, 69n, 119

212

National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), 75, 90, 156, 192 Netflix, 89, 188, 189–90, 193, 195 New Line Cinema, 20, 83–5, 88, 91 Newman, Kim, 197 Night of the Living Dead, 14, 27, 38–40 A Nightmare on Elm Street (franchise), 57, 83–5, 91, 149 Palen, Tim, 66–9, 152, 155, 158, 169 Paramount Decree, 7, 36–7, 40, 41, 43 Paramount Pictures, 37, 40 Friday the 13th on home video, 76–81, 84, 92 home video, 52, 53, 56 Paranormal Activity, 191–2 Paranormal Activity (franchise), 188, 191–2, 193, 196 Payne, Dave, 68 Redbox, 89, 188, 189–90 Romero, George, 2, 7, 38–40, 77 Roth, Eli, 3, 9, 16, 23, 25, 27, 63–5, 92, 119, 143, 146, 153, 163, 198n ‘active auteur’, 19, 21, 25, 97 actor in Inglorious Basterds, 193 cameo in Hostel, 115–16 comments about Tim Palen, 66 DVD extra features, 97–100, 101–6, 112–16, 117–18, 118n, 121, 137, 142, 144 family, 98, 104, 116, 153 member of the Splat Pack, 1, 5, 16, 17, 20, 68, 158, 165–6, 197 producer of The Last Exorcism and Hemlock Grove, 193 relationship with David Lynch, 64, 69n relationship with Quentin Tarantino see Tarantino, Quentin self-fashioning, 13–14, 17, 22, 24, 47, 67, 98–100, 102–6, 117 thoughts on ‘Unrated’ DVDs, 81–2, 90 Savini, Tom, 77, 79 Saw (franchise), 9, 17, 19, 22, 56, 67, 90–2, 142, 143, 144, 156–8, 164 ‘DVD of attractions’ and digital theme park, 150–4, 162 ‘House of Jigsaw’ website, 160–1 media convergence, 147–9, 160–1 theme park attractions, 154

index

Saw, 17, 26n, 89, 90, 143, 144–5, 159, 167 DVD extra features see Wan, James and Whannell, Leigh DVD releases, 6 fan vidding, 163–4 low-budget production circumstances, 145–6, 159–60 Saw II, 17, 26n, 142, 143, 146, 147, 148, 151, 153, 154, 158, 160 DVD extra features see Bousman, Darren Lynn DVD releases, 6, 156, 157 DVD sales, 6 Saw III, 17, 18, 20–1, 142, 143, 149, 156–7 DVD extra features, 151–2, 153, 154 DVD sales, 6, 91–2, 189 Saw IV, 91, 142, 149, 188–9 Saw V, 91, 143, 189 Saw VI, 143, 189 Saw 3D: The Final Chapter, 143, 192 Shivers, 16, 49 Silence of the Lambs, 106 ‘slumming it’, 134–6 Sony, 23, 51, 54, 56, 114, 133, 189, 190 Splat Pack, 1–3, 5–6, 7, 13, 16–21, 22–6, 188–9 The Splat Pack (film), 197 Straw Dogs, 15, 165 Switchblade Romance see Haute Tension Tarantino, Quentin, 64, 67, 68, 70–1 DVD extra features, 98, 102, 105–6, 117, 118n relationship with Eli Roth, 64–5, 99, 119, 166, 193, 198n television, 7, 19, 27, 28, 37, 45–6, 51, 54, 72, 120–1, 141n, 189, 193 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 3, 15, 16, 19, 27, 38, 104, 121, 126, 129 The Thing, 168, 184–5, 187 Tucker, Reed, 17–20, 60, 71, 142–3 Twisted Pictures, 17, 26n Universal Pictures, 42, 53, 195, 196 home video, 51, 53, 56, 81 monster movies, 32–3, 43, 47n relationship with Rob Zombie, 14, 26n, 120

Valenti, Jack see film ratings VHS era, 50 horror films, 57, 149 introduction of VCR technology and format war, 51 rental market, 52, 53, 81, 87, 189 sell-through pricing, 52, 83, 84 ‘Unrated’ movies on videotape, 77–8, 80, 81, 82–5, 86, 88, 91, 92 video nasties, 10, 26, 26n, 50, 69, 93n, 124, 174, 193, 197 Wal-Mart, 53, 55–6, 68, 71, 87, 102, 133, 153, 189, 190 Wan, James, 9, 26n, 142, 143–4, 161, 162, 165, 169, 196–7 DVD extra features, 145, 146, 150–1, 157, 159–60, 163–4, 173 member of the Splat Pack, 17, 142–3 uneasy position in the Splat Pack, 158–9, 163 ‘war on terror’, 2, 3, 8, 25, 60, 61, 101, 106–8, 164 Wasserman, Lew, 37, 42, 53 Waters, John, 84, 137 Whannell, Leigh, 9, 26n, 142, 143–4, 161, 162, 165, 196, 197 actor in Saw, 144 DVD extra features, 146, 150–1, 155, 157, 159–60, 173 member of the Splat Pack, 17, 142–3 uneasy position in the Splat Pack, 158–9, 163 White Zombie see Zombie, Rob Wilson, Stacy Layne, 197 YouTube, 9, 144, 161, 162–3 Zinoman, Jason, 2, 39–40, 47n Zombie, Rob, 9, 14–15, 16, 22, 89, 119–20, 143, 146, 163 cross-class spectatorship, 136–7 DVD extra features, 121–2, 127, 128, 129–30, 137–41, 142, 144 fans, 133–4, 140 marketing, 61–3 member of the Splat Pack, 1, 3, 5, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20–1, 68, 158, 165–7 ‘white trash’ aesthetic, 123–4 White Zombie, 14, 119 working with actors, 48–9, 137–41 Zombie, Sheri Moon, 72, 128, 138–9

213