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STEVE PERSALLThe days of the Hitchcock horror movie are over. Filmmakers find that explicit gore nearly guarantees an audience reaction, including ticket buying.
With the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks approaching, a large portion of U.S. moviegoers have regained their bloodthirsty tastes.
For the past three weeks, the films topping the box office charts have been what some analysts predicted would never again be popular after the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001, repulsed Americans.
Freddy vs. Jason, starring the psycho killers from the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th horror series, was No. 1 at the box office for two consecutive weeks, the first movie to manage that since X2: X-Men United in early May. Last weekend, another grotesque gore flick, Jeepers Creepers 2, grabbed the top spot with $18.5-million earned.
It should be noted that the chart-topping earnings for Freddy vs. Jason and Jeepers Creepers 2 would have been good for only third- or fourth-place finishes at the peak of the summer movie season. Fewer tickets are sold after school begins and vacations end.
And it's interesting that Freddy vs. Jason plummeted from first to seventh place when Jeepers Creepers 2 arrived in theaters, the biggest tumble from the top all year. Apparently, the core audience for horror films is quick to support grisly entertainment and just as quick to be distracted by another gory film.
Today the horror revival continues on a bigger budget with the release of The Order, an Exorcist ripoff. Next week, an annoyingly cheap, rudimentary gorefest called Cabin Fever is expected to do good business. The same day, Channelside Cinemas in Tampa is presenting Haunted Castle, a 3-D IMAX movie so shocking that the IMAX corporation withdrew its affiliation, citing its family-friendly policies.
All the talk about audiences rejecting movie violence after Sept. 11 has gone the way of Janet Leigh's shower water.
That doesn't surprise me. The shocker is how willingly audiences buy into a genre that has become increasingly repetitive and uninspired. How many ways can eyes be gouged out? Once you've seen one guy with an ice pick jabbed in his ear, you've seen them all.
Gore is the easiest way by far to get audience reaction. As long as people will cringe and scream over the same old thing, that's what they'll keep paying for.
That's what Clearwater filmmaker Andy Lalino hopes.
Lalino, 35, is writer and co-director of Filthy, a half-hour barrage of disgusting, degrading behavior appealing to only the basest instincts. He would love to turn it into a feature-length film. The plot - a charitable description - concerns a TV news reporter kidnapped on Halloween Eve by a crazed family of cannibals and sexual deviants, forcing her into repulsive situations involving rotted food, human waste and torture. The "highlight" occurs when the reporter's head is shoved into a tub of water to go bobbing for amputated genitalia.
That's not funny or scary, just sick. But Lalino and his colleagues believe that Filthy is their ticket to Hollywood. The frightening part is that after the latest revival of gory cinema, they may be right.
Despite its sordid content, Filthy is a fairly proficient movie for its $35,000 budget. Using 16mm film instead of digital video, favored by other amateur horror auteurs, makes a difference. The edits, acting, sets and costumes are commendable, proving that Lalino and co-director John Karliss have talent and the know-how to organize it.
Then why don't they use those skills for something more artistic and less debasing, something a wider audience could appreciate?
"To me, film is not just about constantly making artistic statements," Lalino said. "It can be like hopping on a carnival ride, a roller coaster. I hope we never lose that. We need that once in a while. Everything can't be sex, lies and videotape. Sometimes we want something a little easier to take a bite out of."
But does that mean a filmmaker should always prompt the audience to barf up those bites?
"There are two schools of thought: whether a filmmaker should go for the gore or go for more of subliminal type of fright a la The Haunting or the original Cat People, where it's hinted but not shown," Lalino said.
"My decision was a practical one. I know it's an easier route to being noticed if you're heavy on the (special) effects. I admittedly chose that route because of past successes like Friday the 13th, where they were heavy on the gore."
Lalino insists that more is going on in Filthy than viscera. He calls it a "morality play," apparently because the reporter isn't a nice person and therefore deserves everything done to her. Lalino swears that the movie is very funny but "because of the quantity of the gore effects, it might take a couple of viewings" to understand that.
"My one hope - and it hasn't been happening - is that people would pick up on those themes when they watch Filthy," Lalino said. "To be honest with you, it hasn't happened much."
It's tough to notice a message when you're gagging.
Filmmakers such as Lalino and Karliss are increasingly sloppy with the mechanics of what makes a movie genuinely scary. Gore alone isn't horrifying, just disgusting. The physical responses of disgust - groans and winces - can look and sound exactly like fear. It's much easier to accomplish the former than the latter.
By confusing the two, filmmakers and audiences are warping the horror genre in practice and acceptance.
I still contend that The Blair Witch Project was a truly terrifying movie, hyperrealistic and more logical (aside from its supernatural theme) than any other recent horror flick. Yet that viewers never saw the witch, and only a few drops of blood, left many viewers disappointed.
They went to see a movie touted as being "scary as hell" and automatically anticipated seeing their notions of what's scary: cheap shocks drenched in fake blood. That is what they've learned from filmmakers continually going for the gross-out.
What occurs between the brutality isn't pretty, either: characterization and plots that are cliched or nonexistent, dialogue without wit and impromptu twists intended only to set up the next slaughter. A lot of creatively dead time passes before filmmakers show what today's horror fans are looking for.
If Filthy were stretched to feature length, it would almost certainly go the same route.
But Lalino and his colleagues are trying hard to make that dream happen. Winning 14 awards at the recent Saints and Sinners film festival in St. Petersburg gives them something to hype. A couple of horror film festivals in California have accepted Filthy into their lineups. The cult audience that made hits of Freddy vs. Jason and Jeepers Creepers 2 will welcome it with open arms and covered eyes.
"As long as we can be afraid of the dark, there will always be a place for horror movies," Lalino said.
Just keep one light on that marks the way to the exit.