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35 “The Pound of fleSh which i deMand” American Horror Cinema, Gore, and the Box Office, 1998–2007 —Blair Davis and Kial Natale The pound of flesh, which i demand of him, is dearly bought; ’tis mine and i will have it. —William ShakeSpeare, The Merchant of venice “iT’S fun To be Scared”—horror and habiTuaTion In 1981, renowned American film critic Roger Ebert decried the state of horror cinema at the time in his reviews of two sequels released that year, Friday the 13th Part II and Halloween II. In reviewing the former, he describes the film’s opening sequence in which a young woman“wakes up, undresses, is stalked by the camera, hears a noise in the kitchen.” Ebert continues:“She tiptoes into the kitchen. Through the open window, a cat springs into the room. The audience screamed loudly and happily: It’s fun to be scared. Then an unidentified man sunk an ice pick into the girl’s brain, and for me, the fun stopped. The audience, however, carried on. It is a tradition to be loud during these movies, I guess.” At the end of the review, which he notes can be substituted for any Friday the 13th film of one’s choice, Ebert surmises that teenagers in earlier decades would not have been able to understand “a world view in which the primary function of teenagers is to be hacked to death” (142–43). In his review of Halloween II, Ebert quotes John McCarty’s book Splatter Films and the notion that, in splatter movies, “mutilation is indeed the message—many times the only one.” Halloween II, says Ebert,“fits this description precisely. It is not a horror film but a geek show” (158). By “geek show”’ Ebert presumably means that such horror films place an emphasis on exploitive, carnival-like violence, similar to that of the sideshow carnival in which the geek’s act consists of biting the heads off of live chickens. Such an act is by blair daviS and kial naTale 36 most accounts both gruesome and senseless, yet apparently not without its macabre charms as demonstrated by its historic role in carnival history. So too then, by Ebert’s comparison, are an increasing amount of horror films: gruesome, senseless, but undeniably popular. The question then becomes: just how gruesome are these films? More specifically , if American horror films were in fact exceedingly gruesome in the early 1980s, how much gore is present in the average horror film some twenty-five years later, when images of torture and mutilation have seemingly become even more prevalent ? Has there indeed been an increase in the sheer amount of gore seen on screen in recent years thanks to the popularity of such films as Saw (2004), Hostel (2005), and their sequels? This essay is one attempt at answering some of these questions, by studying a recent ten-year period of American horror cinema, from 1998 to 2007, in order to quantify specific trends in the level of how much screen time gore occupies in recent horror films. The larger question behind these inquiries is whether there has been an evolution of gore in the horror genre throughout film history. Certainly, to most people, modern horror films seem gorier than those of decades past—but just how accurate are these perceptions? Do horror films devote more of their total running time to shots and scenes depicting gore with each passing year? If such a trend is not seen year by year, is it revealed decade to decade? In addition to the resurgence of previously dormant subgenres such as zombie films (not regularly seen since the mid/ late 1980s, but revived in large part due to the success of 2002’s Resident Evil and 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake), the current decade has also seen the creation of new subgenres (such as the“torture-porn”film, a moniker tentatively given by critics and many fans to such films as Saw, Hostel, and the like, and the rise of the“horrorremake ” in which older films are updated with modern special effects). Gory movies have increasingly become a target of criticism in recent years, with many critics decrying the progressively violent imagery of the horror genre. The Christian Science Monitor reported, for example, how the formerly“subtle” nature of horror film advertising has since“given way to gory trailers,billboards,and magazine campaigns” (Goodale). The Motion Picture Association of America suspended the rating process for the...

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