I wonder...

Horrifying by suggestion, (Dragnet and (nm) by Tawaki on 2021-09-11 12:39:23 UTC Writing Reply

Horrifying by suggestion or implication. (Dragnet and Twilight Zone spoilers) by Tawaki on 2021-09-11 12:53:36 UTC Edited Reply

Sorry; I accidentally hit Enter while in the subject line.

You know, sometimes there is more horror in a reaction or a bare-bones description. A lot of the modern horror films really pile on the gore, when gore isn't necessary.

And in both radio and televised Dragnet, this comes into play. In one radio episode, Webb narrating as Friday gives the ages of the two missing girls, the fact that the corpses were holding wildflowers—and the fact that a veteran homicide detective had never seen such a sight as those corpses before and never hoped to again. And in "The Big High", the corpse in the bathtub is never shown, but is so horrifying that Officer Gannon is going to be sick for the first time in seventeen years on the job.

In the Twilight Zone episode "Death's-Head Revisited", when former concentration camp commandant Lütze spurns his last chance to repent and be shown mercy, he is made to go through everything he enjoyed putting his captives through, And it is chilling not only what he's going through, but the fact that none of this is disproportionate; he was THAT BAD.

And in the Second Doctor story "Fury from the Deep", one of the censor clips--chilling to the bone--is accomplished simply by a human mouth emitting the noise of hissing gas--uncanny valley right there--and the target's gasping and choking.

You don't need graphic blood and guts to be terrifying, so why do so many modern horror pieces rely on them? Are so many people so jaded?

Because that's not what gore/blood/etc are always used for. by Scapegrace on 2021-09-11 16:14:31 UTC Reply

The use of blood and gore invokes different reactions based on how you're using it, the same as what you describe. I would attest that it is generally intended more to shock than to outright horrify, though of course this varies between films, directors, and stories. I'll take as an example that poster child of "it's just torture porn" upon its cinema release, the first Saw film. Its use of very graphic violence and blood is designed to emulate the violence that Jigsaw believes the killers have themselves inflicted upon the world; it asks the audience to consider that violence, that pain, that suffering, and then think about how justified this retribution is. In similar (severed, oozing) vein, Hostel and its sequels are critiques of capitalism and capitalist society's distance from the violence upon which it is built - violence against marginalised peoples and the global poor, and the vengeance that the global poor are carrying out. I'm not saying that these critiques are entirely successful, nor is every gory film some secret masterwork of anticapitalist theory. However, I do think it's disingenuous to dismiss every film that uses graphic imagery as "relying on" it in lieu of different styles of horror which might not fit the ethos, atmosphere, themes, et cetera that the director was attempting to convey.

For a more in-depth look into this, I recommend the excellent work of feminist film theory, Men, Women, And Chainsaws: Gender In Modern Horror Film by Carol J. Clover.

I wonder... by Neshomeh on 2021-09-11 18:16:05 UTC Reply

I know nothing about the subject of horror film theory in general, but I have heard a discussion or two about how violence—especially violence against women—is romanticized. "Oh look at this beautiful girl, so virginal and pure with her white gown and white skin, such a tragedy she's dead, so sad nothing can be done, single tear, okay we move on now." So that plus your post makes me think that gore might be used to prevent that kind of romanticization. Like... no. Violence against women is not a beautiful tragedy, it is disgusting, and you should feel viscerally disgusted when you see it, and you should know that something can and should be done to stop it.

Not that just any over-the-top movie gore would achieve that effect, and there may be a danger in overdoing it to the point that audiences become inured, but I do second Scape's point that it can be used to achieve a particular effect you wouldn't get if you sanitized it. Sometimes it's important to make people look at something they don't want to see.

~Neshomeh

That's an excellent point! by Scapegrace on 2021-09-11 19:26:20 UTC Reply

And one that Men, Women, and Chainsaws covers as well. It's very forward-thinking for an academic work written in the 1980s. I really do recommend it.