When Hollywood first realized that teenage audiences were more interested in blood and guts than in watching Lee Marvin croon I Was Born Under A Wandering Star, filmmakers began catering for them with a series of films that, while not particularly accomplished in other areas, never failed to paint the screen red. Following the lead of Herschell Gordon Lewis, journeymen directors such as Lucio Fulci enjoyed success with pictures whose excesses caused them to be banned and prosecuted for obscenity in the UK. If you want to recommend a movie to a gorehound, then banning it on the grounds that it might deprave and corrupt its intended audience beats a thumbs up from Roger Ebert any day. As far as multiplex horror goes, though, the traditional gore movie is pretty much in the toilet. Too many haunted houses, too many interchangeable teenagers with cameras and not enough power tools. If your cast is comprised almost entirely of whiney, annoying young folks, then according to Eli Roth, they have to encounter a sicko with a chainsaw. Its a tradition or an old charter or something. Power tools are a recurring motif in the movies that follow. Haunted houses, not so much.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
