Supernatural Horror

[Indrid Cold]

Being near All Hollows Eve, now is the perfect time to explore one of my favorite themes in the erotic death fetish: the supernatural. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think a touch of the supernatural and surreal can enhance the eroticism of a female death scene infinitely. For me, there is something ineffably exciting about a female in a mortally perilous situation, where reality as we know it is turned upside down; the idea of a sexy woman alone, in a foreboding place or situation, where an evil creature or malevolent spirit might manifest from the shadows at any moment and do her harm. Even if there is a camp element, I still find such a scenario incredibly arousing. (The camp element can even further augment the eroticism.) This is something that is sadly lacking in the vast majority of contemporary horror fare, which is based around natural - if somewhat superhuman - psycho killers and typically set in a grungy, forcibly "realistic" milieu. Frankly, I think a crazed killer with an axe or knife is just plain boring.

One of my favorite supernatural horror scenarios - and one I have yet to see depicted to my satisfaction - is a professional woman (perhaps a lawyer or reporter) dressed in a sexy miniskirt business suit, attacked and killed by one or more diminutive nasties (such as a possessed doll or little demon). I can see her returning home, casually and unsuspectingly going through her normal routine, when the creatures suddenly appear, permanently altering the reality of her last few remaining minutes of life. The "Puppet Master" and "Demonic Toys" franchises had tons of potential to deliver scenes like this, but only have disappointed.

Though the payoff is a disappointment, this scene from "The Ghoulies" is an excellent example of an archetypal setup for an erotic supernatural horror death scene. An unsuspecting, scantily-clad damsel suddenly confronted by evil supernatural entities who will stop at nothing to kill her. No stupid douche ex machina hero showing up to save her at the last moment. She is shocked and alone, and while she may put up a fight, she is ultimately doomed to meet her violent demise at the hands of these hideous creatures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... q4g#t=666s

The actual killing is offscreen, but we do get to see her lifeless body dragged across the floor in the next scene.

[xj900uk]

Can you check the youtube link please, can't seem to get to it..

[Indrid Cold]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... q4g#t=666s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... us34#t=84s

[xj900uk]

Thanx, much appreciated

[mikedark]

It seems that there's not enough supernatural horror in the genre. I think that might be largely due to budget restrictions. Those can be overturned easily enough by the use of sound and suggestion instead of full on visual effects, but it seems that audiences in general have gotten so used to being showed everything that they don't have the patience for subtlety and imagination anymore.

[Indrid Cold]

Lack of budget didn't stop gobs of 80s b-horror movies from having a supernatural element. The lack of supernatural element in today's horror is due to this trend of "gritty realism" and torture porn, "grunge horror", as I call it. It's not fun or scary, just bland and ugly, if you ask me. And most of the horror movies with that do have supernatural element are about demon possession/exorcism nonsense based on "true" stories.

[mikedark]

I like me the good old fashioned slasher film and I appreciate a good gore film, of course. I'm not going to take anything away from Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, or the makers for the first three Saw films (which are masterpieces in my eyes in terms of sympathetic villainy, suspense, and the use of gore as a release of suspense as opposed to shock for its own sake), or films like Cannibal Holocaust, Romero's films, or things like that. The problem is that the formula got so tired even in the 80's that it's hard to do anything with. I also don't like torture porn. Sure, one can argue that what we do in our fetish is "toruture porn". It's inflicting violence for the sake of sexual gratification, and with some producers there's genuine porn involved. I give us more credit though, because even we have more story than the average Hostel knockoff and a shit-ton more variety (from slashers to cannibals to spy thrillers to superhero stories to assisted suicide scenes to even variations on Shakespeare!).

The problem with torture porn isn't the gore even, it's the lack of true horror. There's no characterization, there's little in way of story. It's just, 10 minutes...introduce these unlikeable douchebags who we have to try to sympathize with later and never will-10 minutes later..."HOT GIRLS WITH BOOBIES! LET'S SCORE!"-25 minutes later...wake up in a warehouse somewhere-30 minutes later...first guy is thoroughly dismembered the killer wipes the blood off the instruments of grue...10 minutes of more intense torture later, the second guy is somehow able to murder the torturer and hobble away...but the group the killer belongs to is still out there, waiting for fresh meat! That's not scary, that's boring, and after everything I've seen in my life as a fan of the CLASSIC gore stuff, there's no amount of dismemberment, torture, or even rape that you can show me that can shock me. I might get uncomfortable (toe, nails, genital, and toot torture still unnerves me), but not shock. I'm jaded to this stuff now, and without new ideas or at least good variations on old ideas ala Saw, I'm just going to laugh this stuff away. And what sucks most is that it's people with the potential to make truly great films like Eli Roth making this trash!

At this point, I'm back to liking the old Gothic style stuff. I can still get creeped out by a good old ghost story, or vampire tale, or Lovecraft adaptation (you should check out the stuff by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society), or even a good adaptation of Wuthering Heights in a way that Touristas never will make me.

[Indrid Cold]

If I see one more movie come out in which a group of college-age friends get lost in and are pursued by a psycho slasher, I will chunder.

"Cabin in the Woods" really put a refreshing, satirical spin on the whole modern horror genre.

[mikedark]

I have yet to see it, but the horror movie in a horror movie or reality show within a horror movie seems like a refreshing breaking of the 4th wall, similar to the breaking of the 4th wall in the first Scream (before the franchise degenerated into self-parodying its own parodying of the genre).

I think the best breaking of the 4th wall is the original Funny Games though. It's really unsettling to have the characters turn to you and force you to wager on the lives of the family they're torturing.

Anyways, when it comes to supernatural horror that's come out recently, Guillermo del Toro consistently makes or produces the best stuff. Cronos shows how to make a sympathetic vampire without bathing them in romance novel tripe, while Devil's Backbone and Orphanange are masterful ghost stories that are also metaphors for real horrors (war, being an orphan, being outcasted for deformity or weakness or any of the other horrors children shun each other for), and Pan's Labyrinth deals with similar themes about the consequences of war while also getting to the heart of what fairy tales really are, and that's that they aren't these cuted little children's fantasies that Disney makes them into, but are these rather shocking/horrific little morality tales.