We explain what gore cinema is, its characteristics and examples from different periods. In addition, we tell you its origin and its history.
What is gore cinema?
gore cinema, also called cinema splatter, It is a film genre characterized by the representation of horror stories in the most raw, violent and shocking way possible with gruesome details, bloody scenes or extreme brutality. It belongs to a genre called “B series”, a type of low-budget cinema with little publicity that, in most cases, does not have artistic ambitions, but rather purely commercial ones.
The name of the genus, goreis an English word that refers to the shedding of blood or the attacks of certain animals with their horns. Its use became popular in the second half of the 20th century to designate a specific type of exploitation cinema (a low-budget genre with controversial or unacceptable themes), which bases its appeal on special effects related to the violation of the human body (mutilations, blood, very violent injuries).
The other name by which this cinema is known is splatteran Anglo-Saxon term that means “splatter” or “spilling,” alluding to the abundance of blood that these films present. This name was coined by the film director George Romero (1940-2017), regarding the premiere of his film dawn of the living deadin 1978.
Gore cinema has many followers, especially among young audiences. It has generated subcultures and communities of fans, and was important for the emergence of other film genres, such as slasher (serial killer movies) and certain types of manga and anime.
Some gore films have been controversial and have been censored or banned in several countries, due to its negative impact on mental health. They have even been accused of promoting violence in real life.
Characteristics of gore cinema
Gore cinema is characterized by the following:
- It is a genre of commercial cinema. Gore cinema does not usually have artistic ambitions, but is often linked to the underground cinematographic, cult cinema or niche cinema, that is, with a cinema that circulates in small groups of experts or amateurs.
- It usually represents stories of terror or horror. In gore films, situations of extreme violence represented in a very explicit way abound.
- It's low budget Gore films are not usually attractive to large investors, so the financial resources for making the films are very limited compared to mass cinema productions.
- Abounds in special effects. The key element of gore cinema is the special effects, with very realistic results and obtained with few resources. Makeup made with homemade techniques (such as gelatin or dyes) and handcrafted prostheses are used.
- It usually represents the destruction of the human body. Gore cinema is defined by the presence of realistic scenes of dismemberment (tearing off legs and arms), decapitation (cutting off the head) or evisceration (removing the organs of a living person), and the absence of plots or elaborate narrative proposals.
Origin of gore cinema
Gore cinema was born as a genre in the second half of the 20th century, but there are important antecedents since the beginning of the century. One of them is the French theater Grand Guignol from 1908, in which elaborate massacres were depicted.
Likewise, in the early films of Americans DW Griffith (1875-1948) and Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959), beheadings and other forms of explicit violence were shown. This was one of the reasons why, in the 1920s, the Hays Code was created, a document detailing what should and should not be shown in cinemas.
In the late 1950s, there was a new boom in crime-based film stories, notably Psychosis (1960), the famous film by director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), which suggests an off-camera murder.
Subsequently, Herschell Gordon Lewis (1926-2016) and David F. Friedman (1923-2011), producers of modestly successful amateur erotic films, decided to start making explicit films with taboo themes and show the bloody scenes that Hollywood omitted, to exploit them. the public's taste for the forbidden and the grotesque. This is how gore cinema was born.
In 1963, Lewis and Friedman released blood feast (in Spanish, “blood festival”), considered the first gore film proper. It was shot over nine days in Miami, with a budget of $25,000 and in full color. However, this new cinema, little interested in interpretation and the artistic aspect, had no place in traditional theaters and had to debut in drive-in cinemas (cinemas that project films on large open-air screens and that the public watches from their own car. ).
The critical reception was negative, but Lewis and Friedman took advantage of it: they began handing out vomit bags at the entrance to drive-in theaters and using the phrases of their detractors to promote their films. So, Lewis and Friedman's films had an unexpected success and shook the morale of American society at the time. In the following two years, the duo produced several films, and between 1965 and 1972 almost twenty more feature films with gore themes.
On the other hand, in 1963, the Italian director Mario Bava (1914-1980) contributed a new aesthetic with cinema giallo, and in 1968 the American George Romero released his famous film dawn of the living deadwhose sociopolitical approach marked a milestone in the genre.
Herschell Gordon Lewis moved away from gore films in 1972 (with a brief return twenty years later), but his legacy significantly influenced all horror films and endures to the present.
Examples of gore cinema
Some famous gore films are:
- The girl who knew too much (1963), by Mario Bava.
- The Gore Gore Girls (1972), by Herschell Gordon Lewis.
- dawn of the living dead (1978), by George Romero.
- cannibal holocaust (1980), by Ruggero Deodato.
- Nekromantik (1987), by Jörg Buttgereit.
- Hostel (2005), by Eli Roth.
- Grindhouse (2007), by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodríguez.
- Trilogy The human centipede I (2009), II (2011) and III (2015), by Tom Six.
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References
- McCarty, J. (1984). Splatter Movies. Breaking the Last Taboo of the Screen. St. Martin's Press.
- Palacios, J. (1995). Goremanía: the definitive guide to gore cinema. Alberto Santos.
