The splatter film has its aesthetic roots in French
Grand Guignol theatre, which endeavored to stage realistic scenes of blood and carnage for its patrons. In 1908, Grand Guignol made its first appearance in England, although the gore was downplayed in favor of a more
Gothic tone, owing to the greater censorship of the arts in Britain. The first appearance of the realistic mutilation of the human in cinema can be traced to
D. W. Griffith's
Intolerance (1916), which features numerous Guignol-esque touches, including two onscreen decapitations, and a scene in which a spear is slowly driven through a soldier's naked abdomen as blood wells from the wound. Several of Griffith's subsequent films, and those of his contemporary
Cecil B. DeMille, featured similarly realistic carnage.
Modern era In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the public was reintroduced to splatter themes and motifs by groundbreaking films such as
Alfred Hitchcock's
Psycho (1960) and the output of
Hammer Film Productions (an artistic outgrowth of the English Grand Guignol style) such as
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and
Horror of Dracula (1958). Perhaps the most explicitly violent film of this era was
Nobuo Nakagawa's
Jigoku (1960), which included numerous scenes of flaying and dismemberment in its depiction of the
Buddhist underworld
Naraka. Splatter came into its own as a distinct subgenre of horror in the early 1960s with the films of
Herschell Gordon Lewis in the United States. Eager to maintain a profitable niche, Lewis turned to something that mainstream cinema still rarely featured: scenes of visceral, explicit gore. In 1963, he directed
Blood Feast, widely considered the first splatter film. In the 15 years following its release,
Blood Feast took in an estimated $7 million. It was made for an estimated $24,500.
Blood Feast was followed by two more gore films by Herschell Gordon Lewis,
Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and
Color Me Blood Red (1965). The popularity of the splatter film in the 1970s was met with strong reactions in the US and the U.K.
Roger Ebert in the U.S., and
Member of Parliament Graham Bright in the U.K., led the charge to censor splatter films on home video with the film critic going after
I Spit on Your Grave while the politician sponsored the
Video Recordings Act, a system of censorship and certification for home video in the U.K. The latter resulted in the outright banning of many splatter films in the U.K., which were deemed "
video nasties" in the British press. Some splatter directors have gone on to produce mainstream hits.
Peter Jackson started his career in
New Zealand by directing the splatter movies
Bad Taste (1987) and
Braindead (1992). These films featured such over-the-top gore that it became a
comedic device. These comedic gore films have been dubbed "splatstick", defined as physical comedy that involves dismemberment. Splatstick seems to be more common in Japan, with the examples of
Robogeisha,
Tokyo Gore Police, and
The Machine Girl. The story in
Cannibal Holocaust is told through footage from a group of people making a documentary about a portion of the Amazon which is said to be populated by cannibals. Although the
Blair Witch directors had not seen
Cannibal Holocaust at the time of filming, this "
mockumentary" format was later used in their film. One of the more recent examples of a splatter film is
Terrifier (2016), and its sequels
Terrifier 2 (2022) and
Terrifier 3 (2024). All three films are infamous for their gore, two main examples being Dawn's hacksaw kill in
Terrifier, where
Art the Clown saws Dawn in half, and Allie's bedroom kill in
Terrifier 2, where Art theatrically mutilates Allie to death.
Terrifier 2 was said to be so gory and so violent that audience members have reported to be
vomiting and
fainting.
Torture porn in
Eli Roth's 2007 film
Hostel: Part II, portraying a woman being tortured In the 2000s—particularly 2003–2009—a body of films was produced that combined elements of the splatter and
slasher film genres. The films were dubbed "
torture porn" by critics and detractors, most notably by
David Edelstein, who coined the term in a 2006 article. Like their splatter forerunners, torture porn films reputedly emphasize depictions of
violence,
gore,
nudity,
torture,
mutilation and
sadism. Also like splatter films, the extent to which torture porn lives up to its sensational reputation has been disputed. The torture porn label has been applied to films including
Baise-moi (2000),
Ichi the Killer (2001),
Saw (2004) and
its sequels (though its creators disagree with the classification),
Hostel (2005), ''
The Devil's Rejects (2005), and Wolf Creek (2005). A difference between this group of films and earlier splatter films is that they are often mainstream Hollywood films that receive a wide release, and have comparatively high production values. Lionsgate, the studio behind the films, made considerable gains in its stock price from the box office showing. The financial success led the way for the release of similar films: Turistas in 2006, Hostel: Part II, Borderland, and Captivity, starring Elisha Cuthbert and Daniel Gillies, in 2007. Indeed, in 2009, the Saw'' series became the most profitable horror film series of all time, prompting the release of
The Collector starring
Josh Stewart and
Juan Fernández within that year. Despite these financial successes, torture porn is perceived as a pejorative label by many press critics, filmmakers, and fans. and
Captivity drew criticism for their graphic imagery, causing them to be taken down in many locations. Director Eli Roth sought to defend the subgenre, claiming that critics' uses of torture porn "genuinely says more about the critic's limited understanding of what horror movies can do than about the film itself", and that "they're out of touch." Horror author
Stephen King defended
Hostel: Part II and torture porn stating, "sure it makes you uncomfortable, but good art should make you uncomfortable." Influential director
George A. Romero stated, "I don't get the torture porn films ... they're lacking metaphor." The success of torture porn, and its boom during the mid to late 2000s, led to a crossover into genres other than horror. This became evident with the release of many crime thrillers, particularly the 2007 film
I Know Who Killed Me starring
Lindsay Lohan, and the 2008 film
Untraceable, starring
Diane Lane and
Billy Burke. The British film
WΔZ, starring
Stellan Skarsgård and
Selma Blair, and its US counterpart
Scar, starring
Angela Bettis and
Ben Cotton, continued to facilitate this hybrid form of torture porn, which was also, to a lesser degree, evident in films such as
Rendition (2007) starring
Jake Gyllenhaal,
Law Abiding Citizen (2009), and
Unthinkable (2010) starring
Samuel L. Jackson. In the mid-2000s, the splatter film was given a major boost within the horror industry by a new wave of
French films—commonly referred to as
the New French Extremity—which became internationally known for their extremely brutal nature:
Martyrs (2008), directed by Pascal Laugier,
Frontier(s) (2007), directed by Xavier Gens, and
Inside (2007), directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. Rapper
Eminem explored the genre in his music video for the single "
3 a.m.". Danish filmmaker
Lars von Trier's
Antichrist, starring
Willem Dafoe and
Charlotte Gainsbourg, was labeled torture porn by critics when it premiered at the 2009
Cannes Film Festival due to scenes of extreme violence, graphic sex, and genital self-mutilation. By 2009, the box office draw of torture porn films had mostly been replaced in the U.S. by the profitable trend of remaking or rebooting earlier horror films from decades past, with the modernization of films such as
Dawn of the Dead (2004),
The Amityville Horror (2005),
House of Wax (2005),
Black Christmas (2006),
Halloween (2007),
My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009),
Friday the 13th (2009),
The Wolfman (2010),
The Crazies (2010), and
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010). A number of these remakes, such as
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003),
The Hills Have Eyes (2006) (and its
sequel in 2007),
Funny Games (2008),
The Last House on the Left (2009), and
I Spit on Your Grave (2010) were referred to as torture porn in press reviews. At the close of the decade,
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009) and
A Serbian Film (2010) were among the most notable torture porn releases. Although not as financially successful as
Saw or
Hostel,
A Serbian Film and
The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011) gained attention in the press for their graphic depictions of forced
fecal consumption and
necrophilia, and both films were censored in order to attain release in the U.K. Other torture porn films such as
Murder-Set-Pieces,
Grotesque and
The Bunny Game were banned outright by the
BBFC. Subsequently, torture porn has increasingly become a DVD-oriented subgenre. For example,
Hostel: Part III (2011) was released direct to DVD, unlike the previous films in the series. The film received less negative attention in the press as a result of its lower-profile release. ''
Who's Watching Oliver (2018), Don't Click (2020), Hacksaw (2020), and The Host'' (2020). As fewer and fewer high-profile cinematic torture porn films are being released, however, the subgenre is slowly dying out, as many journalists have proposed. The genre elements were also used in episodes of many popular American television shows, including Fox's
24,
CBS's
Criminal Minds,
Showtime's Dexter,
The CW's
Supernatural,
NBC's
Blindspot and
FX's American Horror Story. Some scholars have published analyses of torture porn films. For example, a book chronicling the torture porn phenomenon and the surrounding controversy—Steve Jones'
Torture Porn: Popular Horror after Saw—was published in 2013. ==See also==