Horror is hot - again - in Hollywood, capable of turning low-budget violence into a box-office bonanza. "But also a film that hits different chords, like Americans' fear of other cultures, our feelings of superiority and people's need for control." "I set out to make a sick, scary move," he says of Hostel, the story of three college boys who backpack across Europe, get seduced by three comely gals and end up on the wrong side of a torture den. Which is one reason Eli Roth endeavors to scare the bejabbers out of theatergoers. "This is one of the most misogynistic films ever made," as the New York Times put it.
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Offal," a movie critic for the Denver Post decreed. His detractors call it "torture porn." " Hostel's purposeful but mindless carnage unfolds into a ridiculous moral. Roth, 35, makes cheap, grisly films - "Cabin Fever," "Hostel" and the new "Hostel: Part II" - as tightly written thrillers that build to extremely graphic bloodbaths.
That's entertainment! It comes from the twisted mind of filmmaker Eli Roth, a new prince of horror in Hollywood. Cut to closeup: flesh being chewed up by the drill bit, replete with dangling chunks of gore. He approaches a screaming, bare-chested man who is chained to a chair. Cue sound effect - an ominous, metallic whine - and the camera opens up on an electric drill wielded by a sadist in surgical mask, black rubber gloves and black rubber apron.
The scene from Hostel opens with a keyhole shot of a tabletop strewn with tools of torture: saws, pickaxes, knives, hooks.