# My tolerance for gore is waning **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 4, 2007, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780 "2007-12-04T15:41:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Nikki\_Tikki\_Tavi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3da27b/32.png) [@Nikki\_Tikki\_Tavi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nikki_Tikki_Tavi)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/1 "2007-12-04T15:41:03Z")
And I’m putting this thread here because I mean gore in movies. Luckily, I don’t see alot of real-life blood and guts 😛 I used to LOVE blood and gore and icky special effects in movies. Zombie movies, monsters, slasher flicks, the bloodier the better. It seems like the older I get, the less I can stand it. When my husband and I saw The Mist, I had to cover my eyes when the bug was pulling the skin off that guy’s neck and also when they showed the burned guy There are even some parts in Dexter that I have to turn away from. I won’t even try watching the Saw movies, I know I won’t be able to get through it. What gives? Has anyone else experienced this? Nothing traumatic happened to put me off of gory movies, it seems like it just gradually happened. Oddly, I can still look at still pics of gross movies scenes (like in Rue Morgue magazine) with curiousity instead of revulsion. ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/2 "2007-12-04T16:07:07Z")
And I wish he’d either get in the race or not. And all this global warming stuff . . . ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/3 "2007-12-04T16:13:29Z")
[QUOTE=spifflog] And I wish he’d either get in the race or not. And all this global warming stuff . . . [/QUOTE] Shit, THAT Gore I never HAD any tolerance for… 😃 But to answer the OP, I know what you mean. I think, though, for me, it’s not so much the gore itself, it’s the way it’s presented that bugs me. It seems like movies are way more sadistic nowadays, revelling not just in carnage but in torture and inflicting pain. Turns my stomach. ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/4 "2007-12-04T16:24:27Z")
I’m not sure if this is what’s going on in your case, but I know that personally, I’m usually a huge gore-hound who goes through phases where I can’t stomach the stuff. I have absolutely no idea what causes it. I don’t think it’s that I overdose or anything; I just find that sometimes I sit down to watch something I would otherwise love and find that I can’t even look at it. It happened to me recently when I was watching the remake of The Hills Have Eyes… which I had already seen! ---
**Author:** ![kelly5078](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6f9a4e/32.png) [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/5 "2007-12-04T17:07:02Z")
It’s okay with me if it’s a war movie, or a cop movie. I’ve never had any patience for it in horror movies, though. I still get suckered in by good review (e.g., “Saw,” “Hostel”), but I always come away just wanting to take a bath. At least I stayed well away from “Passion of the Christ.” ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/6 "2007-12-04T18:03:39Z")
I felt I should keep up with the Saw series and rented #3. About 15 minutes in I realized I don’t want to spend my time watching that kind of thing. I don’t mind a gory interesting story (Silence of the Lambs, Nightmare on Elm Street) but the moral message in Saw has no way of working and it becomes gratuitous and torture-porny. ---
**Author:** ![NailBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecae2f/32.png) [@NailBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NailBunny)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/7 "2007-12-04T18:23:34Z")
[QUOTE=gigi] I felt I should keep up with the Saw series and rented #3. About 15 minutes in I realized I don’t want to spend my time watching that kind of thing. I don’t mind a gory interesting story (Silence of the Lambs, Nightmare on Elm Street) but the moral message in Saw has no way of working and it becomes gratuitous and torture-porny. [/QUOTE] Exactly, or even just something done in fun. For example, my husband and I absolutely loved the recent gorefest of _Planet Terror_, but I cannot tolerate the Saw movies. We were loaned Saw 3 from one of his co-workers, and also made it about 15 minutes in before we decided we didn’t want to sit through this crap. “Torture Porn” is exactly the words I used. I still love a good, fun gore movie (examples that come to mind are along the lines of _Dead Alive_, _The Gore Gore Girls_ or _Tromeo and Juliet_), but as I’ve gotten older I’ve completely lost the stomach for stuff like _Saw_ and _Hostel_. ---
**Author:** ![Nikki\_Tikki\_Tavi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3da27b/32.png) [@Nikki\_Tikki\_Tavi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nikki_Tikki_Tavi)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/8 "2007-12-04T18:31:52Z")
[QUOTE=RikWriter] Shit, THAT Gore I never HAD any tolerance for… 😃 But to answer the OP, I know what you mean. I think, though, for me, it’s not so much the gore itself, it’s the way it’s presented that bugs me. It seems like movies are way more sadistic nowadays, revelling not just in carnage but in torture and inflicting pain. Turns my stomach. [/QUOTE] I think that’s part of it. I wonder if some of it is how far special effects have come. Someones face being chewed off really looks like someone’s face being chewed off! “Torture porn” movies didn’t make it onto my radar until after I noticed this decline in my tolerance, so I’ve never wanted to watch one. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/9 "2007-12-04T19:17:58Z")
Well, I’ve never been a gore-hound, but I think this phenomenon is partly due to age. Shocking movie violence seems to be aimed mainly at teenagers, who are often looking for extreme experiences. Middle-class suburban teenagers may even find it useful to redirect their feelings of fear onto something truly horrifying, so that their more mundane challenges (growing up, getting a job, and so on) seem less daunting. As we grow older, though, the real world around us becomes scarier and we have less desire to induce horror artificially. Anyway, that’s the best sociological bullshit I can come up with. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/10 "2007-12-04T19:58:19Z")
[QUOTE=WF Tomba] Well, I’ve never been a gore-hound, but I think this phenomenon is partly due to age. Shocking movie violence seems to be aimed mainly at teenagers, who are often looking for extreme experiences. Middle-class suburban teenagers may even find it useful to redirect their feelings of fear onto something truly horrifying, so that their more mundane challenges (growing up, getting a job, and so on) seem less daunting. As we grow older, though, the real world around us becomes scarier and we have less desire to induce horror artificially. Anyway, that’s the best sociological bullshit I can come up with. [/QUOTE] That was some awsomely accurate bullshit, I must say. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2007, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/11 "2007-12-04T23:58:16Z")
[QUOTE=vivalostwages] That was some awsomely accurate bullshit, I must say. [/QUOTE] Completely agreed. For me, it’s not the gore I mind, it’s the human suffering. I can watch 1,000 dudes get mowed down by a machine gun, some guy’s neck broken by a martial arts badass, and (though it’s kind of yucky) that scene in _Kill Bill_ where everyone gets their limbs sliced off and the stage is bathed in blood. Stupid gore movies (_House of Wax, 13 Ghosts_) make me roll my eyes and I don’t find them even a little bit scary or really entertaining. But you put one single person in a movie who is scared, who is about to be tortured, who IS being tortured, who is lost, trapped, in extreme pain or otherwise suffering psychologically, and I freak the heck out. Stirring and epic movies like _Pan’s Labyrinth_ and _Schindler’s List_\*, for example, leave me with nightmares and insomnia for weeks. I get freaked out just looking at the DVD cover for _Hostel_. That’s not happening EVER for me. \*I have not actually seen Schindler’s List, because I couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with the audio. I just couldn’t think of anything like it I’ve watched recently, because I tend to avoid those kind of movies. Pan’s Labyrinth was a beautiful work of art and a testament to Spain’s suffering during the postwar era, but I will never, ever watch it again. ---
**Author:** ![want2know](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/50afbb/32.png) [@want2know](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/want2know)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2007, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/12 "2007-12-05T18:39:27Z")
Lifelong horror movie fan here. My problem with the explicit gore in recent films is this: Gore has a place in films when it _drives_ the story, not when it _is_ the story. That, for me, is what separates Romero’s zombie series from films like **Hostel**. In order to show the threat from the zombies, a certain amount of gore is necessary. But Romero knew how often and when to place it. Today’s “torture-porn” is nothing more than a bloodbath from start to finish. It’s lazy filmmaking, plain and simple. Knock 'em off, make a profit, make more gorefests. But as long as there’s a market for it, it will continue. Personally, I choose not to watch films like that because they’re stupid and boring. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2007, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/13 "2007-12-05T18:50:17Z")
I feel that torture porn as a subgenre is back on the wane. It makes occasional appearances in culture, then tends to sink back into the muck after a while. The thing I worry about is that it really had a strong resurgence this time…possibly strong enough to influence other, non-torture-porn movies to include some of its conventions in their stories. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2007, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/14 "2007-12-05T19:42:12Z")
Some things, the imagination does enough damage - the chainsaw scene in “Scarface” compared to similar chainsaw scenes in the remake of TCM - as an example. The effects have come so far - they forget that the story/suspense is what the majority of viewers want - and instead rely on upping the ‘realism’ - I don’t watch horror films for realism. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2007, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/15 "2007-12-05T20:04:16Z")
[QUOTE=want2know] Lifelong horror movie fan here. My problem with the explicit gore in recent films is this: Gore has a place in films when it _drives_ the story, not when it _is_ the story. [/QUOTE] That’s what I think about Saw. The premise is vaguely interesting: he wants to teach people to value their lives so he threatens their lives to see what they’ll do to survive. But in order to convert someone, they have to stay alive and change themselves and their minds. Since there is only the slimmest of chances any of these people will make it, the premise is thwarted by the desire to show creative ways of offing people. And leave me wondering, who has the time or resources to create these elaborate schemes? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2007, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/16 "2007-12-05T20:08:45Z")
Hollywood does! Again and again and again. Yuck. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2007, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/17 "2007-12-06T00:27:44Z")
As I tell my customers, they don’t make horror movies these days; they make torture porn. That said, \*Vacancy \*and _The Messengers_ are exceptions, though neither is very good. _The Tripper_, an ax-murderer movie, is one of the best movies of the year. I was surprised that _Hostel II_ is better than the first one. It’s subtext is at the same time more subtle and more solid. I do wish Roth would just quit bullshitting around, though, and set _Hostel III_ at Birkenau. You know he wants to. I can’t decide if this genre will finally have reached maturity, or it will be its long-looked for death knell, when Christian Bale or somebody plays Dr. Mengele in a “Tarantino Presents.” ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2007, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/18 "2007-12-06T00:30:06Z")
[QUOTE=gigi] That’s what I think about Saw. The premise is vaguely interesting: he wants to teach people to value their lives so he threatens their lives to see what they’ll do to survive. [/QUOTE] Yeah, except Paul Verhoeven addresses the exact same theme with cheesecake instead of giallo. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2007, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/19 "2007-12-06T03:38:55Z")
[QUOTE=simster] Some things, the imagination does enough damage - the chainsaw scene in “Scarface” compared to similar chainsaw scenes in the remake of TCM - as an example. [/QUOTE] In this vein… I just watched the shower scene in Hitchcock’s ‘‘Psycho’’ for the first time ever. It didn’t show anything remotely gory… not a single stab wound… and yet it is one of the decidedly freakiest things I have ever seen. I feel like that scene showed me more about what it is like to die than any horror movie I’ve ever seen. You just literally sit there and watch her die. The way she reaches for the shower curtain to pull herself up, but doesn’t have the strength… gut-wrenching. It’s over fast, but not fast enough. Not to be all old-timey and everything, but I feel like that kind of imagination and atmospheric cinematography is lacking nowadays in mainstream film. Hitchcock scared the pants off of me without a bit of gore. I wish they made more films that way. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2007, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780/20 "2007-12-06T04:37:47Z")
[QUOTE=gigi] That’s what I think about Saw. The premise is vaguely interesting: he wants to teach people to value their lives so he threatens their lives to see what they’ll do to survive. But in order to convert someone, they have to stay alive and change themselves and their minds. Since there is only the slimmest of chances any of these people will make it, the premise is thwarted by the desire to show creative ways of offing people. And leave me wondering, who has the time or resources to create these elaborate schemes? [/QUOTE] From [The Onion Review](http://www.avclub.com/content/cinema/saw_iv) of Saw 4: > [@](#): > > With this perversely unforgiving sense of morality, Saw IV pushes the old slasher-movie trope of disproportionately punishing victims for relatively minor transgressions to ridiculous extremes. It’s only a matter of time until Bell starts punishing hapless souls for failing to floss regularly by having them yank out their own teeth with rusty pliers. It’s easy to imagine him portentously intoning, “You thought tooth decay was a big joke. Now rats will feast on your decaying corpse after you bleed to death.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-tolerance-for-gore-is-waning/428780.md?page=2)