Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Hostel (2006)
Paxton: We can't rail a girl that's in a coma.
I think that's illegal, even in Amsterdam. 

Last week was the 10th anniversary of Eli Roth's Hostel and I totally missed it. I hadn't updated my 2016 calendar with the year's anniversaries yet -- I don't remember this movie having come out in January either? I suppose it makes sense - they weren't gunning for any Oscars with this one. Anyway the movie was a sensation and caused quite a ruckus, helping to spawn the mid-decade tag of "Torture Porn" that echoed in the wake of Abu Ghraib and such. With that cheerful reminder, here's a video of Eli Roth being chatty and peppy talking about the anniversary. (thanks Jim)
.
I haven't watched the movie in several years but I was always a staunch defender of it and of Eli's purposes with it -- he didn't do a lot to help me out with my claim that it's more than fratty posturing over the years but I still think, whether he intended it all or not, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on under the surface of the film, especially the turned textual grappling with gay subtext. 

The "best friend" character of Josh, played by Derek Richardson, is clearly having some queer issues, which is picked up on by the film's predatorial forces, and yadda yadda bad stuff happens! Anyway that's nice and all, but more importantly, we must ask (and ignore poor doomed Eythor Gudjonsson as Oli in the center)...
.

.

3 comments:

Adam said...

I have like no memory of this movie. What was the gay subtext/main text?

Anonymous said...

When Hostel II came out, it made me realize how expected it would've been to make women the victims in the first film, considering how long the victims spend in their underwear. I mean, when has a horror movie chosen to focus on underwear-clad male victims before underwear-clad female victims? But looking at these pictures, besides Mr. Hernandez, they don't exactly look like studio executives told them to get in shape for the movie. How nice for these men that they can't be the doughy stars of a movie where they spend most of the time in their underwear yet women would never be able to be that out of shape in the same scenario.

FoxVerde said...

lumbersexuals with dad bods lol