Splatter film

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A splatter film is a subgenre of horror films that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and graphic violence. These films, usually through the use of special effects, display a fascination with the vulnerability of the human body and the theatricality of its mutilation. The term "splatter cinema" was coined by George A. Romero to describe his film Dawn of the Dead, though Dawn of the Dead is generally considered by critics to have higher aspirations, such as social commentary, than to be simply exploitative for its own sake.^[1]

The term was popularized by John McCarty's 1981 book Splatter Movies, subtitled: Breaking The Last Taboo: A Critical Survey of the Wildly Demented Sub Genre of the Horror Film that Is Changing the Face of Film Realism Forever.^[2] The first significant publication to attempt to define and analyse the 'Splatter Film', McCarty suggests that Splatter is indicative of broader trends in film production. Though Splatter is associated with fairly extreme Horror Films, and such works form the main focus of the book, a relatively diverse range of titles dating mainly from the 1960s to late 1970s are also included, for example John Waters' Female Trouble, Ted Post's Magnum Force, Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky, and Walter Hill's Western The Long Riders.^[3] This filmography implies that the influence of film-makers such as Sam Peckinpah or Andy Warhol, to name two, is as significant to the development of the form as Grand Guignol, Hammer Films or Herschell Gordon Lewis.

During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the use of graphic violence in cinema has been labeled "torture porn" or "gorno" (a portmanteau of "gore" and "porno").^[4] By contrast, films such as Braindead, Evil Dead II, Idle Hands, and to some extent Dawn of the Dead, all of which feature over-the-top gore, can be construed as comedic, and fall into the category of splatstick.