Rumour, hearsay and gossip have long been friends of the film marketing machine. Whether it’s stories about on-set romances, banned scenes or ‘cursed’ sets, it goes without saying that the more a film is discussed prior to release (preferably with a high degree of polarised opinion) the easier it is to market and distribute to an eager and receptive audience. Marketing people would be using words like “viral” at this point to explain the mysterious attraction of a film that is talked about precisely because it is being talked about.
Occasionally, a film comes along that is not only surrounded by the usual gossip and hearsay but all-out hysteria. A film purported to exert strange powers on all who dare to see it: pregnant women faint and the elderly experience cardiac events while others run screaming from the theatre. Films that fall into this category are usually of the horror genre, the most famous example being The Exorcist, which became the stuff of legend in 1973 as a mesmerised U.S audience reported anything from dizzy spells and heart attacks to sudden death during screenings. There was a genuine sense that the film’s power transcended mere entertainment, and to some it became not only a portrayal of possession but a demonic force to be feared on its own right. To date, the film has been (tenuously) linked with at least 9 deaths.
The most terrifying of films often use the conceit of cinema itself to draw audiences into the action. The idea that a film could be so frightening as to be mortally dangerous to the viewer was played on to great effect in Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998). The film maintains an equivalent status in Japan as The Exorcist in the U.S - both in terms of Box office earnings and impact on the public at large.
"In the case of Cannibal Holocaust, rumours that the film was in fact a snuff film involving the real-life butchery of its cast...only made audiences more keen to watch"
Found-footage films such as Cannibal Holocaust (1980), The Blair Witch Project (1999) or Paranormal Activity (2007) – the latter of which has spawned a multi-million pound franchise with no less than five sequels – have succeeded in terrorising audiences precisely by making them feel complicit in the horror on screen. This is often complemented by off-screen controversy, which serves to stir audiences into a frenzy prior to actually viewing the film. The Blair Witch Project was famously accompanied by reports of nausea and vomiting in cinemas, partly due to its shaky handheld camerawork but also because of its claustrophobic psychological tension. In the case of Cannibal Holocaust, rumours that the film was in fact a snuff film involving the real-life butchery of its cast – an accusation that placed its director under arrest for murder – only made audiences more keen to watch it.
While the history of cinema is peppered with films that have attracted the disapproval and even censure of the establishment on moral grounds, there are few films that have managed to incite real outbreaks of hysteria among cinemagoers. With enough sex and violence, it is easy to create a merely controversial film; but creating a cinematic experience that leaves audiences out of their minds in terror is an altogether higher skill.
The question is, are today’s increasingly smart and cynical movie-goers still capable of reacting to a film in this way? It may be a relief that a saturday-night trip to the cinema isn’t usually accompanied by an audience member becoming apoplectic with terror. At the same time, horror cinema at its best should be a visceral experience so it’s a rather sad state of affairs if we’ve become so desensitised as an audience that we’re no longer able to experience cinema on the kind of visceral level that would cause one to become apoplectic with terror.
One of the most controversial films in recent years was the critically-panned Human Centipede (2010). The low-budget horror attracted attention because of its grotesque subject matter and its director’s dubious claim that the scenes of human mutilation portrayed were ‘100% Surgically accurate’. Its sequel (Human Centipede 2 (2011), high on body count but low on everything else) pushed boundaries even further and was initially banned in the UK until substantial cuts were made.
Yet, the Human Centipede can hardly claim to have caused the levels of anarchy inspired by The Exorcist and earlier ground breaking horrors – regardless of Director Tom Six’s attempt to convince the public that he was documenting ‘real’ events. Ultimately mere gore (even at its absolute goriest) is no substitute for the sheer craftsmanship that sets the likes of The Exorcist and Ringu apart from the crowd.
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