The Worst Movie Everyone Loves

Quentin Tarantino has terrible taste in movies. Actually, I stated that wrong: Tarantino has a taste for terrible movies. Everything he lists as his influences and the "sources" for all his movies would make most peoples' "Movies I Hated" Lists.

Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Movies like Lady Snowblood and They Call Her One Eye (the "inspirations" behind Kill Bill) are completely enjoyable crap that have a surprisingly large cult following. But, they are just that: crap. Some people don't appreciate things like a samurai movie filled with sex and violence. And that's fine; they're not for everybody.

But Tarantino doesn't seem to get this. He seems to feel almost obligated to shove all the shit that he loves right in the public's face, to get them to love it too. He might say that he thinks Fulci's The Beyond is the Greatest Horror Movie Ever, and then people take his word on it, and go out and see it, and find out it's actually a piece of shit. (As a Fulci fan, I will say that The Beyond is probably Fulci's best film, but, yes, it is a piece of shit.) It's great that your influences are kinda offbeat, but they're so off the beaten path that they only appeal to a small sliver of the audience. (This is also the reason Kill Bill totally blew, because the only person that could enjoy everything crammed into it is Tarantino. It's the ultimate fanboy movie, but just for that one fanboy.) I didn't think the object of filmmaking was to alienate your audience, but I don't make movies, so I'm not an expert on the subject. (If Tarantino hadn't made Pulp Fiction, he wouldn't be worth wasting any time on.)

All that being said, it doesn't surprise me that Tarantino got his name attached to Hostel, Eli Roth's follow up to Cabin Fever, which, in some circles, was seen as the revival of the "R-rated" horror movie. (I thought that honor went to Scream, but I'm probably wrong on that, too.) Oh sure, Cabin Fever was R-rated, and bloody as hell, but it was also completely moronic. To say it saved the horror movie (and this is not my line, but I use it cuz it's hilarious) is like saying Nickelback saved rock-and-roll. (Ha ha. Nickelback.)

From what I've read, Tarantino was so enamored with Cabin Fever that he persuaded Roth into making a similarly gory follow-up, as opposed to the studio-recommended material he was considering making. And so, we ended up with Hostel. (And speaking of studios, when did the studio that released Hostel, Lion's Gate Films, once a very brave indie studio, become content with releasing nothing but ripoffs of SAW? Those dollar signs turned LGF into a bigger whore than Miramax.)

I'll just come right out and say it: I love gory exploitation films, and Hostel was a complete piece of trash. I hated it so much, I'm considering suing Roth and LGF to get my $3.00 admission and that hour and a half of my life back. (Yeah, I paid three bucks to see this movie, and I'm still pissed.) Oh, there's plenty of blood and guts to go around. The blood gets ladled out like watery soup down at the homeless shelter. No complaints there. But to call this a "movie" would imply that there is some sort of central idea, or "plot," as they call it in the biz, behind all this bloodshed. Nope. None. Any scene in this "movie" that doesn't involve tits (which are plentiful as well) or blood is basically just filler until the next scene that involves tits and blood. To use an earlier example, The Beyond has such a simple plot that the screenplay could have been written on a cocktail napkin, but it has a plot. The gore isn't the driving force in that movie; there just happens to be a ton of it that pops up from time to time. The only reason to watch Hostel is for the gore, because there isn't anything but gore (oh, and tits) to watch. I can sum up Hostel's "plot" in six words: Three morons enter Slovakia (Slovakia?? Who the fuck goes to Slovakia?!? Maybe they thought it was still part of the Czech Republic) and die. Add approximately 90 minutes worth of sex and violence to that, and that's Hostel.

It's tragic that people are actually paying money and going through the theatre-imposed hassles to see this movie. (Not only was I carded, I had to pass a security checkpoint to enter the actual theatre.) It will only encourage Roth to make more movies, and Tarantino to promote them, and both of these guys are about T-plus 20 minutes past their fame running out.

But, after all this bashing, I will say one thing about Hostel: It was better than the similarly-themed Wolf Creek, which was so bad that I kept hoping the characters would die faster, so that the movie would be over. So it's got that going for it.

Go see Munich instead. Best movie I've seen this year.