Splatter

Starting in the 1960s, exploitation cinema began producing a series of films designed to satisfy voyeuristic fans of body horror who'd had a morbid fascination with dismemberments and mutilations since Gothic fiction emerged in the late 1700s.

It was Herschell Gordon Lewis - financed by his friend and business partner David F. Friedman - who launched this cinematic gorefest with a long string of seedy works that lingeringly revel in horrific details such as severed limbs, gouged-out eyeballs, and eviscerated bodies. Although these films still featured a somewhat "static" gore component - the blood appeared puddled or clotted - this esthetic undoubtedly played a key role in lighting the way to what would shortly become true "splatter" (the term, popularized by American critic John McCarthy, suggests spurting arteries and splattering blood and guts).

Steeped in violence and erotic impulses, the cynical 1970s amounted to a real-life experimental lab when it came to realistic cinematic depictions of physical injuries and wounds, but it would be the mythical 1980s, a hedonistic decade par excellence, that represented the pinnacle of splatter, thanks mainly to a host of heavy hitters who successfully exploited the canons of body horror to create works of significant artistic and conceptual value. But whether the film was serious and thought-provoking or simply meant as entertainment plain and simple, the important thing was that blood, and plenty of it, was finally free-flowing - spurting from slashes, gushing from wounds, spewing and gurgling amidst a tangle of pulsating entrails and slimy innards...

With that in mind, this Tag will be used for films characterized by a pronounced presence of blood and guts and Grand Guignol special effects.