foreign horror

1982’s “Strange Behavior” is a strange little movie. It’s a mad scientist/revenge film, that was set in Middle America and shot in New Zealand. It features high level character actors but pairs them with kiwi first-timers that are incapable of anything approaching a yank accent. In places it is tonally similar to Gary Sherman’s “Dead and Buried” which was released the same year, but it wants to be more of an homage to 50’s era sci-fi/horror.

Fairly or not, when future horror historians look back on this decade there's going to be a lot of discussion of “torture porn”. The label may or may not be fair, but there is no denying that the themes of torture, sadism and captivity have been touched on by many horror films of the 2000s. The problem with most of these films is that while ostensibly the filmmakers are condemning the acts it's apparent that the audience is supposed to wallow in delight at the splatter and desperation, and sometimes are even meant to identify more with the torturer than the victim.