LOOK, you can talk all you like about the cathartic effect of viewing fictional trauma and about the satirical insights that contemporary horror directors bring to their work, but the bottom line is that, just as some moviegoers enjoy weeping at amorous tragedies such as Love Story, others savour the vista of human innards being flung about the set.
It would reflect badly on the romantics if they got pleasure from watching real members of the public dying beautifully in one another's arms. Only genuine psychotics seek out footage of actual disembowelments. Both groups can, however, service their base instincts in the cinema without anybody getting hurt.
All of which is a way of explaining why Eli Roth, director of Hostel and its equally revolting sequel, just about deserves all the Bentleys, beach houses and cabin cruisers his intestinal entertainments have brought his way.
There is no question that the Hostel films have amusing things to say about many Americans' ignorance of any nation east of Martha's Vineyard. Similarly,
the pictures point the finger accusingly at the ugly forms of capitalist banditry that have taken root in certain parts of the former eastern bloc. But Roth's main talent is for devising ever more disturbing ways of dispatching his vacationing victims. Hostel: Part II features
a beheading, the severing of pudenda and a woman bathing in the blood of a recently slain teenager. If you like that sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you will like.
Once again the picture follows a group of Americans as they are lured to a Slovakian hostel whose owners allow their guests to be carved up by recreational torturers. This time round the victims are all women - cue furious newspaper features - but, as is the case in such proto- feminist slasher films as I Spit on Your Grave, the tables are eventually turned in ways that will induce serious wincing in male viewers.
The budget is more substantial than before and, as a result, Hostel: Part II looks somewhat like a mainstream film. But the insistent comic nastiness and the enthusiasm for turning all Europe into Transylvania confirm the picture as another proud exercise in cartoon sadism.
Nothing wrong with that. It is kinder to its heroine than was Love Story and ia heck of a lot funnier. DONALD CLARKE
