Movies

A splatter film or gore film is a type of horror film that deliberately concentrates on portrayals of gore and violence. These films, through the use of special effects and excessive blood and guts, tend to display an overt interest in the vulnerability of the human body. Due to their willingness to make manifest images that society might consider taboo, splatter films share ideological grounds with the transgressive art movement. As a distinct genre, the splatter film began in the 1960s with the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, for example Blood Feast (1963). One of the most successful splatter films was George Romero's 1978 zombie film Dawn of the Dead, which went out into American theatres unrated rather than with the X-rating it would have got for its scenes of explicit carnage.

The term "splatter film" is often confused with "slasher film". While there is often a great deal of overlap, a slasher like Halloween (1978) cannot be termed a splatter film, as it does not contain sufficient on-screen gore.

Sometimes the gore is so excessive it becomes a comedic device, e.g. Evil Dead II (1987). Splatstick is a phrase coined by Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell to describe those movies. It is defined as physical comedy (slapstick) that involves evisceration (making the sound "splat!"). Some further examples of splatstick would include Peter Jackson's Bad Taste (1987) and Braindead (1992).

Scenes of splatter can also appear in films of other genres, some examples are Michele Soavi's Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore, 1994) and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (2003).

External links

• Who's Laughing Now? The postmodern splatter film
• Body of Work: Gore
• Splatter/Gore Film Guide