im just cutting and pasting this from a site where i got tired of people talking the same old crap. so please ignore the slightly annoyed tone in this analysis
next person to put their foot in ear with a "tarantino's sticky fingers all over it" comment deserves to be flushed in a nuclear reactor.
dont bother to check facts people, hell, MX didnt in their small article yesterday.
tarantino's producing credit was due pretty much solely on him throwing money at the production so that it didnt have to suffer under censorship and so that it would get more advertising and attention from the general public.
his reason for doing this is that eli roth set out to recreate that which was considered virtually impossible: recreate and reinvigorate the 70s eurotrash grindhouse sub-genre. about 10 years ago, tarantino helped set up a remastering and cinema re-release of Lucio Fulci's "The Beyond", a true masterpiece of bizarre cinema, and one of tarantino's favourite films.
now, roth's film isnt meant to be more than anything in regards to characters and plots. it's meant to be ian mcculloch all over again, as in the hero who despite everything just keeps on going along til the end, with no real twists and turns.
that isnt what this film is about.
it is not just tapping the vein, it is rebuilding the mythology of euro splatter.
american actors in euro setting.
trains playing key parts in the horror.
zombie like plagues of children (not for the zombie reference, but rather a particular evil child gang sub-genre that only really flourished in fascist spain).
eye ball motifs (the eye played a key part in the italian giallo genre, connecting voyeurism with the flinching of the eye away from violence. this particular motif was made his own by fulci, and as far as i am concerned he still holds the most horrific eyeball destruction scene in "Zombie Flesh Eaters".
the medical motif initiated by "Les Yeaux Sans Visage" and turned into a vista of carved up bodies, for science, and pleasure.
and last but not least, it isnt just a fun appearance of takashi miike in this film, being that the japanese are the only ones who have successfully done anything, on a large scale, with the ground breaking subgeneres of horror from the 70s and 80s.
hostel is a classic opera of violence, a grand guignol trip into a world of horror and destruction that "they don't want you to see". it is a true child of argento, fulci, martino, deodato, bava, franco and all those nobodies who filled drive in cinemas with broken bodies and shattered minds.
and last, but not least. for many many years, eli roth was assistant and close friend to david lynch. he assisted in creating many of lynch's 90s films.
so people say they see tarantino's fingerprints all over it.
i see a man who is putting together a lot of pieces of cinema, the things he learnt in youth when the world was different, and the things he learnt from a great calculating mind, and is taking them into his own areas. not for gold or prizes, but for the sheer enjoyment of finally seeing the offspring of "Late Night Trains" and "Gritos En La Noche". these films were bad and raw, poverty row and braindead, but often powered by bizarrely powerful visions that are still haunting and disturbing today.
if it had been a better film it wouldnt have been grindhouse.
if Hostel had been a better film, if it had connected to the audience, it wouldve become unwatchable. a futile effort of depravity, akin to something like irreversible, only minus academic construction and subtext, things which would not have sat with the alarmist, urban legend nature of Hostel.
people will buy the same trash cliches from tarantino with kill bill, because it is a sub-genre that is easier to understand and grasp, because it is entertainment of a fun variety, because it is tarantino and thurman and carridine.
but roth is just some nobody under tarantino's thumb, right? and u didnt spot miike, and the classic stars appear only in motif. and most of all, people will think it is a particular species of horror because they didnt know it could have these unusual markings. tis a rare species, and that's why i it is amazing.
i will note however that i would never attempt to rate this film out of 10. it is a concept piece that most certainly does not exist for rating or easy digestion.
