Torture Porn/Hyper Violent Movies Featuring Women As The Monster?
 

Hi!

Sorry to bother you guys but I'm currently working on my dissertation on the topic of women within violent contemporary horror and was wondering if you could help me?

I'm looking for films that could be classified under the term Torture Porn that feature female characters as the perpetrator or aggressor rather than the victim. I have a few already, but I'm sure there are more out there and I thought who better to ask than you guys?

Thus far I have:
1. SAW
2. The Loved Ones
3. Haute Tension
4. À l'interieur

Do you know of any others?

I hate the term Torture Porn and wish people would stop using it. I understand the reasoning behind it, a la, "I get off on watching people get tortured (fictionally), and this movie tittilates me in that way." The problem is a) the term "porn" will cause many people (including respected critics like Roger Ebert) to misunderstand the term, and think that it includes sex or nudity, and b) Torture Porn films are fictional, where the torture is acted, but in pornography the sex is real. (Not counting Skinemax style softcore, which can barely be considered "porn.")

So ignoring that term, you're asking about movies where a woman is responsible for sadistic torture.

Good examples I can think of are:

- Hard Candy
- American Mary
- The Girl Next Door
- Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS
- I Spit on Your Grave (remake franchise) focuses more than the original did on using torture in the revenge
- Salo (both males and females inflicting torture)

From your examples, The Loved Ones is a good one, where the theme truly is about torture, and the monster is a woman.

A'Linterieur is not really a torture film, but the female antagonistic is certainly sadistic, and inflicts plenty of harm in her quest.

[SPOILER]
Haute Tension is not a torture film, and the viewer doesn't know the monster is a woman until the end. Like Inside, she does inflict plenty of harm though.
[/SPOILER]

The Saw films are torture films. The female antagonist (Amanda) is really only directly applicable to Saw 3, where she begins to construct the torture traps herself and becomes even more sadistic than Jigsaw. [SPOILER] I guess you could include 2, although that would be a spoiler, and she's not really doing the torture in that film, just helping capture people. Including Saw 1 seems like a stretch.

- edit -

I just noticed that the title of your post includes "hyper violent movies," not just torture porn. In that case, I would definitely include A'Linterieur.

FIVE ACROSS THE EYES 2006

Recently found this one on YouTube.

Audition

Where's Ferox? ::wink::


The only other one I can think of is Mum & Dad.

Of course! How could I forget that one?

Because it's not "torture porn"? It just got one freakin scene.

Oh, but what a scene it is! :)

Thank you for all your help, guys! I will collect all these films and give them a good watch through!

For the record, GiganticFace, I'm aware of the problems with the term "torture porn", and was using it more as a short hand, like the scholar Steve Jones. Personally I'd argue that torture porn is shockingly non sexual in nature considering its name (after all, the SAW franchise has almost no sex in it at all, though perhaps thats something to do with the term torture porn being applied to it retrospectively).

You're missing quite a few titles...

The August Underground trilogy;

August Underground
Mordum
Penance

Then there's always Martyrs...I can't believe this classic, highly brutal film isn't on here.
What about Human Centipede 2?
A Serbian Film? Come on...a woman gets her head cut off DURING sex...by the guy banging her...and it's very graphic.
Someone mentioned Ferox...yes, Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust are contenders...
The Hostel series...
I could go on and on...
The Collector and The Collection...