A History of Gore and Splatter in Cinema
1929: Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali collaborate to create the surreal short film Un Chien Andalou, which features a very graphic eyeball slicing. A genuine cow eyeball was used so this looked incredibly real, making people cringe to this day. The first extreme gore scene in a film.
1934: Dwain Esper's surreal and experimental psycho/horror film Maniac has a scene where a cat plays with a heart. Not too graphic by today's standards but still pretty sick and disgusting.
1940: The Nazi propaghanda film Eternal Jew directed by Fritz Hippler shows a scene of Jews slaughtering a cow to make it Kosher. An extremely gory scene with a cow's throat slit and left to bleed to death. It violently twitches around as it gushes blood out its big neck wound by the gallons. This film was basically used to turn everyone against the Jews, painting them as immoral savages that must be exterminated. Putting this graphic scene near the end of the film was clever of the Nazis since the final moments in any movie are the ones people remember the most. And when a lot of people remembered that cow getting butchered the most, they sure as hell were pissed off at the Jews. Just goes to show how powerful an impact gore has on a viewer. Later in 1952, Night and Fog would show the Nazi's brutally murdering Jews. Some denied the Holocaust and said the gore scenes were Jewish propaganda that the Jews in Hollywood created.
1950's: Driver's Ed "scare films" such as The Red Asphalt series features the gruesome aftermath of car accidents so people can take driving more seriously. Later on in the 60's there would be similar graphic movies known as "shockumentaries" that would document the shocking and sensational, including gore. The movie Mondo Cane started the whole "mondo film" thing.
1962: The Japanese legend Akira Kurosawa makes the samurai film Sanjuro, which contains a scene where a guy sprays a ridiculous amount of blood when he dies. Chocolate syrup, carbonated water, and a whole lot of pressure was used to do this. Later into the 70's other Japanese movies like Lady Snowblood and Lone Wolf Cub series (the 1st 2 eps combined better known as the movie Shogun Assassin) would take the blood splatter into more extreme levels.
1963: Herschell Gordon Lewis makes Blood Feast, which is considered to be the first real gore/splatter film in horror history. Yep, this is the one that started it all folks with gratuitous blood-drenched kills, severed limbs, and meaty chunks of humans. It's the first known actual film that shamelessly exploited gore and attracted an audience by sensationalizing the gore in the title, poster, and trailer. Gory kills and special effects became an emphasis in a film, it wasn't just an isolated scene like in earlier films with gore. In later years, H.G. Lewis would go on to do more gory films like Wizard of Gore, Gore Gore Girls, Color me Blood Red, and Gruesome Twosome.
1964: Flesh Eaters comes out. Capitalizes on sensational gore too. This stuff gets popular in Drive-In theaters.
1968: George Romero makes Night of the Living Dead which did have some scenes of blood and people being eaten. This film would later on spawn the even gorier sequels, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead. It would also inspire a gorier approach to zombie films that filmamkers such as Lucio Fulci would take to more extreme heights. Before Night of the Living Dead, the zombie movie genre lacked excessive gore and were pretty boring.
1972: Wes Craven does Last House on the Left, a rape/revenge film that delivers some violent gore.
1974: Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes out. It's more of an atmospheric horror film than a gory horror film but still it's pretty gory in its nature with a guy wearing human skin! This film really influenced a lot of gore/splatter later on in the future.
1975: Monthy Python's Holy Grail, a comedy, has some real bloody scenes where a guy pours blood out his wounds like a waterfall.
1976: The controversial erotic Japanese arthouse film In the Realm of Senses has a penis cutting scene that leaves nothing to the imagination. You see the blade actually go through the guy's shaft. Ouch! The entire movie was graphic, showing hardcore penetration, hence why some call this film nothing but a porno. Bloodsucking Freaks came around this time too, combining sex and gore in a more exploitation fashion.
1979: Alien chest burst scene! This would be parodied later on in movies like Seventh Curse and Space Balls.
1980's: Gore and violence was apparently rising so much in the 80's that the Video Nasties was established in the United Kingdom as a means to censor the growing extreme shit (although not all the Video Nasties were as nasty as you'd think, especially weak shit like Killer Nun and Don't Go Near the Park). Troma, a company founded in 1974 releases gory classics such as The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke'em High, and Redneck Zombies. Comedic gore aka splatstick films are born: Sam Raimi doing Evil Dead I and II, Stuart Gordon doing From Beyond and Re-Animator, and Peter Jackson doing the alien massacre masterpiece, Bad Taste. Frank Henenlotter did Basket Case and Brain Damage (brain gore!), which were funny and delivered the gory goods too. Japan's Guinea Pig series comes out. These films made gore look disturbingly realistic and Charlie Sheen even thought Flower of Flesh and Blood was a genuine snuff film (source). The Faces of Death Series arrives and gets people wondering if the gore is real or not, even though majority of the gore is fake (source). A 1982 documentary called Killing of America on the other hand was the real thing. Tom Savini does gore effect and make-up in films like Friday the 13th, The Burning, Maniac, Day of the Dead, The Prowler, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and Creepshow. Slashers, Cannibal films, and Zombie films kept being churned out to jump on this blood craze. The Italians were responsible for a lot of these gory offerings. Lucio Fulci's movies were released: New York Ripper, Zombie, City of the Living Dead, House by the Cemetary, and The Beyond. Joe D'Amato does Antropophagus and Beyond the Darkness (from 79 but still part of the 80's craze). Ruggero Deodato makes Cannibal Holocaust, that infamous film with genuine animal kills and that image of a woman impaled on a pole. Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox was the other cannibal film that became legendary. Indonesia delivered gore with Jaka Sembung and other Barry Prima films. Jörg Buttgereit of Germany did Nekromantik, a film about necrophilia. In America Nathan Schiff did some of the goriest stuff in the era with Long Island Cannibal Massacre and They Don't Cut The Grass Anymore (what I consider to be one of the goriest films of all time.) Even people that didn't have much money took a shot at creating gore films, doing cheap shot on video (SOV) shit. Video Violence and Cannibal Campout are born. The last great gore film before the 80's ended was the gritty people-melting epic, Street Trash.
Other noteworthy 80's gore/splatter movies: Cannibal Apocalypse, Zombie Holocaust , Demons, Stagefright, Nightmare in a Damaged Brain, Slaughter High, Nightmare City, Chopping Mall, Dark Power, Humanoids from the Deep, Dawn of the Mummy, Burial Ground, Dead Next Door, The Deadly Spawn, Deadbeat at Dawn, Evilspeak, My Bloody Valentine, Night of the Demon, Night of the Demons, Return of the Living Dead, The Seventh Curse, Skinned Alive, The Thing, Society, Scanners, Evil Laugh, Flesh Eating Mothers, Hellraiser, Mother's Day
1990's: In the late 80's and throughout the 90's, German gorefreak Andreas Schnaas does the Violent Shit films full of splatterific effects, Zombie Doom being the best one. In 1991 Ngai Kai Lam's Story of Ricky recieves the infamous Hong Kong Category III rating due to the ridiculous amounts of gore, rather than for sexual content. Other Category III's such as Men Behind the Sun, Dr. Lamb, Untold Story, Diary of a Serial Killer, and Ebola Syndrome had gore too but Story of Ricky was over-the-top with the blood and guts! Later in 1994, the ultimate gore movie arrives: Peter Jackson's Braindead aka Dead Alive. This movie has the infamous lawnmower scene where zombies are chopped up into gory pieces. That movie was gory as fuck, even before and after that lawnmower scene. A German zombie movie called Premutos is pretty close to the gore level of Braindead. There's also a vampire movie by Leif Jonker's called Darkness, which had people exploding like crazy! Another extremely gory film was Nacho Cerda's Aftermath, like Nekromantik a decade before, this one was about necrophilia. The director of Nekromantik also had an offering to the 90's, which was Schramm, a gruesome serial killer film. Traces of Death was the 90's answer to Faces of Death, but with genuine gore. Japan's goriest entries in the 90's would probably be Naked Blood which features a girl eating herself, Organ and Psycho Snuff Reels, a really bad amature porno meets snuff. Hard Boiled, action film from Hong Kong had a huge body count (307) and loads of bloody gun shot wounds. By the end, 1999, Das Komabrutale Duell comes out, the gore level is pretty ridiculous in this one.
2000's: Japan has some gory films like Versus, Suicide Circle, Stacy, and Ichi the Killer. Computer effects are used in some of these films though. Hostel, Saw, Live Feed, and Murder Set Pieces come out, utilizing gore in scenes with an emphasis on torture. Critics throw around the term "torture porn/gore porn" on these types of films and a new style of splatter movies is kinda invented. Bone Sickness was the goriest zombie film of the era, even gorier than Romero's Land of the Dead. Philosophy of a Knife is an epic 4+ hour film by Andrey Iskanov, touching on the same subject Men Behind the Sun did but goes WAY further in showcasing the brutality and inhumanity of Japan during WWII. Iskanov is one hell of a director! The 00's does see two legendary splatter geniuses completely change for the worse though. Peter Jackson, the man responible for two of the goriest films in cinematic history (Bad Taste and Braindead) now does tame mainstream films like Lord of the Rings and King Kong. And Sam Raimi is now doing pussy Hollywood garbage like Spider-Man and its useless sequels.
~ joseangeles@muchomail.com