When movies become too violent

[J.R.]

Actually, show me all the violence against humans you want, but when you start hurting the animals you've gone too far. There's just something about hurting a kitten or puppy or something.

[ErikJ]

I don't like it when children are involved. Adults are one thing but in a world where violence against children is becoming more common, I really feel it has no place in movies.

[Susan]

Violence again'st children isn't common in today's world. Did you know at the turn of the 20th century it was commonplace to purchase orphans to do slave labor on farms..often abused and starved? Well I think we've come a long way, we're a society that actual caters to children..you still have your sickos out there. I think we've lost touch with reality - we see reports in the news and think it's everywhere. In fact it's less so because people are afraid to even spank their own kids...vs generations prior who believed "what goes on behind closed doors is nobody's business" That's a whole other issue and way too serious for here.

Not many films that show violence against young children, only teens..but that's a given since they're the victims in sex camp horrors. Now if you're talkin children DOING the violence..that's not their fault..usually it's because they were turned into zombies. ;-)

[ErikJ]

I only state the fact of it being common as the rash of kidnappings and here in my home town a 11 year old and 15 year old were murdered, the same day they found that little girl in California(So you know I'm in NW Indiana). I also say common because it seems like I cannot open the paper or turn on the TV without hearing about some poor kid who was caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout(Not so common anymore) or parents who do it just to shut them up(more common everyday)
I am the father of 3 and I believe I have a right(just as any parent) to be concered about violence against kids

[bryce]

i respect your opinion , umm (but obviously not enough to remember your name) nbk was over the top what do you expect from a movie titled "natural born killers" this movie was violent but it made a point and was great film. fight club, my favorite film ever , i do not feel is over the top it portrays violence realisticly, and if it doesnt blame it on the book not the director. if you want to see a violent movie with no redeeming value see "the doom deneration" i couldnt finish it in one sitting the violence is way, way over the top and the movie has no social comentary. maybe after seeing that piece of trash you can aprieciate the other fore montioned films to of my favorites

[chris]

I love when they kill off a kid in a horror flick.  That means all bets are off, everyone's fair game.  To think, in Speilberg's classic, Jaws, that kid gets killed in a horrific way and years later in his dud Jurassic Park, the audience knows the kids are in no real peril, there's no way they'll die.  It is a shock when a child dies in a film, but in the long run, it is only make believe.
Oh yeah, I also love irresponsible, exageratted, overly graphic film violence with no redeeming qualities also.

[laitka]

I have to say that I agree with the general concensus that movie violence where the author/director are making a statement (fight club and nbk i would definately file in this category) but those where there is no point just random gratuitous violence is disgusting.   However there are few that would fall under that banner.

I don;t think that I have ever heard really offensive language in a movie (half the time it just goes over your head - you'd probably be surprised just how often) most of the males in my life speak a lot worse.

Meanwhile, what are views on drug use in movies?

[Neville]

Laitka said: "Meanwhile, what are views on drug use in movies?"

I would say they are more or less the same than on movie violence. I don't mind movies showing drug taking or drug addiction, but I would feel a bit relieved if its consequences were shown as well, if the plot allows it.

Oh, about violence exrced by or over kids, I see somebody hasn't read "Lord of flies" or seen "Village of the dammed". Personally, I think children can be extremely cruel, because they haven't been taught yet all the social rules about violence and its use, and now and then, when I see children in movies I found quite annoying how "perfect" they are. Looks like studios find the idea of violent children too disturbing or not profitable enought.

[chris]

Best killer kid movie: The Pit.  Man that kid was demented.

[John]

>for millions of years our ancestors watched the real thing. Gladiator fights, mans
>rights of passage (young boys impaled and strung up or knives carving into their
>heads or killing a bear to prove they're a man), virgin sacrifices, cannibalism,
>torture chambers, mass public executions...I think as a society we've actually
>come a long way..lol

 No, western society and most parts of Europe have come a long way, but for many parts of the world, all that is still commonplace. Wanna take a look at the video clip I have of a guy in some middle east country being anally impaled on a stake while the crowd cheers it on? Or the video of Daniel Pearl having his head sawed off with a knife? How about a public stoning in the middle east? Or a south American woman with half the skin on her right breast burned or ripped off? Somewhere I think I even have a clip showing an african circumcision where they just tied a cord around the skin at the end, pulled it way out and chopped the end off with a machette.

>The only movie that has been maybe too gory for me is Hellraiser.

 Hellraiser wasn't as bad as Day of the Dead. A zombie body with just the brain attached to the neck, another zombie with its guts severed and just sitting in the hole where its stomach used to be, an arm being hacked off etc.

>Not many films that show violence against young children, only teens..but that's
>a given since they're the victims in sex camp horrors. Now if you're talkin
>children DOING the violence..that's not their fault..usually it's because they were
>turned into zombies. ;-)

 Yes, but then you have to hack off their hands with a sword to kill them.

>Best killer kid movie: The Pit. Man that kid was demented

 What about The Good Son with Macauly Culkin?

 "If I let go, do you think you could fly?"

[Susan]

Well yes I mean western culture has come a long way..that is the society most of the posters here live in and relate to. Obviously other countries are more barbaric..but if anything just following the old traditions. We may still execute people, but we do it silently, usually painlessly, and not in a crowded street. But given the west produces the most amount of films, you have lots of people living here who figure it attributes to the violence in our society when frankly I feel the violence in our society is drastically lower than it would be if we didn't live in such a media driven PC culture. It's still there mind you, but not to the extent it has been and it could be. I think we live out our violent natures through watching films, but it's instinctual. People gawk at roadside accidents, tune into the news to watch live images or replay after replay of carnage and mayhem. We can't get enough of watching it. But overall I feel violent tendencies have been supressed in western culture. Your kids can sue you for a spanking...lol.

But we are a voyeristic culture, we have media 24-7 on tv showing us all the violence they can find. It only "seems" like things are more violent than ever but I think it's not true. It just seems that way becuase we have access to that information as where we didn't before. But being such a PC society, with social awareness I think our violence has been dramatically toned down..even in the past 100 years compared to how we used to live and treat children/people. However it's also two-sided, because the medias obsession with showing "real" violence (vs what we see in movies) is more detrimental. It is like "Natural born killers", we make specticals and celebrities out of criminals, and in turn that encourages those who want attention in life and feel like an outcast to do violence because they'll get on tv. Sounds hokey but I think if they never showed a single school shooting on tv it wouldn't have encouraged more kids to "copycat". So IMO the media is more dangerous than what movies could ever show. Course i don't think anybody here wants to get into this..we'd just go round and round with it. :)

[BoyScoutKevin]

As this thread has seemly evolved into a thread about viiolence against children, let me see what I can add to the subject. As I am mostly neutral on the subject, which can be seen from the lists below of the dozen films in which  a half dozen or more children
were killed.  More or less arragned from most violent to least violent. The ones I liked on the left, and the ones I disliked o n the right.

Doctor Zhivago                            Village of the Damned (1995)
Bugsy Malone                               Swarm
Village of the Damned (1960)   Basketball Diaries
Cemetery Man                               Red Dawn
Massacre at Central High           Revenge of the Teenage Vixens from Outer Space
Children of the Damned              Sometimes They Come Back for More

A dead child or dead children are good for one thing. They are a shorthand method to depicting the horror and tragedy of war. Though, this may be sometime of a film cliche, as the idea dates back to at least 1916 and "Intolerance," if not earlier. So, here are the war films in which a child or children die.

Alexander Nevsky                                  Lionheart
Back to Bataan                                        Man of Legend
Braveheart                                                The Mission
A Bridge Too Far                                   War and Peace (1957)
Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)   War and Peace (1968)
Cross of Iron                                              Waterloo
Glory                                                              Zulu Dawn
The Green Berets                                     300 Spartans

As for horror, ever since Frankenstein's Monster threw Little Maria into water, so that she drowned in "Frankenstein," a dead child or dead children have been a staple in horror films. Here are some of the horror films, that feature a dead child or children.

Arachnophobia                    Lair of the White Worm
Black Sabbath                     Lost Continent
Brotherhood of the Wolf   Near Dark
Cry of the Banshee            Return to Salem's Lot
Dracula (1979)                      Salem's Lot
Fright Night                            Vampire Circus
Interview with a Vampire    Twilight Zone: the Movie
It's Alive                                    6th Sense
Kronos

Of course, the fact that in some of these films, the children died, then came back as vampires may not count.

Here are some other facts. The worst (or best) years for violence against children was 1987 to 1997. In the five years since then, violence against children has more or less continually declined. The ratio is for every girl killed in a film, then 2.82 boys are killed. And the best "killer kid" film, that will be taken up tomorrow, when I can double check my notes.

[BoyScoutKevin]

As I said in yesterday's post,, if one is looking for a good "killer kid" film, then one has to look no further then some horror films. As what is a vampire, basically? Basically, a vampire is a killer. Thus, if one has a kid vampire, one has a killer kid.
Here are some of the films that feature a child vampire.

Black Sabbath
Fright Night
I Was A Teenage Vampire
Interview with a Vampire
Lost Boys
Near Dark
Return to Salem's Lot
Salem's Lot
Ultraviolet
Vamp

Of course, if vampires are not one's thing, then one hardly can do better then one of the first killer kid films, the original "The Bad Seed" w/ Patty McCormack as the Bad Seed and outstanding work by Eileen Heckart and Henry Jones. Enjoy!

[No Nukes, The Satanic Pikachu]

It's not always the blood loss that kills them, either. The sheer shock and pain can do some people in.

Or maybe we should start becoming like the ancient Romans, so fascinated by the terrible beauty of pain and death that we no longer care about the violence in the world around us. But it's coming up around us quick, and we can't hide from it forever....

[Chadzilla]

Some movies make me want to take a bath after seeing them, I Spit on Your Grave, Cannibal Holocaust, and Tim Kincaid's Breeders come to mind.

The killing of a kid usually gives movie an edge to its threat (the best capping of a kid I have seen was in John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 - "I wanted Vanilla Twist." POW! - the second best was Alex Kinter's death in Jaws and the scene were the boy walks in on his parents murder in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, eghads).  It should come as a surprise to no one that once someone has kids they become a tad more squeamish about offing kids in their own work (so I wasn't not THAT disturbed by Spielberg's E.T. tinkering or Carpenter's AoP13 commentary that, if he made the movie today, he would not kile the girl) because they have tendency to see their own child in their mind's eye and...well...it's disturbing.

Sometimes the death of a kid just looks cheesy and stupid because the director wants to shock the audience badly (the 'oh horrible tragedy' shot of the dead lollipop kid in Irwin Allen's hilarious The Swarm comes to mind).

Sometimes I think gore is just boring, the more a director chooses to wallow around in it the less I think that person has any trust in the movie's story (if it even has one).

As far as the real life stuff, well it's part of humanity.  We all just have to learn to deal with it.