Where's the nudity?

Here's the thing: ever twenty years or so the film industry falters a bit (due, largely, to competing technologies) and has to revive itself somehow. I won't go into detail, but basically it's gone like this:
1915 The feature/studio system
1930 Sound (to compete with radio)
1950 Widescreen/color (to compete with TV)
1970 Nudity, violence, "art" (not technology, but whatever...to compete with color tv)
1990 CGI (to compete with premium cable that has nudity)
2010 ??? (probably 3d and digital, to compete with HDTV and shows that have more and more spectacular CGI, as it's cheap now)

Cinema needs ways to differentiate itself from competing products, and nudity was introduced for just this purpose. But the thing is...once you introduce new attractions to film, they never go away, but they lose importance over time and are thus implemented differently. Color looks pretty weird nowadays what with a lot of very limited palletes, not everything is scope anymore (lots more 1:1.85), the ambiguities and formal techniques of 1970s art cinema have entered the mainstream but been watered down, etc. etc. So, while there are movies with nudity, it's not the attraction it once was...

Sadly, in the horror genre (your example, and a good one), producers still need to differentiate so they're using gore. I don't know why, but horror movies are getting gorier and gorier (to compete with what? tv? video games? pg13 horror movies?) and that's the main attraction being advertised. Oh well. I think the MPAA's shifting standards in regards to sex and violence and the increase in conservative Christian politics in the mainstream are responsible, too.

If you want, you can probably find some nudity on the internet, though.

It feels like there's a lot less nudity in movies in general. I used to get all excited whenever I heard a famous actress was going to be showing a bit of boob in a film. But it seems like I have less and less reason for celebration nowadays. That being said, maybe the actresses themselves are partly the reason. Y'know, feminism and all that shit.

Somebody doesn't read the main page, and that somebody is Myers.

Seriously, the interview the "Hitcher" guys did talks about this very issue.

Also, "feminism and all that shit?" Nice misogyny you got going on there.

Finally someone is speaking my language. I'm a gay guy, and even I miss the olden days of boobs popping out in horror movies. It's obviously not because I like boobs, but because I grew up on horror films of the 80s and found it to be a grand and glorious tradition. It was something to be expected and to look forward to, along with gruesome kills and a town crazy exclaiming "You're all gonna die!"

Which isn't to say all horror movies need to have nudity...but really, if you're making a piece of shit film like The Hitcher, Stay Alive, or any of the dozen others mentioned above, why not go all out? Stop pretending like you're trying to make something that's actually suspenseful and full of good acting, because it's obvious that's not happening. Instead we get a bunch of shit films with no suspense, no nudity, and no gore. What's the point?

Somebody's funny bone is broken.

My problem is with their assumption that there are no unknown actresses who can act. They seem to think that only well-known actresses have talent. That's just stupid. Maybe if they did their jobs with the casting instead of just running down the current "hot list", they could have it both ways.

I completely agree that great horror flicks can have the hat trick of genuine suspense, great acting, and nudity. Just take The Shining for example, it has all three. But most of the horror flicks coming out now days are lacking all of these elements. I can't say I understand why they keep casting these TV actresses in horror roles, especially since the box office figures don't show that anybody gives a damn. If you combined the grosses for flicks like Pulse, The Hitcher, and Stay Alive, does it even crack 50 million?

Thank you

Yeah, forget the hot list. Who needs funding or publicity for their movie anyway?

Horror is a genre that really doesn't need that much help. The Descent and Hostel did quite well without a single big star. Promise the gore and the scares, and a certain amount of audience will show up. If you need Jessica Biel in a tank top to sell your horror film, maybe you need more horror.

HOSTEL had Quentin Tarantino's name in HUGE letters on the poster. That was because they had no stars, so they sold it on QT. A lot of people walked into theaters thinking he directed it.

THE DESCENT did OK... but not that great. 25 million would not be a good enough turnaround on an American horror movie, where the budget is doubled by P&A. These movies need to make around double what DESCENT did to be profitable.

Further, the lack of nudity is because of the fact that the demos for horror have been changing - while the core audience is still heavily male, many girls go to horror films. A movie like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is now a date movie.

And the original TCM had no titties. Just sweet, delicious, short shorts.

But to balance your lack of nudity among the actresses these days, you've got Chloe Sevigny actually sucking an actual cock, and...well, that's all I got.

That doesn't disprove my point, though. There are ways around the hot list, especially now that people like Michael Bay and Sam Raimi are producing horror films.
That depresses me no end.

Why does that depress you? Not every movie has to be made for you. The more you understand that, the happier you'll be. It isn't like this is the 90s and no good horror movies are being made at all.

Because, to an increasing degree, teen pseudo-horror is taking over everyone's perception of what a horror movie is. Horror movies with adult themes and protagonists were uncommon to begin with, and they're dwindling. And the perception that horror movies should be "fun" isn't helping anything, either.

I'm not sure if this is an intentional conflation on your part, but the fact that the idea of "adult themes and protagonists" came up in a thread discussing why there's less gratuitous nudity in horror movies these days is telling. Just to be clear, you do acknowledge that nudity is an appeal to adolescent boys looking for cheap thrills, not to audiences looking for "adult themes," right? Let's not make the mistake that some comic book fans do - graphic violence and sex do not make something "mature." Intelligence makes something mature.

I think there's probably room to argue that, as Supremo mentioned above, shitty exploitation movies should be over-the-top to some degree, which might require some nudity (although if we're being completely honest with ourselves, that probably shouldn't stop with female nudity - the cinematic cock still trumps tits in the over-the-top department).

But a completely separate discussion is warranted if you want to talk about a perceived decline of intelligent, adult, scary horror movies - those attributes have very little to do with how much skin you see. Hitchcock managed to get his point across without showing so much as Janet Leigh's nipple, and Psycho's still probably one of the best examples of horror movie vulnerability by way of nudity. It certainly would have been no more powerful with a close-up crotch shot.

I agree with this, more and more I'm hearing the phrase "scary movie" to describe a horror film and the demographic has certainly changed. Thanks to 'SCREAM' acting as the vanguard for less sexually exploitive fare, the female empowerment that Carol Clover discussed in "Men, Women, and Chainsaws" is gaining some serious traction.

Yeah, I think I kind of veered off the original subject of the thread there.

I was prepared to think this thread was kind of silly until I read this. Thetradition angle is something I was thinking about while contemplating this topic but couldn't quite articulate. My hat's off (but that's all I'm taking off; I won't do nudity either) to Supremo for getting this point across so well. I don't look forward to seeing tits in a horror film, particularly. If that's what I want to see specifically, they make other kinds of video for that. And if a movie's good, I may not notice anything's missing if there's no nudity. But I'm never DISAPPOINTED to see some. And it just fits, again because of the tradition angle, w/ some teen-populated Friday the 13th Part Whatever style Slasher flicks. You just kind of check it off on the mental checklist in your head. You almost get a warm, fuzzy, I'm-on-familiar-turf feeling seeing it in that context. It just sort of BELONGS.

Greg makes a good point, in that we don't need A list celebrities to get good acting, necessarily. And just 'cause we GET A list celebrities doesn't mean we get good acting, either.

And I was going to make the point Devin did, sort of, that the "A Listers" are attached to these projects more becuase the filmmakers see that s a way to get asses in the seats than to get us top notch talent for our horror flicks.

The chicks on myspace are going on dates right? I doubt they would mind seeing some tits in movies. They seem to like them quite a bit.

I know this girl would...

Fabfunk's sister?

Nah. That doesn't look like hot ham water.