Hey, PopWatchers. Won’t you grab a refreshing glass of Metamucil and join me in the Cranky Old Man zone? Today’s subject is the appalling movie poster for Saw III, which stopped me dead in my tracks and killed my appetite yesterday as I was innocently carrying my cinnamon-dusted pretzel and Diet Coke into the theater to catch Little Miss Sunshine. Now admittedly, I didn’t see Original Flavor Saw or its sequel — if there’s more to these films than watching helpless victims get tortured and snuffed out by a dude in a clown mask, please advise — but I really could have lived without the sight of a person’s upper lip being pulled back by a metal instrument to reveal his brutalized and bloodied gums. Okay, so the trio of teeth spelling out "III" is clever, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t lie beneath a plain brown wrapper. Am I right?
Rant of the Day: 'Saw III' poster
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Comments (1-26) of 26 Add your comment
I’m usually right there with you Slezak, but you may be overreacting just a tad to this one.
Think that’s bad? Wait until the posters come out for Hostel II. Now THERE’S a movie that is 100% about watching folks get tortured. I found that flick much more disturbing than Saw.
I work at a movie theatre and we don’t hang up posters like this because we get complaints from parents. Do marketing teams forget that these posters are going to be hanging next to theatres where “Cars” may be playing? We didn’t hang up the severed finger poster from Saw 2 and I doubt this one will ever see the light of day in our theatre.
I think the more disturbing part was that you were going to see Little Miss Sunshine. What a derivative, cloying wait of time THAT movie is.
The guy in the clown masks makes them choose their specfic sin…or escape? For example: one pretty girl’s going to be marred for life if she escapes alive: so does she do so and live a life as ugly, or die, but remain pretty? Stuff such as that.
I’m gonna weigh in as some old broad or something, but I really don’t GET the graphic horror stuff that the whippersnappers like today.
Is it too many CSIs? Do all children now want to be forensic pathologists, and these movies are the Cliff’s Notes for Anatomy lab?
But it’s not just schlock horror that’s been graphically literalized, unfortunately. I was watching the overrated Munich, and it had this really graphic, coroner’s-eye view of a shooting, and I went, huh. Interesting special effects. It made me back away from the movie, because it was just meaningless gore.
Note to movie makers: I know how to feel, how to think, and how to imagine. I don’t need you shoving your brain-dead literalism up my nose.
Maybe it’s just the movement of the moment? Filmed sex is more graphic, but not more interesting or dramatically meaningful. And violence has become so graphic that it’s a complete joke. Not scary, not interesting, not compelling … just sort of pathetic, like an obvious toupee or bad plastic surgery.
I find it all totally distancing, tedious, and disappointing. What happened to good writing and acting? Because, I mean it, no one is going to film a scarier gum-related horror scene than Laurence Olivier’s dentist demanding of Dustin Hoffman: “Is it safe?”
the Saw movies are so stupid, but the marketing people behind them deserve awards.
WAAAA! WAAAA! Whats that sound??? oh! its the sound of a baby crying… come on slezak, you’ve seen worse on the news.
Hostel 2?
The problem with horror films now is that the blood and violence is so realistic that it looks like a snuff film. Also the original Hostel (the one that is on DVD) was edited for the American theaters because it was very close to getting an NC17 rating.
Plus ok, we see two teeth in the poster of Saw III but, did anyone see the trailer for Jackass 2? They actually pull a tooth by hooking up a piece of rope to the bumper of a car! Talk about ouch!
I think the scariest thing about that poster is the pun “Opening wide this Halloween”.
Slezak, you kill me!
The poster is brilliant considering its subject matter. I mean, the two severed fingers for the second installment was just as bloodly fantastic as this poster is.
I can’t help but remember when an ex of mine at the time, took me to see the first one on my birthday…my freakin’ birthday! Yeah, we broke up.
Ah, memories.
As for this poster, it’s ingenious. Perfect for the Halloween season. Don’t be so dismayed by it, ’tis the season…and stuff.
I’m still on the fence about seeing Little Mary Sunshine, Slezak. So…what say you? Yay or nay?
Ep Sato -
I’m right there with you. Hostel was more disturbing because the premise is that people PAY MONEY to torture innocent kids. Wherein Saw you have a detached, terminally ill (by the way, when the hell is HIS illness going to kick in and force him to keel over?) embittered old cronie killing people who have lost their appreciation of life and who would have otherwise ended up dead anyway, if by their own volition.
Definitely a difference in gore factor.
I’m with you, Slezak. THAT. IS. FRICKIN’. DISGUSTING. The people who have made that Saw series should go hide in a hole somewhere for the toxic crap they’ve put out into the world. Bleagh.
I agree with you too, Slezak. At what point did filmakers think that to make a good horror movie they just had to put as much gore and violence in as the censors would allow. Classic horror movies in the vein Hitchcock were so frightening precisely because they only intimated at the gore and violence and left the truly scary stuff to our imaginations. Even other classics such as Halloween and The Exorcist (pea soup not withstanding) didn’t overwhelm the audience with unmitigated displays of violence. Recent (good) horror movies, as diverse as The Sixth Sense and 28 Days Later, didn’t need extremely graphic displays of violence (a la Saw and Hostel) to be scary. The Scream franchise parodied this trend in scary movies, which took off in the ’80s, perfectly. I agree that violence and gore are essential to a good horror movie, but not when they overwhelm the story and distract from the experience. Too much serves no more purpose than to simply be so outrageous and notorious that, essentially, the graphic violence becomes the movie. Good storytelling, and truly scary movies, are about more than that.
I am right with you, Slezak! It’s one thing for people to pay specifically to see grisly images like this in the latest horror movie – that’s their choice and their right if they want to – but it’s another thing for people who DO NOT want to see these images being forced to see it anyway in posters like this. Especially children. It’s really wrong. Thanks for saying something, Slezak.
Dave,
Actually they took off in the 60’s and 70’s.
The 60’s and early had the low budget Hammer House of Horrors movie series, and then you had the low budget Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Prom Night, Central High School Massacre (the pre-curser to Heathers), etc. These new super gore flicks are going back to the low budget horror films but with the new technology, the movies are twice as gory. That’s why I am concerned that if it is taken too far, the horror films can become snuff like.
These movies are lame…..nothing but cheaply shot gore for shock value by a TALENTLESS HACK LOSER of a ‘filmmaker’.
Although I risk bringing up the very thing I had kind of railed against a bit in the past (the Valerie Cherish thing had been run to the ground!), I want to congratulate Slezak on his remarkable restraint of NOT referencing “The Comeback” during this item.
If there ever was a time for an “I don’t need to SEE that”, this was it. Way to go, you’re a strong man.
Great poster.
It’s fairly tame considering I see about a dozen toothless grins, asking me for spare change, every morning when I walk down the street. It’s the kind of poster that worked perfectly. You stopped, looked at it, and then started talking about it — giving the movie free publicity.
Those marketing guys deserve a raise.
I’ve seen all of the SAW films opening weekend. Sure they’re gory, but what do you honestly expect in this day and age? I’d have liked to see how well SAW III would have opened up against a classic slasher flick like HALLOWEEN or FRIDAY THE 13TH, armed with the new digital effects and technology, but I guess I’ll just have to wait til next halloween! Lord knows what those SAW posters will look like in order to compete against Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees!!!
I have not seen any of the SAW films; have no desire to.
The poster is pretty darn creepy, stylishly gory even.
But for a change I’d like to see a recent horror flick live up to its hype.
When was the last time there was a REALLY good horror film? I mean REALLY good? (Britain’s THE DESCENT comes to mind but that’s about it).
Any filmmaker can splash blood on a screen or sever limbs. What really makes a GREAT horror movie is when the filmmaker messes with your mind instead of shoving gruesome imagery into your face.
I wish movie studios would crank out more SEVENs or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS types, or geniune frightfests like BLAIR WITCH.
Viewing an impaled eyeball gets pretty tiresome after a while…
Let me see if I get this right….you were so repulsed by this poster that you decided to show it to everyone???
The poster is appropriate because (presumably) that’s what the movie is about. I see that poster and I know whether I want to see that movie (never, ever, ever, probably not even for a lot of money).
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