The Sick Mind Behind Hostel II's Marketing

Director Eli Roth's Hostel Part II finally hits theaters this weekend and I, for one, cannot wait. Not because I'm looking forward to watching this movie (I saw the first Hostel in theaters and thought it worked fine as a sometimes shocking B-grade horror film). But because we'll finally see an end to all the pre-release thumb sucking from pundits (like myself) musing about the social/psychological implications of the "torture porn" genre, asking aloud if Hollywood has gone too far. But one area that hasn't been mined is the ingenious marketing campaign for this movie, which the LA Times' Patrick Goldstein drills into today, focusing on Lionsgate's Tim Palen, the guy who came up the disturbing images to attract attention for the film.

Lionsgate's co-president of marketing dances around why his work defies the "vulgar" label that he places on the outdoor campaign for Captivity, which incited such ire that they were almost immediately taken down (Palen says the difference has to do with the "flourish and technique" he applied when creating art with an actor holding a severed head). However, in my opinion, the most disturbing (and effective) image from the movie is the one you see above. That's boar meat, says Palen, who went to a butcher shop, selected five cuts of flesh and photographed them in his kitchen to decide what looked the most gruesome. "We had to prove to the MPAA that it wasn't human," Palen tells the LAT, "so I sent them the receipt from the butcher's shop." Wait. What? You had to prove to the MPAA that it wasn't human flesh? That's what they wanted to know? Huh. Maybe Hollywood has gone too far.