This topic for this lesson was labeled “Cinematic Dismemberment”. The two films we were required to watch for this section were Alvarez’s Evil Dead (2013) and Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo the Iron Man (1989). Both of these films were very disturbing and difficult to watch because of all of the gore. Tetsuo the Iron Man was just a weird and disturbing film that I will definitely not watch again. It was a good film in my opinion, but one viewing is enough for me. Evil Dead was a better overall film in my opinion but it was so disgusting and bloody. Dismemberment is defined as the action of cutting off a person's or animal's limbs. This was very prevalent in Evil Dead as there are limbs cut off and many other horrible gory scenes. Evil Dead as including demons and the possession of the main character Mia. Demons and possession in my head is possible to actually happen, so yeah this film scared me thoroughly. I have said in many of my other blog posts that I do not mess with demons or anything like that. I am just thankful that we did not have to watch The Exorcist for this class. The image of the possessed girl in The Exorcist is one of the most frightening shots in cinematic history. The image of the possessed Mia peeking her head up from the cellar and saying “you’re going to die today” in Evil Dead is not far off from that in my head. Also the scene when the girl chopped her arm off as she knows she will be possessed if she doesn’t was also a difficult scene to stomach. Then after she chopped her arm off all the way she still got possessed, that must have been a real bummer.
These kinds of bloody and gory films really makes you ask the question, “why am I watching this?”. This goes back to our first topic about why people watch horror films if they are so scary and gross. To be honest, I really don’t know why people watch horror films and I am one of those people as I am a big horror film fan. I plan to write my final paper about that very question. There has got to be some kind of explanation about why a person would want to watch a movie about a demonically possessed girl or of a Tetsuo the Iron Man. I plan to find that explanation and write all about it in my final paper. Evil Dead and Tetsuo the Iron Man were both solid films in my opinion, but like I said before one viewing is enough for me.