Implied gore often better than seeing gore...In my opinion.

I recently watched the movie, Attack the Block.
This movie is about quite a few different things but basically it is an alien attack movie.
At one point the monsters are attacking the residents of the building complex. One of the boys who is being attacked is wearing a motorcycle helmet and the monster starts biting his helmet.

It would seem the helmet is his savior, up until you hear the crunching sound and then see the helmet go flying to the other side of the room.
While this movie does have direct visual gore, in this case you don't see anything gory during this entire scene.

The look on the others faces tells a tale as well as the characters absence for the rest of the movie.
I find I often enjoy this kind of implied gore much more than literal gore visually played out.

What other instances of great implied gore can you describe, or post video of, from movies you have watched?

 

The Hitchcock rule--your mind can fill in the blanks more graphically.
No need to show the second rape and murder in Frenzy--you know what's going to happen

My favorite scary movie, The Hitcher, has an absolutely horrifying execution in it, and they show absolutely zero gore.
And of course Reservoir Dogs has THAT scene when we don't see anything, just hear things.

 

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is all about mood, filth and fear...very little blood in that one.
Showing something gory or repulsive is, relatively speaking, very easy. It's also lazy, because unlike the mind, visual effects are concrete.

When needed, it's fine to show something, but don't use it as a crutch in place of storytelling.

The German film "The Deathmaker" consists of the murderer and his psychiatrist talking in a room. No blood or bodies, yet the film is deeply unsettling beacuse of the descriptions, and because it's a true story.

 

Absolutely correct. Whatever horrors you can conjure up in your own mind is far more terrifying than what a director can film. Plus... implied horror is personalized for each one of us.

A great example: many people talk about how gross the cop torture scene is in Reservoir Dogs. Mobster pulls out a switchblade. He grabs the cop's ear... he leans in and... the camera pans away. Leaving you to imagine what you will.

EDIT: @The Panda beat me to it.

 

The 1955 Kubrick movie "Killer's Kiss" climaxes with an axe fight in a mannequin factory. Arms and legs a-flyin' and not a drop of blood.

 

I don't want to see the gore thank you. When I was 13-14 I did, but I grew out of it.

 

There was an episode of Monk where a guy got his head crushed by a circus elephant. You see the elephant's foot rest on his head, the camera cuts to another character, and CRUNCH!

Gives me the heebie-jeebies every time...

 

I'm with you for the most part.
If the gore is just gratuitous and there for the shock value it both bores me and repels me . After living the life I have and witnessing things I wish I had not I don't really need to see any of that by choice in a film.

However if used correctly to set a tone, especially a historical tone, gore can have a huge impact on the viewer.
Saving Private Ryan is a great example of useful gore. Lord knows they could have gone even further and still not exaggerated the real gore.

There was a time I watched all the new slasher movies. What better place for a teen doofus to see boobs. Too bad they had to ruin those glorious things with a machete through the chest...Anyway, I have grown tired of that kind of movie gore.
I do greatly enjoy when a director chooses to imply the gore as it lets me imagine the outcome with as little direction as possible.
The movie does not have to be excellent to use this effectively either. Jurassic Park, when Muldoon gets taken by the Velociraptors, is a great example. He is mauled behind the bushes with much shaking, noise, and flailing, but no gore to be seen...Perfect. Let me imagine how they tear him apart rather than showing me.

 

More effective & much cheaper to shoot.

 

Right on daytime TV?...Wow.

 

Yes, you're right. In some cases, it works for the benefit of the film. With war films like Saving Private Ryan (a good example), the gore underlines the atrocity of war itself.
In another genre, a great film I watched not long ago had unexpected and sickening gore and I was quite shocked but it did enhance the film and turn it into something else - "Bone Tommahawk" (jeez!).

 

In The Black Cat (1934), Bela Lugosi is shown skinning Boris Karloff alive-- in shadow only, thankfully.

 

I agree with this somewhat. The obvious examples are Hitchcock-type films where having little gore preserves the mysterious air and is better left to the imagination. War films are the obvious counterexample, but a film like Taxi Driver would not be as good without the gore either. I don't like gore for the sake of gore (slasher films, etc.) but sometimes even seemingly excessive gore might be necessary.

 

great example - even after seeing it most people seem to remember it having a lot more gore than what's really shown - which is very little at all.

Also, in these types of movies sound is often the director's best friend.

 

I would go even farther and say it's mostly about the audio.

Try watching a horror movie without the sound. Not scary.

Certainly there is more merit to the Hitchcock approach than the Madman Mel approach.

 

Last night I happened to pop in my Blu-ray of House By The Cemetery. Director Lucio Fulci's gore scenes were famous for being wildly over the top with the blood cascading in geysers and streams. These scenes were difficult to shoot and Fulci would get very enthusiastic (and a little sadistic towards the actors) in their creation. I love his stuff and he has his following. This is not to say that Fulci, Argento, Romero et al didn't know how to use mystery to stimulate the viewers imagination, they just specialized in using outrageous showmanship to blow the audiences mind. You're either into it or you're not. Hitchcock knew what he was doing but he didn't do everything.

I don't think anyone is more skilled than David Lynch at tapping into a viewers deep, dark psyche using every visual and auditory gimmick he has available to him. Sometimes you see it and sometimes you don't. But when things get rough, oh boy. Making the audience use their imagination is a preference, not a rule.

 

I can't imagine the Evil Dead trilogy without gore. It's so over the top that extreme gore & violence is pretty much required. It's all part of it's charm.

 

Yes! What bugs me about the shower scene in Psycho is the sound of her getting stabbed; it's that 'shhik, shhik, shhik'. Oh, it bugs me.

 

Bela was great as Boris Karloff's sidekick.

That is truly a horrifying, scary-as-crap soundtrack -- both with the Bernard Herrmann score and the (subtle) sound effects. I think that was one of those movies where they stabbed a watermelon to get that sound.

Somebody has done a documentary just on the "Psycho Shower Scene" that's due out pretty soon. I dunno how you could get a 90-minute film out of that, but it could be interesting.

Yes, here it is: "78/52", named for 78 camera setups and 52 cuts that make up that memorable scene:

Film Review: ‘78/52’

 

The famous shot of Karloff helpless and in chains while Lugosi surveys him with bloodlust (and a a knife in his hand) is all that needs to be shown.

 

It really depends in my opinion. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was able to create an extremely violent atmosphere with very little gore. The Evil Dead remake was extremely gory and yet I still begged for more. I think it really depends on the story, film makers, and the quality of the gore. Some go too far while others didn't go far enough.