History Main / TorturePorn

* In 1993, Music/NineInchNails created a twenty-minute short film titled ''[[https://www.revolvermag.com/culture/nine-inch-nails-broken-movie-story-behind-infamous-viral-vhs-snuff-film Broken]]'' to go with the EP of the same name. Never officially released but circulated in bootlegs for years and currently [[https://archive.org/details/NineInchNails-Broken available]] from the Internet Archive, the video is filled with graphic imagery, most notably a man (played by performance artist Bob Flanagan) being brutally tortured and dismembered by a RoboticTortureDevice, all of it set to NIN's music.

* In 1993, Music/NineInchNails created a twenty-minute short film titled ''[[https://www.revolvermag.com/culture/nine-inch-nails-broken-movie-story-behind-infamous-viral-vhs-snuff-film Broken]]'' to go with the EP of the same name. Never officially released but circulated in bootlegs for years and currently [[https://archive.org/details/NineInchNails-Broken available]] from the Internet Archive, the video is filled with graphic imagery, most notably a man (played by performance Bob Flanagan) being brutally tortured and dismembered by a RoboticTortureDevice, all of it set to NIN's music.

* The Creator/MarquisDeSade is the TropeMaker, and one of the most infamous authors in history; the word "sadism" was named after him, and, unlike most examples on this page, his torture porn is also literally porn. His stories are full of rape, incest, bondage, sadomasochism, pedophilia, coprophilia, and necrophilia. His most infamous work was ''Literature/The120DaysOfSodom'' which had four libertines and their accomplices kidnapping and horrifically abusing sixteen teenagers over 120 days. UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte had him thrown in jail after reading ''Justine'' (about a young woman who is raped, tortured, and sexually abused over many years for her virtue and purity), which is actually one of his milder works.

* In the backstory of ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'', Travis Tate, [[spoiler:the Alpha in charge of programming the HADES subfunction of GAIA]], apparently had a taste for such movies. [[https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Archive_Abuse One Datapoint]] mentions how he tried to submit "all sixteen(!) installments of "[[Film/TheHumanCentipede Making a Millipede]]"" for addition to [[spoiler:APOLLO, the repository of human knowledge]]. The same datapoint also mentions that, in contrast, the works of Creator/PierPaoloPasolini ''have'' been accepted for preservation. [[spoiler:However, since Ted Faro ultimately deleted APOLLO so that nobody would know it was him who doomed the world, it's ultimately a moot point.]]

** ''FanFic/{{Cupcakes}}'', an infamous fanfic about Pinkie Pie torturing and killing Rainbow Dash, helped popularize this trend. Most of the below-listed ''MLP'' fics were arguably inspired, at least in part, by ''Cupcakes''.

* ''Film/TheHumanCentipede'' trilogy combines this with BodyHorror. The worst stuff was [[GoryDiscretionShot merely alluded to]] in the first film, though the second one went out of its way to show it in [[BloodierAndGorier full, gory, scatological detail]], before [[UpToEleven plunging straight into]] SelfParody with the third installment.

* The first ''VideoGame/{{Manhunt}}'' game is a slight subversion, as it revolves around a SnuffFilm ring, and even the worst executions are relatively quick and clean compared to usual TorturePorn. The second game, which takes inspiration from most of the SlasherMovie genre, takes this trope, [[UpToEleven and runs with it to the endzone]], with the "Violent", "Gruesome", and "Environmental" kills [[ColdBloodedTorture all out to inflict as much pain on the helpless victim]] as possible before killing them. This is also clearly invoked in the "Sexual Deviants" level, which takes place in BDSM club "Dungeon" that is one giant homage to ''Film/{{Hostel}}''.

* ''WebAnimation/GoAnimate'''s "Punishment Day" videos, while usually consisting of {{Humiliation Conga}}s that are meant to be more funny than disturbing, can reach this level if sufficiently brutal enough. Some videos, believe it or not, are rated 18+ and have even been removed from Website/{{Youtube}} for guideline-shattering content.

* The AsymmetricMultiplayer game ''VideoGame/DeadByDaylight'', while based primarily off of {{slasher movie}}s, is also heavily influenced by this genre, between the kills (especially the [[HumanSacrifice sacrifices]]) and the grungy atmosphere of the maps. Fittingly, Amanda Young from the ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' films is available as one of the playable killers, and can kill her victims by forcing them into painful traps.

* Theatre/OedipusTheKing has Oedipus emerge having learnt of what he's done, [[EyeScream now having gouged out his own eyes]]. Medea features an extremely graphic description of what happened when Glauce put on a dress covered in highly acidic poison, and when her father hugged her body with this skin-dissolving venom still in effect.

* ''Film/{{Captivity}}''. Even before its release, it became notorious for an [[http://web.archive.org/web/20081208024154/http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/18/local/me-lopez18 incredibly tasteless marketing campaign]] that nakedly appealed to people who might want to watch a real-life snuff film, and led Creator/JossWhedon and Jill Soloway to campaign for the film to be re-rated. Its critical and commercial failure ended up [[GenreKiller killing off the genre]] in mainstream cinema releases, and did lasting damage to the careers of both its [[StarDerailingRole star]] Creator/ElishaCuthbert and [[CreatorKiller director]] Roland Joffe.

* ''Film/MeganIsMissing'' turns into this once the viewer learns what happened to Megan, especially after [[spoiler:Amy is kidnapped, raped, tortured, and eventually killed by Josh]].

* ''Film/{{Nekromantik}}'', which features several people being killed by a necrophiliac and includes a graphic, real scene of a rabbit being killed and skinned.
* ''Film/PinkFlamingos'', the film to start with if you're interested in the work of Creator/JohnWaters, plays with this trope mockingly. One scene, one very long and uncomfortable scene, features a man having sex with a chicken (resulting in bloody lacerations for the nude gentleman and an onscreen death for the chicken), and another features what can best be described as "a heartwarming torture sequence wherein women are beaten in a basement and raped with a turkey baster, with the resulting babies being sold to lesbians." Thankfully, John Waters is parodying the TrueCrime genre, so it's usually meant to be (disturbingly) funny.

** ''Film/{{Hostel}}'' and its sequels, in which tourists (in [[{{Ruritania}} Eastern Europe]] in the first two films, in UsefulNotes/LasVegas in the third) are kidnapped to be tortured to death by rich sadists.

* ''Film/ASerbianFilm'', which includes a woman having her teeth removed and then being suffocated to death via oral sex, a woman being decapitated while she's being sexually penetrated, a young boy being raped by his [[GagPenis well-endowed]] father, and, most infamously, "newborn porn."

* ''Film/{{Videodrome}}'': Subverted in-universe. When Max first sees the pirated Videodrome transmission, he thinks that it's the most realistic torture exploitation he's ever seen, which is exactly what he thinks his channel's viewers will want. Only later does he realize that Videodrome's 'actors' don't ever return, and is a real SnuffFilm operation.

%% This is how the quote formatting is suppose to look: One indent, then dialog, then two indents, then the source. Don't mess with it.
->''"In her absolutely splendid novel'' Literature/AlifTheUnseen'', Creator/GWillowWilson has a character ask whether a given book counts as eastern literature. In reply, Vikram the Vampire says, “There is a very simple test. Is it about bored, tired people having sex?” When the character confirms that the book does, Vikram proclaims it western literature. It’s terribly clever, but omits a key subgenre: bored, tired people being terribly violent."''
-->--'''[[http://www.philipsandifer.com/2013/08/outside-government-combat.html El Sandifer]]'''

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl1MVtgfWIw This short film]] is literally titled ''Torture Porn'' and is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. [[spoiler:[[ExactWords It turns out]] it's all [[DoubleEntendre innocuous foreplay]], with the TortureTechnician and his victim being gay lovers with a torture fetish shooting a HomePornMovie.]]

The term is usually associated with popular HorrorFilms from the 2000s; it was [[TropeNamers coined]] in 2006 by film critic David Edelstein to [[http://nymag.com/movies/features/15622/ describe]] films like ''Film/{{Hostel}}'', ''[[Film/SawI Saw]]'', ''Film/TheDevilsRejects'', and ''Film/WolfCreek''. Horror of this ilk is also known as "sadistic horror". The genre struck a chord amidst the post-9/11 cultural climate of the TurnOfTheMillennium, when UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror and the revelation of widespread [[EnhancedInterrogationTechniques abuses of captives]] at internment facilities like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay put torture at the forefront of public debate and became fodder for a generation of horror filmmakers. However, it can be found in older {{Exploitation Film}}s, books, comics, plays, and more, as long as seeing or reading about people suffering slow, agonizing, torturous deaths is the point of the work.

* ''ComicBook/{{Crossed}}'', which has most of humanity being infected by a "rape-murder-insanity" virus. Of special note are the story-arcs ''Psychopath'' and ''Family Values''.

* Parodied in ''ComicBook/TheMultiversity'', in which the mass villainous team-up of all the alternate versions of [[ComicBook/{{Shazam}} Dr. Sivana]] includes a DarkerAndEdgier "depraved serial killer" Sivana. He wears a Hannibal Lector mask, and his constant brandishing of rusty surgical instruments and ranting about how he wants to torture the young Marvels to death [[EvenEvilHasStandards creeps the other Sivanas out]].

* In ''Film/{{Found}}'', Marty and his friend David watch a slasher movie called ''Headless'' (which the filmmakers [[Film/{{Headless}} later defictionalized]]) that his brother Steve stole from the video store, which is comprised largely of scenes of a killer in a skull mask torturing tied-up women to death in a gratuitous, highly sexualized manner before defiling their corpses, all of it shown in graphic detail. Steve left a note in the videotape's box marking the times at which each of the film's kills takes place. David is impressed by the gore effects but disappointed by the lack of a plot, while Marty, who at this point knows that Steve is a SerialKiller, keeps picturing him as the killer and can't help but wonder if he took inspiration from this film.

* ''Film/{{Hostel}}'' and its sequels, in which tourists (in [[{{Ruritania}} Eastern Europe]] in the first two films, in UsefulNotes/LasVegas in the third) are kidnapped to be tortured to death by rich sadists.

* ''Film/InglouriousBasterds''. While most of [[Creator/QuentinTarantino Quentin Tarantino's]] works veer more towards {{Gorn}} and ExploitationFilm than Torture Porn, this film features a fair amount of lovingly depicted torture inflicted mostly on [[AcceptableTargets Nazis]]. Several Nazi soldiers have swastikas carved onto their foreheads with a Bowie knife, one officer is psychologically tortured before having his head crushed with a baseball bat, and a character sticks his finger into a bullethole in a woman's leg, among other examples.

* Many of Creator/LucioFulci's films, especially ''Film/TheNewYorkRipper'', where a stripper is killed by having a broken bottle ground into her crotch.
* The French film ''Film/{{Martyrs}}'' (which a lot seem to categorize as "too ''good'' to be mere torture porn") starts as a bloody revenge flick on a seemingly normal family, devolves into humiliation torture, and ends with [[spoiler:the martyr being [[FlayingAlive graphically skinned alive]], left to hang that way, and her long-sought otherworldy revelations [[GoMadFromTheRevelation driving her captor to suicide]]]].

* Discussed and mocked in ''{{Film/Scream 4}}'' - where one character is complaining about her friend being obsessed with Torture Porn. The film was released when the genre was beginning to die out.

->''"In her absolutely splendid novel'' Literature/AlifTheUnseen'', G. Willow Wilson has a character ask whether a given book counts as eastern literature. In reply, Vikram the Vampire says, “There is a very simple test. Is it about bored, tired people having sex?” When the character confirms that the book does, Vikram proclaims it western literature. It’s terribly clever, but omits a key subgenre: bored, tired people being terribly violent."''

* In ''Film/{{Found}}'', Marty and his friend David watch a slasher movie called ''Headless'' that his brother Steve stole from the video store, which is comprised largely of scenes of a killer in a skull mask torturing tied-up women to death in a gratuitous, highly sexualized manner before defiling their corpses, all of it shown in graphic detail. Steve left a note in the videotape's box marking the times at which each of the film's kills takes place. David is impressed by the gore effects but disappointed by the lack of a plot, while Marty, who at this point knows that Steve is a SerialKiller, keeps picturing him as the killer and can't help but wonder if he took inspiration from this film. The makers of ''found.'' later {{defictionaliz|ation}}ed ''Film/{{Headless}}'' and made it a feature film.

* The fake movie ''[[http://www.somethingawful.com/awful-movie-database/slew-movie-horror/ Slew]]'' from Website/SomethingAwful's Awful Movie Database is a parody of the genre, in which gorgeous women are forced to mutilate themselves in a highly sexualized manner (taking the "porn" part of the trope a bit too literally). The snippet we get of one of the user comments [[TooMuchInformation tells us way too much about the sort of people who enjoy this film]].

* The short-lived (so far) series ''[[http://www.mis-directed.com/1/post/2011/04/mis-directed-web-series-webisode-1-pilot.html Mis-Directed]]'' [[ParodiedTrope spoofs this]] in the first episode. It's about a brother and sister trying to make one of these films, and in addition to the camera problems, the sister Julianna plays the victims with heaps of BadBadActing and she acts like ThePrimaDonna while wearing a [[PrettyInMink purple rabbit fur jacket]].

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl1MVtgfWIw This short film]] is literally titled ''Torture Porn'' and is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. [[spoiler:It turns out it's all innocuous foreplay, with the TortureTechnician and his victim being gay lovers with a torture fetish shooting a HomePornMovie.]]
* A few of the more violent and detailed {{Creepypasta}}s can venture into this, and a lot of the poorly-written ones tend to [[ArtisticLicenseBiology ignore biology hard enough]] to even cross back over into NightmareRetardant.

A SisterTrope to {{Gorn}}, MutilationInterrogation (and often overlaps with both), {{Cuckold}} (the emotional equivalent). Genres that more often than not center around this include {{Nazisploitation}} and RapeAndRevenge.

The term is usually associated with popular HorrorFilms from the 2000s; it was [[TropeNamers coined]] in 2006 by film critic David Edelstein to [[http://nymag.com/movies/features/15622/ describe]] films like ''Film/{{Hostel}}'', ''Film/SawI'', ''Film/TheDevilsRejects'', and ''Film/WolfCreek''. Horror of this ilk is also known as "sadistic horror". The genre struck a chord amidst the post-9/11 cultural climate of the TurnOfTheMillennium, when UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror and the revelation of widespread [[EnhancedInterrogationTechniques abuses of captives]] at internment facilities like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay put torture at the forefront of public debate and became fodder for a generation of horror filmmakers. However, it can be found in older {{Exploitation Film}}s, books, comics, plays, and more, as long as seeing or reading about people suffering slow, agonizing, torturous deaths is the point of the work.

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%%* The Winchesters experience this a lot in ''Series/{{Supernatural}}''.

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