“I go to see the films because I like them. I like to be scared anyway. And I think you have a tendency to see things come in waves. If one thing is successful others follow in its wake. And the thing is, Hostel 2 is actually a better picture in every way. It’s very clever and Eli Roth is a tremendous talent, and has a tremendous eye as a director. The material makes a lot of people uneasy; it makes me uneasy.
“There’s another side of that too. The gore obscures, particularly in the minds of critics, some of the reasons why those movies are successful. The gore in movies like Last House on The Left was so new that it kind of slapped audiences in the face, ‘I can’t believe I saw that, let’s go see it again!’ Like driving past an accident.
“But people get desensitized to that in a hurry and you cease to get involved on a level where there are characters. It’s like watching people in a shooting gallery being knocked over one by one. You can’t go for gore for the sake of gore in movies anymore.” — Stephen King speaking to L.A. Times writer Mark Olsen.