An examination of an extremely popular box office genre - the gross-out movie - "Laughing Screaming" is a serious study of this unashamedly lowbrow product. Writing about "movies that embraced the lowest common denominator as an aesthetic principle, movies that critics constantly griped about having to sit through," Paul discusses their unique place in our culture. He focuses on gross-out horror and comedy films of the 1970s and 1980s - film cycles set in motion by the extraordinary successes of "Animal House" and "The Exorcist". What links them, Paul argues, is their concern with the human body - especially with the "lower" body, in all its scatological and sexual aspects. Grossness, explicitness, and "gleeful uninhibitedness" reign in these films and provoke non-stop laughing screaming. Tracing both of these culturally disreputable subgenres back to an ancient tradition of festive comedy and Grand Guignol, Paul places them in a line of tradition, harking back to "adult" movies such as "M*A*S*H" and "Blazing Saddles", that were produced under Hollywood's newly liberalized censorship code.
The wide range of films discussed includes classics by Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock, "blaxploitation" movies, horror films by David Cronenburg and Stanley Kubrick, and comedies starring John Belushi and Bill Murray.
Industry Reviews
A serious, jargon-laden, and stubbornly appreciative examination of movies that, according to Paul (Film/Univ. of Michigan), "embraced the lowest common denominator as an aesthetic principle." Citing everyone from Freud to Bill Murray, and with research ranging from Oedipus to Dada to fairy tales, Paul finds not only parallels but the very wellspring of the honor film genre in the Roman circus and Elizabethan drama. Comedies such as Animal House and Bachelor Party, he claims, have roots in the Greek theater and in the later Feast of Fools and Midsummer Eve festivals. They may have "repulsed critics," but gross-out movies represent "something other than proof of America's cultural decadence." Paul credits the makers of these films with being "creative in the desire to break down inhibitions, to move away from the repression of our traditional society." Thus Porky's and Animal House, noted for raunchy, slobbering male sexuality, become "explorations of the variety of penile expression." Slasher films such as the Friday the 13th and Halloween series comprise, in Paul's view, "art that defines itself as oppositional to the dominant power structure," not as films that exploit violence and degradation. There is groundbreaking work here, particularly in tying together the historical, theoretical, and cultural perspectives underpinning the attraction of these genres. But he actually cites the women's movement (as well as other social movements) as a beneficiary of the dashing of sexual and other taboos by these films, overlooking their frequent portrayal of the victimization of women. Ultimately, this is a rationalization and justification - in dense, scholarly prose - of viciousness and sophomoric titillation in film. (Kirkus Reviews)
