You are spot on with you reference to “torture porn”. However is this not a by-product of the vastly superior and ever developing special effects? If you give the twisted the tools to make something truly horrific and a socially expectable line which should not be crossed then for notoriety and financial gain alone there are always going to be those who are eager to push ahead.
First: no, it has little or nothing to do with the "advance" (if it is such, which I at times seriously doubt) in special effects, as there have always been films to cater to this lower taste, just as there have always been those types of literature which catered to the same, from the penny dreadfuls to a large section of the pulp market of the '20s to the '50s, and the paperback market since then. (Look at Lumley's
Necroscope series, for instance, which is often chock-full of such graphic violence with a heavy seasoning of sex.)
But, by and large, those which were more acceptable also leaned on storytelling and character-driven tales rather than the (supposed) imaginativeness of various ways to mangle, mutilate, dismember, or torment cardboard-cut-out victims. And there were always those exceptions which were considered "art": The Innocents, The Haunting, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dead of Night, Curse of the Demon, etc., etc.
The films that you reference as “Classic?” were no more socially acceptable by the “Mature/Grandparents/God fearing/etc” of their day than the crap being released today (which in twenty years time will probably be considered tame)
For the record: I didn't use the word "classic", nor did I infer such a term. I referred to (mostly) older films because they did rely on storytelling -- which is always both more challenging, interesting, and imaginative than the extremely easy out of graphic violence
for the sake of violence.
That is a cheapjack way out of actually coming up with a decent story which builds suspense and character. (Violence and story-telling are not mutually exclusive, and you can have graphic violence and still make a good film, just as you can have graphic sex and still make a good film. But the trend today seems more heavily influenced by such tripe as the
Faces of Death videos -- sheer sadism with a large degree of prurient interest -- than any desire to actually tell a tale, even when they have a great initial idea. (
Dead Silence comes to mind here -- such potential, completely wasted.)
The same is true in most other genres. "Comedies" are actually slapstick farces, more often than not, which would shame the Three Stooges for lack of intellectual integrity; suspense films rely on the worst elements of that genre combined with moronic action sequences to shore up a sagging visual sense (compare most of these, for instance, with
Wait Until Dark, where the head-games and mental torture are
considerably more imaginative and show more of a tendency for true evil than anything I've seen in modern films, yet it is done with both taste, finesse, and flair). The list goes on.
As I said, there are still good films being made, and yes, violence and sex (even quite graphic violence and sex) have a place in such when not done gratuitously. But when it comes to the "horror" end of the spectrum (which reminds me of the distinction made by so many -- Karloff, Lee, Devendra P. Varma, Ann Radcliffe, etc. -- between "horror" and "terror"), all-too-often we are dealing not with people who want to "push the envelope" but people who simply have no imagination when it comes to attempting to evoke anything more than the gross-out. As I said, artistically and imaginatively bankrupt, nothing more.
As for the "bad guys getting back up"... that has, sadly, become a cliche; but done well, it is much more effective than the alternative. The essence of true horror or terror, in the final analysis, is a situation where there is no release. That is what genuinely stirs uneasiness and discomfort, leaving the audience a bit shaken, and that is the most effective type of tale for such emotions. The other may be reassuring, but it does, inevitably, lessen the effect.
