‘THE UNRATED DVD CHANGED EVERYTHING’

One imperative in cultivating an appreciation for a work of ‘art’ is making certain that one has access to the artist's entire vision. DVDs not only make it possible for films to be positioned and sold as art objects; they also give studios the opportunity to create the illusion for consumers that they are experiencing the entire film: complete, unadulterated and uncut. In the case of the horror film, Lionsgate and other distributors did this by releasing films ‘Unrated’ on DVD. This label promises consumers that no censorious organisations have come between them and the film which, in the case of the Splat Pack, has been discursively constructed as ‘art’. As Guins explains, this label is intimately linked to a film-on-DVD's status as art object: ‘Even the “Not Rated” classification accompanying paracinema on DVD today is closer to a category of exemption attributed to art than the outlawed “NC-17” or nostalgic “X” afforded to filmic licentiousness’ (Guins, 2005: 28–9). As Chapter 3 outlines, the rush to sell films on DVD as art objects and collectables is one factor in how the Splat Pack was sold to a film-going – or a DVD-buying – audience. Working in concert with this factor is Hollywood's decision to release ‘Unrated’ films on DVD, another material change in film industry policy that facilitated the emergence of the Splat Pack.

A few illuminating comments about ratings appear at the beginning of Jones's article on the Splat Pack. These few provocative quotations are not from a member of the Splat Pack but from Tarantino. Tarantino had positioned himself as something of a mentor to Roth and to other Splat Packers. Not content to sit on the sidelines, Tarantino had got into the act himself. At the time of his comments to Jones, he was taking a break from working on Death Proof, a homage to drive-in era car films and videotape-era slasher films that would play alongside Robert Rodriguez's apocalyptic zombie movie Planet Terror as the combination film Grindhouse, released in the United States in April 2007. Jones begins his article with Tarantino proclaiming: ‘No question – this is a fantastic time to be making real horror movies’ (quoted in Jones, 2006: 101).