Slasher film gets "Hostel" reaction

[TexasStooge]

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (Reuters) - Better known to the outside world for their ice hockey players and stunning models, Slovaks are horror-struck that the smash-hit slasher film "Hostel" is giving them a bad name.

The low-budget movie made a surprise debut in the United States, topping box office sales in early January. In the film, American backpackers are kidnapped, tortured and killed during a trip to the central European country.

"It's so sad," said Alzbeta Melicharova, marketing head at Slovakia's state tourist board.

"The events in the film are so absurd. They have nothing to do with reality. We are actually one of central Europe's safest places. It's one of our selling points."

Scenes of teens locked in a dungeon, tortured with chainsaws and blowtorches and sold to sadists have shocked this tiny, mainly Catholic, nation that is trying to lure tourists away from the beaten paths that lead to Prague, Budapest and Vienna.

This formerly communist nation of 5.4 million, independent for just 13 years, is not used to being the setting for Hollywood films, much less nightmarish ones.

The film has yet to open in central Europe, but word of it has already spread to Slovakia, where radio and newspapers have blasted it, and Slovaks are puzzled and offended.

Taxi driver Julius Horvath saw a photo from the movie in a newspaper of a dog chewing a human bone.

"It's like something from a 1,000 years ago," he said. "Like Slovaks live in the jungle."

IDEAL LOCATION

American director Eli Roth said he chose Slovakia because it was close enough to backpacking meccas Amsterdam and Prague to be a plausible diversion for his heroes, but still unknown to most Western audiences.

The film tells the story of a hostel-cum-dungeon, where wealthy foreigners pay to make snuff fantasies come true.

"I would like to apologize to Slovaks for making them look like maniacs," Roth told Reuters in an email.

"But if you look closely, the worst crimes are committed by Americans, Germans, Japanese and Dutch."

Slovakia has rebounded from 40 years of communism to become a stable democracy with a thriving economy.

Tourist brochures tout Slovakia's mountains, stretching over two-thirds of the country, and forests, covering 40 percent of Slovak land, and a multitude of ski slopes that make it the "eastern Alps."

Roth's film instead shows broken-down communist-era cars, black-and-white television sets, gangs of children who kill for bubblegum -- an amalgam, he says, of the worst American stereotypes of the old Eastern Bloc.

Melicharova has challenged Roth to visit Slovakia and see, in her words, what it is really like and the director said he would take up the offer during a promotional trip ahead of the central European release of "Hostel" on February 24.

"I think I have to be a man and go there and face the music," he said.

[Miss Mary]

I saw promo's for this movie and then went to an IMDB message board for it. No way will I ever see this film. I have to ask again - what is it's purpose? What good does making a movie this violent serve?

Makes me want to reach for a Disney movie, seriously. I'd be upset too this movie portrays Slovakia, inaccurately.

M.