For unconvincing reasons, the new slasher flick from Eli Roth will not be shown in Ukraine.
New horror flick “Hostel” was set to premiere March 16, just like we said in the movies section of the guide last week. However, on the very same day, the Culture Ministry announced the film was banned from all Ukrainian silver screens.
“Hostel,” which tells the story of American tourists who become the victims of a group of maniacs at a hostel in Slovakia, became the third horror movie to be banned from distribution in Ukrainian movie theaters over the last few years. In 2003, the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” a remake of the 1974 cult horror film, was banned for “propagating a cult of violence and cruelty,” and two years later George Romero’s “Land of the Dead” was banned for similar reasons, one of the claims being that a movie with scenes of people being eaten alive can’t be shown in a society that still holds the memory of the 1933 Holodomor famine still fresh in its mind.
Dmitry Zaruba, the president of the all-Ukrainian youth hostel association, said at a press conference on March 16, that the movie should not be distributed in theaters because it popularizes bloody murders, violence, sexual perversion and other nasty topics (accusations that could easily be made of almost any modern-day horror movie, including Eli Roth`s previous hit, “Cabin Fever,” which was distributed in Ukraine with no problem.However, “Hostel,” produced by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Eli Roth, was also censored for much more commerical reasons. “The distribution of the movie here will negatively affect the creation of youth hostels, which has only started in Ukraine,” said Zaruba, who, with his association, authored the appeal to the Culture Ministry to ban the movie, claiming that no businessmen will want to invest in youth hostels after the movie is shown. Strange as it may seem, the movie wasn’t banned in Slovakia, whose hostels it directly discredits, and no hostels have been reported to have closed down – or to even have lost any business for that matter – because of the movie.
