According to Eli Roth, it was a conscious choice for the first example of nudity in Hostel II (2007) to be that of a man. Following the credit sequence and a quick catch up with Hostel survivor Paxton (Jay Hernandez), we’re introduced to our victims.

Far from the seedy lights of Amsterdam, these beautiful college-age women are in a life drawing class in Rome. Within thirty seconds, the male nude is replaced by a female model, Axelle (Vera Jordanova), who disrobes to the sound of audible gasps. Her gaze lingers on our main character, Beth (Lauren German). Beth grits her teeth, her forehead puckered into a tense frown as she begins to sketch.

“Jeans, no heels,” is what Beth says when asked if she’s packed for their upcoming trip to Prague with friends Whitney and Lorna. Beth may as well be called Sidney or Laurie: she is masculinised, her relationship with the female model Axelle is eroticised (Whitney even jokingly refers to Axelle as Beth’s ‘girlfriend’) and it is revealed that Beth keeps her father on an allowance following the death of her wealthy mother.

Beth and Axelle’s encounters are carefully structured to be titillating, and yet Beth’s sexuality is never openly discussed. Compared to the view of male homosexuality depicted in the first Hostel film, we’re in full-on homophobic fratboy territory here: lesbians are hot (as long as they’re young, slim and not too gay), and gay men are scary and have to be repressed.

Hostel II differs to Hostel in that we get a deeper understanding of how the whole operation works, focalised through two American clients, Todd and Stuart. “This isn’t like going to a whorehouse,” Todd explains to reluctant Stuart after they successfully bid a collective $100,000 on securing Whitney and Beth as their torture victims. “You can’t just back out.”

Roth works hard to ensure the viewer feels an iota of sympathy for Stuart: he is de-masculinised by a practical and demanding wife, he lacks charisma, and he has to be cajoled into the Hostel experience by the powerhouse Todd. Todd compares their first kill to losing their virginity; Stuart pensively asks, “Do you think we’re sick?”

“We’re the normal ones,’ Todd replies, taking a deep sniff of cocaine. As they draw up to the factory, a mournful serenade plays as we see the doubt flicker across Stuart’s face. Roth asks us to feel sympathy for someone who has essentially been peer-pressured into paying vast sums of money to torture a woman – who intentionally resembles his wife, no less – to death.

Hostel twists itself into a game of privilege top trumps. The rich are powerful and the powerful are rich: the notion of power, and an individual’s lack of control over their own fate, presents a contemporary spin on the 18th century fear of the aristocracy, often portrayed through a vampiric allegory along the lines of Dracula.

Hostel II even includes a female client who pays hard cash to writhe – naked, naturally – in an Elizabeth Bathory-esque tub as the blood of virginal Lorna showers down upon her bare skin. It’s interesting to note that this is one of the few onscreen deaths of torture victims: the franchise often shies away from the so-called money shot (another grotesque connection between torture flicks and pornography).

Additionally, the fact that the only female client – aside from a stern silver-haired horsey type who unsuccessfully bids on the trio – chooses to murder her victim in this rather specifically vain method reinforces the assertion that for women, beauty is a matter of life and death. (This is also articulated in Hostel when the infamous “eyeball” woman catches sight of her mutilated face and throws herself from the arms of safety to certain death under a speeding train).

The fate of Whitney is grisly: she is made up ‘for the client’ in a corset and smudged, clownish make up. Todd gets cold feet, and so she is offered around and sold to the highest bidder. Sensitive Stuart finds his sea legs and takes her on as a warm up for Beth, who is dressed in a suit and made to even further resemble his wife.

How does Beth survive? She seduces him, naturally, then chops his dick off and pays her way out because she’s stinkin’ freakin’ rich. Let’s not forget her place, though: after negotiating with the Alan Sugar of the Hostel world, she is bent over a table and tattooed on the small of her back, rather than her bicep, ankle or, oh I don’t know, anywhere on her body that wouldn’t liken the process to being fucked from behind.

In a world in which The Human Centipede exists (and actually manages to generate enough revenue to produce a sequel), the so-called “torture porn” movement seems to have finally tipped over the edge into self-parody. The golden age for splatter flicks was 2002-2007. Since then, things seemed to have waned.

The biggest horror titles of 2012 suggest a rekindled preference for things that go bump in the night, with poltergeists, paranormal happenings and possession pictures enjoying a rise in popularity. The washed-up sequels of classic Splat Pack originals, such as Hostel III and Saw ad infinitum, are slinking off into the background – and good riddance.

• By day, Alice Slater is a writer and bookseller from London. By night, she is a horror film addict who always keeps the lights on. She writes for Mslexia and Drunken Werewolf, and she blogs about veg*n high jinx at SmokinTofu.com.

It’s unsurprising to learn that the big names in the so-called “torture porn” movement are all blokes. Known as the Splat Pack, James Wan (Saw, Dead Silence), Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes), Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel), Greg McLean (Wolf Creek), Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses, Halloween) and Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV) all specialise in a brand of horror that leans heavily on sadism and graphic onscreen gore – the more creative and toe-curlingly disgusting, the better.

Eli Roth met a wave of criticism for the gender roles in Hostel (2005), a film in which all the women are either sex workers, hypersexualised and morally repugnant, strung out on enough narcotics to render them completely obsolete as anything other than onscreen ass, or all of the above (with the exception of two Japanese twentysomething tourists, who are portrayed as giggling and coquettish – the stereotypical western idealisation of Japanese women as schoolgirlish and subservient).

Roth, being a sensitive chap at heart, created Hostel Part II as a response – kind of like Neil Marshall hopping from Dog Soldiers to The Descent. Nice try, Eli. The gender politics are equally terrible in Hostel II. I know – “I can’t believe it!” said absolutely no one.

Now, horror isn’t the most feminist genre, but it’s my genre of choice. Female nudity, themes of female virginity and scenes of a sexual nature are prevalent in horror, from chaste Janet Leigh’s infamous shower scene to the chesticular fireworks of Piranha 3DD. Sex and death – the circle of life, as Sir Elton calls it – are intrinsically linked, and often sit well side by side. We all know what the phrase “torture porn” refers to, but there’s a problematic duality created by suggesting that sadistic violence and sexual gratification are titillating in the same way. It reduces the whole horror genre to something akin to Bizarre magazine: Blood! Tits! Tits covered in blooood!

Hostel opens with an unsympathetic bunch of lads on tour as they weave through the streets of Amsterdam. The group laugh at sensitive, still-getting-over-his-ex Josh (Derek Richardson) for suggesting they take a break from smoking pot and chasing skirt to check out a museum or two. Then they fistbump and hi-five their way through the Red Light District. It leaves us all feeling well primed for the next hour and a half of blood, guts and dismemberment because they are quite possibly the most unlikeable people in the history of humanity (apart from Jeremy Clarkson, who retains his crown of The Worst).

“Paying to go into a room to do whatever you want to someone isn’t exactly a turn-on,” says Sensitive Josh, and we all cock our heads and recognise that he is definitely going to die. The anti-sex work comparison drawn between prostitution and the premise of Hostel – the rich paying high prices to torture and kill others – doesn’t go unnoticed.

Loutish and drunk, the lads are denied entrance to their hostel. As a rain of glass bottles smashes around their feet, an eastern European tourist offers refuge in his hostel room. Here, Sensitive Josh awkwardly explains the definition of ‘clitoris’ (“Women have it? It’s like right near the labia? Like, it hangs?”) and talk naturally turns to sex.

“Looking for girls?” their new friend Alex asks. He then creepily shows them photos of himself having sex with women “so hot, you won’t believe it”. He explains that the women of Bratislava “go crazy for any foreigner. You just… take them.”

After hearing one of the most chilling phrases in the history of patriarchy, off the threesome go to Bratislava. A creep on the train confirms that eastern European women are smokin’ hot and DTF. He then places a hand on Sensitive Josh’s thigh and Josh reacts as though he’s just had his Achilles tendons cut (and we can be accurate here because that is exactly what happens to him approximately twenty minutes later).

This brief moment of casual homophobia is not to be overlooked: Josh, the sensitive one, the most respectful and the least sexually repugnant of the three, later places his hand on this man’s thigh in a sincere yet hesitant apology – moments after being called a “faggot” by Paxton. “I would have done the same thing at your age,” the man says, regarding Josh’s extreme and aggressive reaction to the hand-on-thigh moment from before. “It’s not easy, but from my experience, choosing to have a family was the right choice for me. Now I have my little girl, who means more to me than anything. But you should do what’s right for you.”

Hold on, what? It’s no coincidence that the next shot is of Josh ‘making his choice’ – on the brink of having sex with an incredibly attractive woman. Because of course, sexuality is a choice and the option of having a family is strictly for those that choose ‘straight’.

Anyway, the hostel is everything they imagined and more: slender young women shoot them come-hither looks, are totally chill to hang out in the spa with their tits out, and laugh at their inane jokes. Reader, our trio of lads go dancing, pop pills and eventually fuck their roommates to Willow’s Song, the alluring siren’s song performed by Britt Eckland as she seduces the copper in 1973’s hit cult flick The Wicker Man (incidentally, another movie about a community seducing and eventually murdering outsiders).

The problem? These are not sexually liberated tourists, having a laugh and shagging a bunch of goons for the fun of it. They, like Willow of The Wicker Man, are duplicitous: the sex is the primer for the betrayal, because we all know that sexually liberated women are up to no good.

• Come back tomorrow for Part 2, in which Alice looks at Hostel II – and its more prominent female characters – in more detail… EDIT: Read Part 2 here.
• By day, Alice Slater is a writer and bookseller from London. By night, she is a horror film addict who always keeps the lights on. She writes for Mslexia and Drunken Werewolf, and she blogs about veg*n high jinx at SmokinTofu.com.