They don't make them like they used to.

Last night I watched John Carpenter's 'The Thing' and not only was I reminded what an excellent film it is but I was hit by a revelation, an epiphany of sorts: I hate CG gore. Now this might not seem like such a life changing realisation, and I'll admit it isn't really, I always knew that I preferred physical special effects no matter how badly they were done, but I never actually realised how much I truly hated CG gore until I was reminded how much I loved the 'real' thing.

Before you get the idea that I'm some sort of technology hating freak let me say that obviously CG and other computer based trickery is far superior in some cases, the lush world of Pandora in Avatar was far better than anything that could have been recreated in a studio, but when you need that really visceral shock to the system you really can't beat traditional special effects.  Compare the part in The Thing where the Husky's head rips open to reveal the alien for the first time to a scene from Blood: The last Vampire:

In the first clip we have a genuine example of horror in a horror/sci-fi film, the tension builds to just pas the point where you'd expect something to happen and then *BAM* the dog's head explodes, peeling back like a ripe banana, then it starts to transform into some sort of spider and tries to eat the other dogs.  Ace.  In the next clip we see some smoothly choreographed vampire slaying which is easy on the eye but feels to me like there's no emotional involvement, the CG blood looks nothing like actual blood and quite frankly the vampires look like they're enjoying dying (quite possibly to get away from the awful Mortal Kombat music someone's dubbed over the top of the scene).  Done correctly there should be nothing better (for men) than a super hot Japanese school girl leaping around acrobatically cutting vampires in half with a sword but thanks to the 'wonders' of CG, in the words of Peter Griffin "All right I am totally flaccid but thank you anyway mam I appreciate the effort".