“It’s violence replacing the sexual act … [about] guys getting off on the violence.”

You certainly have to give horror director Eli Roth credit for beating his critics — many of whom are regarding his latest film, “Hostel: Part II,” about the abduction, torture, and murder of female American tourists, as nothing more than horror pornography — to the punch. In an era when the horror movie genre has become a race to see who can pack the most explicit images of pain and terror into 90 minutes, Mr. Roth has a simple story, and he’s sticking to it. After the New York premiere of “Hostel: Part II” last Wednesday night, Mr. Roth made an appearance in Times Square — as a guest of the Museum of the Moving Image — and offered a few gems to those in the crowd who hadn’t run screaming from the premiere moments after its gruesome climax.

Horror fans no doubt appreciated the way Mr. Roth discussed his “craft,” particularly in regard to the way he inverts the ideas of sex and violence in the “Hostel” series, the way he chose to depict the on-screen execution of a child, and the way he structured “Part II” as little more than a 90-minute build-up to a bloody, full-frontal, up-close castration.

“I think there is a moment, just a moment in the movie, where you should pull into a place where people are genuinely horrified by the violence,” Mr. Roth said, sitting only a few feet away from a visibly disturbed Bijou Phillips, the co-star of “Hostel: Part II” who had just seen the film for the first time. “And then you slowly bring them back to the point where they’re actually into the violence and they’re crazy and they’re loving it and laughing at the d— in scissors, and once you see that d—, everyone’s going … crazy.”

Mr. Roth also talked extensively about the way he uses his limited marketing funds to maximize the box office returns for such relatively low-budget entries as 2006’s “Hostel” (budgeted at under $5 million) and its sequel (estimated around $10 million). Besides targeting horror buff Web sites, on which Mr. Roth said he intentionally leaks stories and provides interviews, the director also hailed Lionsgate Films for crafting a creative and aggressive marketing campaign, and boasted about a poster that features a nude Ms. Phillips holding her own severed head.

Exploiting a legal loophole, the poster — which surely would have failed the Motion Picture Association of America’s regulation of domestic movie advertising — was created by Sony International, Lionsgate’s partner abroad, and brought to New York’s Comic Convention, where it was promptly photographed and linked across the Internet.

After Quentin Tarantino saw it, Mr. Roth says with glee, the iconic “Pulp Fiction” director proclaimed it “an exploitation poster by way of Diane Arbus.”

The film’s detractors likely took comfort in the fact that “Hostel: Part II” stumbled out of the gate, finishing sixth in the box office rankings over the weekend with a $9 million haul (though it showed on only 2,350 screens, about 1,000 fewer than “Ocean’s Thirteen”). But Mr. Roth’s critics may have been more interested last week in hearing the director defend the rating of his film — an R-rated national release about three American tourists who land in a Slovakian torture chamber where passive aggressive men purge their misogynistic angst by purchasing the kidnapped women and laughing away their tears, pleas, blood, and eventually, severed limbs.

“They got it, they protected the film,” Mr. Roth said of members of the MPAA ratings board, explaining that he lobbied them to permit the castration sequence because it’s “revenge violence. Without that ending, people wouldn’t feel good. There’s nothing NC-17 about it.”

Given the groans from the screening’s sold-out audience, the obvious unease of the discussion’s moderator (Museum of Moving Image curator David Schwartz), and the shell-shocked Ms. Phillips (who refused to comment on the finished cut beyond saying it was “intense”), not everyone agrees with Mr. Roth’s view of the ratings system. Or good taste.

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For those fed up with the blood-soaked profanities of “Hostel: Part II” and the dapper inanities of “Ocean’s Thirteen,” Anthology Film Archives is offering a fascinating dose of counter-programming this weekend in the minimalist nature films of James Benning, set to run through June 21. Two of the three films, “13 Lakes” and “Ten Skies” capture precisely what their titles imply: Long, static takes of 13 lakes, and of 10 different views of the sky, rolling across various landscapes. For those who are sick of summer blockbusters that seem to be getting dumber just as they get louder, here’s the quiet and reflective alternative, enticing New Yorkers with the chance of escaping the asphalt jungle.

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It’s easy to take New York’s many film establishments for granted, but one of our most exciting annual cinematic staples — the New York Asian Film Festival, organized in large part by Grady Hendrix, a regular Sun contributor — came close to imploding a few weeks ago when its new sponsor, Midway Games, pulled its funds from the event three weeks before opening night. It’s a testament both to the festival’s leadership and to its numerous fans that the event has rebounded in such a short span of time, drawing offers of donations and sponsorships. And it would be quite the testament to the supportive New York film community if the Asian Festival was able to sell out the majority of its screenings between June 22 and July 8. If you’re a fan of the festival, or of Asian movies, this is the year to show your support.

ssnyder@nysun.com