Before we can truly call the “torture porn” horror trend dead, we’ll have to wait until Halloween to see how audiences react to the upcoming Saw IV. The Saw series has been one of the most successful horror franchises in recent years, and as long as they keep making money, I’m sure they’ll keep bringing out sequels. Saw IV director Darren Lynn Bousman and producer Mark Burg recently appeared at the Comic Con in San Diego this weekend to promote the film and show off a clip from the next installment.

At first they hinted that the clip had been deemed “too much” for audiences, although eventually they showed it anyway. (You can read a description of the clip over at Coming Soon.) But not before they first bragged to everyone that the initial cut of the movie had just received an NC-17 rating, and that they were actually considering releasing it as is. Yeah… sure they are! Come on, are we supposed to believe they would actually release an NC-17 film? As cool as that sounds, it would limit them to only a handful of independent theatres across North America, which means they’d basically be shooting themselves in the foot. People are worried enough that attendance is dropping for R-rated horror films… let’s not get carried away here. If they did actually do that I would be extremely impressed — heck, I might even go out of my way to try and see it, even though I still haven’t bothered watching Saw 2 or 3 yet. What do you think… are they really considering an NC-17 release, or is this just another publicity tactic?