by Pam Johnson

Created on: April 29, 2009   Last Updated: April 30, 2009

Step into any horror movie, and a lot of adventure and even comedy movies and you can be stepping into a festival of blood, guts, and gaping oozing wounds, as well as well done bodies and flying body parts.

In younger years, I used to delight in the gore of it all, applauding the spectacular slashing fingers of Freddy Kruger as he shredded panicked teens to pulp or the belly-rupturing, alien eruptions from both female and male screaming bodies, but as time goes by, not so much.

Hollywood claims they need the splash of blood, the oozing slime, the mushrooming geyser of red and gray splatter to keep the viewers attention, but really all this gruesome mass destruction is doing is drizzling a bad plot with mayhem and anguish. Let's face it, we laugh at the humor of hulu.com's aliens turning our minds to mush so they can gobble them down by broadcasting the old and new shows "directly into the viewer's brain", but you have to wonder just how much of that is really how the producers of horror and, yes, crime drama producers too, see the viewing public when they try to disguise a poorly written B movie with mindless gore.

Don't get me wrong. Gore has its place. If it's included to drive the story ahead, then keep it. But don't force feed the viewers a cement truck full of it when all that is needed is a smattering. Gore is not a case of more is better.

In days gone by, producers of horror and dramatic movies had an elegance. Alfred Hitchcock used intense suspense and elegant effects to frighten his fans. Who can forget that amazing shower scene in Psycho. It was achieved by a man with vision and a passion to create quality work, not a slash and slash gore-o-matic.

Once upon a time, vampires were a refined and gentry-type creature. When they sipped on their human feasts, the blood wasn't splashed to and fro. It was savored like a fine wine. Vampires of old knew how to dine with dignity. Today's vampire wears as much blood as he, or she, guzzles. rather like pigs at a trough. Even today's good-guy type vamps go all beastly when the dinner bell rings, which leaves them appearing less humane than the men they are feeding from.

All in all, there was a time when movies could be horrific without resorting to being gross-out carnivals. Gore has its place, admitted. But lets get it back in the box before takes on its own blob-of-slime life and devours our minds much like hulu.com warns us could happen

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