What does one do with Halloween? If you have a generally incompetent...bungling lifestyle...you'll stay home and watch a movie. And of course...tradition tells you...to muster up all the horror films you can find...invite some more of your "bungler" friends...pop some popcorn...order a pizza...open up a few cold brews and start a farting and belching contest...between intermissions.

Horror films...almost always starts off...with some chick running through the woods at night.

This is not a problem...as most people like chicks. At least...I know men do. Nine times out of ten...the young woman is a brunette (heaven forbid they knock off a blonde first) and lightly built...so as not to give herself a couple of black eyes before she gets killed. Naturally...we get only the briefest glimpse of the monster...or cranky Avon saleslady...who'll be terrorizing us (or not) for the rest of the film.

We fall for this crap...over and over...and for the life of me...I can't figure out why? I don't think the introduction...as such...scares anyone anymore. Even my dogs...can't be bothered to stop licking their butts...long enough to get caught up in it's scary music... stings and all. "Get to the monster already!" People have cried for years...over this stuff. Only then...would we deign to be scared...and only if the monster was good.

This...too...has gone...the way of all rotting flesh...and for a couple of major reasons: One...the bloody (sic) sequels. "Halloween"..."Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Friday the Thirteenth" series...add up to around fifty movies. How frightening can Freddie be anymore? Two...maybe three? Thanks to computer graphics...they can now create anything...that the mind can conceive...and we've been using them up at a rapid pace. The above films...introduced unbridled gore and blood. Now...we have explicitly detailed monsters and mayhem. This reached its artistic peak...in the original "Jurassic Park"...when the T-Rex smashed a restroom and chomped a lawyer right off of the can and ate him. Oh...how we cheered! Unfortunately...after that...the shark had been jumped.

No...there's simply a limit to what the special effects can sell. I hate to be picky...but have you pimply-eyed boys (I know what I said)...in that dark room with your savvy computers...considered contacting a writer (hint...hint)...and inserting...say...an actual story line? Scary movies aren't scary anymore...so they've resorted to other things to sell tickets:

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