Halloween is only a handful of days away. Many people are gathering costumes, preparing to hold parties or finding space for their out-of-town friends. I'm sure a few will even make a trip to the movie theater this weekend, hoping to be scared out of their wits. To those poor souls, I say \good luck.""
Only two Halloween-type films are in theaters this year. This past weekend, ""The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"" was ousted from the top of the box office by ""Scary Movie 3."" Both of them have largely been panned by critics, and yet ""Scary Movie 3"" raked in nearly $50 million in its opening (""Chainsaw Massacre"" took only two weeks to reach the same mark). The first two ""Scary Movie"" flicks were helmed by the Wayans brothers and were simply a collection of horror movie references and crude jokes cobbled together into something loosely called a ""film.""
The second in the series was particularly disgusting and was not much of a financial success. Now, with director David Zucker (""Airplane!"" and ""Naked Gun"") taking over for the Wayans brothers, the third movie is enjoying inexplicable box office success. I've never been impressed by the ""Scary Movie"" series, and the house-cleansing that occurred after the second makes this third sequel almost completely unrelated to its predecessors (but no more appealing). Unsurprisingly, Dimension Films already has greenlit production for ""Scary Movie 4.""
And what of ""Chainsaw Massacre?"" Well-known critic Roger Ebert gave it zero stars. By no means do I place an extreme amount of confidence in Roger Ebert's taste in films, as he seems to have gotten much softer in his ratings over the last three or four years. But considering how bad ""Chainsaw"" looked to begin with, a zero rating makes me feel pretty confident about discouraging any and all people who are considering seeing it this weekend.
Then again, I've never been a fan of scary movies. For the most part, describing films in that genre as ""scary"" and ""movies"" is arguable at best and laughable at worst. The most well-known franchises are exercises in camp-low budget absurdities that make young children cringe in fear but leave the rest of us laughing. The ""Nightmare on Elm Street,"" ""Halloween"" and ""Friday the 13th"" series are scary to some people and hilarious to others, but I never even felt like they were worth my time. They don't amuse me. They don't scare me. The first ""Scream"" film was far from spectacular but was somewhat entertaining. The sequels were extremely disappointing.
So what should you throw in the DVD player on October 31? I would suggest ""28 Days Later,"" the Danny Boyle zombie flick that was recently released on DVD, though it doesn't really make you jump out of your skin. It's a chilling end-of-the-world tale and an outstanding, stylish film-but it isn't all that scary. Last year's ""The Ring"" was particularly scary and creepy without taking the genre's conventions completely over the top. In the end, though, I'm pretty sure the scariest sights to be seen this weekend will be some of the State Street costumes. Yikes.
wwtemby@wisc.edu.
