A Horror Movie on Every Corner

As a recovering child addict to Forry Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, I know from horror.

Back when, long after Universal's Frankenstein/Dracula/Werewolf salad days but before the onslaught of slasher flicks (and, oh yeah, before I was old enough to see R-rated movies), my supply of horror films and horror trivia was pretty much determined by what appeared in Famous Monsters and what played Saturday afternoons on Dr. Paul Bearer's "Creature Feature."

And now, after the Friday the 13th, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street have been ground into nothingness, and following the Scary Movie and Scream parodies, horror movies are ... everywhere, again.

The New York Times, this past Friday (the 13th!) offered a round-up of horror-movie festivals throughout the U.S., from NYC to Orlando.

But, aside from George Romero's zombie movies and the cycle of Japanese ghost chillers (The Grudge, The Ring, etc.), which, honestly, aren't very frightening, doesn't it feel like horror movies have been devolved into GORE movies?

Call me crazy, but I just don't find the lopping-off-body-parts movies -- the Saw franchise, Hostel and so on -- frightening or in the least appealing.

I'll take a good supernatural or scary-monster thrill any day over close-up views of bloody, mutilated flesh.

Yeah, I know, it could just be the onset of Old Fogey Syndrome. And I'm probably contradicting myself, because Romero's films are pretty gory. But they're not stupid and pointless. So, uh, sue me.