Good god, what the hell is Hollywood paying all their marketing people for? 'Cause it sure as hell isn't to look at the calendar and do a bit of advance planning. So here's a little lesson for all of you would-be marketing types out there.

First, Hallowe'en. It's one of the largest, most anticipated and most visible holidays of the year. Everybody loves Hallowe'en - well, everyone except my parents who wouldn't let me celebrate it as a child out of religious concerns - and why not? You get to dress up and be spooky and gorge yourself on candy and all three of these things are very good indeed.  

On to point two. Where do people like to go to be spooked?  While gorging themselves on candy? Could it be the movies? Yes, indeedy. Hallowe'en is a movie marketer's wet dream, the perfect time to spread a bit of blood across the screen and rake in cash from audiences who -- if we're being frank -- don't really give a damn about quality this week, provided there's a bit of gore and maybe a few breasts in front of them, glowing larger than life on the big screen.

So where the hell is the horror? These next two weeks should be a genre-fan's bonanza on the big screen and, instead, they're absolutely horrible! What have we got? Coming out this week -- the week before Halloween -- are only two genre themed titles. There's the retch-inducing Twilight cash-in Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant -- surely the most glaring waste of talent of the past decade, with John C. Reilly, Salma Hayek and Ken Watanabe among those with actual talent slumming it in this dog. And then there's the latest in the Saw franchise -- the whopping sixth installment in the franchise that long ago stopped even pretending to care about quality so long as they could cash in on the season. Yeah, they're doing exactly what I suggested earlier that more films should be doing but, people... how sad is it when Saw is the best thing going?

Well, maybe it'll get better next week. New release day is just the day before Halloween, right? Surely someone's holding back something better for then. Er... no. October thirtieth features a grand total of zero wide release movies and there's not a single genre title among those hitting limited release, though Bronson is really quite good and well worth checking out. Bizarrely, though, there is a pair of genre pics coming out the week after Halloween with Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly's The Box and alien abduction flick The Fourth Kind both dropping a week late. Kelly's flick is being sent out to die an ignoble death, completely unsupported by a studio that lost faith in it long ago, which explains the odd release date there but I have no idea what the thinking is behind The Fourth Kind.

Part of what's happening here is -- quite simply -- that Hollywood is literally running out of movies. The writer's strike of a couple years back interrupted the production cycle and with the recession following hard behind that, production has been way, way down with most of the players choosing to clear the vaults of already completed projects rather than risking money on anything new. And now there's not much worthwhile hitting screens because there just aren't many films for the studios to release, period. That explains a lot of it, but come on, Scorsese's Shutter Island is done and ready to go. Give me that. Or maybe Joe Johnston's The Wolfman, which just dropped a fantastic new trailer despite having its release pushed back until February. In my corner of the world that Wolfman trailer is the only thing worth getting excited about this week so unless something drops something unexpected in my lap I'll just be spending the next couple weeks at home with my Bluray player. Or maybe I'll take the lad to see Astro Boy. But ain't no way Saw's getting my money.