2nd February 2011.

Question: How often should we reasonably expect a decent theatrical horror movie to come along? One a month? One a fortnight? If we get, say, twenty, does that count as a good year? I'd say that it certainly would, to get that many plums among the dozens of duffs that get released every year. Such a bounty of good, intelligent, quality genre movies at the cinema would be a rare treat. That's before counting the DVD releases of films that are actually perfectly entertaining and enjoyable but not deemed worthy of a theatrical release, or not even conceived with theatrical viewing in mind, such as cash-in sequels produced for the home market (Death Race 2 is a recent example).

Obviously, the more the merrier, and the healthier the genre. To struggle to produce a list of ten really good genre films at the end of the year is a familiar experience. But could we really manage with two a day? I ask because over on the FrightFest Forum, there's a list of upcoming horror movies that numbers a whopping 627 titles, which would work out at about 1.72 per day. Ignoring the fact that many of them won't actually be theatrical releases (the likes of Spring Break Zombie Cruise will not trouble Odeons, or even Blockbusters), ignoring the fact that many of them may not show up until 2012 or 2013, ignoring the fact that some of them aren't even horror movies (Blue Valentine): let's more than halve it to take account of that. Will we still get three hundred - even two hundred - decent genre offerings this year?

Not a chance. Sheer weight of numbers will surely preclude a lot of them from getting released even on DVD, let alone to your local plex. Even if we got one hundred titles released at all - good, bad or indifferent - that's still two a week. That's not counting any of the films that aren't on the list, or catching up with any older movies, or taking into account the occasional days where we don't watch anything at all. Certainly it's possible to see that many movies - you could see four a day if you wanted - but at the expense of any kind of real life. You probably wouldn't even have time to blog about them. That quantity might look impressive at the end of the year but if the majority of them were one and two-star films that, to me, suggests half that year was wasted. It takes just as long to watch a great film as a rotten one, although the best ones sometimes deserve a little time, or a second viewing, to fully digest. I know that was my experience with Pan's Labyrinth.

It's an interesting list. Some of the titles we know are coming out at some point - Final Destination 5, Human Centipede: Full Sequence, Straw Dogs. But numerous others may be headed straight for Blockbusters or Poundland, assuming they even get made. New versions of Deep Red, Suspiria, new sequels to the Friday The 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Elm Street reboots might be possible, although hadn't the Deep Red remake and the Friday sequel already been cancelled. But they've been banging on about some of these projects - a new Hallraiser movie, for example - for years and they've still not materialised. Meanwhile we're promised another sequel to Xtro? Why on Earth would they do that? Or Constantine 2? Come on. And those are movies that you could conceivably imagine existing. Does the country really need a Gutterballs 2? (Mind you - who would have thought we'd ever get a sequel to Mirrors?)

The IMDb - and yes, I acknowledge it's not the most reliable of sources, given that it omits Dario Argento's new 3D version of Dracula - doesn't even bother to include the purported remakes of The Eyes Of Laura Mars or I Know What You Did Last Summer, so they may be nothing more than some dumbo executive's flight of fancy or a randomly overheard snippet of conversation. Here's hoping that's all they are, frankly - given that I Know What... is an entirely generic slasher movie (albeit a passably entertaining one), why shackle a new and equally generic slasher movie to an old and derided franchise? Do they think we won't go and see it? Of course we will.

Until the next time...

Richard Street.

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