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On the other hand, largely forgotten April fare included the Kirk-Michael Douglas collaboration It Runs in the Family ($7 million), the silly comic book-based fantasy Bulletproof Monk ($23 million, and on a $52 million budget!), and The Real Cancun ($3 million), a cinematic version of reality TV. That latter film's failure at the box office is what saved us from any more "Reality Films", and we should all be very, very grateful (can you imagine what movies would look like today if Cancun had grossed $100 million? The A&E channel, that's what). As for It Runs in the Family, it still stands as the now 92 year-old Kirk Douglas' very last theatrical release, and it'd be a shame if that remained the case. Another title that was roaming around looking for a home in April was Vin Diesel's mediocre revenge thriller A Man Apart ($26 million); just like Oct. 2002's Knockaround Guys, it was filmed before Diesel hit it big, and, just like that film, it didn't help him much with retaining his star status.

Finally, director Rob Zombie entered the cinematic arena with his '70s horror tribute House of 1000 Corpses. Filmed in 2000, the movie was originally scheduled for January 19, 2001, before Universal Studios dumped it (for no good reason, apparently, other than that it was disgusting). The $12 million that this low-budget film took in may not seem like much, but that amount sowed not only the seeds of Zombie's career as director, but also helped create the up-and-coming torture porn subgenre. The face of horror in the 2000s was slowly coming together, for better or worse.

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