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When I started this column a few months back, I said that I'd make it about pretty much whatever caught my mythological fancy in any given week. Today I'm going to do just that by breaking a few rules. First, my topic of the week is going to be about a film series rather than a television one. Second, I'm going to take a fairly positive stance on one of the more reviled yet successful recent film franchises. I'm struggling to avoid getting all cutesy and quoting their tagline here...oh, what the hell... It's Halloween - it must be Saw.

As I said, this recent horror series has inspired the ire of critics, word-of-mouthers, bloggers, tweeters, facebook status updaters, and pretty much anyone with a public outlet to express their scorn. Yet, year after year, the latest installment rakes in another $50 million plus in ticket sales. I think I read somewhere that it's made more in five films (to date) than any of the three big franchises, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th have in their collective double digit installment grosses. No Saw film has topped $100 million like Blair Witch, The Ring and The Grudge, but consistency is the word of the day here and Saw has developed a passionate fanbase, excited to return every All Hallow's Eve to see Jigsaw or one of his disciples dispatch another bunch of ingrates who just can't seem to learn that all they have to do to survive is to show how much they appreciate life by permanently mangling themselves. And the fan base is passionate. There is a core who will always turn out for Saw - maybe not to the extent of Star Wars, Twilight or Harry Potter, but enough to keep the franchise going well beyond the trilogy level that most film series peter out at.

So why the disconnect? Certainly horror is one of the more polarizing of genres to begin with, but there are enough acclaimed classics of the form (The Exorcist, Halloween, Frankenstein, The Shining) to disavow genre prejudice, I would say. Saw exists within a splinter genre, the so-called torture porn or gorno. Now this label, while clever, is not quite accurate. Porn is real, not simulated, sex. To really be "torture porn", Jigsaw's traps would have to actually mutilate the actors. This seems like a bit of a nit-pick on my part, but I think it's significant in that the "torture porn" label exists to devalue any film that fits within its constricts. Is there artistic value in the Saw films? That's debatable, but throwing the descriptor of "porn" at them immediately reduces them to a category of crass commercial product designed to titillate the basest of human id.

Now I don't mean to dispute the graphic nature of the series, nor do I deny that there is a visceral response to the gore we see, but I find it disingenuous to criticize Saw (or its gorno bretheren like Hostel) for being violent. Gore, blood and viscera have all been part and parcel to the horror genre for decades. One could argue that Saw raises the bar on dismemberment, but there are many horror classics (Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and so on) that enjoy acclaimed reputations in cinema's history books despite disturbing violence, not to mention other serial killer films like Silence of the Lambs or Se7en. I'm not sure where one draws the line, but it's a blurry one.

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