an old Saw

Nothing unpredicted here: the new flick in the Saw run opened, like it does every year at this time, and it grossed about $30 million for its opening weekend, like it does every year at this time. Various press releases and internet news posts tout this as putting the Saw franchise at the top of the all-time grossers for horror series with about $320 million, but this neglects inflation.

A list of adjusted totals from Wikipedia (sourced reliably):

Friday the 13th, $590 million
Hannibal Lecter, $560.4 million,
A Nightmare on Elm Street, $503
Halloween, $498.6 million
Scream, $385.2 million
Psycho, $358.2 million
Saw, $338.3 million
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, $304.2 million
Child's Play, $193

Our anonymous compiler, a F13th fan, has neglected one or two: the Alien series, which should run over $500 million even before including the Alien Vs Predator flicks, and more to the point, the Exorcist series. The original Exorcist by itself, which took in $193 million in 1973, adjusts to about $782 million, singlehandedly obliterating any of these franchises without including sequels and reissues.

As for Saw, it's nothing if not reliable. People seem to enjoy asking how many there'll be, but the creators don't seem to have denoted a magic number to end the series. Conventional wisdom indicates that as long as these things cost $10-15 million to make, open to $30 mil, and close with $50 domestic, they'll hold out.

I am not a Saw fan. The first one had some pretty interesting buzz going, and I dug the premise, but the flick was awful. Poor acting from capable folks, painful, sub-C.S.I.-quality dialogue ("Looks like our guy likes to book himself front-row seats to his own sick little games!"), and a twist so plastic I left the theater groaning - that was it for the Saw franchise, as far as I was concerned.

Still, though, people's continued rabid interest in the series over the years made me wonder what I was missing, and I thought maybe I owed the franchise another shot, so I recently sat down on a day off and lined up all four Saws. I'm still not a Saw fan, but I'm no longer a hater; it's got just a little bit more going for it than I expected. The first film was still painfully bad, but for the first time in my experience, every sequel is better than the original. None of them is wonderful, none is original, but taken as a whole, it's got a small quantity of personality, and there's something pleasurable in the formulaic repetition, expectable structure, the familiar swell of the main theme as each entry climaxes with a comprehensive flashback revealing that episode's twist.

Viewing them back-to-back is a pretty good way of going about it; one of the strengths of the series is its consistent storyline. It's the most soap-operatic horror franchise you could imagine, and seen in a chunk (or over a brief span of a couple days, if you don't want to throw six consecutive hours into it), the singularity of the timeline is intriguing, individual character storylines looking much more delineated than they would if you caught one of these per year. In a single serving, the whole thing plays like a serial, full of teasers and cliffhangers, and if I couldn't differentiate between, say, Saw III and Saw IV as films (any more than you'd know whether a crucial bit on last month's Young and the Restless went down on a Tuesday or a Wednesday), it's as engrossing as any other guilty pleasure you might get caught up in unintentionally. So if you've ever found yourself staying tuned past the first commercial break on L.A. Ink, America's Next Top Model, Passions, or your embarrassing TV show of choice, don't judge the Saw fans too harshly.


Other reasons I'll defend Saw:
-To counter the numerous folk decrying it as "torture porn" and claiming you're a sickie if you'd want to see flicks like these
-The reliable revenue stream for Lionsgate means they can afford to take a few more risks on independent flicks and lesser-known horror options
-Most of all, the annual blood drive, which has gathered tens of thousands of pints, saving over a hundred thousand lives. Should dispel knee-jerk estimation of horror fans being sick. Certainly done more for mankind than any number of Ocean's Elevens.