Who Needs Halloween? TV is Scary Enough

Yikes! Just in time for Halloween, we've got nukes and wars, genocide and terrorism. And then, on November 1, awaits the same dread as the night before. The spell of real-world demons won't be broken as we scrap this season's costumes, masks and candy corn.

What to do? We can turn, as ever, to our TV. Not for reassurance, or even distraction from life's bogeymen. But to get the willies in acceptable fashion. To get our fear intake in a suitable dosage and convenient form right there on the screen, in dozens of variations at the click of a button.

Maybe we feel like wallowing in the nightmares of a community cut off from a world otherwise devastated by nuclear blasts. Well, we can help ourselves to CBS' "Jericho," one of the season's most popular new series.

Could be, we've got a hankering to watch a handful of loners struggle to prevent a nuclear attack they see flattening New York this very November 8. "Heroes," a new hit for NBC, is just the ticket.

Or, taking us out of the nuclear rut, the CW has two beefcake brothers chasing goblins on "Supernatural." And Jennifer Love Hewitt counsels dead folks on CBS' "Ghost Whisperer." (Sure, it's supposed to be comforting to watch her point a soul toward the light. But, sorry, even a ghost in need is still a ghost, and that's creepy.)

Our taste for ghoulishness is served by the ever-more-grisly display of corpses in dramas like "CSI" and "Bones." Didn't we get our fill of real-life bodies sighted floating in floodwaters or abandoned at a curbside after Hurricane Katrina?

Heck no. We never get our fill. What we fear isn't getting more, but not getting enough. We fear that TV, even in its excesses, can't offset its impact on us as a desensitizing agent. We fear that it won't keep pace with our dulling sensibilities.

The rest of this story will shock you, too

What do we viewers fear? Hearing someone's point of view we don't agree with. Losing cable service before a big sportscast. Getting so befuddled by an episode of "Lost" we think we'll never catch up. Putting something on YouTube, then nobody watching. To name a few.

Bad news also alarms us -- in a titillating way. "The next story will shock you" is our favorite tease. We're beside ourselves at the prospect of shock value. Twenty years ago Dan Rather signed off by saying "Courage," and people are still laughing at him. Courage would just spoil our high.

The news washing over us like acid rain is scary, all right.

But even more scary are the adjacent commercials. On the evening news, one warning follows another from products for diseases we never knew existed. Overactive bladder! Chronic dry eye! Restless leg syndrome! Plus old reliables like arthritis, insomnia, cancer, bone loss, high cholesterol, asthma, erectile dysfunction.

Life hands us the opportunity to make growth choices or fear choices. It's advertising's job to sell fear choices. The defensive solution. A quick fix for a problem we didn't know we had.

We let commercials, and the larger ethos of TV, plant doubts in us, and then, our faith shaken, we keep measuring ourselves against people on TV. So we can rely on always coming up short. Unless we tune in "Jerry Springer," where we revel in the horror of seeing ourselves in the willfully wretched specter of his guests.

We watch toothpick twit Paris Hilton and joyously recoil at her vapidity.

Eagerly we brace ourselves for TV's next four-letter word or wardrobe malfunction.

We savor the madness of Nancy Grace. (What's scarier than that?)

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, as we all know. But we retreat into it anyway. Into palatable, entertaining fear. Our cheap substitute for feeling at peace. And the easy alternative to boredom. Which, of course, is the thing we fear most.

'Saw III' Slices the Competition

Halloween came early at movie theaters as "Saw III" sliced up the competition with a $34.3 million debut, the best opening yet for the gory horror franchise.

Lionsgate's "Saw III" easily took over as No. 1 at the box office, bumping off Disney's dueling-magicians saga "The Prestige," which slipped to third place with $9.6 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. "The Prestige" raised its 10-day total to $28.8 million.

Martin Scorsese's mob tale "The Departed" held strongly again, taking in $9.8 million to place second for the third-straight weekend. The Warner Bros. film lifted its total to $91.1 million.

Revenues for "The Departed" were down just 27 percent from the previous weekend, compared to 35 percent for "The Prestige" and 38 percent for Clint Eastwood's World War II epic "Flags of Our Fathers," which was No. 4 with $6.35 million.

Paramount's "Flags of Our Fathers," which cost $90 million to produce, has gotten off to a slow start, raising its 10-day total to $19.9 million. The acclaimed film still could follow the pattern of Eastwood's last two movies, "Mystic River" and "Million Dollar Baby," which became hits on the strength of Academy Awards buzz.

Focus Features' South African drama "Catch a Fire" premiered weakly with $2 million in 1,306 theaters, averaging $1,541, compared to $10,830 in 3,167 cinemas for "Saw III."

"Catch a Fire" stars Derek Luke and Tim Robbins in the story of a black family man driven to rebel against South Africa's apartheid system in the 1980s.

"It's the biggest no-brainer of the century to put these movies out on Halloween weekend and wait for the money to roll in," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.