In part one of "What's Wrong With Today's Horror Movies", the League of Tana Tea Drinkers hoisted a few crisp, wet ones while dwelling on the exigencies, intricacies, and commodities of postmodern (as well as classic and neo-classic) horror film fair, and it's looming quietus into something amounting to little more than the taste of grisly pablum. With salty pretzels well in hand, and a cold drink in the other, let us get back to the discussion.

Dinner With Max Jenke wants more on his plate...

This is a topic that lots of fans have an immediate answer to, with plenty of vitriol to share about how horror is a diluted product now - just watered-down thrills made for an indiscriminating audience. Tips for improvement run the whole gamut — horror movies should be R and not PG-13, there should be less of a focus on teenagers, and more original films instead of remakes and sequels.

But horror fans of every generation have typically made it a point to complain that the horror films of the present are inferior to whatever scare fare they grew up on. I imagine that even some ancient moviegoers who were raised in the silent days must have believed that the advent of sound was the death knell of true horror. Because, you know, movies are only scary when you have to imagine what a creaking door sounds like. And once black and white was replaced by color, I bet some fans never recovered from that because everybody knows that horror movies just don’t work as well unless they’re in black and white. The point being that every era has given horror fans something new to gripe about.

When I was a kid in the early ‘80s, all I ever heard was a lot of hyperventilating about how horror had fallen into a morass of blood and guts and how the slasher genre was destroying horror movies. Now, of course, that time is now thought of as some kind of golden age and films that were dismissed as outright junk like My Bloody Valentine and Happy Birthday to Me (both 1981) are considered (in some quarters, at least) to be classics and now it’s the turn of remakes like Prom Night (2008) to be blamed for ruining horror.

So if anyone ever asks me what’s wrong with horror today, my usual answer is “nothing”.

Sure, I don’t love every horror movie I see. With some films, I just don’t understand how they appeal to anyone. The Saw series baffles me, for instance - not because of the violence, but because of the inanity of the storylines. But what other people like doesn't bother me and every year I always manage to find some movies that I do enjoy. As long as that stays true, I can't say things are all bad.

If I could change anything, it’s that I'd like unrated and NC-17 movies to get wider theatrical releases rather than either going straight to DVD or receiving very limited runs. I was part of the last generation who got to see the unfettered likes of Pieces, The Beyond (aka Seven Doors of Death), and Demons in theaters and I think it's unfortunate that unless someone lives in or near a major market, the most extreme horror movies they'll ever experience on the big screen are R-rated fare. And it's also a shame that quirky independent pictures like Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter and Stuart Gordon's Stuck (among many others) don't have a chance of playing at most fans' local theaters. I'm glad these movies have an outlet to be seen uncompromised on DVD and cable but yet I wish they had greater opportunities for theatrical distribution.