R.I.P. - My tolerance for gore

A moment of silence please...

Thank you!

I don't know if this means I've officially grown up or what. I mean, I still love cereal and can watch cartoons for hours. But, last night marked the death of my high tolerance for the goretastic.

Actually, the ability to withstand eye-gouging, stomach-churning gore is less a kids thing then it is a young adult thing. As a kid, you quickly shield your eyes to scary and gory things. As a teen you pump your fist with joy at the over-the-top grossness of it all.

Well as an adult I'm not only shielding my eyes but turning the channel!

Unfortunately, even reminding myself it's only a movie doesn't do much good to wipe the images away.

The murderer of my tolerance, Showtime's original scarefest, Masters of Horror.

Sometimes, the shows are funny. Last year's episode with Michael Moriarity was the best and had me giggling righteously, mostly at Moriariaty's creepy, yet tickling portrayal of a serial killer.

Okay, so I'm weird to be tickled by a serial killer.

I said my tolerance for gore has died. Not my love of the horror genre.

Other times, MOH is spooky. I still recall the weirdly haunting story of the over-sexed mutant girl. Serious proof that men will...well, watch the episode.

But last night's MOH was just plain gross. I squealed and screeched through the first fifteen minutes. Watched through my fingers the second fifteen and had turned the channel by the final twenty.

I was disappointed in myself.

I truly tried to stick out the entire hour. I did.

But the show spiraled into horrible gore that would make even the producers of Saw wince.

Use your imagination to envision how the following things were used on the human body:

*A steel animal trap
*An aluminum bat
*A sewing needle
*A six inch knife

All very innocent tools on any other show!

An obvious glutton for punishment, I went back and attempted to watch the last seven minutes. When Meatloaf (playing the main baddie) said, "I need something sharp," in a conversational tone, I knew what was what and haul assed from the channel.

I don't know if he found something sharp. And I don't care to know what he did with it if he did!

I swear, I have not been truly afraid to watch a movie since I was nine years old and my aunt Jan forced me to watch (without fingers obscuring the good stuff) late-night horror films. She introduced me to scary movies and took me to my first theatre-film, Poltergeist.

Not since those days, where I'd curl into a ball as I watched fascinated, have I felt the need to run in the opposite direction of what a scary movie has to offer. But last night...man, I couldn't take it anymore.

Geez, what next? Loving foreign films? Or only watching chick-flicks?!

Someone tell me, what is it about the human mind that makes it too sensitive, too sensible and too friggin' intuitive that it begins to process such things differently as you age?!

It's just a movie!!! I screamed to myself last night. But I was saying this AS I turned the channel to a late-night re-run of Ugly Betty.

I won't give up on the MOH series. Dammit, I've watched its predecessors - Tales from the Crypt, Outer Limits and such - without issue. And some of those got pretty darn disgusting. So, I will not let MOH conquer me.

Even while admitting I'm obviously getting less tolerant of graphic gore, I also believe (no, I know) the producers of these things are pushing the limits. They're upping the ante on gore to levels that must have censors working overtime.

I read that one of the MOH eps, for this season, was directed by a Japanese filmmaker known for his unsettling movie images. The ep was pulled by Showtime and is only available if you purchse the DVD. It was that disturbing, apparently.

So maybe it's not me.

Still, last night when that woman took that needle and...::shudder::

Yeah, it's me.