By DANNY GALLAGHER

Don't be alarmed, but there's some pretty disturbing news coming from the aorta of America's heartland.

An anonymous "Movies that Suck" reader named Jim, who's obviously too scared to reveal his true identify, writes:

"In my local video store (as in most) there is a section of previously viewed videos and DVDs for sale. I've noticed, this section actually has 3 or 4 copies of Gigli. How can there be this many copies that have actually been rented, even if only once each?

"This is a film that when it came out, David Letterman asked his audience if they had seen it, and instead of a smattering of applause, he was met with complete silence.

"Does this mean we can expect to see viewed copies of 'From Justin to Kelly' in a few weeks? The mind boggles. -- Sincerely, Jim"

Quite a shock, eh? Now before we all get ourselves into a feverish panic and start raiding the local hardware stores for torches and pitchforks, let's take a calm, deep, collective breath and figure this thing out using our heads, which the makers of "Gigli" obviously never used since day one of principal shooting.

There's probably a very reasonable explanation for this. As a matter of fact, here's three that just flew off the top of my head.

(1) The big name video rental chains can't get customers to rent "Gigli" of their own free will and have resorted to selling them at prices lower than the value of the Mexican dollar.

(2) After Blockbuster Video bought thousands of copies hoping it would flood the box office with more cash than a stripper's G-string at a Kennedy family reunion, they realized they had to mark down the retail price and have their distribution manager executed by firing squad.

(3) They're multiplying.

Truthfully, Jim's letter was a scary one to receive because the local Blockbuster here in East Texas has a pre-viewed movie rack filled with videotapes of movies no one has watched since algae had the highest rung on the food chain. And there are at least five copies of "Gigli" sitting there hoping that someone will buy them.

They're begging to be purchased. If you walk into any Blockbuster Video and listen quietly, you can just hear the faint whispers of desperation these tapes try to scream without any mouths.

PREVIEWED COPIES OF "GIGLI": "Please...please buy us. You don't understand how we feel. We spend our whole life as a strip of blank film waiting, hoping, praying that we'll be worth something. Something magnificent, something brilliant, something that's not just entertaining or funny or scary or romantic but something touching and thought-provoking. Something that makes you think differently about life or feel something, anything, for another human being that you never would have thought you'd feel before. Instead, we're a 120 minute crap festival starring some dumb meathead who fell into a movie career like a man falls into an open sewer and dies and a woman who's butt takes up at least one-fourth of every frame."

It's a known fact that life cannot be stopped. Somehow, it always finds a way to survive. And while "Gigli" videotapes aren't technically living things, they know they're not going to make it in the real world on their own. They've found a way to multiple like in "Jurassic Park" when the scientists try to keep the dinosaurs from breeding by making only female specimens, but their frog based DNA allows some of them to change their sex. The dinosaurs also knew it would stretch out the movie another 45 minutes.

So if these tapes have found a way to prolong their existence without Cinemax's help, there has to be a way to stop them. We could just start buying them by the truckload in the hopes they'll start taking cold showers again, but I wouldn't buy a copy of "Gigli" if Jennifer Lopez was holding my sister hostage. Maybe Blockbuster Video will get the hint when they're stuck with tons of copies of this stinker and burn them but I found a copy of "Batman & Robin" in the New Releases section a month ago, so that's not going to happen.

Hmmm, where did I put that pitchfork?

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©2004 by Danny Gallagher

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