Halloween and the remaining end-of-the-year holidays are fast approaching, though it’s hard to get excited about any of them when it’s 90 degrees outside.

If it doesn’t cool down pretty soon, my Halloween costume and birthday suit may be one and the same. The sight of a pasty, out-of-shape man in his early 40s would be the cruelest trick imaginable — scary enough to illicit screams and disgusting enough to make you not want your candy.

Still, I’d be cool as a cucumber.

Despite its association with pagans, witches, ghosts and whatnot, I like Halloween very much. I like candy (hence the physique) and I like pumpkin-flavored crap, cinnamon brooms and going door-to-door in search of a handout.

Heck, I will even sit through the occasional scary TV show. (Lately, that’s called cable news.)

I’m not much into the evil side of Halloween, however. I prefer the too-goofy-to-be-believed style of Halloween horror.

I’m a big movie fan, but there have been few horror movies that have actually scared me. I would have thought “The Sixth Sense” to be somewhat frightening if the ending hadn’t been blown for me before I purchased a ticket. Thanks, Letterman!

I have seen a couple of horror movies I do find mildly disturbing.

The first of which, “The Shining,” revolves around character Jack Torrence, who takes his family to a desolate wintertime retreat only to lose his mind and terrorize his family. The subtitle could also be called “Smith Family Vacation.”

The other film, “It,” is about a psychotic clown who terrorizes a group of friends who have gathered for a high school reunion of sorts. Again, it takes place in a spooky hotel and, like “The Shining,” was written by Stephen King.

What makes “It” so scary? A psychotic clown, duh.

What makes these movies so great is a lack of predictability. Most slasher films follow a pattern, usually consisting of scantily-clad girls, braless running, a prep school boyfriend in a letterman jacket, underage drinking and/or drug abuse, an empty house and a character who wields some kind of ridiculous weapon.

I, personally, would have a hard time trying to kill or wound anything with a chainsaw, ice pick, pitchfork or finger knives. The smoke from a chainsaw would likely get into my eyes, shifting the balance of power to my opponent, thereby making me an easy target unless I was pure evil and could not be killed by any means.

In other words, most horror movies just aren’t that realistic and aren’t that frightening. Realism is what I crave. If I were to write a horror screenplay, it would go something like this:

A newspaper editor has to write a column. He doesn’t know what to write about so he takes advantage of an upcoming holiday. He knows he’s written about Halloween on a general level before, but what will he do this time? He decides to write about horror movies and how they aren’t really all that scary. Even scarier, he ends the column with a one-paragraph synopsis, basically summing up the first part of the column. Then, a leprechaun smashes his tiny fist through the editor’s computer monitor and beats him to death with a dead octopus.

The end.

— Editor Adam Smith can be reached at adam@athensnews-courier.com.