..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

The Wails of September Movie going continued to rebound with record September business led by Sony's vampire thriller Underworld with an estimated $22.9 million. Second and third ranked films also featured new entries in Paramount's The Fighting Temptations and New Line's family film Secondhand Lions. Even Focus Film's reissue of Scarface proved potent in 13 situations. Still, volume largely trumped individual potency as the Sharon Stone thriller Cold Creek Manor returned tepid results and the latest Woody Allen offering, Anything Else wilted in the heat of competition. Overall business expanded to slightly more than $107 million, compared to about $81 million generated in 2002 when Barbershop led the field with $12.8 million and the top newcomer was The Banger Sisters at $10 million followed by Ballistic and The Four Feathers. It's a 33% increase from last year and 25% better than last weekend's business. I believe it was Hammer's Dracula A.D. 1972 that had the ad line that "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down." However, even if Underworld has a distaff vampire unrelated to the Count, you get the picture. Horror movies are enjoying a current vitality regardless of their pedigree and certainly irrespective of providing more than a modest twist to venerable characters and situations. Last weekend's excellent bow of Cabin Fever - one of the more inventive recent chillers - nonetheless experienced a sharp second weekend drop. That's pretty much been standard, too, and has to be worrisome for upcoming scare titles leading up to Halloween when attendance tends to be soft and competition fierce. It was a close race for second spot (see How Can You Tell I'm Lion below) with the musical The Fighting Temptations nosing out Secondhand Lions by about $100,000 with $12.4 million. The spread widens considerably when you toss in the fact that Lions played in close to 1,000 more theaters and underscores the continuing problem faced by all family fare that doesn't carry the Disney imprimatur. The Mouse House's Touchstone label was having its own problems with Cold Creek Manor, a predictable thriller that generated no more than an OK gross of $8.4 million. And DreamWorks decision to give Woody Allen's Anything Else a wider than usual launch proved to be just about a total wash as evidenced by its $1.8 million return. Allen has moved on to Fox Searchlight for his next film. Activity in niche and limited releases was generally soft although the U.S. launch of Mambo Italiano had room for optimism and the Scarface DVD promo proved quite effective. Mambo, a hybrid indie comedy with gay and ethnic appeal set in Montreal, grossed $770,000 for the weekend. It previously rang up about $3 million in Quebec via producer/distributor Equinox that added 130 theaters in English Canada this weekend. IDP's 42 playdates on the west coast accounted for about $180,000 of the weekend tally. Scarface, originally released in 1983 by Universal, was given a locked one-week run to tub thumb its DVD release and based on the results some exhibs will be pleading to keep it on screen longer. Certainly if it's deemed a successful promotional tool, more such limited theatrical revivals will be in the offing. Among the handful of exclusives, Videograph's offbeat comedy horror item Bubba Ho-Tep was the surprise with about $36,000 from two engagements. It should kick start the yarn involving Elvis (yes, he's still alive) and a malevolent mummy. Also upbeat was the $17,300 generated by the French documentary To Be and To Have on two screens. The rest of the entries were no better than fair and included John Sayles' social drama Casa de los Babys with $37,200 from 9 theaters and the Berlin Golden Bear winner In This World - the second Sundance Film Series offering - with $26,500 from 10 venues. How Can You Tell I'm Lion? The race for second spot (and not the lion's share) between The Fighting Temptations and Secondhand Lions is a reminder how weekend box office estimates rather than Monday's final figures have become the news story and focus for studio reporting. In the long run it will make little difference how either film ranked on opening weekend but judging from the vigorous inflation being applied to each film by their distributor that argument falls on deaf ears. According to the respective studios, Temptations grossed $13.2 million and Lions did $12.88 million. MCN estimates fall outside the typical +/- 5% statistical norm for margin of error. For virtually all media outlets, the studio reported estimates are not verified or counter checked and, as they are estimates, it's difficult to separate bad calculations from numbers being spun for a presumed commercial advantage. The latter excess has bothered several distribution execs and even prompted Phil Barlow at Disney to devise a chart that would include estimates from all studios of the top ranked pictures. However, before it could be taken the next step, both Variety and the Hollywood Report rejected it when it was proposed about seven years ago. When I I was reporting weekend box office at Variety, my entreaty to print "our" estimates was also deep sixed though I was able to question reported numbers in the written analysis. For those who never spend time in the schoolyard in the Second Grade, the answer to the riddle is: Because you paws too long. - by Leonard Klady