Those of you who follow "At-A-Glance Film Reviews" will note that recently I watched all the "A Nightmare On Elm Street" movies in succession, and now I'm plugging my way through the "Halloween" series. When I'm done, I'm even going to go out on a limb and trudge through the dregs of them all, the "Friday the 13th" series.

Some of you may be wondering just what on earth has possessed me to subject myself to this, while others of you may be wondering why I hadn't done it sooner, back in the eighties, when everybody else was.

I don't like slasher movies. At least not in general. There's always exceptions, of course. Like it or not, "Psycho," one of Hitchcock's best and most notorious works, is a slasher movie. Most recently, the two "Scream" flicks were both clever, amusing, and suspenseful. But the genre is not noted for accomplishments that rise above the exploitative, and its reputation is more deserved than not. I look down on the worst of its members with distaste.

And that's why I never saw any of these movies sooner. I was aware of what they were. I was aware of the genre's filmography. But I never subjected myself to them back when the worst of them were popular, because I knew perfectly well I wouldn't like them.

The years go by, and I become even more obsessive about movies, expand my cinematic horizons, and put up a movie review web page that, to my mind, had a conspicuous absence. My peers refer to those silly trashy slasher flicks of the eighties, and I feel left out, because although I know the formula, I haven't a clue about the specifics. Couple this with my wife's desire to see the "Elm Street" movies again, because she watched these when she was a teenager -- like many, she liked the first one, then watched the rest in "bad movie" mode, laughing at what the filmmakers thought would be scary. So, being a completist by nature, I suggested that if we were going to watch them again, we should do it right and watch every last one, in chronological order. It would familiarize myself with something that, like it or not, had become a cultural icon, and it would fill a gap on my movie review page. So we did. Bottom line: I liked the first and last, thought the third was ok, liked the sixth as a bad movie, and the rest were pretty grueling. But now I know what it was all about. Now, starting with the Halloween series, I note with surprise that three of the first four are actually worth watching. From what I understand, the next couple aren't anything, and the "Friday the 13th" movies are pretty much all bombs, but this isn't a mission to seek out candidates for my forthcoming "Top 100 Movies" list, it's about plugging holes on my film review page and about "catching up" on this part of my cinematic cultural education. Because, let's face it, on the list of the most culturally influential movies ever made, "Halloween," "Friday the 13th," and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (and "Psycho," too, for that matter) would probably all be listed.

The reason I'm posting this here, instead of in the Site Journal, is that I want all of your opinions -- particularly from those of you who watched these movies as teenagers in the eighties and now have memories that are more sentimental than appreciative, if, indeed, they are positive memories at all.