Hollywood comedies have been undergoing a bizarre metamorphosis in the past few years: They are turning into horror films. You cannot watch them without, at some point, covering your eyes in anxiety and fear that the next image you see will upset, disgust, or terrify you. Right now, there are four such movies showing: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut; Big Daddy; and American Pie. Each of them is punctuated by scenes that are purposefully, stomach-churningly repulsive, with imagery more akin to nightmares than comedies.

What can be said about a movie like Austin Powers, in which a man holds a beaker full of human feces and unknowingly drinks from it? Or one like American Pie, in which a teenage boy, again unknowingly, quaffs a beer laced with human semen? Or an animated feature about four little boys like South Park, in which Saddam Hussein sodomizes Satan?