THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT AND OTHER REASONS TO EXIT THE PREMISES

If most of of us were the stars of a horror movie it would be a short one indeed. If you suspect there's a homicidal maniac in the next room, why the hell would would you go in there? That's SWAT team time for anybody with a lick of sense. Or say, the place is haunted by some horrible otherworldly creature that warns you in a creepy voice to get out. Out we'd go as fast as our feet could carry us. No prob, blob, we're outta here. Roll the credits, curtain down, show over even before the butter melts on the popcorn.

But movies are not about common sense. You must bring with you a willingness to suspend belief and take it for granted that all those attractive and seemingly highly intelligent actors are behaving rationally when they are not. Never mind all the different Bat men or other super heroes of comic book fame, the talking hair balls from sci-fi movies, the nerdy magicians of wizard flicks or even the dinosaurs brought back to life, these are all examples of full blown fantasy, sort of like cartoons, James Bond movies, dopey video games and White House press briefings. It's the so-called serious movies that really take a leap of faith to watch.

Take your average heist movie. The thieves are so intelligent, highly skilled and sophisticated that if these guys existed in real life they'd be wealthy without ever having to steal, in charge of some giant dot com company worth billions. Or take your typical murder whodunit. There's always one aging lumpy old-school detective partnered with a brash young and hip fashion plate of a detective who is somehow involved with one or more of the victims and possibly the diabolical killer. And neither of them figure that out until half the young cool guy's ex-girlfriends turn up dead in the exact same way. In real life they'd both be back walking the beat after the second identical murder baffles them and abler minds would be assigned to the case.

It's the same with the frame-up movies. These things really take the cake. They always depict your Joe or Jane Average working stiff and throw them into a nightmare of suspicion and false accusations of everything from murder to the Lindberg kidnapping, and always these ordinary people do all sorts of extraordinary things to not only prove themselves innocent but expose some huge and complex nefarious crime organization or a renegade government department being run by a madman. You have to stretch your imagination pretty wide to consider the possibility that the average human would do anything but point out the blatantly obvious to the first investigator they could summon by calling 911. This suspension of belief part must really kick in early on in the action when Mr./Ms. Average starts leaping from roof to roof (often in a tuxedo or a gown and high heels), breaking into places guarded by machine gun-toting sociopaths and pit bulls and then hacking their way into incredibly complex computer data bases to avert some national disaster.

Along the way they always manage to make wild passionate love to somebody, anybody. That's also par for the course in the detective movie too, but usually that somebody winds up dead the next day. And in all these movies, when there's a final confrontation with the bad guy, the evil mastermind always wants to explain his reasons and methods to the hero before he kills him. You'd think these evil masterminds would have learned from all the James Bond movies not to fool around with explanations, shark tanks or other slow-death methods and just shoot the person in the head and get on with their life! But no-ooo, they can't seem to help themselves and the hero always unties himself in the nick of time, feeds the villain to his own sharks and stops the countdown to doomsday with 2 second left on the jumbo-sized digital timer. Makes you want to reach into the screen and deliver two quick slaps to the villain to snap him out of it.

But then again, movies are entertainment, and real-life heists and murders are generally too sordid, uncomplicated and repulsive to generate much of a box office. Few of the heroes and villains look anything like movie stars and few sensational crimes go unsolved for very long. With robberies it's almost always one of the usual suspects and with murder the killer is usually somebody the victim knows quite well or is the odd person out in a love triangle. And both the thieves and the killers are usually uninteresting and decidedly unremarkable individuals with few skills for eluding immediate capture.

As far as the frame up flicks are concerned, well, the closest thing in real life to that is identity theft, a passionless crime where the victim never meets the perpetrator and is rectified only by the dry exchange of letters and e-mails between accountants, lawyers, banks and credit card companies, hardly edge-of-your-seat action no matter how traumatic it may be for the victim. So, suspend away at the movies, pretend these things really happen and such people really exist. Just don't ask us to go into any haunted houses anytime soon. That's what actors are for, especially the lesser-known and not-so-attractive ones who meet their bloody fates early and often. They just had to open that door, didn't they? Serves 'em right.