UNCLE DON’S VIEWS OF NIL REPUTE:I came, I ‘Saw,’ I was ripped off

Been there. Done that. Saw it.

Saw it again. And now, again.

“Saw III.”

To paraphrase ELP: Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends; I’m not glad I had to attend, bored inside, bored inside.

It’s the third installment of the “Saw” series. Whoopee.

There went an hour’s pay and two hours of my life.

If I could count, I’d bet there were fewer patrons in the theater than fingers on my hands, all eleven or so.

It’s back to the same old deja puke with the “Saw” series. For the most part it’s just another episode of “Dirty Jobs,” and you’ll see much grosser stuff on the TV show.

A couple of you may remember “Saw’s” aging routine. Some poor sap is abducted, hauled off to a room barely cleaner than your typical Highway 99 gas station head. Chained in place at the ankle, he’s gotta do something to get free.

Well let’s see, a Hobson’s choice of hacking off the foot with a rusty handsaw and maybe escape, or sticking around to face a certain ugly death. Sooo, you can go through life needing only a single Air Jordan, or have your survivors break out the Swiffers. No Fuller Brush man is gonna be carrying enough cleaning products to tidy up the floor if you choose wrong.

We get nothing but iterations of this routine for not only the next hour or so, but for the entire “Saw” series. Duller than an imitation Ginsu knife.

Let’s see, you’ve got a scene where some chick has to stick her hand in a vat of acid to retrieve a key. Another where a judge has to get a key before he drowns in liquefied pig (there’s an offal way to go). Then there’s the doc with a ring of 12-gauge shells around her neck which won’t go off as long as she keeps some sicko alive. The sicko is Jigsaw, the rotting away, sloughing away protagonist.

That elongated scene, with her, is the apparent focal point of a movie that has no point. Well, I guess “Saw III” has some pathetic philosophical points, which are beaten into you every couple of seconds or so. But I’m not much on thinking (a fact that would make me well qualified to be a newspaper editor or a liberal), so most of the fil-uh-sof-i-kuhl mumbo-jumbo always zooms right over my pointed little head.

Meanwhile, the doc, in order to save herself, has to perform brain surgery on Jigsaw. Confined to a room in Jigsaw’s hovel, she must make do with the latest in surgical tools from Home Depot. While she operates on a head that’s phonier than anything you’ll find in the Halloween section at Sav-On, we’re treated to the random sawing, drilling and sucking sounds that one has been hearing in horror films since the end of the silent era.

The soundtrack drones on, part porno film, part ‘70s sitcom, part “Friday the 13th.”

And “Saw III” is chock full to the brim with award winning dialogue, such as this sequence:

“I’m just a pawn in your stupid games.”

“I don’t mean anything to you.”

“You mean everything to me.”

Meanwhile the flick flops along at a leisurely Yugo-like pace. Never interrupted by anything of interest, we visit, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom travelogue-like, from one mundane torture scene to another. None are more interesting than one of them Halloween haunted houses you drop a fin or two on.

On a vagrantly recurring basis the actors unfortunately open their mouths, and appear on screen. If acting were a crime, this would be capital. We have the privilege of observing thespian malpractice at its most accomplished.

Quothe Jigsaw, obtrusively, “Suffering, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Spoke I, yawning, “Two hours ten and a sawbuck know the suffering I’ve seen.”