I Hate Musicals

Will someone please explain Hollywood's fascination with musicals to me? Every year that there is a musical up for one or more Academy Awards, trust me--it will win.

I don't get them. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief and accept almost any storyline or plot. But some concepts are just too moronic for me to wrap my head around.

See if you can name the movie in which these scenes actually appeared:

* A Marine Corps lieutenant, lying wounded on a jungle island mountainside, his intestines hanging from a bloody and steaming hole in his abdomen, bursts into song.

* Two juvenile gangs armed with zip guns and switchblades meet for a rumble in a New York City alley, wave their weapons menacingly, and start singing and dancing with perfect choreography.

* A king of an agrarian Asian country and an English governess twirl around the palace in a song and dance production that would rival Astaire and Rogers.

You get the idea.

How many great stories have been blasphemed by being turned into musicals! "Lost Horizon" became "Shangri-la." "The Phantom of the Opera." "Les Miserables."

What's next--"Papillion," where Henri Charriere and Louis Dega stand on the cliff of Ile Diablo and sing, "We gotta get outta this place?"

"Apocalypse Now," where Lt Col Kilgore looks at the destruction wrought by his helicopters and sings, "Nothin' smells as pretty as napalm in the mornin'," and Capt Willard breaks out with "Up the Mekong River in the jungle sun," backed up by his accompanying river rats?

"The Wolf Man," where Larry Talbot sings "I get no kick from champagne...but I get a bite out of you" to his beautiful victim just before he rips out her throat?

How about "The Grapes of Wrath," where the Joads load their junk on a truck that's held together with baling wire and set out for California with a rousing rendition of "On the Road Again?"

Imagine "Titanic" ("I went down, down, down and the water crept higher"). "Sudden Impact" ("Bang, bang, I shot him down"). "Apollo 13" ("Fly me to the moon"). The possibilities are sickening.

All that said, however, I did enjoy "Chicago," largely because it starred whom I consider to be the most beautiful woman on the planet. I swear, after that last number I looked down at my feet, and my socks were gone!

I heard a rumor that they're going to make "Dracula: The Musical." Is nothing sacred? Is there no shame at all left in Hollywood?

Just promise me this. Promise me that Justin Bieber won't be cast as the Count, okay? Will you at least not commit that heresy?