It turns out that, much to my chagrin, torture porn flicks like Captivity and I Know Who Killed Me actually have some socially redeeming value. Apparently, ultra-violent films actually curb real-life violence, so says a couple of economists.

Instead of fueling up at bars and then roaming around looking for trouble, potential criminals pass the prime hours for mayhem eating popcorn and watching celluloid villains slay in their stead.

“You’re taking a lot of violent people off the streets and putting them inside movie theaters,” said one of the authors of the study, Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. “In the short run, if you take away violent movies, you’re going to increase violent crime.”

Really? So this means that Lindsay Lohan and Elisha Cuthbert have, actually, done something beneficial with their lives? Hell -- maybe the only valuable contribution that Paris Hilton has ever made was getting gored in House of Wax -- she potentially prevented a murder. Man, I am all for a Paris Hilton movie career if it means that every movie she's in ends with her grisly demise. That way, I can live out my own violent fantasies and not have to kill a bitch myself.

Paris gored: