Welcome to the relaunch of the Weird Chronicles! I know I’ve neglected my faithful readers of late, and I also know there’s a whole world of new readers out there who need to get a little Weird in their lives.

I had planned on saving the big reawakening for next month, when I’ll be tagging along with a team of real, live paranormal investigators as they check out an old house, but a trip to the movies Saturday night changed my plans.

Saturday night, friends, I discovered the real reason the modern form of 3D moviemaking was invented. It’s not “Avatar.” That was a nifty movie, to be sure, but it didn’t have a topless parasailer who emerges from the water sans legs.

It’s not “Saw: 3D,” which promises to not use even a tenth the amount of fake blood as the movie I saw.

As you’ve probably guessed, the night’s entertainment was none other than “Piranha: 3D,” a peppy little gorefest that is guaranteed to break your end-of-summer blues if you’ve ever thrilled at all to seeing stupid people get their just desserts in horror movies. There are stupid folks by the raw, bleeding boatload in this movie, and legions of hungry prehistoric fish ready to harvest them.

But let’s begin at the beginning, a pastoral scene with an old fellow in a rowboat on a lake, fishing pole to hand and six-pack dangling in the water to keep cool. As the scene progresses, we realize that the fisherman is none other than Richard Dreyfuss. And yes, he does soon find himself wishing he had a bigger boat. And yes, his character’s name is Matt Hooper.

The younger folks who are really the target audience for this movie may not get either of those in-jokes, or even chortle when they realize that Dreyfuss is mush-mouthing along to “Show Me The Way To Go Home” on his portable radio, but the fact that they’re included shows that director Alexandre Aja, best known for, … well, … nothing, and his screenwriters have a sense of the history of their subject.

The original “Piranha” was a quickly made low-budget monster flick helmed by Joe Dante, the twisted mind behind “Gremlins” and all-time great “Amazon Women on the Moon.” It didn’t make much money, but it turned a profit, and that was all that was needed to spawn (pardon the pun) a sequel, “Piranha II: The Spawning,” directed by none other than James Cameron. Cameron hasn’t really had much of a career since, stumbling through middling fare like “Titanic,” “Terminator” and “Avatar.” He peaked early.

With such a pedigree, it would be easy for the third film in the series to try for high art, to try to somehow transcend its genre and give us insightful commentary on man’s place in nature, the exuberance of youth or the perils of polluting our waterways. Thank the cinematic gods that absolutely none of this takes place. You can buy your ticket to this movie in blissful assurance that there will be no moral lesson, no philosophy and no overarching message beyond the simplest.

The biggest lesson to be had from this movie, as in any movie in which he appears, is to do whatever Ving Rhames tells you to do. When he leans out of a boat and orders you out of the water, you don’t flip him the bird and do a kick-turn to greater depths. This will result in a gory, unpleasant death. As horror and action film fans have learned, the appearance of Ving indicates that there is some major monster smackdown about to happen, and woe indeed to the character who fails to get out of the way tout de suite.

There is also a more-than-generous amount of that most delicious of schlock-horror tropes, watching annoying or “bad” people die. I won’t spoil anything by telling you how Jerry O’Connell’s soft-core porn producer character dies, but suffice it to say it’s one of the greatest examples of poetic justice in recent cinematic history.

Even the movie’s one scene of mass carnage, with piranhas by the thousands feasting on tender spring break revelers by the hundreds, manages to focus primarily on characters we’ve come to loathe in their short time in front of the camera before becoming part of the Lake Victoria gumbo.

And let’s not forget the use of the 3D technology. My friends, if you thought the jungles of “Avatar’s” Pandora were surreal, you haven’t seen anything yet. Watching a school of hungry piranha swim by your head or watching three of them fight over a particularly tasty morsel is an experience not to be missed. There are even moments of quiet beauty, as when after a particularly voracious feeding we are treated to the sight of two silicone breast implants floating languidly in the middle depths, freed from their fleshly confines.

In short, “Piranha 3D” gives a return on your $13 investment at least as great as any other movie this summer. It gives you exactly what you expect: lots of gore, plenty of skin, hungry critters. But it also has a wicked sense of humor and an unabashed willingness to not just go over the top, but establish an entirely new one.

So, what's weird in your world? Got a question? Comment? Random rant? Drop me a line, anytime!