text: No, I haven't read the Stephen King novel "Thinner," but I choked down the film version. Horror movies are an acquired taste. Regular movies give an audience a hero to applaud as he strives to achieve a goal. In horror movies, audiences are invited to savor the demise of characters. In director Tom Holland's low-fat but tasteless revenge chiller "Thinner," nobody wins and everybody deserves the bite that is put on them. Gluttonous New England attorney Billy Halleck (Robert John Burke of "Robocop 3") has a weight problem. Although he rocks the bathroom scales at 300 pounds, he appears happily married to a trim, delectable wife, Heidi (Lucinda Jenney of "G.I. Jane") with a yeasty teenage daughter.<br /><br />Fat doesn't mean stupid here. Halleck displays his sagacity in court when he wins an acquittal verdict for sleazy Mafia chieftain Richie Ginelli (Joe Mantegna of "House of Games"). Driving home from a victory feast, Billy hits an old gypsy woman crossing the street and kills her. A cover-up occurs, and Halleck's friends get him out of the soup. The disgruntled gypsy father Taduz Lemke (Michael Constantine of "Skidoo") retaliates with a curse on the corpulent lawyer and the two town officials that exonerated him. Suddenly, Halleck finds himself shedding pounds no matter how much chow he chomps. When he begs the vengeful Gypsy to lift the curse, the old man refuses. Desperately, Halleck resorts to Richie. While Halleck struggles with the gypsies to remove the hex, he learns that his loyal wife has turned his attentions to the town's hotshot doctor.<br /><br />"Thinner" qualifies as not only laughably inept horror flick, but the filmmakers also rely on stereotypes of men and women. Tom Holland, who directed "Child's Play" (1988), and scenarist Michael McDowell, have served up such a slipshod script that you cannot relish watching Billy get his just dessert and shrivel up. "Thinner" boasts few shocks and fewer surprises. The filmmakers may have regurgitated King's novel, but they have filleted whatever sense of horror and humor it contained. Holland and McDowell introduce characters, such as the Mafioso, then inexplicably let them off the hook. One minor character shows up long enough to die and have a chicken's head stuffed in his mouth.<br /><br />The stereotypical behavior of the characters may offend audiences, too. "Thinner" depicts women as oversexed vixens and men as swine. When Halleck sneaks home from a clinic, he finds his doctor's sports car parked at his house. His suspicions ripen into jealousy and he cooks up a scheme to get the curse transferred to this wife. Even the premature ending lacks any satirical flavor. Oscar-winning special effects wizard Greg Cannom of "Van Helsing" and make-up artist Bob Laden do a fabulous job beefing up actor Robert John Burke to look obese. They succeed, too, in making him shrivel.<br /><br />Only die-hard Stephen King fans will be able to stomach this misogynistic gooledyspook.