Ah, Halloween – when only the scariest, goriest, most psychologically-upsetting movies have a sniff of topping the weekend box office.

And that has never been more true than this year because the number one movie at the US weekend box office as we speak is one of the most awful, horrific movies ever made – High School Musical 3.

But High School Musical 3‘s weekend box office success won’t be celebrated by everyone – its huge opening has forced Saw V into the number two spot. Maybe the Saw franchise can learn something from High School Musical 3‘s appeal and adapt it into next year’s Saw VI. Let’s hope so, because we know for a fact that you’d all go and see a Saw movie that involved Zac Efron blowing his jaw off with a bomb made of putrid pig intestines.

The Halloween weekend box office has traditionally belonged to Saw for the last few years. Audiences flocked to the cinema to see men and women die in a procession of complex gore-splattered traps, even though the franchise has been slowly transforming into more and more of a ridiculous parody of itself right from the get-go.

But not this year, because now the Halloween box office number one is High School Musical 3. It just goes to show the change in public taste that has occurred over the last 12 months. Screaming people attached to pulleys getting decapitated in graphic detail? Pah. Zac Efron’s shiny face singing a song about believing in yourself? Now that’s scary. Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 - High School Musical 3 (Hopefully the last High School Musical movie to be released, because if it goes on any longer then the inevitable leaked naked internet photos of the High School Musical cast will actually start to feature people who look like adults. Bleurgh) $42,000,000

2 - Saw V (Note: Please don’t refer to Saw V as Saw 5, because the correct pronunciation is Saw Vee. That’s because the producers of the movie are very very sawvee that they keep making you go and see tired old rehashes of an already mediocre movie year after year) $30,500,000

3 - Max Payne (Liked Max Payne? Then you’ll no doubt be excited about next year’s big Mark Wahlberg videogame adaptation. In Spring 2009, Mark Wahlberg will star in a 300-style action version of Smart Girl’s Magical Book Club) $7,600,000

4 - Beverly Hills Chihuahua (We still haven’t seen Beverly Hills Chihuahua, but we’re putting that down to the fact that we haven’t been chloroformed, tied up and forced to watch it under pain of miserable death. But, still, one day eh?) $6,916,000

5 – Pride & Glory (A cop movie about the hilarious adventures of Officer Pride and Officer Glory. Oh, come on, it’s not actually as if you’re going to bloody see it, is it?) $6,325,000

Read more:

Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

Zac Efron has given us an insight into what it’s like to be him.

Zac will be making a welcome return to our cinema screens in the autumn with the third installment of Disney’s High School Musical.

But not before telling us just how great being Zac Efron is. He said:  

"I'm loving it. I'm having a blast. I'm in a good place and really excited to be where I am."

That’s nice for Zac. Now also reports that Zac is having to get used to being followed around by a ‘gaggle’ of adoring girls. He said:

"The parents are the ones who want the pictures; the girls are too shy. I can pretty much go anywhere – I just have to wear sunglasses."

We can totally sympathise with Zac there. It’s not nice being surrounded by a group of girls – be it a gaggle or otherwise – and yet every morning they come, loitering outside hecklerspray HQ trying to catch a glimpse of the faces behind the words in the vain hope they might be equally as rewarding as the articles they read on a daily basis. Can't you just let us get on with our work?

Zac continued:

"But there's no way that I'd avoid my fans. I like making them happy."

Yep, Zac Efron is a young, freakishly handsome and successful man. Zac is so beautiful, in fact, that when he walks past a female – be it any female – she will instinctively open her legs with such ferocity that her pelvis literally displaces itself (that’s how we imagine it, at least).

In fact, if Zac was to walk down Oxford Street on a sunny afternoon the scene would resemble Gandhi’s Salt March.

But girls have not always been so easy for Zac, as he explains of his time back at school:

"I wasn't the skater dude or anything. I tried really hard in school. I got good grades. I was in advanced classes so, if anything, you'd probably call me a nerd. Seriously, I was the short kid in high school. I didn't get much attention from the chicks. I was, like 5ft 6in tall. But as soon as I left and started working, then I started to grow up a little bit. I realise that I got very lucky so, thank you, everyone out there (arms outstretched)!"

So not only is he young, good-looking, with a successful career, he is also an academic success too!

There’s only one word for a man like that, can anyone think of it?

Read More – High Sschool musical star wasn't always so hot – Now Magazine 

Disney had to make a difficult decision recently – to invite Vanessa Hudgens back for High School Musical 3 despite her nude scandal, or to replace her with someone less likely to whip their vagina out and show it to everyone all the time.

But, surprisingly, it looks as if Disney has chosen the former. Reports are rife that Vanessa Hudgens is not only going to sign on to reprise her role in High School Musical 3 this week, but she's also negotiated herself a giant payrise in the process. Although Vanessa Hudgens' payrise has shocked everyone who thought that her days as a family-friendly pop gonk were over, there's probably a perfectly good explanation for it – like the millions and millions of extra dollars that High School Musical 3 will make thanks to the army of new adult male Vanessa Hudgens fans who'll watch it again and again trying to work out if they can see the beginnings of a cameltoe emerging during the movie's tender opening number.

High School Musical has become a phenomenon by its relentlessly-pushed message that everyone is special and has their own gift. That's certainly true about Vanessa Hudgens, who is special because she's one of the few 18-year-old Disney stars prepared to take naked and borderline-lesbian photos of herself and paste them all over the internet for everyone to see.

But, even though this gift has made Vanessa Hudgens one of the most well-known vaginas in the entertainment industry, it looked like the fame was coming at a cost. Vanessa Hudgens, you see, was the female lead in High School Musical and High School Musical 2 – Disney's almost-nauseatingly earnest Grease rip-off cable movies. And, as you may have guessed, the sight of Vanessa Hudgens singing a song called You Are The Music In Me and the sight of Vanessa Hudgens trying to cop off with a schoolgirl with tongues didn't sit so well together.

However, despite rumours that Vanessa Hudgens was going to get the shove from High School Musical 3 – where the plot presumably involves all of them having to keep repeating years despite clearly being above high school age, possibly because they're all a bunch of honking dimwits – over the naked photo furore, it looks like Vanessa Hudgens might get the last laugh after all.

It's claimed that Vanessa Hudgens is on the verge of signing up for High School Musical 3 and getting a big fat payrise for doing so. While the official Disney and Vanessa Hudgens line is that nothing has been signed and negotiations are still in process, a High School Musical source told Us Weekly:

“Vanessa is locked for the movie. She is very happy that the deal is done.”

Obviously, while Vanessa Hudgens has built up a following amongst sickening bright-eyed innocent children by starring in the first two High School Musical movies, it's hard not to think that her naked photo sideline will bring in the punters to the third movie like never before, something Disney is hoping to expand on by forcing Vanessa Hudgens to wear nipple tassels throughout and singing a provocative burlesque song called Do Me In My Minge Now instead of the scheduled Never Forget (We're All Stars And God Loves Us Equally).