Until this week, I had managed to avoid seeing any of the Saw series, which began in 2004, and was hoping to continue that streak. Forever.

But in honor of today’s release of Saw VI, someone in a higher pay grade decided it would be a great time for me to catch up with sadistic mastermind Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) in a 10-hour, five-movie marathon of death and puppets.

So I spent the better part of a weekend trapped in my house watching this psycho and his minions trap various felons, former addicts and harbingers of evil in a series of disgusting locations (abandoned buildings, skeevy bathrooms, skeevy bathrooms in abandoned buildings).

And my thoughts are this:

Seriously? They made six of these things?

Here’s the basic premise of each and every Saw picture: Jigsaw and his assistants stalk and kidnap people, many of them played by people who used to be famous in the 1980s and 1990s. These people have done something to offend Jigsaw’s moral sensibilities (and if you offend a guy who likes tricking people into ripping their own faces off, you’ve done something wrong.)

Once captured, the victims are given the choice of A) doing something really painful and awful, like sawing their hands off, or killing a presumed stranger, or B) having their heads smashed in a medieval torture device.

My personal choice, were I these people, would be C) to be let go with a warning or, if it would satisfy Jigsaw’s sadism, maybe rip off my big toenail or something. Of course, C is not an option, because Jigsaw doesn’t like ripping off anything that might grow back. (He prefers skin, extremities and heads).

And because these nasty little “games,” as he calls them, have popped up now in six movies, apparently there’s a whole movie-going public out there who considers that fun. I don’t know who these people are, but if any are planning to invite me over for Game Night, I’d appreciate it if they identified themselves.

It’s not that you can’t make a good movie about sadistic, cruel killings, because the original Saw was OK, as sadistic serial killer movies go. That’s because the action happened mostly in the claustrophobic confines of the aforementioned skeevy bathroom, with a corrupt doctor (Carey Elwes) charged with killing the stranger chained on the other side of the room if he wanted to ever see his family again. It’s dank, sick and cruel, but well-paced and inventive, because you had no clue where it was going.

Here’s the problem: It’s only shocking once. Every sequel follows the same basic script, while telling more and more of Jigsaw’s back story. He’s a formerly altruistic guy who turns to a life of nastiness when a drug addict causes his wife to have a miscarriage. He decides that most people are wasting their lives, so to help them, he offers them the opportunity to atone for their sins … by cutting off the feet they used to cheat on their wives. Or dive into a bathtub full of the needles they once used to shoot up.

Jigsaw … baby … stop helping me.

And the only thing worse than a homicidal maniac is one with delusions of superiority. Jigsaw, who is dying of cancer, considers himself enlightened or something, and rather snottily insists that he isn’t a killer — he simply gives people a choice, and if their choice kills them, that’s not his thing.

The most unforgivable thing about Saw is that Jigsaw’s intermediary for his evil plans is not a human minion, or a ghost or something cool, but a puppet. A stupid-looking puppet who looks like Madame, the 1970s variety show puppet operated by Waylon Flowers, going through a Kabuki period. It’s all so pretentious and annoying, that combined with the talky killer and all that eye and head smashing, I can safely say that I’ve seen my last Saw.

Unless someone in a higher pay grade gets another cool idea.