When's a spoiler not a spoiler?

Byline: Jim KEOGH

COLUMN: FILM CLIPS

I read with great interest Saturday's Associated Press review of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" in the hopes of learning the answer to the Big Question: Does Harry live or die?

But writer Deepti Hajala kept her piece respectfully vague, never identifying who among the Hogwarts hoard gets zapped. "Pain and death are constant companions, and sometimes who is taken is a shocker," she allows, noting that the book is both "heartbreaking and hopeful." In other words, you'll either have to read the seventh and final novel in the series if you want to know more, or get the scoop from somebody who has ... or go online to find out, which I did Sunday morning.

While some are all too eager to divulge a good spoiler - like the creep who posted photos of the book's pages online before publication - I think most exhibit restraint in this regard. By now, virtually all of the Midnight Club, those Harry fanatics who waited in line at bookstores Friday night until "The Deathly Hallows" went on sale at 12 a.m. Saturday, are well aware of their hero's fate. I'm assuming most will guard that information, and the nature of any other "shockers," from those who haven't yet read the book.

The most complex aspect of all this is determining how long to hang on to the secret. In publicly discussing "The Deathly Hallows," when exactly will it become acceptable to divulge the key plot points, which until now have been so aggressively shielded from the public it's as though spilling them is like handing a drunk the keys to the Batmobile?

Movies face this problem all the time.

When "The Crying Game" was released, folks clammed up about the boy-meets-boy surprise until their friends had seen the movie. Media discussions about Clint Eastwood's boxing picture "Million Dollar Baby" skirted the issue of the Hillary Swank character's paralysis for a long time, even though her struggle consumes about half the movie. It wasn't film critics who raised the plot twist openly, but rather news pundits, who debated the morality of pulling the plug on the severely disabled boxer.

The ending to the 1985 edge-of-your-seat thriller "Jagged Edge" inspired a mini-mania, and plenty of confusion. The murderer's dead body was shown at the end, but his posture, combined with the camera angle, obscured him enough to cast some doubt on his identity. The debate raged for so long that on the Siskel and Ebert review show, a fed-up Gene Siskel warned viewers who didn't want to know the identity to turn away from the TV screen, then mouthed the name "Jeff Bridges."

Twenty two years later, I'm still debating whether I should have included that anecdote. Did the light just go out in the eyes of some poor soul who tonight was going to fulfill his lifelong dream of watching "Jagged Edge"?

Well, while I'm at it, that's Norman Bates dressed like his mother stabbing Janet Leigh to death in the shower in "Psycho."

For years, movie trailers pleaded with audiences not to reveal a film's shocking ending. Now, the studios are often their own worst enemies. Rather than whet the filmgoer's appetite, trailers are often extended spoilers, laying out so much of the story in the course of a couple of minutes that actually seeing the movie becomes irrelevant. In 2000, the trailer for the Harrison Ford-Michelle Pfeiffer horror thriller "What Lies Beneath" earned widespread condemnation for revealing that Ford's character was having an affair, a crucial secret at the heart of all the spooky goings-on at his lakefront home.

For the most part, critics do their damnedest to preserve a measure of secrecy. It's become routine for a critic to warn readers with a "Spoiler Alert" if he believes he may be veering into sensitive territory. I once had a reader berate me for spoiling a plot point to such a degree he wasn't going to bother seeing the movie. When I re-read my review, I realized some poor wording on my part had inadvertently tipped him off to a key character's fate. Tricky stuff.

Things have changed dramatically with the Internet. Many bloggers are only too happy to wreck the surprise (again, the Harry Potter page photos), so that going online can be a minefield for those who prefer to stay in the dark until they've seen the movie or read the book. Harry Knowles, creator of the Web site "Ain't It Cool News," which offers early looks at major films, was once banned from screenings by studios who believed his site was a buzz killer. Knowles is now embraced by the powers-that-be who came to realize that the Internet can be a huge promotional ally for worthy films (Knowles responsibly applies the "Spoiler Alert" tag wherever needed).

Here's the final question of the day: When the movie version of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is released a couple of years from now, do critics reveal the story details that have been so jealously protected? After all, the saga will have been concluded in print for some time.

I say we keep it vague in the reviews. Despite tens of millions of Harry Potter books out there, some people, like me, only know Harry through the films. The last HP movie should be treated the way any other movie with a twist would be, and then when a sufficient amount of time has passed, we can safely say, "Let me tell you what happened to Harry ..."

ART:PHOTO

CUTLINE: From left, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson

From left, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson star in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."