For the third weekend in a row (and its fourth weekend in theaters), ‘The Help‘ has dominated other openers to hold the #1 spot at the box office. According to Box Office Mojo, the last film to reign at #1 for three consecutive weeks was last summer’s ‘Inception’. Down only a staggering 2.3% in attendance from last weekend, ‘The Help’ has now earned more than $118 million. Will ‘Contagion’ please open already and knock ‘The Help’ off its melodramatic and preachy high horse?

The smallest of the three wide openers, ‘The Debt‘, brought in more viewers than the other two. Earning $9.6 million at 1,826 locations, ‘The Debt’ tells a fictional espionage story about three Jewish spies sent into Communist-controlled East Germany in 1965 to locate and extract a former Nazi doctor so that he can stand trial in Israel. While the concept and mid-movie twist are definitely interesting, the execution of the film is terrible, all the way up to its fizzling climax.

‘Apollo 18‘ and ‘Shark Night 3D‘ are so close in studio-reported box office numbers that they very well could swap positions when the final tally rolls in this afternoon. As of now, ‘Apollo 18’ appears to be the stronger of the PG-13 horror flicks, earning $8.7 million. ‘Shark Night 3D’ is currently at $8.64 million. Judging both books by their covers, this box office battle is comparable to watching two three-legged dogs duke it out – only not as fun. Neither of them of them could ever come close to holding their ground against good openers.

The G-rated inspirational film ‘Seven Days in Utopia‘, starring Lucas Black and Robert Duvall, opened in the 19th slot with $1.2 million. Considering that it opened on only 561 screens, that number isn’t terrible. In fact, the per-screen average is just below those of ‘Shark Night 3D’ and ‘Apollo 18’. ‘Shark Night’ and ‘Apollo 18’ earned $3,079 and $2,614 per theater respectively, while ‘Seven Days’ earned $2,203.

An interesting note for this weekend’s box office is that only one film in Top 10 dropped more than 28% in attendance. While ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ dropped 42%, ‘The Help’, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’, ‘Colombiana’, ‘Our Idiot Brother’, ‘Spy Kids’ and ‘The Smurfs’ all fell no more than 28%. The numbers may not seem too strange for a holiday weekend, but for a holiday weekend with three major openers and such a low box office total, it’s pretty odd.

Top 10:

1. ‘The Help’ (Buena Vista) – $14,209,000

2. ‘The Debt’ (Focus) – $9,677,000

3. ‘Apollo 18’ (Weinstein/Dimension) – $8,700,000

4. ‘Shark Night 3D’ (Relativity) – $8,640,000

5. ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ (Fox) – $7,800,000

6. ‘Colombiana’ (TriStar) – $7,400,000

7. ‘Our Idiot Brother’ (Weinstein) – $5,182,000

8. ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ (Film District) – $4,941,000

9. ‘Spy Kids: All the Time in the World’ (Weinstein/Dimension) – $4,637,000

10. ‘The Smurfs’ (Sony) – $4,000,000