Horror movies have always made bloody fortunes, dating back to the days when Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, and Boris Karloff were skulking around darkened theaters in Halloween costumes. Along the way there have been the campy (Creature From the Black Lagoon) and the classy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) and the in-between, chiefly the British imports from the Hammer Films of the 1950s through the 1970s, when comedy crept into the crypt with Christopher Lee. (Indeed, it's the Hammer Films that have influenced Raimi and Ghost House Pictures to emulate their corporate agenda. Says the director, "No one will ever consider them works of art, but as a kid I was crazy about them. The producers must have loved horror films and really wanted to give the kids - and I feel like they're made for kids - a steady diet of what they loved about horror movies.")

Then came the zombie renaissance of the late 1960s, led by Night of the Living Dead director George Romero; the all-guts-mo'-gory period of the 1970s that included The Texas Chain Saw Massacre; and the biggest, baddest stomach- (and head-) turner of all time, The Exorcist. The scary movie has been malleable enough to allow for social commentary (the Romero movies, even John Carpenter's best works) and self-satire­ (the Scream series), for gross-out thrills (the zombie gore-fest Braindead, directed by Lord of the Rings kingpin Peter Jackson) and the genuinely thrilling (say, Psycho-era Hitchcock or Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist).

They're inevitably profitable because horror films are relatively cheap to produce, with budgets often ranging between $10 and $30 million, and easier to market with over-the-top trailers featuring ominous narrators promising terror over quick-cut flashes of shadowy specters with bad intentions. ("The subjects of some movies are so disturbing that those who experience them will never be the same again," moaned the voice of White Noise's trailer.) They offer the promise of fear, and if they don't deliver, well, there's always next week's entry in the chills-and-thrills sweepstakes, which may be why these movies often do well on opening weekend but watch their profits fall dramatically come the next Friday.