Hollywood drove a stake through the black heart of British horror when it tried to kill off the lumbering Frankenstein of Hammer Films. But the twitching corpse refused to stay dead and it is back for revenge.
A new generation of directors are creating a new mutation on the old formula with an explosion of horror film-making not seen since the days of Quatermass, The Brides of Dracula and The Earth Dies Screaming.
The success of Danny Boyle's low-budget zombie thriller 28 Days Later proves that the British have not lost their talent for terror. Its apocalyptic vision of an abandoned land ravaged by hoards of "the infected" was only knocked off the top of the box office this week by the Harry Potter mania, having taken nearly £5m in its first 14 days.
It follows the success of Marc Evans' teen horror My Little Eye, another shoestring production with a devilishly clever script, and Dog Soldiers, a werewolf flick which has already spawned a sequel.
Deathwatch, a supernatural first world war yarn topped the box office in the Far East, sinking the Hollywood blockbuster Ghost Ship. It is released here in a fortnight.
Having been brought back from the dead by the art collector Charles Saatchi, Hammer Films too is trying to remake one of its classics, The Devil Rides Out.
Unlike the American teen scream films, the new wave of British films are more psychologically spooky. Instead of the blood and guts, the British are going for mental torture.
Nor are the makers happy to make the kind of B-movies once associated with the genre. The two brightest stars in British cinema, Lynne Ramsay and Jonathan Glazer, are immersed deep in the paranoid world of suspense.
Glazer hopes to follow up on Sexy Beast with Under the Skin and Ramsay, fresh from the international acclaim for Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, is working on The Lovely Bones.
Not all of the current crop of horror though is at the cheapo end. Jim Gillespie's ghost story, Julian is likely to cost more than £12m while Halloween writer-producer Debra Hill is to direct a supernatural love story, costing a similar amount, about a woman who has to fight an evil spirit possessing her partner.
Even more fiendish plans are being laid. The Ministry of Fear, a new mini-studio presided over by producer Lizzie Francke, is about to unleash a string of high-quality scripts summoning up the ghost of Hitchcock.
For Francke, horror plays to the strengths of the slimmed down British industry, short on cash but strong on talent.
It is also an area where young directors can make their mark without breaking the bank. "It is all about the quality of the script and the sophistication of the film-making."
Britain, she believes, can learn from the Spanish and the Japanese, who have created a huge market for smart but relatively cheap psycho-thrillers. "There is a European sensibility to these films which suits us, and we have a tradition of gothic literature and film, from Mary Shelley to Hitchcock."
Adam Minns, of Screen International, the industry bible, sees a market for forthcoming films like Brian Gilbert's The Gathering, which plays on the spooky flip side of Merchant Ivory England.
The danger is that the vogue for horror could fall into the same trap as the fashion for mockney gangster capers which bored the public rigid in the wake of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Minns believes horror will outlast Vinnie Jones' acting career. "Suspense has more international appeal. Hammer proved that. If they weren't that good, why is everyone always trying to revive them?"
Gore and alien butchers
28 Days Later Danny Boyle is back in business with a virus epic that has the punters petrified
My Little Eye After great reviews for House of America and Resurrection Man, Marc Evans finally put bums on seats with this tale of reality TV gone spectacularly wrong, with the required big bloodbath ending.
Dog Soldiers A young couple disappear in the Highlands after a soldier refuses to shoot a dog. Soon his comrades are under attack from sharp-clawed furry creatures. The public lapped it up. Good old-fashioned gore leavened with cheesy one-liners. A sequel is on the way.
And coming soon
Deathwatch Jamie Bell of Billy Elliot fame is in the trenches in this spooky world war one thriller which had a big impact when it was released in the Far East.
The Gathering Christina Ricci plays an American backpacker who believes she is being followed by strangers.
Under The Skin Jonathan Glazer takes on Michel Faber's cult science fiction story about a strange female creature who trawls the north of Scotland for men to deliver to alien butchers.
