With the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre about to hit cinemas, horror films are well and truly back in fashion. Steve Pratt looks at what makes us sleep uneasy in our beds.

It's enough to bring you out in goosebumps and send a shiver up your spine. The remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is top of the US film charts, original slasher movie Hallowe'en is 25 years old, and Channel 4 devotes this weekend to scaring viewers witless. And just when you thought it was safe to go back into space (where, as the original poster reminded us, "no one can hear you scream") Alien is re-released in cinemas.

Fright nights are fashionable again. The horror of it all became apparent during the summer as hotly-anticipated blockbuster films flopped while lower budget horrors topped the charts. Freddie Vs Jason, Jeepers Creepers 2, Wrong Turn, Cabin Fever, House Of 1,000 Corpses and currently The Texas Chainsaw Massacre have all done well at the box office.

Horror has been part of the cinema from the silent days. Instead of being scared reading stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker, people liked being frightened by big picture portrayals of werewolves, vampires and monsters. The screen found its own loathsome leading characters. Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy gave way to the likes of Norman Bates, Freddie Krueger, Hannibal Lecter and Pinhead from the Hellraiser horrors - all characters destined to strike fear in your heart.

The genre has had its ups and downs. The current boom has been called horror for the post 9/11 generation. Audiences can tolerate - enjoy, even - violence as long as the bloodshed is removed from the real world of terrorism.

"There has been an upswing," observes John Carpenter, whose Hallowe'en sparked off a slasher movie craze. "It's a very cyclical business. It goes down, back up again, and it has throughout its history. It's a very good time for horror. This business certainly has changed, but there's still room for serious horror films. Look at 28 Days Later, that's not a tongue-in-cheek picture."

Seeing our worst fears materialise on screen is a substitute for the real thing. We're scared as we're caught up in the moment, but know we can go home and sleep safely in our beds.

One person's terror is another person's turn-on. Some can't stand things-go-bump-in-the-night movies where characters creep along dark corridors after hearing mysterious noises. You know someone - or worse, something - is going to leap out of the shadows and make you jump. The heart-stopping anticipation and the hiding behind your hands is what horror movies are all about.

Too often in recent years, film-makers have made audiences go "yuk" rather than "oooh" by using state-of-the-art special effects to depict murder and mutilation in gruesome detail.

The scariest moments are often the simplest. The shower scene is Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is recognised as one of the most shocking sequences ever, but you see less than you think you do.

The Master of Suspense, who said that he liked to make the audience suffer as much as possible, took three lines in Robert Bloch's source novel and turned them into a classic 45-second slasher scene. Making the victim the leading lady, Janet Leigh, added extra shock value as audiences weren't expecting the star to meet such an early demise.

C4's The Greatest Scary Moments casts a very wide net, taking in film, TV, music and even advertisements.

For some of us, the scariest thing on TV is Lisa Riley presenting You've Been Framed. But that's another story. Were C4 afraid they wouldn't find enough big screen scares? TV doesn't do terror as well. Sitting at home doesn't have the same effect as the group experience of sitting in a dark cinema with strangers.

Director John Carpenter practically invented the modern slasher movie in 1978 with Hallowe'en in which a babysitter is terrorised by a man in a mask. In a nod to Psycho, he cast Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh, in the leading role.

That was followed by such imitations as Friday The 13th, My Bloody Valentine, New Year's Evil, Prom Night and Graduation Day. All exploited the teens-in-peril scenario. The only novelty was the slice-and-dice factor as film-makers sought ever-ingenious ways to kill.

Wes Craven's 1984 Nightmare On Elm Street was another key influence on the genre. He created child murderer Freddie Kreuger, who had steel talons instead of fingers. He returned from the dead to invade the dreams of troubled teens. Cheekily, Craven returned in 1996 to deconstruct the slice-and-dice genre in Scream, paying homage to the demands of the genre while exploiting them.

There will always be young directors ready, willing and able to make low budget horror movies to establish their credentials. Sam Raimi did it with Evil Dead in the early 1980s and this year first time feature director Eli Roth did much the same thing in Cabin Fever. They pump fresh blood into horror movies, while drawing on the classics of the genre and acknowledging their influence.

The current explosion of gore galore includes a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, made in 1974 but not released uncut in this country until 2000. Despite its reputation, this teens-in-jeopardy story leaves more to the imagination than is actually shown. That wasn't lost on Pearl Harbour director Michael Bay, producer of the 2003 version. He says: "I made a trailer that was a couple of minutes long with nothing but scary sounds. I wanted to show that the scariest thing was the stuff you didn't see."

After the unnecessary 1998 shot-by-shot remake of Psycho, many were sceptical about the new Massacre. A $28m opening weekend US take indicates the appetite for blood is as keen as ever.

Bay may claim that you'll care more about the characters this time but this is still a standard serial killer scenario about a leather-faced madman chasing big-breasted teens around a creepy old house brandishing a buzzing chainsaw.

Original producer Tobe Hooper says: "The key is whether they can grasp a certain time and place, a certain feel that made our movie so special. When I made Chainsaw, we had Charles Manson and it was around the time of Watergate. It was a very specific climate. Maybe this is the right time to do another film like this."

* The 100 Greatest Scary Moments is on Channel 4 tonight at 9.05pm and tomorrow at 9pm.

* The Texas Chainsaw Massacre previews in some cinemas today and goes on general release on October 31.

* Hallowe'en 25th Anniversary Edition is released on DVD on Monday.

* Win an MVC pack of ten horror film titles at www.entertainment-northeast.co.uk/win