Horror: Where girlie meets gory

For years, the tried-and-tested formula for box-office success has been American horror movies based on shock and gore – scaring the wits out of audiences by ladling up the blood in torture-fests such as Saw and Hostel.

In Britain the horror genre is still haunted by the classic but corny output of the Hammer studios, epitomised by Peter Cushing and Vincent Price in velvet jackets and frilly white shirts inhabiting Gothic mansions as Count Dracula, Baron von Frankenstein or the Abominable Dr Phibes.

All that is now about to change. A new wave of British horror directors and writers are reanimating the genre, washing away the blood and the ham acting to produce complex psychological chillers.

At least 15 horror movies are in production in Britain and due to be released later this year. Such is the boom that the annual Film4 Frightfest festival in London's West End next month features an unprecedented number of British films, making up a quarter of the showcased movies.

Three of the new British films are from the revived Hammer House of Horror, the company that churned out notorious and legendary B-movies on tiny budgets in the Sixties and Seventies, such as The Secret of Blood Island, Hands of the Ripper and Creatures the World Forgot. It has already released Beyond the Rave on the internet, a story about a soldier who must rescue his girlfriend from a strange group of ravers before he returns to Iraq.

Others are funded by the lottery, Film4 or, in some cases privately. What they all have in common is that they are low-budget – less than £1m – and reject the blood and gore of more recent Hollywood fare.

The Broken, for example, is an existential tale about a woman who sees herself drive past in a car and follows herself. Donkey Punch, scheduled for release later this month, is about seven friends on holiday in the Mediterranean who embark on a brutal battle for survival while out on a boat, and Eden Lake, filmed in Buckinghamshire and due out in September follows the vicious aftermath of a couple who ask a gang of louts to turn their music down while on a romantic trip to the country.

Alan Jones, who organises Frightfest, says that the new British horrors focus on the psychological aspect of the genre, using films such as The Shining as examples, as well as thoughtful Asian films such as The Ring, about a videotape passed from person to person, each of whom dies mysteriously after viewing it. Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, about a virus killing the entire population, has also been suggested as a source.

"It's a genre where you can put out extreme ideas and be entertaining," Mr Jones says. "The Dead Outside, for example, is a Scottish film about zombies. But it's not really about zombies. It's about people descending into madness, but realising they are descending into madness."

The Dead Outside is directed by Kerry Mullaney, a 32-year-old music video producer making her first foray into film. It was shot in just two weeks and will be premiered at Frightfest.

"I made the kind of film I want to watch," she says. "I think women like to see something psychological rather than gore, and that needs strong male and female characters to pull it off, and a good story."

These new films reflect a change in the audience for horror. Increasingly, women are becoming fans of the genre. Mr Jones estimates that around 40 per cent of his audience are now women.

"When we started it was 90 per cent male and we did quite well," he said. "Now it's about 60-40 and we're doing really, really well.

Hammer

'The Wake Wood'

Director David Keating

Still in production

'The Resident'

Director: Antti Jokinen

Exorcism-style tale

'Let the Right One in'

Release: 2010

Others

'The Descent'

Director: Neil Marshall

Release: 2005

Caving expedition goes wrong.

'The Broken'

Writer/director: Sean Ellis.

Release: 2008

Woman follows herself.

'Donkey Punch'

Writer/director: Oliver Blackburn

Release: 18 July

Ruthless battle for survival.

'Eden Lake'

Writer/director: James Watkins

Release: August 2008

Couple confront a gang of louts.

'Mum and Dad'

Writer/director: Steven Sheil.

Release: 2008

Strange family draw office worker into weird world.