HOORAY FOR HOWLYWOOD : HAIR-RAISING MOMENTS IN FILM HISTORY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

One of the scariest thoughts this Halloween is that they're not making horror movies like they used to.

The last big-budget fright film to actually exhibit the terrible trifecta of horror movie excellence - genuine jolts, a sense of its own absurdity and the impression that souls are really in jeopardy - was ``Wolf'' back in the summer of '94.

As for the low-budget shockers, which for decades were reliably more devilish than the classier horror fare, even the last dozen ``Halloween the 13th Massacre on Elm Street'' sequels haven't had enough tricks among them to scare up their once-loyal audiences.

There are several theories as to why the horror genre has cycled so low in the '90s. One is that the last generation of its great practitioners - John Carpenter (``The Fog,'' the first ``Halloween''), Brian De Palma (``Carrie,'' ``The Fury''), George Romero (``Day ...,'' ``Dawn ...'' and ``Night of the Living Dead''), Joe Dante (``The Howling,'' ``Gremlins''), Wes Craven (``Last House on the Left,'' the original ``Nightmare on Elm Street''), David Cronenberg (``The Fly'' remake, ``Scanners,'' ``The Dead Zone'') - either burned out or moved on to other kinds of movies.

Then the relentless, brutal brainlessness of the '80s slasher films, combined with grotesquely effective new advances in gore makeup technology, pretty much scared away all but the most bloody-minded fans. Horror movies have always been considered Hollywood's illegitimate stepchildren - even the Boris Karloff classics were mostly low-budget programmers in their time - but the moron slasher stuff was so thoroughly mutant, it barely even resembled entertainment.

It could even be said that Francis Ford Coppola bears some blame. Though the ``Bram Stoker's Dracula'' he directed in 1992 found a pretty big audience, its overwrought operatics annoyed and amazed viewers in about equal proportion. Two years later, the equally outlandish Coppola-produced ``Mary Shelley's Frankenstein'' pleased nobody, driving more nails in the horror movie's coffin.

All of which adds up to this frightening question: What's a movie fan to do this Halloween? Go see ``Thinner,'' the umpteenth Stephen King gimmick picture, about a deadly diet on the most candy-filled holiday of the year? Or should we anticipate the weekend release of ``Bad Moon,'' a werewolf picture whose hero is a dog?

Pitiful.

Until Hollywood gets its haunted house in order, there is only one thing to do: resurrect the glories of the past. And thanks to the mad science miracle of video, most of the good stuff is undead and available.

You can begin with the classics, although even the most devoted fans of Universal's 1931 ``Dracula'' with Bela Lugosi must admit that the movie's pretty creaky. Somewhat livelier are James Whale's '31 ``Frankenstein'' and his hilariously demented 1935 sequel, ``The Bride of Frankenstein.'' Other '30s fright films that still pack some punch include, of course, ``King Kong,'' ``Mark of the Vampire'' - a slicker and funnier reteaming of Lugosi and ``Dracula'' director Tod Browning - and Whale's ``Invisible Man.''

And for the ultimate in black-and-white creeps, check out the 1942 ``Cat People,'' probably the scariest movie you'll ever see that relies on suggestion more than shock for its eerie effect.

It must be said that, as accustomed as we've become to deep red in our movies, more recent horror classics tend to have a stronger impact in the video age. ``The Exorcist,'' Steven Spielberg's ``Jaws'' and De Palma's ``Carrie'' still remain as unnerving as they were in the '70s, while such '80s sci-fi hybrids as Jim Cameron's ``Aliens,'' Carpenter's ``The Thing'' and Cronenberg's ``The Fly'' have all it takes to keep you up all night.

And there is something to be said for those graphic '80s gore effects, at least when they were used in conjunction with the anarchic nutball visions of Sam Raimi in his ``Evil Dead'' gross-out comedies or Stuart Gordon in ``Re-Animator,'' a film that you never know whether to gag or laugh at.

Most extreme of all is ``Dead Alive'' (a k a ``Brain Dead''), a 1992 zombie comedy with a fruity Freudian twist and more fake gore than 100 chainsaw massacres. It makes director Peter Jackson's summer ghost comedy ``The Frighteners'' look like ``It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown'' by comparison. (Alarming trivia note: The Suncoast Motion Picture Co. chain says the Peanuts cartoon is its top-selling Halloween video.)

It could be argued that the real golden age of fear films sprang up between the classic and modern periods. Two low-budget outfits, England's Hammer Films and America's one-man exploitation factory, Roger Corman, led the '50s and '60s into an inspired chamber of cinematic darkness.

Hammer made its blood money reminting the classic Universal pictures in color and with more cleavage. They turned Christopher Lee into the second Karloff through an impressively mounted menagerie of Gothic nail-biters, including nearly a dozen Draculas.

Fun as nearly all the dozens of traditional Hammers were, the small studio's finest frights landed in its sci-fi/horror Quatermass series. ``The Creeping Unknown'' (1956) and ``Enemy From Space'' (1957) added an engagingly shivery, intelligent quality to the generally cheapo '50s alien monster genre. Unfortunately, the best film in the Quatermass series, ``Five Million Years to Earth'' (1968), is not available on video.

When he tired of churning out cheapo '50s alien monster junk, Corman first turned to quickie but savory horror-comedy (``A Bucket of Blood,'' the original ``Little Shop of Horrors'' with Jack Nicholson's memorably masochistic dental patient).

But as the '60s dawned, the true artist inside the schlockmeister emerged, ``Alien'' babylike, with a stylish series of loose Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Often teaming Vincent Price with a game stable of graying ghouls (Karloff, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone), such dark gems as ``House of Usher,'' ``The Pit and the Pendulum'' and ``Masque of the Red Death'' still impress with their sparkling wit and pathological depravity.

While we're talking depraved, let's not forget that the psychological thriller reached its pointed pinnacle during the early '60s. Hitchcock's ``Psycho,'' of course, remains the eternal masterpiece, but its colorful English cousin, Michael Powell's ``Peeping Tom,'' is just as disturbing.

And if you really want nightmares, check out Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as the aged, tormented sisters in the 1962 ``What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'' Talk about fright masks; some of the makeup jobs in this movie have not been matched since for sheer grotesque terror.

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3 Photos

Photo: (1) The senior prom becomes a bloodbath in Brian De Palma's creepy 1976 classic ``Carrie,'' starring Sissy Spacek and a prone William Katt.

(2) Anthony Perkins haunts the Bates mansion and enforces a strict checkout time at the next-door motel in ``Psycho,'' Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece of suspense.

(3) Terror is the primary resident in ``The House of Usher,'' Roger Corman's 1960 fright flick starring Mark Damon, standing, Myrna Fahey and Vincent Price.