The horror.

It's that time of year again, and some cable operators are offering up an appropriate variety of visual fare as a Halloween treat: scary movies.

Cable nets are getting in on the horror action by launching entire channels dedicated to the genre. The genre is typically a great way for studios to make money, since the scary movies tend to be cheap to make and are highly profitable. There's always something wicked on the table (and eventually in the broadcast pipeline, too)--consider such recent titles as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" and "Saw III."

Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, Sony Pictures Television and Comcast Corp. are launching Fearnet on Halloween, available over the Internet, wireless platforms and cable systems' video on demand.

The alliance could be a monstrous one: Comcast is the world's largest cable distributor and Sony and Lions Gate both have sizable horror content offerings to pull from.

Despite the well-timed launch, Fearnet wasn't the first one to the party. The Horror Channel, owned by New Jersey-based Terrorvision Television, got into the hunt earlier this year. And last week, it announced a deal to provide its creepy content to Akimbo Systems.

Rainbow Media Holdings Inc. also distributes fright-themed Monsters HD as part of its Voom HD suite of channels.