Toronto has been awash with blood and gore for the past two years, servicing a run of low-budget horror movies including the ubiquitous Saws, Dead Silence, the sci-fi thrillers Repo! The Genetic Opera and Repossession Mambo, and the parking-lot horror P2.

These and other horror movies — there was also Skinwalkers — have helped keep the city’s studios, technicians and actors working despite a dry spell that has seen the biggest-spending Hollywood films favoring Vancouver. Dan Heffner, who exec produces the Saw franchise and served as coproducer on both Repo! and P2, says these U.S. titles inject nearly all of their production spend into the local industry.

‘Part of it is dependent upon what salary you’re paying your U.S. cast,’ he says. ‘If they come in on the high end of the spectrum, obviously that money goes back to the U.S. But certainly all of the production period is spent in Toronto,’ he adds, noting that there are more than 100 acting roles in Repo!, and 98% of them are being filled by local ACTRA members.

Although, in the case of P2, which arrives in theaters Friday via Seville Pictures, there was no spend for studios. The picture stars lesser-known Rachel Nichols (Resurrecting the Champ) as a young exec who is trapped in an underground parking garage and stalked by a creepy security guard, played by Wes Bentley (Weirdsville). It skipped the local studios and instead shot entirely on location at a parking facility in the city’s downtown core.

‘Studio-wise, we’ll take what we can get from any project,’ says Jim Mirkopoulos, VP of facility management for Cinespace Film Studios, which housed three of the four Saw movies and Repo!. ‘Even if it only has small studio components — often we’re able to fit them in wherever space becomes available intermittently.’

The Saws took up more space, and Repo!, which features Paris Hilton, shot in the largest studio at Cinespace’s facility on Eastern Avenue.

The horror boom has been good for the industry overall, he says, noting ‘crews, technicians, and special effects houses are kept busy.’

However, Heffner is not sure if the upcoming Saw V will shoot in Toronto, citing the rising loonie as a concern. ‘It’s so far been the most economical place for us to make the movies… but now you have this whole other issue with where the exchange rate is on the dollar,’ he says, adding that 2008 will be a ‘dicey’ year for all production centers because of the writers strike, and the potential of a U.S. actors strike on July 1.

In theaters, P2 will see competition from other new U.S. releases, including the holiday comedy Fred Claus, from Warner Bros., the political drama Lions for Lambs, from MGM, and the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men, handled here by Alliance Films.

On a smaller scale, Mongrel Media will open the documentary Jimmy Carter Man from Plains in Toronto and Vancouver, while Odeon is releasing the Brit drama This Is England in Toronto. In Quebec, Stéphane Lalleur’s dramedy Continental, un film sans fusil bows on 10 screens via Christal Films.