Whether it makes you bolt for the vomitorium or head for moral high ground, horror is big business for the entertainment industry.

But apparently even scaremeister Stephen King has some issues with the ‘goreno’ or ‘torture porn’ sub-genre of horror that has gathered box-office momentum over the last couple of years with franchises like the Saw films. In a recent interview, the scribe observed that, ‘I don’t want to go to a movie and root for the people to die. I want to go to a movie and root for them to live.’

King doesn’t have as much of a problem with filmmaker Eli Roth’s work, however, referring to this summer’s goreno Hostel: Part II by saying ‘art should make you uncomfortable.’

And he’s not alone. ‘Some sick part of me really liked the film,’ admits Joanna Miles, director of marketing for distributor Maple Pictures, who has a decade of experience marketing movies in Canada, from Capri Releasing to Alliance Atlantis.

‘I don’t usually go to films like this,’ she says, ‘but when I watched Hostel II, I actually thought it was quite good. It certainly helps when you’re trying to market a film if you actually like it. It’s all tongue-in-cheek and the audience is in on the jokes.’

Scaring audiences should be in Maple’s mission statement, as it’s cornered the market in Canada. Miles notes that 50% of the distrib’s product is horror. A theatrical release of a horror title typically grabs 5% of the North American box office. Saw II did 7.5% its opening weekend, while Saw III hit 8%. But there are signs of a cooling off.

Lionsgate in the U.S., with whom Maple has an output deal, has courted controversy more than once for the way it has been marketing these types of movies to its 18-24 target demo. Ads for Saw II featuring a pair of dismembered fingers were pulled back in 2005 by the MPAA. More recently, After Dark Films, which has a multi-picture deal with Lionsgate, had its billboard and taxi ads for serial killer film Captivity yanked in New York and L.A. – no mean feat in cities that employ ‘sexvertising’ on billboards for everything from bidets to Pizza Hut.

After Dark ran a series of four boards featuring Canadian actress Elisha Cuthbert entitled: ‘abduction,’ ‘confinement,’ ‘torture,’ and ‘extermination.’ Ironically, it wasn’t an outcry from political or religious lobbies that got them taken down, but rather the MPAA, which suspended the film’s release, pushing the date from May 18 to July 13.

Maple avoided the controversy in Canada by scaling back its campaign to just radio and newspaper ads, which Miles says was a decision based on viewing the movie and the market.

‘We took a look at the film and the current climate for that type of film – and we learned our lesson on Hostel II that maybe the Canadian public isn’t as conducive to this type of film as it used to be,’ she says.

The European poster art for Hostel: Part II featured a naked Bijou Phillips holding her own head, but while it didn’t get approval in North America, it made its way virally around the Internet. The Hostel sequel did decent business around the world, taking in $31.5 million on a $10-million budget, but that was diminishing returns compared to the original ($80.5 million on a $4.8-million budget). Captivity fared even worse, with a box office under $3 million in the U.S. and $6.5 million worldwide

‘I think it’s all in the timing,’ says Miles. ‘And it’s also how much money you spend.’ She observes that the first Hostel movie came out in January, amidst Academy Award pictures and specialized art films.

‘There was nothing of its ilk in the marketplace,’ she notes. People are watching television, and the television advertising is hitting the eyes it needs to hit. Here we are releasing Hostel II June 8 after Pirates, Spider-Man and Shrek the Third. There was a glut of sequels out in the market, and those [films’ distributors] spend, spend, spend.’

Maple’s marketing budget was the same for Hostel: Part II as for the original, but Miles says she believes it needed to spend more to break through all the summer clutter. But there’s no magic formula.

‘Maybe the time has come for these types of films,’ she says. ‘Or maybe it was a warm weekend and nobody wanted to go to the movies.’

As far as reaching the vaunted 18-24 demographic, Miles says the goreno genre skews almost like a date movie.

‘The audience is almost 50-50 male, female,’ says Miles, recalling that the full house for the promo screening for Saw before opening night was evenly divided, proving an old horror film adage. ‘Girls like to go because they like to scream and hold on to a guy’s arm, and guys like to go because they like girls screaming and holding on to their arms.’

Although she’s convinced ‘there’s a market for everything,’ Miles sees the need for an evolving approach to the genre as a whole. She’s putting more of her marketing budget towards online initiatives like ringtones with partners like MuchMusic, which, in addition to bus shelter posters that morph when the sun goes down, will be part of the push for upcoming Canuck werewolf movie Skinwalkers (Aug. 10 release date).

‘I think you have to step it up for the horror fans out there,’ she says. ‘They are on websites talking about this stuff constantly, and you have to be smarter. You have to be clever and you really have to up the ante. They can smell when they’re being suckered into something.’