Remakes and big-budget films have long been Hollywood staples, but studios are finding success by embracing the former without the usual cumbersome costs.

The Amityville Horror was last weekend’s box office champ, earning $23.3 million and proving that fans are still hungry for remakes of horror, sci-fi and action thrillers, even if they lack star power.

Such "genre" films’ spawn may not be prestigious but can be hugely profitable.

Two 2004 horror remakes - The Grudge and Dawn of the Dead - cost a combined $36 million to make, then earned a combined $169 million at the box office.

The previous year, a Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake cost $9 million to produce, then earned $80 million in America and another $26 million abroad.

On the flip side was the sci-fi chiller The Stepford Wives. Boosting its budget with mainstream stars (Nicole Kidman, Glen Close) and lavish but witless special effects, it cost $90 million and earned just $59 million.

Despite Stepford’s flop, Hollywood hasn’t given up on the big-budget remake. Several comedies and family films cooked up from ’60s and ’70s recipes are getting pricey new faces this year.

Among these are The Pink Panther, with Steve Martin in Peter Sellers’ classic role; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with Johnny Depp in Gene Wilder’s part from Willie Wonka; The Longest Yard, with Adam Sandler replacing Burt Reynolds; and The Bad News Bears, with Billy Bob Thornton in for Walter Matthau.

TV has also been mined for source material, with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell set to appear in Bewitched.

Such stars are costly: Depp earned $18 million for Charlie and Kidman $17.5 million for Bewitched, but since stars can propel films to jackpots, studios gamble on them.

By contrast, The Grudge had only Sarah Michelle Gellar, while Dawn of the Dead and Texas Chainsaw were star-free.

These genre films’ success speaks volumes about young people’s renewed hunger for horror.

"If it looks scary, they’ll go," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Co., a Los Angeles firm that tracks the film industry. "When the concept is horror, today’s young audience can buy that, whether they know the original or not."

With this youthful orientation, remakes must be marketed "essentially as brand-new product," he said. "With a remake, often they’re for films released well before the target audience was born. I bet if I asked a dozen 20-year-olds if The Longest Yard is a remake, they’d probably say no."

But even if they haven’t seen the original, a remake can have name-brand cachet. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a pop-culture touchstone. Assault on Precinct 13, whose remake flopped, was not.

Even with name value, last year was unkind to mainstream remakes like Alfie, which cost $60 million and earned $13 million, and The Flight of the Phoenix, which cost $45 million and earned $20 million.

All this may not bode well for the new Pink Panther and Bad News Bears. But the year’s action, horror and sci-fi remakes should pay off.

Amityville Horror found life in a franchise that had been dormant since the ’80s. Due May 6 is House of Wax, remaking a 1953 Vincent Price film.

The latter should be typical horror redux: done on the cheap but with grisly effectiveness. Shot in Australia, House of Wax has Paris Hilton in a not-so-stellar cast. But a slasher slant should pay dividends in a market cozying up to fear fests.

The year’s biggest remakes should be two sci-fi films with scary sides: June 29’s The War of the Worlds and Dec. 14’s King Kong.

Costing a reported $150 million, the reprise of 1933’s King Kong is what Peter Jackson ached to make while helming Hobbit films. As for War of the Worlds, first done in ’53, the remake has Steven Spielberg as director and Tom Cruise as star. Game over. The first time they teamed was 2002’s Minority Report, a sci-fi success that earned $358 million worldwide.

"It goes in cycles, and ’05 seems to be a year of remakes," Dergarabedian said, "While there’s a lack of originality, they’re a good way for studios to mine their vaults of pre-tested product and can be produced in a way that makes them original. That said, every film has to rise and fall on its own merits."