By E. J. Mundell

CHICAGO (Reuters Health) - He's fang-tastic: in a nationwide survey, Americans young and old rank Dracula, the Lord of the Undead, as their scariest, most compelling movie monster. The survey is part of a psychological study aimed at finding out what sends shivers down film-lover's spines--and why.

"What we found was that people are attracted to monsters who are intelligent and have super powers, but also monsters who can perform on screen with the kind of evil and lack of inhibition that we just can't do in real life," said researcher Dr. Steven Fischoff of California State University, in Los Angeles.

He presented the findings here Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.

In their study, Fischoff and co-authors Alexandra Dimopoulos and Francois Nguyen conducted a nationwide telephone survey of close to 1,200 Americans ranging in age from 16 to 91 years of age, asking them, among other things, to select a favorite on-screen monster.

According to the survey, "The king of the monsters is the vampire, and the king of the vampires is Dracula," Fischoff said in an interview with Reuters Health. Skulking behind everyone's favorite Transylvanian are berserk killer Freddy Kreuger in the #2 spot, Godzilla trampling his way to third place, Frankenstein clanking into fourth and the less-than-cuddly demon-doll, Chucky, in the fifth spot.

According to Fischoff, a definite "generation gap" is emerging among Americans when it comes to being scared.

"We found that younger people grew up with and were more attracted to the violent, bloodthirsty slasher-murderers like Jason Vorhees from 'Halloween,' Michael Myers from 'Friday the 13th' and Freddy Kreuger (from 'Nightmare on Elm Street'). And the older people were attracted to the more classic monsters who didn't kill except for very important reasons---survival, fear, revenge."

Fischoff theorizes that young people are more attracted to the uncomplicated, "killing-machine" type monsters of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s because, for them, senseless violence isn't seen as a personal threat. "Young people think they are going to live forever," he said. "And also it's what they grew up with. The mother's milk of contemporary culture is violence, in-your-face stridency, edginess."

On the other hand, studies have shown that as we age, our appetite for gore and violence declines, perhaps because we feel more vulnerable as regards our own mortality. So older audiences may demand less blood and more plot and character development from their horror films. "The older, more classic monsters were people who were tormented by their monster-ness," Fischoff points out. "They were rejected by society, hunted down, ridiculed. They also had problems--Dracula, for example, mourned the fact that he couldn't die."

He stressed that younger people still remain attracted to the classic movie monsters. "Younger people seemed to have two scripts in their heads--one script is the script for the contemporary monsters who are vicious murderers, and the other script is for the traditional monsters who have a type of classic appeal. And they can switch from one to the other," he said.

"Whereas the older people want to have nothing to do with the contemporary monsters, because they are just totally uncivilized, without any kind of subtlety."

In a somewhat unexpected finding, the LA researchers found that women are generally attracted to the same kinds of monsters as men. "Younger females, especially, were attracted to the same kind of violent Freddy Kreuger, Michael Myers-types as were the males," Fischoff said. Women of all ages were also likely to rate Dracula as "sexy," he added.

Why are film-goers drawn to the macabre, the violent, the scream-inducing? "We liked to be scared because it's something that is out of the ordinary in our experience," Fischoff said. "Most of us live in somewhat insulated lives, we don't have extreme ups and downs. And the pleasure in being scared is in knowing that it will stop. It's a safe scariness. You can close your eyes, turn off the television--its like going on a roller coaster--you get the adrenaline rush, but you know it's going to end."

He also believes we may all harbor a little "monster" of our own, deep inside. Watching vampires and slashers onscreen, "we live vicariously through their killing of people who annoy them, their disrespecting authority, their running amuck--and not having to pay for it," Fischoff said. "I think there is evil screaming to get out, but we can't do it in reality so we go to movies to watch our own evil play out on the screen."