For more than a decade, March has quietly been a staple for the release of horror movies, many of them opening wide on St. Patrick's weekend.
This year the biggest releases happen to be comedies—the "21 Jump Street" remake and Will Ferrel's Spanish flick "Casa de mi Padre," but there is one thriller on the list: the Nicholas Cage revenge/suspense flick "Seeking Justice."
But history shows that the movies that do well by launching around St. Patrick's day tend to be scary movies, like 2010's remake of "The Last House on the Left."
Here are some of the best or biggest slasher-flicks, supernatural scary movies, crime features and erotic thrillers released on the weekend nearest to St. Patrick's Day. It doesn't happen every year, but there are too many to ignore:
2009 — "Knowing" (over $183 million worldwide): Nicholas Cage tries to decode all of the world's disasters from a page written by a child 50 years prior.
2008 —"Shutter" (over $47 million worldwide): Joshua Jackson stars as in this low-budget Thai horror remake about a couple who is haunted by supernatural being they see in photographs.
2007 —"Dead Silence" ($23 million) and "Premonition" (over $85 million worldwide): The first is a movie about a witch and her living dummies while the second follows Sandra Bullock in an "Awake" style thriller where her husband is alive in one timeline and dead in the other.
2005 —"The Ring Two" (over $161 million): Samara is back to terrorize Naomi Watts some more.
2004 —"Dawn of the Dead" (over $102 million): A decent remake of the George Romero zombie fright flick
2003 — "Dreamcatcher" (over $75 million): This terrible adaptation of Stephen King's novel stars "Justified" star Timothy Olyphant and more as a group of friends who encounter aliens in the woods. Morgan Freeman co-stars.
2002 —"Resident Evil" (over $102 million): Milla Jovovich kicks off her a giant franchise about zombies apocalypse created by an evil pharmaceutical corporation.
2001 —"Memento" (over $39 million): Christopher Nolan makes a real splash in Hollywood with this brilliant psychological thriller about a man with short-term memory loss who seeks revenge on the murderer of his wife.
2000 —"Final Destination" (over $113 million): Death comes to collect for the first time
1999 —"True Crime" ($17 million domestically): In the height of Clint Eastwood's foray into the crime thriller world, the legendary actor plays a journalist who rushes to prove an death row inmate's innocence.
1998 — "Wild Things" ($30 million domestically): The movie that made Denise Richards a bona fide sex symbol is actually about two women who plot to take a bunch of money form their school with their teacher.
1992 — "Basic Instinct" (over $353 million worldwide): Sharon Stone's leg-cross heard 'round the world is featured in this erotic thriller about a police officer in a V-neck sweater investigating a murder in San Francisco.
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