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''You have to understand that my brother [Miramax cochairman Harvey Weinstein] and I grew up on these kinds of movies,'' says Bob Weinstein, referring to Mimic prototypes like the 1954 killer-ant B-movie Them! and Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic The Birds. ''We'd get dropped off at the Midway Theater in Forest Hills and watch three movies for $1.50.'' Granted, most kids grow out of that phase, but the Weinsteins' inner geeks lived on. ''It's refreshing to be with people who have a genuine passion for the genre and like the same movies you do,'' says the 32-year-old Guadalajara native Del Toro. ''When I told Bob I wanted to kill the kids in Mimic — which is a real no-no in a horror movie — he didn't chicken out. The guy's got serious cojones.''

Luring stylish directors like Del Toro does give Dimension the bouquet of fromage rather than the scent of cheese, but being part of Miramax gives it something far more important: access to stars who would normally give their agents their walking papers for even suggesting a genre flick. Just take a look at how the crossbreeding Weinstein brothers cobbled together the cast of Mimic: The first cast member on board was British actor Jeremy Northam, who starred in the studio's Jane Austen period piece Emma last year. Says Northam: ''I'd be lying if I said I didn't wonder Is this what I want to do? while I was reading the script.... But I met with Guillermo because I had a relationship with Miramax, and we hit it off.'' Sorvino was in a similar situation, only more so. She'd starred in four Miramax movies in the past three years, including the film that won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, 1995's Mighty Aphrodite. And Josh Brolin, who got noticed in Miramax's well-received screwball comedy Flirting With Disaster, appears again in Nightwatch. As for Del Toro, a newcomer to the Miramax fold, he was told by Weinstein shortly after Cronos was released that he should see him first when he was ready to make another film. ''And now we have him,'' laughs Weinstein. ''He's in the family now, and he's not going anywhere.''

Welcome to what Weinstein refers to as ''the Miramax mafia'' — a famiglia that now includes Tarantino, who made Pulp Fiction for Miramax, wrote and starred in Dimension's From Dusk Till Dawn, and just directed Miramax's Jackie Brown. Weinstein, who's discussing more Dimension projects with Tarantino, refers to the director as the studio's ''consigliere.''

If Tarantino is taking that role, then Kevin Williamson, the 32-year-old screenwriter behind Scream and Scream 2, seems to have already been initiated as Dimension's hit man. In addition to Scream 3, Williamson's dark comedy The Faculty, which he describes as ''The Breakfast Club meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers,'' is in the works, as is his directorial debut, Killing Mrs. Tingle, another dark comedy about an evil schoolteacher. Then there's the stalled-but-ripe-for-a-comeback Halloween franchise, which Weinstein is hoping Scream's golden boy can give a '90s tweak and kick-start back into the nightmares of a new generation of horror fans.