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Nothing beats a good fright.

One of my fondest horrific memories is seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” for the first time and being jarred almost out of my jeans when Janet Leigh took her famous final shower in the Bates Motel. Later came the overhead shot in the old hilltop house of knife-wielding Tony Perkins, in his dress and granny wig, surprising Martin Balsam at the top of the stairs, then finishing him off as he fell backward toward the first floor.

Speaking of dolled-up sociopaths, for me Brian De Palma’s “Dressed to Kill” ranks second in sweet mortification. Although much less original than “Psycho,” it had me gasping and ducking my head like a wimp when gussied-to-the-nines Michael Caine began butchering Angie Dickenson in the elevator.

Those were the days.

So what a bummer that Stephen King’s three-part television version of his novel “The Shining” hits--despite its heavy violence--only a 6 or low 7 on the scare scale.

Much of “The Shining” is plenty watchable. Directed by Mick Garris, it’s a nice-looking production, and despite a plodding start and an even slower prelude to its explosive windup, there’s something about its fierce ghosts, rising dementia and innocents in peril that holds your interest in between.

Yet masochists who love scary movies and regard screen terror as system-cleansing will be disappointed, for nearly all of “The Shining” is for the squeamish. Granted, there is a first-rate scare in Part 2, but it’s a single, unrepeated, piercing jolt from a ghastly figure that’s all too fleeting. And if this story doesn’t regularly freak you out after finishing with its nuts-and-bolts introductions, what’s the point of it? King didn’t write the novel or the script for this six-hour ABC miniseries as a psychological study, or as a scholarly treatise on haunted hotels or potentially lethal conflicts between telepathic children and spooks. His eye is on one prize--horror.

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Now you take Friday night’s “The Dukes of Hazzard” reunion movie on CBS--that is scary. Recycled comedy cut-ups don’t count, though. The truth is that TV entertainment generates few intentional scares, an inexcusably dismal record in terror that includes TV adaptations of some of King’s other novels.

Pivotal in this one are Jack Torrance (Steven Weber), his wife, Wendy (Rebecca DeMornay), their 7-year-old son, Danny (Courtland Mead)--whose sensitivity to forces beyond the physical world is called “shining”--and the Overlook Hotel, an isolated white edifice rising majestically on a hill offering grand vistas of the surrounding rugged terrain. The gorgeous setting (it’s actually the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo.) is to die for. Literally.

A teacher and struggling playwright low on funds, Jack is hired as the resort hotel’s caretaker for the off-season, when the roads are impassable and no guests or other employees are present. So here, in this homicidal inn with a bloody history, is where the Torrances are spending the snowbound winter, getting menaced by chalky apparitions and hearing creepy voices of the decayed and cadaverous, a sort of revved-up version of Scrooge getting the word from dead Marley and the boys on Christmas Eve.

Give King credit for the concept. When it comes to horror tales, a kick-ass, jabbering hotel is hardly routine. Talk about your hotels with lousy service--this one tries to murder you. Yet neither the Overlook nor its predatory shrubs, pesty wasps, lights that go on and off arbitrarily and doors that close and lock mysteriously are the stuff of nightmares.

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Getting the major big-scare assignment is Jack, an on-the-wagon/off-the-wagon alcoholic who is swiftly established as having a dark, violent past, a short fuse and the ability to do some damage in any surroundings. It’s at the Overlook, though, where he really gets ticked off. The snowier it gets, the more bizarre he gets; the deeper into winter, the deeper his madness, to the extent that he becomes even more threatening to his family than the hotel’s evil spirits who egg him on.

The problem is that Weber (of the NBC comedy “Wings”) doesn’t have the diabolical goods to deliver on the role’s scary potential. While functional as an archfiend-in-progress who swings a mean mallet, he approaches neither the ferocity nor the blend of demonism and maniacal wit that Jack Nicholson gave the character in an uneven 1980 theatrical version of “The Shining.” Those who saw that slimmer Stanley Kubrick movie will not forget the insane face worn by Nicholson’s snarling madman, brows arched, while simultaneously delivering a tribute to pop culture (“Heeeeere’s Johnny!”) and stalking his wife and kid.

DeMornay is convincing, Mead is a very appealing little actor who wins your heart and Melvin Van Peebles does nicely as the fatherly hotel cook whose strong bond with Danny has him bolting back to the Overlook to crash the bone-thumping final brouhaha.

As if on snowshoes, however, the actors are slowed to an excruciating pace en route to the conclusion of “The Shining,” a crush of commercial breaks and various script devices combining to artificially extend its life and tumultuous send-off.

Late April to late May is a critical ratings period for the TV industry, which is usually at its noisiest when Nielsens are at stake. Thus, it remains to be seen whether “The Shining” is more frightening to viewers than the competition, for running opposite it on reliably bombastic Fox Sunday is “World’s Scariest Police Chases!,” foreplay to Fox’s May 15 special, “World’s Scariest Police Shootouts!”

Heeeeere’s sweeps!

* “The Shining” airs 9-11 p.m. Sunday, Monday and May 1 on ABC (Channel 7). The network has given the miniseries a rating of TV-14 (may not be suitable for children under the age of 14).