Things never go well when the Andromeda Ascendant takes on passengers. When Dylan agrees to transport the bride of an arranged wedding, "The Honey Offering" is tastes bad from the outset. Kimberly Huie gives a memorable acid-tongued performance as the lady in question. The real clue that things were doomed ought to have been Tyr's reservations over the two rival Nietzschean prides genuinely wanting to heal their breach. "Star-Crossed" is the Series One episode that caused more gossip than any other. Stargate regular Michael Shanks guest stars, falls in love with Rommie on screen (and with Lexa Doig off screen), and then suddenly quits SG-1. There's certainly a spark between them in the show to support the gossip. The secondary cause for talk was its broadcast rescheduling in sympathy with the events of September 11 since it opens with a terrorist attack. -Paul Tonks.

This box set of Star Trek: Enterprise contains the first three video volumes of the first series. Episodes are: "Broken Bow" (Vol 1); "Fight or Flight", Strange New World" (Vol 2); "Unexpected", "Terra Nova" (Vol 3). The fifth live action series to hail from the Star Trek universe is without doubt the bravest concept since The Next Generation: here we boldly go back to the future, 100 years before Captain Kirk, to the very first voyage of a starship called Enterprise. Scott (Quantum Leap) Bakula sits in Captain Archer's squeaky new chair, and on the new ship he's accompanied by his cute dog Porthos, an antagonistic Vulcan (Jolene Blalock) filling the obligatory pin-up babe role and an alien Doctor with indeterminate head make-up and mysterious origins. -Paul Tonks.

With Dagon, director Stuart (Re-Animator) Gordon returns once more to author HP Lovecraft, this time for an adaptation of the novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, with the setting switched from the coast of New England to the creepy Spanish fishing village of Inboca. After a sudden storm and a yacht-wreck, a bespectacled and bewildered Paul Marsh (Ezra Gooden) finds himself stranded in the literally fishy town, which has thrown over Catholicism to devote itself to the worship of the Philistine sea-god Dagon. His influence means that the inhabitants are transforming into pop-eyed, tentacled and gilled creatures. Though Gooden perhaps strikes too strident a note to convince as an everyday guy, director Gordon orchestrates the rising terrors well. These range from a supremely damp and uncomfortable hotel room through an impressive flashback about the rise of the Esoteric Order of Dagon to some sinister business with a mad-eyed mermaid (Macarena Gomez), human sacrifice and nasty surprises all round. Unfortunately, Gordon still can't quite distinguish between acceptably gruesome and downright nasty, especially when it comes to disposing of secondary female characters. On the plus side, Dagon boasts an excellent score, which even tries to set to music some of Lovecraft's invented language ("Ia Ia Cthulhu fh'tagn"). -Kim Newman.

Aptly described by critic Roger Ebert as "a vomitorium of viscera", Blade II takes the express route to sequel success. So if you enjoyed Blade, you'll probably drool over this monster mash, which is anything but boring. Set (and filmed) in Prague, the plot finds a new crop of "Reaper" vampires threatening to implement a viral breeding program, and they're nearly impervious to attacks by Blade (Wesley Snipes), his now-revived mentor Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), and a small army of "normal" vampires who routinely combust in a constant conflagration of spectacular special effects. It's up to Blade to conquer the über-vamps, and both Snipes and director Guillermo del Toro (Mimic) serve up a nonstop smorgasbord of intensely choreographed action, creepy makeup, and graphic ultra-violence, with the ever-imposing Ron Perlman as a vampire villain. It's sadistic, juvenile, numbing, and-for those who dig this kind of thing-undeniably impressive. -Jeff Shannon.

A road/vampire movie with teen leads, The Forsaken feels a lot like a sexed-up pilot for a TV series. Kerr Smith takes a job driving a classic car from LA to Miami, with clear instructions that no harm should come to the wheels and he shouldn't pick up hitch-hikers. In the middle of nowhere he is manipulated into giving a lift to a drifting slacker (Brendan Fehr) who turns out to have been bitten by a vampire year or so back. Fehr is keeping the transformation into a blood-drinking monster under control with medication, but needs to destroy the master fiend who sired his attacker to effect a total cure. When Smith is nibbled by traumatised babe Isabella Miko, he is infected too and they all hare off to track down Kit (Jonathan Shaech), a medieval French knight currently cruising the backroads with a posse of minion-cum-killer associates. Unlike Near Dark, from which it steals a lot, The Forsaken is pretty feeble in its re-imagining of the vampire myth: Shaech is just another pin-up pretty boy with highlit eyes who bungles his master villainy, while the very striking Phina Oruche (a black English model) is wasted in an eye-candy role as his nastiest disciple. Smith and Fehr do better in the traditionally weak hero parts, benefiting from snappy patter, but the plot keeps tripping over itself and the blood orgies and vampire combustions are third-hand. On the DVD: The Forsaken comes to DVD with three tiny deleted scenes, two minimal featurettes, trailers, filmographies, and a dry but absorbing commentary track from director JS. Cardone. -Kim Newman.

A medical horror movie from Germany, Anatomy is every bit as slick as its Hollywood equivalents (most notably Coma) but cuts a lot deeper thanks to its connections with a Gothic past. Brilliant medical student Paula Haller (Franka Potente) is accepted into a prestigious summer anatomy course at Heidelberg University and gradually learns that many of her teachers and classmates are members of the Antihippocratic League. This secret society carries out unethical vivisection experiments on live human specimens and has been active in the medical profession since the 16th century with a special peak during the Third Reich. Director-writer Stefan Ruzowitsky plays some distinctive and personal games as the heroine uncovers the conspiracy, then learns that her own family is intimately connected with the League. In gruesome but delicate horror scenes, kidnapped human specimens awake anaesthetised to the sound of easy-listening music as masked students dissect them alive to create the impressive, grotesque and beautifully preserved cutaway specimens used in the anatomy classes. Potente, the star of Run, Lola Run, has a very different role as the serious but passionate heroine and her character is affected by the revelations of the plot in a way that deepens the movie beyond the terrific suspense mechanisms of its lady-in-peril climax, in which Paula's medical knowledge and personal grit enable her to fight back. A great moment has the heroine forced to instruct her non-medical student boyfriend (Sebastian Blomberg) how to administer a simple but crucial intravenous injection to save her life, while the plausible villain turns out to be a renegade even by the standards of his secret society. On the DVD: An extremely high-quality DVD, this offers a pristine widescreen transfer (1:2. 35) of the film (enhanced for 16:9 TVs); soundtracks in German, Spanish and English with optional subtitles in English, German and a dozen other languages; a full-length commentary in German by Ruzovitsky, with English subtitles; a couple of deleted scenes, with director commentary; on-set interviews with the cast and crew and a snippets of behind-the-scenes footage; a music video by co-star Anna Loos, shot on the set of the film; trailers; filmographies; and a neat animated menu. -Kim Newman.