For Creepshow 2, the quickie 1987 sequel to the Stephen King-scripted/George Romero-directed 1982 original, Romero shifted jobs to become the screenwriter, earning King (who also has a goony cameo as a trucker) a "based on stories by" credit. Cinematographer Michael Gornick stepped up to make an uninspiring directorial debut, turning out a conventional TV-look picture unlike the sometimes striking Creepshow. A frame story mixes live action and cartoon as a small boy leafs through the latest issue of his favourite horror comic while plotting revenge against neighbourhood bullies. A pun-dropping host called the Creep (played by Tom Savini when not a cartoon) introduces three anecdotes. In "Old Chief Wooden Head", George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour are kindly Western shopkeepers killed by tearaways and avenged by the wooden Indian which stands outside the place. In "The Raft", four obnoxious teens are terrorised on a lake by a hungry slime-monster. And in "The Hitch-Hiker", hit-and-run driver Lois Chiles is haunted by her squashed victim, who keeps reappearing in a progressively battered forms. Though King and Romero deliver a good mix of cynical and melodramatic dialogue, the stories are disappointingly thin and predictable, with especially weak punch-lines. Of the performers, only Chiles really works up the hysterical attack needed to play a comic book character. On the DVD: just a trailer. [+]

Shadow of the Vampire is a film full of good ideas that are only partially developed. Clever, engaging, and boosted by the sublime casting of Willem Dafoe as Nosferatu "actor" Max Schreck, its premise is ripe with possibilities but the movie's too slight to register much impact: characters remain achingly underdeveloped and the whole lacks a sense of pace or structure. What's left, however, is enough for anyone to get their teeth into: the delightful performances from a sterling cast and director E Elias Merhige's affectionately tongue-in-cheek homage to a landmark of German silent cinema. John Malkovich is aptly loony as the eccentric director FW Murnau, whose passion in filming the 1922 classic Nosferatu leads to the extreme casting of Schreck as the vampire, a vision of evil who, in this movie's delightfully twisted imagination, actually is a vampire, sucking the blood of cast and crew members who've dismissed Schreck as an over-zealous method actor. As these on-set maladies and "accidents" continue, Schreck wields greater control over Murnau, who descends into a kind of obsessive art-for-art's-sake madness until diva co-star Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormack, doing wonderful work) is served up as the actor's ultimate motivation. Merhige and his actors (including Cary Elwes, as intrepid cameraman Fritz Wagner) have great fun with this ghastly escapade, and the humour is kept delicately subtle to balance the movie's artistic aspirations. To that end, Dafoe is just right, his bald pate and gaunt features a perfect match for the mysterious Schreck, his grimace and talon-like fingers suggesting a human vulture on the prowl. Likewise, the re-creation of Nosferatu's expressionist style is both fanciful and brilliantly authentic. Too bad, then, that this movie suffers from a case of vampiric anaemia, with budgetary shortcomings apparently the cause of at least some of its shortcomings; if Shadow of the Vampire shared the depth and richness of, say, Ed Wood, it might have been a cult classic for the ages. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. [+]

The word "vampire" is never mentioned in Near Dark, but that doesn't stop this 1987 cult favourite from being one of the best modern-era vampire films. It put then-unknown director Kathryn Bigelow on Hollywood's radar and gave choice roles to Aliens costars favoured by Bigelow's ex-husband James Cameron-Lance Henriksen is the leader of a makeshift family of renegade bloodsuckers, nocturnally seeking victims in rural Oklahoma; his immortal gal pal is Aliens and T2 alumnus Jenette Goldstein; and Bill Paxton is the group's deadliest leather-clad ass kicker. Fellow traveller Jenny Wright lures Okie farm boy Adrian Pasdar into the group with a love bite and he's soon turning toward vampirism with a combination of frightened revulsion and relentless desire. With Joshua Miller as the youngest vampire, Near Dark is Bigelow's masterpiece of low-budget ingenuity-a truck-stop thriller that begins well, gets better and better (aided by a fine Tangerine Dream score) and goes out in a blaze of glory. -Jeff Shannon.

Lucio "King of the Eyeball Gag" Fulci made his name with a series of gory, gooey horror epics, and The Beyond stands above all as his outré masterpiece. The largely incoherent plot has something to do with a turn-of-the-century curse and a doorway to hell in the cellar of an old New Orleans hotel. Fulci shows his usual sensitivity with wooden acting, clumsy dialogue, and buckets of oozing blood and pus, but don't let that get in the way of enjoying this mad tale of zombies from hell invading Earth and eating their way through a cast of humans: crucified martyrs, blind visionaries, creepy hotel handymen, befuddled cops, and a plucky pair of heroes desperately fleeing a horde of hungry undead. The blood-red art direction is eerily beautiful, and Fulci's relentless long takes, punctuated by jolting shock cuts and eruptions of grotesque violence, create a mood of sheer paranoid horror right down to the final, mind-bending image. And don't forget the Fulci claim to fame: eyes are gouged out, eaten away, melted with acid, and (shudder) popped out by a spike through the back of the skull. Yech! If you dare ignore such piddling details as narrative logic and let yourself get carried away on the creepy visuals, it's a deliciously stylish treat, an edgy bit of Gothic gore pitched in all its bone-crunching, flesh-ripping, organ-splatting glory. This sadistic, sanguinary hell-spawn tale is for gore-hounds only. -Sean Axmaker, Amazon. com.

Christopher Lee, long Hammer Studios' house villain, takes a rare heroic turn as scholar and occultist Duc de Richleau, the kind of role that Peter Cushing had made his métier. Lee plays Richleau with a dark elegance and intensity-he is a commanding figure with a trim goatee who discovers that the son of a war buddy has joined a satanic cult lorded over by the quietly malevolent Mocata (Charles Gray, best known as the narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Director Terence Fisher, working from a literate script by genre scribe Richard Matheson, creates a strikingly handsome period piece (set in 1920s rural England) dripping in dread as Richleau and Mocata battle for the souls of two young lovers on both physical and spiritual planes. The action scenes are well handled and the towering Lee cuts quite a figure leaping through hoards of robed devil worshippers to save a sacrificial victim, but the film peaks in an eerie supernatural battle in which Richleau and his sceptical party confronts Mocata's demons while protected in a giant pentagram. The effects are coarse and dated by today's standards, but the gorgeous period detail, vivid colour and unsettling imagery create a sinister ambience, and Fisher's mix of psychodrama and swashbuckling action makes for an engrossing thriller, a life-and-death struggle between two masters of the forces of light and darkness. -Sean Axmaker.

Set in 1999 and originally released in 1968, Destroy All Monsters, the ninth Godzilla movie in the series, is exactly how you'd like the future to be. The United Nations Science Council has established a busily humming lunar base, astronauts and scientists wear brightly coloured jump-suits, and the world's most dangerous monsters have been collected together out of harm's way on a remote Pacific island. Joining Godzilla in the peaceful seclusion of Monsterland is an impressive selection of creatures taken from Toho Studios' back catalogue of science-fantasy movies. The big names included in this all-star monster rally are Mothra, Rodan and Angilas alongside such lesser terrors as Gorosaurus from King Kong Escapes, Spiga and Minya, last seen in Son of Godzilla, and Manda from Astragon. Pretty soon, however, they're all under the control of the Kilaaks, a sinister race of aliens intent upon taking over the Earth, and smashing up real estate on a global basis. "The people of Paris are holding their breaths", a French radio announcer breathlessly exclaims as Gorosaurus demolishes the Arc de Triomphe. Meanwhile Mothra advances on Peking and Godzilla attacks New York, blowing up the UN building with a blast of radioactive breath. Directed by Ishiro Honda with special effects supervised by Eiji Tsuburaya and a crisp score from Akira Ifukube, all of whom had worked on the series since Godzilla first appeared back in 1954, Destroy All Monsters has an irresistible cartoon grandeur to it. The model-work and miniature sets are impressively detailed, the editing is energetically paced and the overall design is a dazzling display of bold, pop-culture strokes. The apocalyptic savagery of the film's final conflict, with three-headed space monster King Ghidora getting rat-packed by Godzilla and the rest of the guys at the foot of Mount Fuji, makes this the ultimate kaiju classic. [+]

The first and arguably the best talkie version of R. L. Stevenson's classic tale of good and evil. Restored from the edited version put out at the times, this excellent working holds the attention from start to finish. Great central performances handles well by an experienced director.

Following in the reptilian slime trail of Anaconda, this derivative monster movie from early 1998 plays like a cross between Titanic and Tremors, with parts of Aliens tossed in for good measure. Director Stephen Sommers couldn't recognise an original idea if it swallowed him whole-which, by the way, is exactly what happens to a lot of passengers on a luxury ship that is attacked by a giant serpent-like sea creature with a voracious appetite for human flesh. Treat Williams plays the leader of a mercenary crew whose members discover the ravaged ship and wage war on the creature; Famke Janssen joins him as an onboard thief and con artist who just happens to be highly skilled with automatic weapons. Of course, the action grows more intense as the body count rises and along the way the monster is gradually revealed in all of its gruesome glory. A guilty pleasure if ever there was one, Deep Rising arrived in cinemas shortly after another waterlogged thriller, Hard Rain and if nothing else it provides proof that the B-movie monsters of the 1950s are alive and well and as cheesy as ever in the age of digital special effects. -Jeff Shannon.