Another masked avenger is reincarnated as a big budget movie. Idle playboy Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin), schooled in Tibetan mysticism, fights crime in late '30s New York while wearing a natty hat and false beak. He finds time to romance telepathic sweetie Margo Lane (Penelope Miller), whose crusty old scientist Dad (Ian McKellen) has just invented an atom bomb which is in danger of falling into the hands of Shiwan Khan (John Lone), conquest-happy last descendent of Genghis Khan. Director Russell Mulcahy turns out the regulation death traps (a locked chamber filling with water, a bomb timer which ticks away during the climax) and the Shadow breezes through via nifty "invisible" effects. It evokes the conventions and charms of 1930s' pulp fiction in rather more nostalgic mode than Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, and adds little of its own attitude, although a sly camp sensibility (notably in the extremely chi-chi Tim Curry and John Lone as the villains) goes for snickering at the expense of tension. A pleasant, eye-pleasing movie but, after the super-heroic likes of Batman, The Crow and The Mask, the merely mysterious Shadow seems somewhat grandfatherly and remote. -Kim Newman.

Taking its lead from Jonathan Demme's Oscar-winning pulse-raiser The Silence Of the Lambs, Copycat strives for intelligence over gristle and carnage. It's a terse, involving thriller that swings away from the usual cinematic notion of violence as a means to an end by forgoing brawn for brains. Young San Francisco police inspector Ruben Goetz (Dermot Mulroney) is teamed with brilliant force vet, M J Monahan (Holly Hunter), a diplomatic, no-nonsense cop who must buck the system in order to find a killer who is copying the crimes of history's most notorious serial killers. Ruben would rather shoot to kill than merely wound a suspect; Monahan labours to help him think more diplomatically. Everything changes when crank calls arrive at the station from serial-killer pin-up girl psychiatrist Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver). She's been housebound for 13 months, ever since murderer Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry Connick Jr. ) nearly made her his next victim because she testified against him in court. Though he's in prison, he's still mentor and muse to every loose cannon walking the streets-one of whom is killing people with a vengeance and hoping to finish the job Cullum began. Cop and doc team up to solve the case in this stylish, plot-driven movie. Though Copycat loses steam in the end, it still makes a point. [+]

The Relic is the story of a monster that runs amok in a Chicago museum on the very day the institution is holding a glitzy reception. Naturally, the museum bosses want to go ahead with their public relations even as the creature is decapitating victims. Penelope Ann Miller plays a scientist on the run from the critter (which is at times computer generated and reminiscent of the raptors in Jurassic Park), and Tom Sizemore is a cop looking for his cold-blooded (in every sense) killer. Peter Hyams (Timecop) directs, and as always he excels at managing the plastic action at the cost of real feeling and logic. (Much of the story is pretty laughable. ) -Tom Keogh.

After being murdered for quitting his role as a ruthless yet moral government assassin, Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) is sent to Hell, where he makes a pact with the demon Malebolgia-if Simmons is allowed to see his lover, Wanda, again, he will agree to lead the demon's armies to storm the gates of Heaven. Transformed into a superhuman entity with shape-shifting powers and quick regeneration capabilities, Simmons (soon to be dubbed "Spawn" by Malebolgia's crony, the Violator) returns to Earth and attempts to reunite with Wanda, not knowing that five years have passed. He also seeks revenge on his former boss and killer, Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen), who has made a deal with the Violator to develop a lethal virus to take over the world, where Wynn is promised to be king. Spawn wages an inner battle between good and evil as he tries to come to terms with selling his soul and what it could mean for humankind. Despite excellent special effects and great potential, Spawn seems to come up short. While White certainly displays verve in his characterisation of the twisted hero, he cannot overcome some forced dialogue. On the flip side, the usually engaging John Leguizamo portrays the sinister Violator-an evil monster masquerading as a rotund, weird-looking clown-as an irritating lackey who spews overbearing sarcasm and incessantly banal one-liners. Admitted, many of Spawn's action sequences are fun, and the transitions effectively brisk, but more could have been done to explore how Simmons grapples with his humanity in these daunting circumstances. But if you want sizzling action sequences and digital effects, this film should keep you happy. -Bryan Reesman.

Paul Schrader, the director of American Gigolo, brought a similar kind of sexual chic to this explicit horror movie. A remake of the beautiful, haunting 1942 Cat People, this version takes off from the same idea: that a woman (Nastassja Kinski), a member of a race of feline humans, will revert to her animalistic self when she has sex. Arriving to meet her brother (Malcolm McDowell) in New Orleans, she finds herself disturbed by his sexual presence. A zoo curator (John Heard) becomes fascinated by her, but he will discover that her kittenish ways are just the tip of the claw. Schrader dresses the story up in a stylish, glossy production, keyed on Kinski's green-eyed, thick-lipped beauty; it's hard to think of another actress in 1982 who could so immediately suggest a cat walking on two legs. Luckily Kinski had a European attitude toward her body, because this film has plenty of poster-art nudity. There's also lots of gore and some wacky flashbacks to the ancient tribe of cat people, who hold rituals in an orange desert while Giorgio Moroder's music plays. Cat People doesn't really make all this come together, but it's always interesting to look at, and the dreadful mood lingers. -Robert Horton.

"They could fuck the human race out of existence!" warns Michael Madsen in this inevitable-and inevitably contrived-sequel to 1995's surprise sci-fi hit. He's referring to a celebrated astronaut (Justin Lazard) infected with alien DNA from his history-making Mars landing, and the half-alien Eve (Natasha Henstridge), who was created from alien-human embryo splicing by biochemist Dr Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger) in an effort to discover the alien species' vulnerabilities on Earth. While the astronaut sows his gruesomely wild oats with doomed women (resulting in a bevy of creepy kids in alien cocoons), Eve goes into heat until she and the astronaut can consummate their procreative lust. Sex and death are served up like money-shots in a porno flick, with an emphasis on gory flesh-regeneration, explosive pregnancies and slimy-tentacled intercourse. All of which makes this is the kind of derivative schlock that only a true fan could love, but it's boosted to a tolerable level of entertainment by the returning cast (Madsen, Henstridge and Helgenberger) from the previous film. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Yes, it's the one with a character called Johnny Alucard! The occasional attempt on the part of the cast to Frenchify this galumphing not-a-palindrome ("Johnny Alucarrrrr. ") fools no-one, of course, because we all know this young anti-hero of the Chelsea set has a surname that spells "Dracula" backwards because he's the undead (or maybe reincarnated) servant of the fangsome menace himself. On the pretext of dragging his group of chums into a supposedly fake Black Mass by way of teenage kicks, Alucard of course succeeds in his aim of awakening the undead Count Dracula, who promptly swears vengeance on all and sundry. This is unsurprising, perhaps, given that one of the group is Jessica Van Helsing, youngest and firmest of the family which has battled the vampire for generations. Dracula A. D. 1972 is a particularly camp entry in the long-running Hammer horror saga with lots of period detail for retro fans (although it's fascinating how, given only the usual brief production time-lag, the film is clearly a product of 60s pop culture and actually seems to pre-date its title by several years). Lee and Cushing are their usual dignified selves amidst the swinging Londoners, and Stephanie Beacham's bosom heaves magnificently in the time-honoured tradition. [+]

Shout at the Devil was Roger Moore's second starring role in an adaptation of one Wilbur Smith's bestselling African adventures (the first being 1974's Gold, also directed by Peter Hunt). Taking its mixture of comedy and drama, and part of its plot, from The African Queen the movie finds Moore's decent, upright Englishman teamed with Lee Marvin-in a variation on his Cat Ballou drunken brawler comedy persona-fighting the Germans in colonial East Africa at the beginning of the Great War. Moore plays it straight and makes a most heroic and handsome matinee idol hero. Produced between Moore's second and third outings as Bond, Shout at the Devil was staffed with various 007 regulars, including Hunt who was had edited the first three and directed On Her Majesty's Secret Service, title designer Maurice Binder and director John Glen. It even has a ticking clock-gigantic explosion finale. This is an exciting, beautifully shot escapade which deserves to be much better known. On the DVD: The original Panavision 2. 35:1 image is incorrectly letterboxed at around 2:1, cropping so much picture information that the credits disappear at either side of the screen. The print used is of very variable quality, with some scenes looking fine, others washed out and lacking detail, with long shots often being slightly out of focus. Adding to the problems is the abysmal digital encoding which, despite anamorphic enhancement, has left many scenes swarming with compression artefacts. [+]