Available "fully uncut" for the first time in the UK, Two Thousand Maniacs! is the second of director HG Lewis' "blood" trilogy. Though the "once-in-a-lifetime" title makes a promise no film could keep-only about 30 maniacs show up-and the level of gore is a notch or so down from Blood Feast-only four deaths-this is perhaps the director's most watchable film. The Brigadoon-derived plot nugget concerns a Deep South town (variously suggested to be in Georgia or Arkansas, but actually Florida) wiped out by Union raiders during the Civil War, which reappears once every 100 years to wreak "blood vengeance". For the centennial celebrations, Pleasant Valley lures Yankee tourists off the road and subjects them to gruesome fairground games-a cannibal BBQ, a "horse-race", a "barrel roll" and "teetering rock". The ideas are nasty, and Lewis even attempts subtlety by keeping the quartering and the spiked barrel inside mostly off screen, but the creepiest touch is the "aw-shucks" good humour with which the ghostly Confederate maniacs-led by a mayor who is the spitting image of Sergeant Bilko's Colonel Hall-treat their horrible sport. It has the usual Lewis drawbacks-mostly inept staging, acting that veers between the wooden ("Playmate" Connie Mason) and the amateurishly hammy (one of the worst child actors in film history), clumsy editing, community theatre production values-but his fans wouldn't have it any other way and the hayseed music is great! On the DVD: The full-screen image is as good as this ever will look, considering Lewis' primitive understanding of lighting cinematography, with rich scarlet blood, vividly ugly 1963 leisurewear and very few print imperfections. The features offer an imaginative "Welcome to Pleasant Valley Centennial" menu, with buttons like the target you have to hit to drop the "teetering rock" on the Yankee; lurid original trailer ("Two thousand maniacs crazed for carnage started bathing a whole town in pulsing, human blood. brutal, evil, ghastly beyond belief"); filmographies for Lewis, Friedman and star William Kerwin (aka Thomas Wood); promotional art gallery; notes by aptly-monickered expert Billy Chainsaw, highlighting the connections with John Waters and Brigadoon; a teaser trailer for "the Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection"; a mass of trailers for other "Tartan terror" titles. [+]

Stylish, snappy and entirely without a coherent idea in its head, Dracula 2001 is "Presented by Wes Craven" but shows comparatively little sign of his controlling intelligence. This is very much "Dracula-the Rock Video" with some memorable dream sequences and a lot of product placement: the heroine may not be a virgin but she works at Virgin Records. Among its incidental pleasures are a high-tech bank raid which secures the thieves nothing but an ominous silver coffin, Christopher Plummer as an immortal Van Helsing surviving by injections of leeches that feed on the imprisoned Dracula, Johnny Lee Miller as an unusually obtuse servant of good and Star Trek: Voyager's Jeri Ryan as a television news reporter turned Bride of Evil. The early scenes make interesting use of London's Eurostar terminal as a sinister backdrop. The climax moves to New Orleans during Mardi Gras giving the film a frenetic edginess and a lot of partially clad people to look at; it also proves to tie into a moderately inventive reconsideration of Dracula's origins. -Roz Kaveney.

"Nosferatu. the name alone can chill the blood!". F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, released in 1922, was the first (albeit unofficial) screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Nearly 80 years on, it remains among the most potent and disturbing horror films ever made. The sight of Max Schreck's hollow-eyed, cadaverous vampire rising creakily from his coffin still has the ability to chill the blood. Nor has the film dated. [+]