Also showing this week...

Underworld (Cert 15, 121 mins) X

Designed to Death lycanthropic fantasy starring Kate Beckinsale as a rebel vampire kicking against the overlord of the vampire race, which has, in turn, been waging war against the werewolves for a thousand years.

Stylistically looting every fantasy fest from The Crow to The Matrix (long coats, wall-to-wall automatic weapons, subway tiling ...), Len Wiseman's movie is all pose and no substance. Several fine actors (I do not include the nondescript Beckinsale) fall on the spikes of a script which could have been written by an illiterate 10-year-old.

I'd rather stick poisoned needles in my eyes than endure this again. Two hours of unmitigated dreck.

Nine Dead Gay Guys (Cert 18, 83 mins)*

Flash-bang-wallop comedy that is nearly as outrageous as its title suggests, though Ky Mo Lab's debut comes adrift in the script department before the end.

Two Irish layabouts in London decide to supplement their dole money by becoming rent boys; soon the orifice workers are up to their necks in homosexual corpses.

Perverse, outrageous and yet at times coy, it offers the bizarre prospect of Steven Berkoff being buggered to death and Michael Praed in drag.

The Spirit of the Beehive (Cert PG, 97 mins) ***

Welcome reissue for Victor Erice's masterpiece set during the Spanish Civil War (but made during Franco's reign) told through the eyes of Ana (Ana Torrent), a girl who becomes obsessed with Frankenstein's monster after seeing James Whale's 1931 classic movie.

As an allegory of totalitarian regimes it is peerless but it also operates brilliantly as an exploration of a child's view of the world's mysteries. Unmissable.