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When The Eye, the second film jointly directed by Hong Kong’s Pang Brothers, emerged in 2002, it was released into a very different climate to their 1999 debut, Bangkok Dangerous; US studios were hungry for Asian properties that would play well in the West, and to some degree the Pangs seem happy to meet this demand. Essentially, the main problem with The Eye is the nagging sense that it’s continually got one eye (ho ho) on the international market, and as a result the rather promising storyline feels unnecessarily reined in and hampered by the fairly conventional execution.

The plot comes on like an extended episode of Tales of the Unexpected, telling the story of a young violinist who, blinded since childhood, is given an transplant to rescue her sight only to be plagued by terrifying visions courtesy of the mysterious donor. It’s not an unfamiliar setup, but it has the tantalising potential to deliver some truly perspective-bending, disturbing visual madness; sadly the Pangs opt to deliver their scares through a series of wholly conventional, Westernised jumps and crashing noises rather than delving too deeply into Mun’s relative isolation and inner world. It seems fairly clear from the outset to the audience what’s going on here, and so the mystery becomes more focused on Mun and Dr Wah’s investigations into the donor; but sadly this thread falls flat by offering very little in the way of intrigue. The duo’s investigations manage to hit the right track straight off the bat, and from then on it’s a very easy and unchallenging ride to the resolution. The lack of twists or tonal modulation is wholly surprising, and what should be set-piece visual moments - the donor’s world bleeding in and out of Mun’s - are handled without flair, like a poor man’s David Lynch.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing to enjoy here. The Eye is unoriginal, but it’s a slick enough piece of work, with a well-paced story and a sympathetic treatment of its characters by both the Pangs and the cast. Angelica Lee acquits herself fairly well as Mun, and even though Dr Wah comes across as being slightly too credulous for a member of the medical profession, Laurence Chou makes him likeable enough. The film also successfully pulls off an audacious twist an hour through which is beautifully trailed and genuinely had me kicking myself for not getting there sooner. However, much of the disappointment of the film stems from the climax. The Pangs attempt a Ringu-style double ending, which falls flat for two reasons; primarily, the supposed ‘first’ resolution is so low-key as to barely register, while the coda promises spectacle but actually ends up limp and uncinematic. Hideo Nakata’s film succeeded by following a nerve-shredding climax with a moment that managed to top it for nail-biting innovation, but in following a tedious resolve with a botched Hollywood-style blow-out, the Pangs ensure their film end on more of a whimper than a bang.

All of which is not to say I didn’t find The Eye enjoyable enough; it’s undemanding fare that passes 100 minutes pleasantly enough, and as I said earlier, it does have that twist at the sixty minute mark. Unfortunately, it could - and should - have been much more than that. The Pangs clearly have an eye for a story and an undeniable ability behind the lens; if they had let themselves off the leash a little and delved more into the nightmare world they describe this could have been a film to rank alongside the wave of Asian horrors that broke a couple of years earlier. Ultimately, The Eye isn’t nearly disturbing nor - frankly - gory enough to either serve the story it wants to tell nor to differentiate itself from the NC-17 rated mush that’s marked Hollywood’s recent output. Ironically, The Eye is an Asian horror that tries too hard to satisfy foreign notions of what Asian horror is. Given that the film has been re-made in both India and the US, the Pangs have played the market and won, but at the cost of the x-factor that had American execs looking East in the first place.

In many ways, the film shares traits with David Fincher’s Zodiac, released four later. Both follow serial murders that remain unresolved to this day, and this immediately creates a challenge: how do you present a rounded narrative when the story you are telling remains fundamentally unfinished? Both Bong and Fincher tackle this by making the details of the killings secondary to the effects of the investigations on those involved. Memories of Murder tells the story of rural detective Park Doo-man, who is forced to work with Seoul detective Seo Tae-yoon in solving the murders of local woman who are found raped and murdered near a field on rainy nights.

What impressed me most about The Host was its humanity, and this is even more true of Memories of Murder. Culture-clash detective stories are nothing new, but Bong’s dazzling characterisation really brings to life the awkward partnership of Park and Seo. Most impressive is the way he uses humour in unlikely circumstances to bring an extra layer of empathy to the characters; there’s nothing particularly funny about either the killings themselves or the brutal ways in which Park and his colleagues try to pin them on a string of “best fit” local weirdos (which will feel particularly resonant for UK viewers following recent acquittal of Barry George), but the exasperated desperation of the police is bravely played partly for laughs, as they scrabble around without leads, resources or procedure. In particular, the opening sequence at the scene of the crime is hilarious, as Park attempts to co-ordinate the investigation amidst chaos that borders on slapstick. Bong’s use of comedy strikes just the right tone; it’s irreverent without ever feeling tasteless or gratuitous, and humanises a cast of characters that might otherwise be simply inept or even thuggish.

Amidst the laughs, though, is a very trenchant look at the effect an unresolved crime can have on those tasked with delivering justice. Park and Seo are both changed across the course of the film by their involvement with the case and with each other. Park’s development is the more positive of the two, learning to respect the thorough practices and deductive techniques of his more urbane partner; an epilogue, set more than a decade later, shows him to be older and wiser in a nice modulation of Song Kang-Ho’s outstanding performance. Seo, on the other hand, reverts to brutality when his urban instincts fail to solve the crime; the sequence where he beats a promising but inconclusive suspect by a railway tunnel is particularly chilling. But what pervades the film most is a sense of isolation, that these are two men who have nowhere else to turn in order to stop the murderer from killing again. As with The Host, there’s an implicit criticism of the South Korean government here, made clear in the scene where Park and Seo appeal for backup only to be told that everyone’s busy suppressing a demonstration. And although the magnitude of the murders is clear, Bong remains tight in his focus, giving little indication of how the rest of the country is responding (Seoul feels like it might as well be on another continent) and thereby increasing the burden placed on the two detectives.

Unlike Fincher, Bong presents suspects but never points the finger or presents his own theories as to who the real killer is; as a result, the movie offers less closure to the viewer than Zodiac. The ending is understated but completely devastating, bringing Park full circle (literally) and leaving him a changed man, in some ways bettered but in other ways scarred by his involvement. By dint of its subject matter the film offers more questions than it answers, but such is Bong’s skill that it feels both complete and infuriatingly open in equal measure. Memories of Murder is an incredible film that lingers in the mind long after the credits have finished, a confident and assured statement from a directing talent on the rise.

Largely based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents veers between taut, psychological thriller and ghost story with such seamless accomplishment that it’s easy to see why the distributors were baffled as to how to bracket it. In the red corner, we have all of the hallmarks of the Poe-esque ghost story: the Gothic mansion, whose beauty and tranquillity is forever stained with family tragedy and shame. Into this is added the external innocent, in our case Deborah Kerr’s Miss Giddens, a Governess who has been sent to take charge of two orphans kept at a distance by their benefactor uncle. At first enchanted with her new life, Miss Giddens rapidly comes to discover that this is a corrupted Eden; stifling under the oppression of a collective and hidden shame, and, perhaps, something supernatural to boot.

If this was as far as it went, The Innocents would still be hailed as a ghost story of stunning execution. Clayton was blessed with seeming to catch a few of his cast and crew at the peak of their game, and cinematographer Freddie Francis was undoubtedly one of them. Much has been written about his pioneering use of hazing and blurring in the scenes involving the apparitions. Rightly so, as without it the latent ambiguity of Miss Giddens experiences would be lost. However, that one aspect of his work has to be set in the context of his genius for giving the entire film an ethereal aura, which is at one and the same time intoxicating and deeply unsettling. He was undoubtedly assisted in this by the wonderfully tense screenplay of, among other, Truman Capote and Sir John Mortimer (how often do you get to write that?). It rockets along, and in avoiding the pacing pitfall suffered by most period piece ghost stories gives The Innocents a very modern feel. By lulling the viewer into this dreamlike state, Clayton has us perfectly positioned to share Miss Giddens’ journey with her.

Which leads us into blue corner; the psychological dissection of our intriguing protagonists. Cinema studies of the human conditions work best when they have a cast decent enough to carry them off. Here, Clayton was again fortunate in drawing a once-in-a-career performance out of Kerr. She wrings out the hidden frustrations, anxieties and desperations of Giddens with an increasingly startling and unsettling intensity, perfectly balancing her position as both victim and tormentor. It’s a testament to his performance that the ten-year old Martin Stephens (he of Village of the Damned fame) provides a perfect counter-foil to an actress at the top of her game. The two of them dominate the screen as they seek to define and determine the nature of their relationship, and through that the truth behind what is happening at Bly House. Descending from sweet playfulness through to mutual (and even paedophilic?) dependency, we’re left with the wonderful frustration of asking whose story has this been all along: his or hers?

Whether through design or default, The Innocents will always provoke debate between those who see it as a ghost story and others who view it as a character study. It doesn’t matter one way or the other; Clayton provides a textbook example of how to do both.

You can’t help but be left wondering if this is what he was attempting to do with Opera. The question has little to do with the setting (nor indeed title) but arise more because of Argento’s use of raw emotion as the central plot driver, often at the expense of coherent storytelling. Such an elevation might have been disastrous in a lesser director, but as ever with Argento you’re willing to moderate your critical faculties somewhat as you get drawn into his confused, uneasy but always beautifully rendered world.

The tale of a young operetta mysteriously targeted by a deranged killer might seem perfectly conceived to provide Argento with a fodder conveyor belt, but the opera backdrop actually serves as a nice distraction and allows him to indulge in some uncharacteristically self-indulgent fun. You can’t help but see something of Argento in Marco, the horror film director turned rather harried opera director, and you wonder whether the constant criticism of the latter (due, we learn, to his liberal re-interpretation of Verdi’s Macbeth) accounts for the former’s reluctance to give opera a go. Ian Charleson’s snarling performance suggests that it might well be. We (sadly) never get to enjoy Marco’s crow-laden Macbeth for anything longer than a few brief snippets, but it does provide Argento with just the right backdrop to set in place the best revelation of a murderer since Quincy, M.E. On a more serious level, the opera background initially gives Argento a relatively staid and comforting bolt-hole to retreat too in between the flashes of anarchistic slaughter. On every sensual level, the opulently rendered theatre provides welcome relief from the usual Dario butchery in the way that his music school did in Suspiria.

While seeing opera in film always adds a nice layer of bombast to proceedings, Argento deftly allows the edifice of what is happening on stage to sink into the background and allows the underlying terror and tragedy to bubble the surface. That is the undoubted strength of Opera, transforming what might otherwise have been a rather lumpy, incoherent and self-indulgent project into a film of stunning vision and genuine merit. Undoubtedly, there are some splutters, stops and starts along the way. It perhaps takes a little longer than it should for Betty’s predicament to be elevated from the bog standard hunter’s prey to tragic heroine (something the distractingly beautiful Christina Marsillach handles with real aplomb, despite Argento’s purported difficulties with her). Those are minor quibbles though, and they quickly fade into obscurity when we’re forced to step back and behold the patchwork of deliciously macabre situations visited upon Betty in their tragic totality. At that point you realise that opera’s loss is horror’s gain.

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That said, it’s hard to gauge whether or not mentioning the musical aspect would help or hinder the audience’s expectations, given that the actual music is a world away from the West End fare touted by Graham Norton on Saturday night television. Composer and writer Stephen Sondheim’s CV includes an eye-opening number of top-bracket shows (including lyrical duties on the superb West Side Story) but the richness and complexity of the music here, first performed in 1979, is still startling. The score’s angular melodies and leitmotif structures are clearly more influenced by opera than by its Broadway peers, yet despite the lack of conventional showstoppers Sweeney Todd is characterised by a lightness of touch both lyrically and musically that infuses the grizzly story with a wickedly black sense of humour. In particular, his take on Todd himself is a triumph, maintaining a strong core characterisation whilst continually readjusting the audience’s position towards him; almost simultaneously he appears as a sympathetic victim, an irresistible maverick and an irredeemable villain, yet Sondheim never resorts to broad stroke when making these shifts. Such is the deftness of the writing that it seems entirely consistent that Todd spits invective about London’s depravity in one scene before cracking jokes in the next (such as his hilarious debunking of Pirelli’s miracle hair-growth formula).

Such strong source material gives director Tim Burton an enviable canvas with with to work, but despite the wider (and wilder) visual opportunities that film affords over the the stage, he bravely decides to focus more closely on the characters than their environment - even to the extent of trimming the chorus numbers so that the songs are performed solely by the main players. His take on 19th century London is beautifully atmospheric, but for the most part is only glimpsed at as the majority of the action takes place within the claustrophobic surroundings of Mrs Lovett’s pie shop. Inevitably this puts even more pressure on the cast; Johnny Depp and Helen Bonham-Carter are hardly surprising choices for a Tim Burton film, but their close relationship with the director means that they are completely integrated with his vision, and here they absolutely soar, tackling Sondheim’s challenging music with ease and never once letting the singing get in the way of their performances. Depp is absolutely mesmerising, and wholly convinces as the man whose soul has been almost completely destroyed by both the wrongs done to him and the urge for revenge. He is well matched by an excellent supporting cast, which includes Alan Rickman on fine form as Todd’s nemesis Judge Turpin, and both Timothy Spall and Sascha Baron-Cohen chew the scenery in a highly enjoyable fashion.

If the film falters at all, it’s in Burton’s slightly clumsy handling of twists in the plot that were never that surprising in the first place and require a more delicate touch. The identity of the mad homeless woman who watches over events is already a dramatic inevitability, but here it’s blindingly obvious who she is from the outset before we even know what role she is to play. Elsewhere, another promising setup which has Todd’s estranged daughter Joanna hiding in his shop dressed in boys’ clothing peters out without a really satisfying resolution.

These, however, are minor nitpicks in an outstanding film. The leisurely pace might give one cause to wonder whether the movie will live up to the story’s lurid reputation, but once Todd embarks on his killing spree in the final third it descends into an unflinchingly-framed bloodbath that could give most other modern gore movies a run for their money. Given the sorry state of mainstream musical theatre at present, it’s understandable that one might be inclined to give the film a wide berth, but to do so would be a mistake as Sweeney Todd admirably reaffirms the form’s potential. And although there is the niggling doubt that Burton is simply becoming a go-to guy for big-screen adaptations of quirky classics (this film is bookended by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his upcoming take on Alice In Wonderland) it’s hard to dispute that the source material and director are well-matched here, and that Burton is once again at the top of his game. Highly recommended.

In truth, the Blind Dead films were always going to be difficult to sustain, but coming less than a year after Return of the Blind Dead, it’s amazing how quickly the quality threshold nosedives. Tombs of the Blind Dead was a slightly wonky but stylish and original take on the undead genre, and whilst Return was largely a rehash of its predecessor, its quicker pace and silly characters actually made it a good deal more fun. The Ghost Galleon demands a viewing largely for its astonishing premise alone, in which a boatload of swimwear models become stranded at sea during a failed publicity stunt and are soon menaced by the Templars (aka the Blind Dead) and their ghostly ship.

With its heady mix of babes and zombies it feels like de Ossorio is aiming this one squarely at the booming European exploitation market, but to the disappointment of masturbators everywhere it’s actually by far the tamest entry into the series. The leaden pacing means it feels like an eternity before the Templars actually turn up to have their way with the boat girls, but when they do the deaths occur offscreen, meaning the bulk of the film is taken up by the none-too-interesting antics of Howard Tucker, “the famous sporting goods magnate” (his words, not mine) who is determined to ensure that the disappearance of the models doesn’t affect his business too badly. None of the characters here are particularly sympathetic, especially Professor Gruber, who for a man of science is amazingly credulous and superstitious.

Whereas Return of the Blind Dead felt like a worthy sequel, The Ghost Galleon feels like a particularly sloppy attempt to spin the concept into a franchise. The previous films both developed - in different ways - the Templar backstory, in a bid to give the creatures a bit of depth and motivation. Here, there’s none of that; de Ossorio presumes that we already know all the important stuff and essentially uses the Templars as little more than monsters. The nautical setting, although effectively claustrophobic, robs the film of the visual sumptuousness that raised its predecessors above their peers; the slow motion shots of the Templars atop their zombie horses were high points of both films, and their absence is keenly felt here.

That said, the ending is absolutely terrific, as the unstoppable creatures rise out of the water to menace the survivors as they lie panting on the beach. It’s a moment that reminds you keenly of the visual flair that de Ossorio showed earlier, and only serves to remind you how dull the preceding 95 minutes have been. The success of the first two Blind Dead films lay in the panoramic landscapes and the intriguing backstory; both are absent here and the film is all the weaker for it.

The exploding head in question occurs around 15 minutes into the film, and its fame (or infamy) does little to rob it of its impact. It’s a superbly realised moment, both technically (it’s far more accomplished than the similar rupture at the start of Dawn of the Dead) and directorially, hitting a huge crescendo after a seriously creepy buildup in which Michael Ironside’s rogue telepath (or “scanner”) Revok engages in a battle of wills with a hapless fellow telepath giving a demonstration of his abilities. It’s the high point of a sensational opening half hour that both thrills - Revok, head of an underground group of scanners who are plotting a world takeover, subsequently unleashes some serious carnage on the cops who try to arrest him - and tantalises us with a central plot arc that promises much excitement to follow.

Unfortunately, that excitement never really comes. The main plot, in which tortured scanner Cameron Vale is enlisted by security firm ConSec to infiltrate and bring down Revok’s organisation, sadly fails to fulfill its undeniable potential. Apparently production on the film started while the script was still unfinished, and this would serve to explain some of its problems; after a blistering start, the pace slows down almost unbearably, and the action degenerates into a series of somewhat disconnected, vaguely unsatisfactory setpieces, which increasingly rely on the scanners showing hitherto unmentioned abilities in order to further the plot. One example is the sequence in which Vale successfully blows up a computer using his mind via the telephone, which allows the use of some fairly impressive pyrotechnics, but does little to shake the suspicion that everyone was making it up as they went along.

The other problem is that the film criminally underuses Michael Ironside, whose sneering, understated performance is one of the highlights. Revok is undoubtedly the most interesting character, and it’s perhaps understandable that Cronenberg wished to preserve his intrigue by keeping him to the shadows, but considering how strongly his presence is felt at the start of the film and how the climax depends on him, his presence is sorely missed in the middle and would have livened things up no end. It’s always a pleasure to see Patrick McGoohan, here in the role of Dr Paul Routh, but he’s unfortunately hampered by an accent that is presumably American but often wanders into several other nationalities. Stephen Lack’s performance as Vale is a genuinely mixed bag; initially his wide-eyed rabbit in the headlights persona is well suited to the scenes in which he discovers the power of his own mind for the first time, but when required to be commanding and heroic he quickly looks out of his depth.

The climactic showdown between Revok and Vale is pretty decent and definitely raises the excitement levels somewhat but it still falls some way short of the balls-out mind war you might have been expecting at the beginning. Which brings us back to that exploding head. In that one scene, the film simultaneously excels itself and peaks too soon; it’s a textbook lesson in how one iconic moment can raise the levels of expectation to a point where disappointment can only follow. Scanners’ reputation in the public mind rests on a single shot; it’s probably best enjoyed as “The One Where The Guy’s Head Explodes” and nothing more.

I thought back to this as I was watching the superb Stephen King/George A. Romero’s horror anthology Creepshow. Not because I was sitting next to an idiot piercing the cinema silence as they wolfed down their cheese and chilli tortilla, but because I can’t remember the last time I saw a horror film dabble with a different format to the standard 90-120 minute linear progression.

And in Creepshow it really works. I’ve said elsewhere on Black Lagoon that I think Stephen King adaptations can be pretty hit and miss, but in teaming up with Romero, King was taking no chances in bringing his five short stories (two of which were taken directly from his books) to the big screen. Though intended as a film version of the horror comics of the 1950s, this element of Romero’s direction lapses into almost total non-use beyond the occasional flash of animation here and there. This isn’t fatal though, and what you’re essentially left with is five straight horror tales from two of the genre’s masters.

The variety of the stories, in terms of content, approach and duration, is a critical strength of Creepshow, and one that readily grabs the viewer’s attention. They range from the tragicomedy of The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill (in which King himself does a very creditable turn as the lead character) through to a stylish examination of intolerance in They’re Creeping Up On You!. My personal favourite was Something To Tide You Over, which is almost entirely down to Leslie Nielsen’s superb portrayal of a psychotic husband on the rampage. There’s nothing particularly sophisticated about his performance, but his default method of playing it straight, coupled as ever with the affectionate inability to displace Frank Drebin from the memory when watching him, makes it supremely entertaining.

It’s this fondness which accounts for the enduring popularity of the film, and you can’t help but watch Creepshow and be struck by the love of the genre that King and Romero have. In this affectionate homage to their comic book ancestors, they obviously weren’t aiming to turn out anything approaching the high-brow, genre-defining output that they achieved elsewhere. And what’s wrong with that? All genres, perhaps horror more than most, need the occasional dollop of fun to keep their recipes fresh and alluring. For us, there are few people better placed to do this than King and Romero, as they amply prove in the slick, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable Creepshow.