To sum it up, Diary of the Dead is an interesting film with some excellent bits, but is ultimately flawed. Freed from the shackles of the studio machine that discernibly limited his directorial freedom in Land of the Dead, Romero takes us back to the origins of his zombie holocaust in Diary. Jumping around in time somewhat, the meltdown is moved from the 1960s to contemporary America, and is centred on a group of student filmmakers caught up in the mounting chaos.

That might sound a bit Blair Witch Project, but it’s used as an effective plot vehicle (in the first half of the film at least) as it allows Romero to narrate the stories of several disparate groups of survivors as his motley crew attempt to travel to safety. There is a real richness in these bit characters, especially Samuel, the deaf Amish superman. I also think it’s a nice development of the set-up in Night of the Living Dead. There, Romero effectively replicated a cross-section of society within the pressure cooker of the besieged farmhouse. In the intensity of that atmosphere, he toyed out the complexities of the human psyche (and all of its attendant unpleasantness) with a real panache. It’s a mark of his skill as a director that he is able to transfer a similar intensity of experience to what is, at heart, a relatively simple drive through bandit (rather, zombie) country. The same depressed frustration at seeing positions of safety surrendered because of the human proclivity to petty bickering is, alas and enjoyably, a common occurrence in Diary.

It’s also great to see Romero really go to town on the cadavers that have been so instrumental to his success. Matt and I have said elsewhere that the zombies are always secondary players in the Dead series, and Romero himself is on record as saying that he had never intended to be the man who makes zombie films. Diary has some of the best set-piece scenes in the entire Dead series (keep a look out for the defibrillator, the acid and most especially, the clown). In a perverse way they demonstrate Romero’s genuine affection for his subject matter, which is a nice reward for their 40 year service in his cause. They’re also continuing evidence of his sprightly imagination, which bodes very well for future Romero-Grunwald output.

So why is opinion so divided? A beauty of the Dead series has always been the ambiguity and complexity of Romero’s message. As mentioned above, the zombies are only ever used to exaggerate his observations on contemporary society. In Diary, he forgoes some this ambiguity and fixes his colours to the mast in a contradictory, at times patronising and, ultimately, unsuccessful way.

The story is principally centred on Jason Creed, an obsessive filmmaker whose aim is to document every aspect of the growing crisis. It’s an interesting idea, and one that could have worked. In the first half of the film, there is a real sense that his motives are a pure and necessary counter-foil to the lies and distortions being perpetrated by the mainstream media’s coverage of the crisis. There’s a certain nobility of purpose in his actions, which helps to excuse the fact that he is an annoyingly unpleasant individual (indeed, the most annoying character in the history of the series).

In seeing events through his hand-held camera, and in referencing video-streaming and YouTube, Romero manages to successfully integrate contemporary social and technological developments into the story to the extent that they become a seamless thread of the plot and offer genuine comment on what makes society tick in 2008. Anyone who has suffered through Halloween: Resurrection will know that it is all too easy to clumsily and pointlessly graft the apparel of such technology onto a horror film, with disastrous results. By any measure, you have to applaud Romero, a man in his late 60s let’s not forget (sorry George).

The film decisively fails around the half-way point, when it becomes apparent that Creed’s growing narcissism is not going to be challenged by either his band of travellers or the crisis in general. At that point, his polemic against the twisted mainstream media and his quest to capture the unfolding events become confused, patronising and, worse, boring. His constant harping on about the need to ensure a record lives on is reminiscent of pot-smoking students who lounge around all day bemoaning the faults of society whilst doing nothing to address them. Fine when you’re in college perhaps, but not during the conquest of humanity by the returning undead.

Sometimes you feel as though you have missed something, as his companions, who at first vent their annoyance at his unwillingness to get involved with the business of survival, suddenly convert to his school of smugness. The fascinating topic of media manipulation built up in the first half of the film is drowned out by a feeling that at least society is pulling together and trying to do something to address the problem. There’s an interesting exchange between Professor Maxwell and Creed in the hospital, the gist of which is that in an extreme survival situation (difficult to think of a more severe on than this) it’s both understandable and desirable the media/government establishment tries to keep calm and carry on. It’s a shame this baton isn’t picked up and developed further, which results in Creed being free to brow-beat his companions and the audience into following his own flawed logic.

I understand that a sequel has already been cleared for development, and my hope is that Romero uses that film to repair the damage done in the second half of Diary. There are plenty of glimmers for hope. The supporting characters here are much more interesting than Creed, and in following their story Romero could return to the shifting perspectives of disparate bands that is one of the strengths of his output. There are some superb moments of black comedy and insider jokes, which, coupled with the generally positive character development and set-pieces mentioned above are further testament to Romero’s undiminished role as a director at the top of his game. What is beyond dispute is that he has such a great eye for zombie films that we should all be extremely grateful that he is still making them.

On paper, you could be forgiven for thinking that you probably had seen it already, as many of the elements that would define the series are present and correct from the start - a man in a rubber monster suit smashing up miniature replicas of Tokyo, the anti-nuclear subtext, hundreds of Japanese people screaming in panic… But whilst subsequent Godzilla films have their moments, they’re a world away from the heart and soul that you’ll find in the very first film. There is absolutely nothing camp about this movie; instead it’s a stately, emotional and at times even harrowing film that treats its subject matter thoughtfully and with gravitas.

Godzilla is of course an ancient monster woken up after millions of years and given terrifying powers by the Japanese H-bomb tests. Obviously, this puts the theme of nuclear weaponry front and centre in the film, but to describe it as simply an anti-nuclear polemic is an over simplification. Godzilla is far more multilayered than many subsequent horror and sci-fi movies that use a simplistic environmental warning as a narrative rationale for monsters and zombies; instead, director Ishiro Honda’s triumph is the way he rejects upfront preaching for a sophisticated threading of ideas throughout the film. Godzilla indeed represents the destructive power of the atomic bomb both on a literal and an allegorical level; however, Serizawa’s dilemma over the deployment of his Oxygen Destroyer (which occupies most of the second half of the film and is written off too easily by many critics as a simple plot device) reflects the wider issues surrounding the ethics of atomic power: should a discovery be suppressed if there are many ‘bad’ applications for it above and beyond its immediate advantages? And once a discovery has been made, can there ever be any turning back? That the Oxygen Destroyer ultimately saves the day, despite being an even more destructive superweapon than those lamented in the film, suggests a thoughtful ambivalence about the nuclear issue, rather than the soapbox grandstanding of lesser directors.

But as well as brains, the film has a very human heart to it as well. Honda deliberately resonates with recent events that would sit very heavily in the Japanese national memory; characters discuss openly the horror of nuclear warfare that hit the country only nine years previously, and the opening scene on the boat is uncomfortably close to the Castle Bravo test earlier in 1954, where the crew of a Japanese fishing boat was poisoned by the fallout from American nuclear testing. These are scars that run deep, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the scenes surrounding Godzilla’s first attack on Tokyo. Subsequent films shied away from showing the human cost of the monster’s rampages but here it is in full force: orphaned children in hospitals sending Geiger counters into overload; a hysterical mother sitting with her two babies on her doorstep shouting that they’ll all be joining their dead father soon; schools of children praying for an end to the onslaught. It’s sobering, harrowing stuff, made all the more emotional by the dispassionate way Honda’s camera simply records the events as they unfold.

Crucially, the effects - although creaky by modern standards - don’t let the side down. This is partly helped by the noir-ish black and white look of the film, where most of the monster action takes place at night, but equally it’s hard not to be impressed by just how well Godzilla’s destruction of Tokyo is realised. Unlike the friendly green dinosaur he would later become, here the monster is a dark, brutish killing machine who towers over the city with ominous force. Helpfully, the actors play it for real as well with no mugging to the camera, and it’s hard not to find at least some pathos in the central love triange of Serizawa, Ogata and Emiko.

Honda and his team made plain their debt to King Kong nearly twenty years earlier, and whilst that film may have been the first to successfully realise the concept of a huge creature running rampage in a major city, to my mind Godzilla remains the finest giant monster movie ever made. The spectacle we expect from such a film is there if that’s what you’re looking for, but almost uniquely for the genre, it is overshadowed by the concepts, ideas and genuine emotion. In subsequent films we root for the monster and cheer when he knocks down another skyscraper, but here Honda successfully conveys the sheer terror of living through such an unstoppable onslaught. Godzilla is never preachy or presumptive in its nuclear subtext, but instead offers a harrowing and heartfelt yelp of pain from a culture that had all too recently suffered the worst destruction that science could then concoct.

Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator ticks all of those boxes. I confess here that I haven’t yet read H.P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West: Reanimator”, but I don’t think it’s too essential. One of the beauties of good splatter horror is that the means are as important as the ends, and on every level Re-Animator is a joy to experience.

That is not to say that Gordon ever takes the attention of the viewer for granted, nor is he content in offering the film equivalent of junk food. The premise of the deliberate re-animation of the recently deceased is a worthy a subject for discussion as any you will find. Where I think Gordon is especially canny is in framing his story such without ever letting such deep and sombre themes act as a drag on viewer enjoyment.

This is especially obvious in the development of the central character, Dr. Herbert West, who is beautifully brought to life by Jeffrey Combs. When we first encounter Herbert he is styled as your typical creepy mad scientist, just returning to the USA from Europe where some level of mystery surrounded his activities. We are first expected to view him as the outcast, whose gory machinations are being pursued with an utter disregard for the moral and physical consequence. About mid-way through there is something of a gear change though, and in his disregard for the moral questions surrounding his work are hints that he wants to conquer death either because he fears it or to help those who do fear it. This was deftly handled by having the utterly likeable, all-American Dan Cain befriend Herbert. By providing the viewer with the reassuring moral compass of Dan we don’t get too bogged down.

That is as well, because when Gordon opens the throttle Re-Animator descends into some of the most manic, memorable and thoroughly enjoyable gore I think you’ll see. At times, his imagery practically jumps off the screen at you. You realise what a complete package Gordon offers when this violence is tied into a fantastically dark comedy script. He keeps the cast on something of a tight leash in terms of direction, and to excellent effect. By having them play it straight, it retains its artistic integrity and retains the freedom to really push the boat out in it terms of its visuals. The headless Dr. Carl Hill is one example of many.

There is no shame in a film choosing to deliver its message by going down the splatter horror route. When it is done badly, it should rightly be dismissed as pointless exhibitionism. When it is done properly, it offers up an utterly refreshing experience on every level of viewer engagement. Re-Animator could serve as a master class in getting it right, and I only hope that the upcoming House of Re-Animator brings it to the attention of a new generation of viewers.

As is probably clear from the plot summary, Tenebrae finds Argento in a self-reflexive mood. Apparently, he was inspired to make the film by a disturbing series of telephone death threats he received from a deranged fan, and it’s not hard to see fairly obvious parallels between Peter Neal, the crime novelist celebrated for the lurid brutality of his prose, and Argento himself, who if nothing else really pushed the envelope in terms of the elegant, poetic presentation of gut-wrenching brutality. There are some fun scenes which play on the director’s reputation including a sequences in which Neal is quizzed on whether or not his novels are sexist by a feminist journalist (who, it transpires, is a lesbian - which is endemic of Argento’s somewhat passé approach to gender politics; in any case, she’s one of the first to get butchered), and the policeman Inspector Giermani is in many ways the archetypal dumb fan - enraptured by Neal’s work but incapable of really understanding it.

That said, Tenebrae isn’t really a commentary or defence by Argento of his work, but the parallels between the director and his character do add a certain mischievous frisson to the proceedings. It also serves to make the grisly twist at the end of the film even more ghoulish if you think too long about its implications. On a first viewing, I’ll admit to finding the movie’s resolution somewhat gimmicky compared to, say, Deep Red, but on re-watching it does work on a meta-level and adds to the blood-soaked aura of fun that pervades the film. Like Deep Red, Argento has all the pieces in place so that the final unveiling of the killer makes narrative sense; the red herrings he throws you throughout are all accounted for and the final set-piece is a hugely satisfying bloodbath.

One area in which Tenebrae continues to receive criticism is in the look of the film. True, compared to the likes of Suspiria the modernist architectural structures in which the film takes place feel overly stark and washed out, but in some ways this more muted backdrop boils down Argento’s trademark presentation of murder to its very essence, focussing his camera on just the victim and the murderer. There are some incredibly arresting scenes in this film - most notably the celebrated panning shot over the top of a building tracking the killer’s pursuit of the people inside, but also incidental shots such as the close-up of the gloved hand of the killer smashing a lightbulb with a razor blade. Combined with Goblin’s thumping incidental score - probably the most overtly synthpop they’d contributed to an Argento film at this point, and which at times even starts to foreshadow Faithless - Tenebrae sometimes takes on the feel of a music video, but whilst it’s somewhat removed from the sonic and visual palette of his previous works it’s still every bit as stylised as his great works and, in its own way, just as beautiful.

The acting’s pretty passable for a dubbed Italian movie as well; Anthony Franciosa is clearly having a whale of a time in the lead role, and he makes a nice double act with Daria Nicolodi, aka Mrs Dario Argento and frequent collaborator. Ultimately, Tenebrae is probably not as significant a movie milestone as Deep Red or Suspiria, but as a rip-roaring murder mystery it’s probably one of his slickest, most taut and most enjoyable films. The prevailing impression is that of a director at the top of his game having a ball with his material, and sense of fun that runs through this gory shocker is utterly infectious. Highly recommended.

This is the first in what we hope will be a regular series of podcasts featuring in-depth discussion of linked horror films - if you have any suggestions or comments, please do leave them below. Hope you enjoy the show!

The rise in people getting off on filming themselves means that, a decade on from The Blair Witch Project and its flurry of imitators (and indeed, nearly three decades on from Cannibal Holocaust, the big daddy of all “found footage” movies) film-makers are dusting down the tried and trusted technique of the first-person hand-held narrative. Brian De Palma’s Redacted is apparently “Apocalypse Now for the Youtube generation”, George Romero’s poised to release Diary of the Dead (“Night of the Living Dead for the Youtube generation”) and we currently have Cloverfield, which is meant to be “Godzilla for the Youtube generation”. Cloverfield tells the story of a group of friends trying to escape Manhattan during an attack by a giant monster. One of the friends has a camera, which keeps rolling as they run. On paper, it looks like a pretty good concept but in practice the results are wildly variable.

There is a lot to admire in Cloverfield. The monster is fantastic in both concept and design, and in the grand old Romero tradition isn’t over-defined - refreshingly, the apocalypse just happens, without requiring a reason or rationale. There are some genuine shock moments that do get the heart racing, particularly in the helicopter sequence towards the end of the film. Perhaps the most effective scenes are those where director Matt Reeves plays with the audience’s expectations of the handheld style; there’s a brilliant scene in a subway tunnel where one of the characters suggests putting the camera on night-vision so they can see where they’re going. As an audience, we know they’re going to see something horrible when they do, but Reeves has the characters spend what feels like an eternity fiddling around trying to find the right button, ratcheting up the tension in the process.

Unfortunately, there’s far too many scenes which consist of little more than a lot of running around and people shouting things like “We’ve got to get out of here” and “It’s not safe, we’ve gotta go”. And herein lies the main fault with the film: there’s absolutely no reason for it to be filmed first-person hand-held. At a time when the rule of the day in Hollywood is to go big big big, producers JJ Abrams and Bryan Burk are to be commended for having the balls to go small; however, of all the stories that will be told in cinemas this year, surely the tale of a giant monster that levels New York warrants the big screen blockbuster treatment? Much as Reeves does his best, our inability to get a good look at what’s going on is actually irritating rather than tantalising. All the action is reduced to a lot of incoherent banging and crashing. It’s akin to being forced to watch a Broadway spectacular through a keyhole. There’s a really exciting story here, it’s just that it’s all happening off-camera; you become resentful of all the cool stuff that’s going on just outside your line of vision.

I also resented having to see the apocalypse in the company of some of the most vapid, substance-free, zero-note characters I’ve seen in a long time. The whole point of the first-person narrative is that there’s inherently got to be something about the narrator that’s interesting or comment-worthy to justify the sacrifices in objectivity and omniscience that third-person gives you. Unfortunately, despite going through the worst ordeal ever with the characters, it’s hard to feel anything other than total indifference to their fates. The first 20 minutes or so, before the monster shows up, are excruciating. It would be fine if they were there just as monster-fodder, but they’re on screen, in our faces, ALL THE TIME, whereas the monster (which is far more interesting) is only fleetingly in the foreground. The whole plot revolves around Rob’s romantic mission to rescue and win-back his on-off girlfriend Beth; unfortunately Rob is as dull as dishwater, and our understanding of the depth of their relationship is limited to a couple of shots of them giggling together on the subway. Some reviews I’ve read have tried to pass this as a comment on the narcissism of the Youtube generation, but frankly I saw no evidence of this; if we were supposed to dislike the characters I would have been more interested but I have a horrible feeling that Reeves intends for them to be our point of identification in the ensuing madness.

Crucially, despite the shakycam, you never once get the impression that this is real footage or that these are real people. They are clearly actors working from a script, and they’re not doing a particularly good job of it. Now, horror and sci-fi don’t necessarily have a proud history of naturalistic performance, but the Cloverfield’s gimmick relies on us buying into the reality of the situation to sell the rest of the story, which falls apart as soon as any of the characters open their mouths. Most ruinous, however, is the decision to make the cameraman a Hollywood stock “comedy dork” figure. This fulfills the Hollywood rule of only putting beautiful, aspirational people in front of the camera, but his irritating babbling actively saps the tension out of some rather good setups.

Cloverfield is not a bad movie by any stretch, but it’s a frustratingly missed opportunity. It’s been ages since Hollywood made an honest to god, balls to the wall, giant-monster-smashes-stuff-up film. For a while, I thought Cloverfield might be that film, but it wimps out by taking the hand-held route - a technique designed to suggest modernity and immediacy, but that actually feels horribly old hat. It’s jarringly uncinematic; I’ll give the DVD a go when it comes out as I have a feeling that I might enjoy it more on my TV, but on the big screen it feels neutered. As a big-landmarks-get-destroyed film, it can’t hold a candle to Independence Day, which is nearly twelve years old now. As a monster movie, it happily sits in the first division, but comes nowhere near the premiere league of Godzilla, King Kong, Gamera 3 or The Host - for my money, still the best 21st century monster movie yet.

There’s no music in Cloverfield, except over the end credits, where we hear a stirring, militaristic, doomy march in the spirit of the old Toho kaiju films. This pretty much sums up what the film could have been, but wasn’t. Monster movies don’t have to be a treatise on the human condition, but if you’re going to make the characters more important than the monster then it helps if you have something interesting to say about them. Cloverfield should have been an all-out popcorn belter, but in truth it’s just a bit incoherent and unexciting - which is the worst crime of all.

Connelly is probably the film’s best asset, giving an appealing and spirited performance as Jennifer Corvino, the sleepwalking daughter of a film star who discovers she has an affinity with insects. She forms quite a compelling double-act with Donald Pleasance as the wheelchair-bound Dr McGregor, who helps her investigate a string of murders in the posh Swiss finishing school where she is a pupil. Phenomena was the first film where Argento recorded sync sound rather than adding all dialogue during post-production, which really helps the performances breathe in a more naturalistic way than one normally expects from an Argento movie - even if Pleasance’s Scottish accent is decidedly odd. Sadly, this treatment was only lavished on the two leads; for all the other actors it was business as usual, which makes the traditional dubbing seem even more stilted than normal. Argento regular (and one-time partner) Daria Nicolodi fares particularly badly in this respect; her opening scene in the car with Connelly is hellish, although matters improve further into the film.

Stylistically, Argento basically throws in everything but the kitchen sink. There are nods to the giallo - particularly in the opening beheading of a lost tourist - but generally the murder sequences are less audaciously stylised than before, relying more on shocks and scares and thus pushing the film more into the territory of a supernatural thriller. Even the climax (involving a monkey and a razor blade, no less) feels muted compared to the lingering nightmares of previous films. Equally uncharacteristic is how the look of the film is defined by its exterior shots. Argento is a master of colour, but usually allows each film’s palette to emerge through carefully controlled interiors. Phenomena, on the other hand, is flavoured by the cool blues and greens of the lush Swiss countryside, which infused some of the films most successful sequences, such as Jennifer’s first sleepwalk, her pursuit of the firefly or her escape on the water from the killer’s lair. Conversely, this means some of the interior sequences (such as the killer’s pit of decaying bodies) feel more drab than they should do. But despite these deviations, Phenomena is still a very attractive film, with more than its fair share of blissful moments - most notably the dazzling scene in which Jennifer, taunted by her classmates, summons a swarm of flies which crowd the windows of the school.

The music - another key weapon in Argento’s arsenal - also suffers from some bizarre creative decisions. His house band, Italian prog rockers Goblin, were by this point down to one member, Claudio Simonetti, whose cues make up the bulk of the score. By the mid 80s, Simonetti was operating in full-blown electro-pop territory rather than the more organic textures that make up the classic Goblin sound, but there’s some great stuff here including the memorable main title theme, an epic soprano and drum machine blow-out (although oddly, I don’t remember hearing my favourite cue from the soundtrack album, “Jennifer’s Friends”, on the actual film). Unfortunately, many of the important action scenes are accompanied by heavy metal tracks from the likes of Motorhead and Iron Maiden rather than original material. Argento’s use of contemporary-sounding music has always been bombastic to say the least; part of the appeal of his best films is how key sequences are framed almost like music videos (such as the razor blade through the light bulb in Tenebrae) but the use of fully-blown songs here feels like self-parody rather than a step forward, with the lyrics detracting from the action rather than complementing it.

But the prevailing problem with the film is that it’s simply too long. Tellingly, when it was released in the USA (under the ridiculous title of Creepers) around 20 minutes was cut from it to improve the pacing. Much of the first hour is given over to scene-setting, with the story only really kicking into overdrive around the 45 minute mark. Thankfully, things speed up a little in the second half, and the final chase through the killer’s hideout is brilliantly tense, if more than a little reminiscent of Don’t Look Now.

Ultimately, Phenomena isn’t exactly top-tier Argento but it certainly doesn’t deserve the pasting it has received over the years from some quarters. Its flaws generally arise from a surfeit of ambition rather than a lack of it, and he throws enough ideas and techniques against the wall to ensure that every misfire is matched by several successes. Yes it’s long, yes the music’s occasionally a bit rubbish, but it’s still an enjoyable and at times very exciting film - plus it’s hard not to look fondly on a film which ends with Jennifer Connelly hugging a monkey holding a blood-stained blade. Definitely worth a look.

Well yes and no. If (like me) you sit down to watch it with high hopes then you’ll probably come away disappointed. One of several flaws is a real mismatch between the dialogue and the characters, which means that the ten-year-old lead ends up with lines that Samuel L. Jackson would be proud to deliver. At times the humour element of this masks the wider problems with character development. More often than not it doesn’t. As a result we’re left with the oddity of young and mildly annoying Michael investigating the oddities afflicting his town almost single-handedly. It’s okay though, as it turns out he’s well trained in the use of most fire-arms and is also a hell of a driver.

These might seem like glib points (and common enough features of horror films), but they really bite when combined with the turgid pacing of the first two-thirds of the film. As a result Phantasm never really gels together, and the problem is you really feel it. Thus, the usual filler scenes (here involving the adventures of an ice-cream vendor turned wannabe rock star) seem to overly dominate the plot.

It’s a real shame because Don Coscarelli obviously had some interesting ideas. Working with a minuscule budget he does manage to craft some pretty impressive set-piece scenes. The revelation of the other-worldly link is beautifully rendered and offers a nice respite from the otherwise dated feel of the film. The premise underlying Phantasm is novel enough to attract attention in itself, which is why it’s even more annoying that it’s never fully utilised or explored beyond a sneaking glance of the Tall Man’s den. The Tall Man himself is quite rightly the public face of Phantasm, providing as he does tantalising glimpses of what might have been had the character been properly deployed. Angus Scrimm dominates the screen, even if he does look like David Walliams.

There’s just about enough in Phantasm to keep genre enthusiasts going, but the general viewer will probably be left wondering what all the fuss is about.

In the second film, De Ossorio slightly revises the back story of the Templars, stating that they were defeated by some angry villagers who scalded their eyes before burning them at the stake. Fast forward 500 years, and the same village is preparing to celebrate the anniversary of their victory, but the festivities are cut short when the skeletal Templars return, hungry for blood. It falls to a small, motley group of villagers, holed up in the local church, to try and find a way to defeat them.

The characterisation in Tombs was pretty functional at best, but here it’s taken to a literal extreme. The characters are defined only by the skills or traits that will later help them overcome - or succumb to - the Templar onslaught. Thus the hero Jack is, hilariously, a navy captain turned firework salesman; this back-story seems bewildering at first until it becomes apparent that he’s good at organising people in a crisis, and inevitably he’s able to use fireworks to hold back the zombie onslaught. He also manages to convince the mayor’s wife, an old flame, to leave her husband in record quick time, and their public revelation of their affair - in front of the mayor himself - is eye-poppingly cold. The mayor is a fun caricature of a corrupt public official - an obese man in a suit, complete with sweaty brow and bushy moustache - and his devious attempts to save his own skin are great fun.

Once the survivors reach the church, we’re in familiar territory; the character conflict in a confined environment (with zombies!) is lifted wholesale from Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, and the final break for freedom at the end is heavily reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds. But if you’re going to steal, why not steal from the best? De Ossorio directs proceedings with sufficient aplomb that it’s easy to forgive the familiarity of the setup. The Templars themselves remain impressive, and are imbued with sufficient menace to carry the film.

On the minus side, Return lacks the epic scope of the original, and the confined setting means there’s not much variety to keep the viewer entertained. It’s also abundantly clear that De Ossorio’s budget has been slashed, with the shots of the Templars emerging from their tombs re-used from the first film. Ultimately, Return of the Evil Dead is a very minor horror film, but is a worthy sequel to the original if somewhat throwaway by comparison. And compared to the depths that the series would plumb next, it’s a positive masterpiece…

A first time viewer might be surprised, given the film’s reputation, that the titular exorcism only really takes place in the last 20 minutes. But the demonic possession of the 12 year-old Regan McNeil is not so much the film’s raison-d’etre as it is the catalyst for three different plot strands which span the supernatural and the personal: actress Chris McNeil’s relationship with her daughter following her breakup with the child’s father; Father Merrin’s apparent awakening of a demon on an archaeological dig in Iraq; and Father Karras’ crisis of faith, compounded by the death of his mother. When Regan is possessed - and it’s only halfway through the film that we become aware that she is - the film is not just a display of overt, graphic horror; the possession has consequences for these very real people. The infamous displays of violence and abusive language are secondary to the fact that - for the audience - the fate of the child matters.

All this is helped by the absolutely pitch-perfect performances of the lead actors. Ellen Burstyn runs the full gamut between tenderness and hysteria in the role of Chris, and she is never less than convincing. Likewise, Jason Miller’s is immensely likeable and sympathetic as the conflicted Father Karras, and forms a good contrast with Max von Sydow’s legendary turn as Father Merrin. Von Sydow captures - perhaps more so than any other film I can think of - the essence of a man whose faith is so strong that it in turn strengthens him into a powerhouse whose presence and gravitas hulk over the latter part of the film.

At the heart of the film, though, is Linda Blair as Regan. Since the film, Blair has been tainted somewhat by dubious career moves and personal controversy, and it’s widely felt that she was robbed of an Oscar for her role here by Friedkin’s initial unwillingness to disclose that the voice of the demon was provided by Mercedes McCambridge rather than Blair herself. She is, though, astonishing in the part, showing a precocious range that is way beyond her years. Her chemistry with Burstyn in the film’s early scenes is immensely touching, meaning that her coldness in the earlier throes of her possession are actually more disturbing than the creature that she becomes. To see the ‘ideal daughter’ of the film’s opening masturbating with a crucifix and using obscene language is nothing less than horrifying.

Ultimately, The Exorcist succumbed to the fate of all great genre movies - franchising, foreign rip-offs, second-rate homages and special editions. At the centre of it, though, is this relatively simple, heartfelt and utterly devastating film, which over thirty years on has lost none of its ability to draw you into its world and shock you. Peerless, and highly recommended.