"Actor: Javier Sandoval"

• Dagon | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £1.99

  With Dagon, director Stuart (Re-Animator) Gordon returns once more to author HP Lovecraft, this time for an adaptation of the novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, with the setting switched from the coast of New England to the creepy Spanish fishing village of Inboca. After a sudden storm and a yacht-wreck, a bespectacled and bewildered Paul Marsh (Ezra Gooden) finds himself stranded in the literally fishy town, which has thrown over Catholicism to devote itself to the worship of the Philistine sea-god Dagon. His influence means that the inhabitants are transforming into pop-eyed, tentacled and gilled creatures. Though Gooden perhaps strikes too strident a note to convince as an everyday guy, director Gordon orchestrates the rising terrors well. These range from a supremely damp and uncomfortable hotel room through an impressive flashback about the rise of the Esoteric Order of Dagon to some sinister business with a mad-eyed mermaid (Macarena Gomez), human sacrifice and nasty surprises all round. Unfortunately, Gordon still can't quite distinguish between acceptably gruesome and downright nasty, especially when it comes to disposing of secondary female characters. On the plus side, Dagon boasts an excellent score, which even tries to set to music some of Lovecraft's invented language ("Ia Ia Cthulhu fh'tagn"). --Kim Newman

• Dagon | DVD | (07/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  With Dagon, director Stuart (Re-Animator) Gordon returns once more to author HP Lovecraft, this time for an adaptation of the novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, with the setting switched from the coast of New England to the creepy Spanish fishing village of Inboca. After a sudden storm and a yacht-wreck, a bespectacled and bewildered Paul Marsh (Ezra Gooden) finds himself stranded in the literally fishy town, which has thrown over Catholicism to devote itself to the worship of the Philistine sea-god Dagon. His influence means that the inhabitants are transforming into pop-eyed, tentacled and gilled creatures. Though Gooden perhaps strikes too strident a note to convince as an everyday guy, director Gordon orchestrates the rising terrors well. These range from a supremely damp and uncomfortable hotel room through an impressive flashback about the rise of the Esoteric Order of Dagon to some sinister business with a mad-eyed mermaid (Macarena Gomez), human sacrifice and nasty surprises all round. Unfortunately, Gordon still can't quite distinguish between acceptably gruesome and downright nasty, especially when it comes to disposing of secondary female characters. On the plus side, Dagon boasts an excellent score, which even tries to set to music some of Lovecraft's invented language ("Ia Ia Cthulhu fh'tagn"). --Kim Newman

• Beyond Re-Animator | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  After causing the Miskatonic University Massacre, Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) has been serving a prison sentence for the past 14 years. Far from overcoming his scientific obsession with bringing dead organisms back to life, he has had no choice but to continue his experiments on the only specimens he can find in his cell: rats. When Howard (Jason Barry), a new young doctor, comes to work as the prison MD and requests Dr. West's assistance, Dr. West discovers that Howard has something Dr....