TUBE BOOB

Reviewed - CREEP'Please note," the production notes plead. "You are kindly asked not to give away what/who the Creep is in review coverage." One is sorely tempted to identify Christopher Smith, director of this frightfully poor horror film, as the relevant beast, but the monster's origins are so poorly explained - something to do with a mad scientist I think - that I couldn't spoil the surprise if I wanted to.

Telling the unhappy story of what befalls a certain German socialite when she is locked into Charing Cross Underground station after the last train has gone, Creep throws a succession of hoary horror clichés at us - rats galore, distant footsteps, figures seen fleetingly in the blurry distance - in apparently random order. The result is a film which, though sometimes gratifyingly revolting, is entirely devoid of tension. Readers who perked up at the sight of Franka Potente's name at the head of this review can perk right down again. We acknowledge that the star of Run Lola Run and The Bourne Identity is not speaking in her native tongue, and her little legs must be worn out from all the fleeing she's got up to recently, but you have to go back to the early work of Liz Hurley to find a performance this scrumptiously appalling.

If the film's scenario still appeals, however, then seek out Gary Sherman's cracking 1972 horror film Death Line, which tells a similar story with considerably greater skill. Donald Clarke