Alien vs Predator: Requiem

What's going on? Harry Secombe vs The Honey Monster? Princess Grace vs Tank Girl? If you thought the first round of this celebrity death match was carried out in sepulchral gloom, then you're in for a rude shock, writes Donald Clarke.

Directed by the Brothers Strause. Starring Reiko Aylesworth, Steven Pasquale, John Ortiz, Shareeka Epps, Johnny Lewis, Robert Joy 16 cert, gen release, 86 min *

That title doesn't promise much, but it does, at least, hold out the possibility of a punch-up between several fanged Xenomorphs and at least one intergalactic trophy hunter.

Well, something unpleasant is certainly afoot in the back woods of Colorado, but the camerawork is so murky and the editing so haphazard that the precise nature of the conflict remains in doubt.

If you extracted the action sequences and laid some scratchy Polish jazz over them, you could peddle the result as an avant-garde art experiment. Despair vs The Inner Void. That sort of thing.

Pools are muddied further by the introduction of a beast that combines features of both belligerent species. The crossbreed - spawned, apparently, in some gloomy corner of AVP 1 - takes over a Predator spacecraft and causes it to hurtle towards a town entirely populated by people off the telly. Before long, Brad the rebel, Cindy the minx and Biff the bully are fleeing an army of recently hatched Aliens.

The film does, of course, also feature a purebred Predator, but, as the minutes crawl along, it fast becomes clear that the real stars of the show are the shiny black lizard-things.

The Brothers Strause (oh, get them!), debut directors, make sure to include all the things you expect from an Alien film: Xenomorph presses head close to frightened lady; baby creature bursts out of chest; physically robust woman lugs around infant.

The effect is rather like listening to one of those ghastly James Last Party-a-Go-Go medleys in which familiar songs were stripped of all their potency by chillingly perfunctory arrangements.

James Last vs Brown Girl in the Ring. That sort of thing.