OUTPOST

Directed by Steve Barker. Starring Ray Stevenson, Julian Wadham, Richard Brake 18 cert, Movie House, Belfast; Cineworld, Dublin, 90 min **

THIS BRACING, murky horror adventure has plenty going for it. Steve Barker, a young English director, has persuaded decent actors to portray a platoon of mercenaries fighting the undead in some generic East European wasteland. Despite the undoubted paltriness of the budget, the film-makers have managed to infuse the piece with an impressively spooky, washed-out ambience. Most promisingly, the monsters turn out to be Nazi soldiers granted eternal life by mad scientists seeking the secrets of unified field theory. What more could you ask for?

Sad to relate, Outpost, which nods vigorously at such antecedents as Alien, Dog Soldiersand Predator, doesn't quite come off. For all the assiduously maintained atmosphere and enthusiastically bellowed dialogue, the film fails to find anything particularly interesting to do with its villains. The Nazis stand around and angrily grimace, but they prove uncharacteristically reluctant to brandish either dagger or chainsaw. Outpostis all tone and no trousers.

Still, kudos should be put the way of Barker for (intentionally or not) coming so close to replicating the flavour of classic strips from the 2000 ADcomic. Nothing recalls that British institution more effectively than a zombie in a German helmet, and the actors manage just the right balance of fury and horror to keep those allusions aloft. Michael Smiley, a Northern Irish comic of some renown, is particularly impressive as the most bitter and wryly fatalistic of the recruits.

It is to be hoped that the team might be brought together again for a more rigorously thought- through project with a less perfunctory climax. After all, they seem to know a thing or two about rising from the grave.

DONALD CLARKE