I never thought a film would come along that would be so bad it would make Alien: Resurrection look like a masterpiece. But Paul W.S. Anderson has succeeded in performing that dark miracle, for Alien Vs. Predator (or AVP for short) is a complete stinker.

You know the film is in trouble about two minutes in. There's a scene where Alexa, the main character, is climbing an icefall. Her phone rings and she actually answers it. Then when she gets to the top, and while she's still talking, she sees the person on the other end of the line standing right before her next to a helicopter. However, in the establishing shot only a few seconds earlier there was no helicopter in sight. How the hell did it get there without her hearing it? Very stupid.

Just as stupid is another's character's ridiculous intelligence. There's an Italian archaeologist who's been hired by Bishop to look at this pyramid that's been found under the ice. No sooner has he been shown a poor computer model than he's proclaiming the style is a mixture of various ancient cultures and that this pyramid therefore must be the first pyramid ever made. He's quick. And he's just as quick in the pyramid itself. He reads hieroglyphics like he's reading the daily newspaper; he knows the meaning of each room that's contained in the pyramid ("this is the sacrificial chamber", he says after being in the room for about a second) and he even understands the building's inner workings. This last bit leads to another moment of absurdity. The archaeologist proclaims that the Aztecs used the metric system, therefore the moving parts of the pyramid must change every ten minutes. Since when did the metric system have anything to do with time? And since when did the Aztecs use minutes? Did they wear wristwatches?

But one of the worst scenes is when the archaeologist and Alexa get stuck in a room. Again the archaeologist reads the hieroglyphics like he's thumbing the daily paper and spins a yarn about the Predators teaching man how to build temples and create a civilisation. You see, Rastafarian aliens taught us everything we know. Kill me.

But for sheer stupidity there's one moment that trumps everything else. A character is in the sacrificial chamber and he drops a glow stick down into the room below. Then later we see Alexa and a couple of other people wander into this room. She looks at her GPS watch and proclaims that this room must be directly below the sacrificial chamber…with the glow stick just a couple of feet ahead of her! Cocking Christ almighty.

Just as annoying as all this, though, is Anderson's fanboy attempts to doff his dunce's cap at the previous Alien and Predator films. 'Look, it's Lance Henriksen! Listen, one of the characters says, "You are one ugly mother…" See, I made a satellite look like an Alien Queen. Oh, how I respect the heritage of these fine franchises.' Too bad he couldn't provide the film with a decent script, memorable characters or exciting action.

And I guess it's the action that hammers the final nail into the film's coffin. After all, it could have been at least tolerable if the action had been half-decent. Instead it's total crap. Take the fights between the Predators and the Aliens. They're more homoerotic than the naked fight between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in Women in Love. Of course you don't get to see any floppy bits flapping about, but you do get to see an injured Alien flick lots of acid into the face of a Predator in a very camp manner with its tail (I can imagine Anderson patting himself on the back at how innovative he is). And there's another hilarious bit when an Alien is injured on the floor. It reminded me of a scene in The Simpsons where Homer is negotiating with Mr Burns to get the dental plan back. When Homer wins he lies down on the floor and walks circles on his side. The Alien in this film does the exact same thing. Stupid Alien.

But even the penguins in this film overact. There's a scene where Ewen Bremmer gets spooked in an abandoned whaling outpost. Of course, we get the standard 'BOO, there's someone behind you moment' and then when Spud insists that there's something else in the room with them, a penguin waddles out. It's more of an old ham than the Alien.

And I feel sorry for Ewan Bremmer. He gets to play some bland sap that keeps going on about his kids. Of course he dies, which is the only good thing he does. But the other characters are dull, too. Alexa, in particular, is a waste of space. I can imagine that Anderson thought he was shattering genre conventions by making the hero a black woman, but he completely forgot to add colour (ahem) to her character (and everyone else for that matter).

Almost as frustrating as this is the fact that we don't even get the pleasure of seeing these people die horribly; Anderson keeps violence at arms length – he cuts away from every screen death. And also, because his crap story requires it, people give birth to Aliens in about half an hour rather than the hours or days it used to take. Oh, and now facehuggers jump in bullet-time. Wait a second while I weep... And on top of that, the main Predator in this film has an incredibly goofy face. Somehow make-up has got worse over the last twenty years or so. But what made me laugh/cry the most was the final shot: dead Predator gives birth to Predi-Alien. As if the hunchback yellow turd Newborn Alien in Alien: Resurrection wasn't bad enough...

I don't care what most people say, Alien 3 is a damn good film. It's dark, it's gritty and it's refreshingly downbeat. It was a damn good end to the Alien trilogy. Unfortunately though, because of the negative reaction to the film and the desire to make some more cash out of a potentially lucrative franchise, Alien: Resurrection got made. And boy is it bad.

Right from the very first second it's obvious you're watching a turkey. The music is terrible, the special effects are sub-par and the visual style reminds me of The Fifth Element – a film I hate with all my heart. Then you have the awful Star Trek costumes and soldiers who look like they're holding toy guns. It's a comic book.

What I like most about the original trilogy is the way that despite being set in the future and despite being about Aliens with acid for blood, the environments felt realistic. The Nostromo felt like a living breathing spaceship, the colony in Aliens felt authentically low-tech and the prison planet in Alien 3 was grim and dirty. Alien: Resurrection, though, feels like exactly what it is: a film. Not once could I suspend my disbelief. The sets look like sets (something that should never happen) and you can just imagine them filming in some large hanger and then someone shouting 'Cut!' The environments are horribly artificial. They're TV quality.

Then there are all the pointless gimmicks. Not one of them works, whether it be the breath identification, the metal detector gloves (more cheap TV quality sci-fi) or the ship's computer being called Father just because it's oh-so clever in light of the computer in Alien being called Mother (Father, by the way, sounds like Stephen Hawking). And then there's the spitting Aliens (the spitting effect is shite) and the bastard creation that is the Newborn. And speaking of the Newborn, how in the hell did that get past the design stages? It looks like hunchback yellow turd with a potbelly and National Geographic tits. It's not in the least bit scary and the attempts to humanise it are hilarious. I'm supposed to have sympathy for its demise? Sorry, I could only sit there laughing my head off.

But the Aliens in Resurrection aren't much better either. They all look like someone has blown their nose on them. They're covered in too much slime and gunk. And then, like the Newborn, there are the depressingly stupid attempts to try and give them character and to try and make the audience feel sympathy for them. Do I care that two Aliens decide to kill one of their own? No, of course not.

But what about the characters? Well, the film doesn't have much time for them and neither do I. Every single one is a cardboard cut out. You've got the evil corporate/military guy, the supposedly lovable rogues and the character who turns out to be a robot. Haven't we been over all of this before? And Ripley is a waste of space too. Sure Weaver tries her best to give her character layers, and she has a bit of fun being bad, but Whedon's script is so thin that it all comes off as a bunch of soundbites, or trailer moments. "I heard you run into these things before. What did you do?" "I died." Ooh, pithy! But I guess that's what happens when you give writing duties to a fanboy and the creator of the hideously adolescent Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However, to be fair to Weaver, although perhaps not to Whedon, Ripley does have one good scene, the one where she kills one of her clones. It's the only scene with genuine feeling. Too bad then that it ends with more dire-logue: "It must be a chick thing."

In light of these multiple atrocities, I hoped that at least the action would be a welcome distraction. It isn't. The worst offender has to be the basketball scene. As if the fight isn't bad enough with its brief burst of techno music (I can't adequately express how awful the musical score is), there's the shoot-out with its toy guns and the ridiculous ricocheted shot. It's yet more comic book crap. And the underwater scene, while a good idea on paper, fails to get the blood pumping. In fact, the only thing I kept thinking during the whole scene was, 'Boy, they can hold their breath for a long time.'

Oh, but the worst moment in the film, worse even than the Newborn, has to be when a man with an Alien inside him, who's convulsing, and who indeed gets shot three or four times as he's walking and giving 'birth', manages to punch his attacker in the face, disarm him and brutally beat him up. It's obviously meant to be crowd-pleasing moment, but the only people it's going to please are retards and fuckwits.

But there are many other moronic things in the film. There's the way Ripley has acid for blood yet apparently has a normal physiology. There's the way that Ripley uses her blood as a convenient way to get her out of tricky situations. There's the way that The Company, the real bad guys in the series, are disposed of. There's the way that grown adults refer to the Aliens as 'nasties' and 'monsters'. There's the way that Call inexplicably has a sample of the General's breath (how did she get that?). There's the way that Call gets shot, falls into the water and miraculously reappears somewhere else. There are the Taxi Driver-style electronic holsters that one of the characters wears. And there are the amusingly awful moments of ultra-violence – the General saluting and then picking his own brain, the baby Alien shooting through the bloke's head, the Newborn biting someone's head off and the Newborn squeezing someone's face off. Way to crucify a once great series.

Alien 3, by and large, is considered a poor film. Most people see it as a lazy re-hash of the first instalment and most people hate the way that it dispensed with the other surviving characters of Aliens. Well, I can kind of see their point. Alien 3 does opt for the dark, claustrophobic atmosphere of the first and it does have the same stalk and slash mentality – there are no big guns here. And yes, it does rather ruthlessly kill off the characters of Aliens. But I can't really see it being any other way. The Alien series isn't about Hicks or Newt. It's about Ripley, and it's always been her alone against the Alien. To have Hicks and Newt tagging along would feel like Aliens Revisited. It would just be, for the second time, Ripley fighting the Alien to protect her surrogate daughter. At least here she gets to do something different. It isn't a fight for survival, or a fight to protect Newt. It's a fight to keep the Alien away from The Company.

One of the many things that annoyed and enraged me about Alien: Resurrection (now there's an Alien film truly worthy of revulsion) was the way that they dispensed with the main villain of the piece, the mysterious, all-seeing company. That was one of the fun things in the series. You felt like there was something bigger and more important going on. And the filmmakers developed it superbly. In the first film it was only on the periphery. But in the second film, with Burke, it was brought to the front. So I like the way that Alien 3 develops it even further. The Company has an almost Orwellian presence. It seems to see everything. And so Ripley's fight to kill the Alien before The Company can get its hands on it seems entirely convincing. Indeed, there's a great scene – one of those rabble-rousing moments you only see in films – where she explains The Company's motivation to the prisoners. It's an excellent nod to the fans and one that gets you even more fully behind her cause. Don't trust those greedy capitalists, man.

Of course, the company man in the film (Aaron, played by Ralph Brown) is a stupid sheep, but rather than ape what Cameron did with Burke – and make him totally untrustworthy – he's just a man trying to do his job and earn a living. And at the end, after lots of abuse from the prisoners, he actually grows a set of balls and takes a swipe at one of the company men. Too bad, then, that this action gets him killed. I mean, during the final sequence, when all the prisoners are being chased by the Alien in the maze, he finds a quiet room and sits it out. I thought, then, that this might show a new dawning of intelligence. But instead, after looking like he's been saved, he does something brave, but stupid, and gets himself killed. I guess you've got to know when to pick your fights.

Another complaint that people seem to toss in the direction of Alien 3 is that the characters all look the same. Well, personally, I think the characters stand out pretty well. Sure they may all have shaved craniums, but I think that the writing and the acting are pretty damn strong. They all have distinct personalities – which is a pretty good feat when you're dealing with rapists, murders and pederasts – and it's only the ones that get killed in seconds that feel generic. Dillon stands out the most. He's the kind of hardnut that can kick your head in and say something poetic at the same time. Plus, he takes the Alien on in hand-to-hand combat and insults the Alien's fighting skills as he's being killed. How can you not dig a man like that? I also think that Charles Dance is great. He gets killed off rather early, but he makes his scenes count. And he even gets to sleep with Ripley. Sure, in film tradition, this means that he has to die, but hey, at least he went there. And Brian Glover, Ralph Brown, Pete Postlethwaite and Paul McGann are superb. Plus I like the way that one of the more peripheral characters survives the whole ordeal.

And the film is also quite poetic. The cremation scene in particular stands out. It has some great dialogue, a fantastic score and the Alien birth is beautiful in a perverse way. And the final moments, too, are great.

But what of the Alien in this film? Well, aside from the occasional dodgy bit of effects work in the maze sequence – it sometimes moves like its got piles – it's excellent. It's certainly better than the CGI and gloop covered monsters of Resurrection. And it gets some pretty good moments. The killing where the blood sprays over Paul McGann's face is nice, as is the amusing killing of Brain Glover. And I also like the bit where it meets Ripley face to face. Somehow, in the Jeunet film, the Aliens were no longer threatening, but in Alien 3 it still has the right stuff.

And I think the film would have been a fitting end to the series. Ripley finally meets The Company and she sacrifices herself to deny them and to save mankind. That's pretty good going in my book. And I wouldn't have thought the character would have had anywhere to go if they somehow would have managed to bring her back to life. Well, when I first saw it, I had hopes for Resurrection, but unfortunately, I was proved right. The series should have ended here.

Directed by David Fincher
Written by David Giler, Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson
Produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler and Walter Hill
Original Music by Elliot Goldenthal
Cinematography by Alex Thomson
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance and Ralph Brown

Running Time: 114 mins

Rated R for monster, monster violence

Thank the cinematic gods for pluralisation. ‘Oh, what’s that? Alien only had one critter? Well, let’s slap an ‘s’ on the end of the title and have hundreds of the motherfuckers. It’ll be great.’ And indeed it is.

Diehard fans of Alien may bemoan the different approach that Cameron takes – lots of guns and the Aliens themselves reduced to bugs to be blown to pieces by machinegun fire – but the film is true to Scott’s original while taking it in a new direction. It’s a perfect sequel.

The fidelity to the original includes the creepy atmosphere and the slow build-up, but this film has more action and more of an emotional pull. Indeed, it’s the relationship between Ripley and Newt that elevates it to something more than just an excellent action film.

The final act, which sees Ripley head off alone into the Alien nest in order to rescue what has become her surrogate daughter, has a whiff of absurdity to it. Skinny woman with a massive gun and flamethrower attached to her and she’s going to kick butt? Yeah, right. But because Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron play it so straight, and because you’ve become so attached to the characters over the course of the film, it seems like the only thing that could happen. You totally believe in Ripley. This is something she just has to do.

And it helps that there are no attempts to indulge in empty grandstanding. This is just a simple case of a mother going into hell to rescue her daughter. And as everyone knows, there’s nothing in the world you should fear more than a woman who’s trying to get her child back. Mothers are tougher than any Alien Queen, a point illustrated by the fabulous moment when Ripley burns the Alien Queen’s eggs. There Ripley is, just trying to get Newt back to safety. She’s happy to leave the Aliens alone. But then one of the eggs opens, and with a fantastic look from Ripley, one that says she’s going to kick the everloving shit out of you, she lets rip with the flamethrower. She burns the eggs, she shoots the Aliens and fires grenades at the Alien Queen. It’s a phenomenally good scene – aside from crackwhores and morbidly obese shut-ins, I believe any mother in the world would do this for their kid; they’d go into an Alien nest, rescue their child and fuck it up bad if any pissant motherfucker had the temerity to try and fuck with them. You just don’t fuck with a mum and her kid.

But back to grandstanding, one could argue that the ‘Get away from her you bitch!’ moment is an example of empty of grandstanding. But I’d strongly disagree with that. That moment is so iconic because of the sincerity of Weaver’s delivery and the truth inherent in the line – don’t stand between a mother and her child. But fair enough, it’s also iconic because the power loader is so damn cool.

However, the bond between Ripley and Newt was less explicit in the original theatrical version. But in the Special Edition we get a great scene where we find out, because she spent so much time drifting through space in hypersleep after surviving the Nostromo, that Ripley’s real child has died as an old woman. It’s a great little scene and gives more depth to the relationship between Ripley and Newt. I’m kind of baffled as to why it was cut out.

However, other stuff in the Special Edition doesn’t fare quite as well. The least successful inclusion is the scene on the colony where we see Newt’s parents find the derelict alien ship from the first film. It’s kind of pointless and it’s not particularly well filmed or acted – I can easily see why it was cut out. And plus, part of the joy of Aliens was not knowing exactly what happened on the colony. It was creepier when we could try and imagine it ourselves.

I’m also not a huge fan of the sentry gun sequences. Most people tend to love them, thinking they add to the tension. But to me they only seem to highlight the budgetary restrictions. You seem to see the same bit of footage of an Alien exploding over and over again. Plus, for me, there was greater tension when you saw less of the Aliens. The longer you have to wait for the attack, the bigger the pay-off because you’ve been wound up that little bit more.

But although the big attack where the Aliens come crashing through the ceiling is magnificent, I prefer the first encounter; the one where the cocky Marines are slaughtered in the hive. What makes the scene so fantastic is the way Cameron uses the Marines' cameras, the ones they have strapped to them, to add to the confusion of the attack. It makes it even more visceral - we see a lot of the action take place on a series of monitors.

But this use of monitor footage also serves as a nod to Alien. When Dallas and his crew head off to the derelict ship this technique is used to build tension. But Aliens takes the concept that little bit further.

Another concept in Alien that is developed by Cameron is the use of the motion trackers. Scott used it briefly in the scene where Dallas is killed, but here it’s a main feature of the film. It’s used all the time. And again it’s incredibly effective. It’s a tool that’s meant to help the Marines, a piece of technology that helps them do their job better, but it only makes them more paranoid and confused. They can rarely see their enemy. And even when they think they know where the Aliens are coming from, things are turned upside down because the Aliens will come crashing through the ceiling instead of through the door like they expect.

And it’s this unseen enemy, and the Marines' cockiness, that makes it feel like a Vietnam War film. The Marines start off with complete confidence and then are gradually broken down by an enemy that is less well equipped but that can adapt to its environment better.

But although the militaristic aspect of the film is always going to be reminiscent of Vietnam, it also feels a bit like a Western. The Marines keep getting attacked and they’re gradually running out of ammunition. It’s like the Indians are storming the fort – they can only be repelled for so long. But in that way it also feels a bit like the film Zulu – superior numbers will eventually wear down a well equipped force with fewer bodies.

However, going back to the way that Cameron builds upon the ideas that were started in Alien, I love the use of Bishop in the film. After Ash in the first film, we maybe expect another unhinged robot or at very least a company stooge. And at the beginning Ripley treats him like shit. But after hinting that he might be another android psycho, he turns out to be heroic. And it’s a lovely moment when Ripley finally tells Bishop that he did well. In a film that is relentlessly violent, it’s nice to have a moment that has such warmth.

A much smaller nod to Alien that I like is the use of a countdown at the end. With the reactor about to explode we’re told how long Ripley has to reach a minimum safe distance. It raises the stakes even higher when Ripley has to save Newt – not only does Ripley have to save her daughter from the Aliens but she has to do it before everything is blown to shit.

Aside from building on the concepts started in the first film, another one of Cameron’s strengths is creating memorable characters. No one gets lost in the mix. All the grunts stand out. My personal favourite is Hudson (Bill Paxton), the whinging scaredy cat who eventually grows a massive set of balls and kicks some serious Alien butt before being killed. Every line he utters is a work of genius. Then there’s Vasquez. I don’t know what it is about Cameron, but he always seems to be able to create believably tough female characters. Therefore it doesn’t ring untrue when she kicks an Alien in the head and shoots it in the face. You believe this woman is capable of doing this. And of course, then there’s Hicks. He’s probably the toughest Marine, but there’s also a sexual undercurrent between him and Ripley. Thankfully there’s no explicit romance in the film, but with the way that Hicks shows her how to use a gun and with the tracker he gives her, quipping that it doesn’t mean they’re engaged, you know it’s on the cards. And at the end Ripley, Newt and Hicks are like a small family. Again it’s another reason why the film works so well – you believe in the emotional connection between the characters.

But smaller characters stand out as well. Drake and the Sergeant are great in what limited time they have, and I love Gorman, the poindexter turned good. And then there’s Burke, who proves that a greedy company man will always be worse than an acid-drooling monster.

What makes Alien such an effective horror film is how quiet it is. After all, most horror films make the mistake of equating fear with noise. But that's often a mistake, as silence is usually infinitely more effective. And so it is with Alien. The scariest moments are all devoid of intrusive scoring, jagged editing and overblown sound effects.

One of the best examples is when Brett is killed. He has to chase after Jones (the cat) and he's led into a dark corner of the ship. You know he's going to get killed but Ridley Scott knows that you know. Therefore the sequence is dragged out. All the time you're waiting. You're waiting for the inevitable. But Scott doesn't rush things. He racks up the tension by having Brett wander for an inordinate length of time and by having him wash his face in a shower of dripping water as chains rattle in the background. And when the Alien does appear, it's not with a sudden jolt. It just appears quietly behind Brett before killing him. And the way that the death is played on the face of the cat, which has a look of almost stunned curiosity, makes the whole sequence incredibly spooky. It's not really a crash, bang, wallop sort of horror film.

Not that there aren't any jump moments. There are actually quite a few. But because the lead-up is so quiet and ominous it makes the pay-off a whole lot more effective. For example, when Kane looks into the egg. Again the sequence takes its time, racking up the tension to breaking point with the discovery of the ship and the slow exploration of it, but when he finally has a peek and the facehugger leaps out, it has the perfect timing of a great joke.

Another fantastic piece of timing is when the Alien takes Dallas. You go through another long, drawn out sequence of him scurrying through narrow air vents before the Alien finally pops out of a dark corner. But although the moment is fantastically timed, the lead up is where the fun lies. And I have to say that the lead up is probably the most frightening thing in the film. Dallas scurries through narrow corridors searching for the Alien, but you know it's futile - we know that he won't find it and that it will find him and that it'll kill him. And the dark, claustrophobic corridors are full of iris-shaped doors that open and close slowly and forebodingly, which really does add to the air of dread that fills the sequence. And the tracker is the icing on the cake – it racks up the tension to breaking point.

The second most frightening sequence is when Ripley is finally alone in the ship. She sets the Nostromo to self-destruct so that she can take the shuttle but then with strobe lights flashing all around her she sees the Alien. She then goes back and tries to reverse the self-destruct sequence, but it's too late. It's frightening because Ripley has to run around the ship, not knowing where the Alien might be. No longer does she have the option of just hiding. And with everyone dead she no longer has anyone to talk to or help her out. She's all alone. But perversely, once everyone's dead, the film finally gets loud. There's a countdown sequence (which is brilliant in the way that it raises the stakes - not only does she have to face a terrifying monster, but she's against the clock now as well) and the ship begins to destruct. Just when Ripley might have needed the silence to find out where the Alien is, she has to run around in cacophony of noise knowing that the Alien could be anywhere.

But the silence comes back in the final sequence, and it's quite ingenious the way that the Alien is camouflaged in the shuttle. I nearly shat myself when I first saw it as a kid.

What I also like about the final sequence is that it's weirdly sexual. Ripley strips down to her underwear and then the Alien appears. And the Alien then begins almost stroking the console it's resting on. And of course, Ripley penetrates the Alien with a harpoon.

Another excellent bit of weird sexuality is when Ash the robot tries to choke Ripley with a magazine. He shoves it in her mouth and he looks rather turned on as she gags on it. Perhaps robots don't come with all the parts. Perhaps this is his way of venting his frustration. But there's also the way that the Alien kills Lambert. Its tail inches up the insides of her thigh and then you cut away and hear her screaming like she's being violated – the screaming is actually pretty chilling. And of course, Kane getting ripped open goes back to the male fear of childbirth. (The birth scene is still great. The blood, the sound and the way it takes the Alien two or three attempts to burst through is fantastic. But I do have to say that the way the Alien shoots off the table looks rather dodgy.)

Going back to the Lambert killing, though... As well as being chilling, this scene is also quite frustrating because Parker (Yaphet Kotto) gets killed as well. I mean, Parker is quite possibly the coolest man in the universe. I swear he could have taken the Alien had it not been for the cowardly Lambert. (It's quite surprising that the coward and the black character survive so long – they're usually the first two to go.)

But although I dig Parker, I think Ian Holm as Ash delivers the film's best performance. It's quite subtle the way that he hints at his true identity – I like the way he jogs on the spot to get his joints working. And he's so smug and slimy. He's more of a villain than the Alien.

But I think everything in the film is fantastic – the music, the special effects, the sequence on the alien planet, the production design, the moody atmosphere, the script. Everything works perfectly.

I can remember as a kid being somewhat frightened by Live and Let Die. I'm not sure what it was – whether it be the freaky Baron Samedi, the crocodiles or seeing more black people than you'd see on an average episode of Sesame Street (poor whitey had probably only encountered one black person at that time) – but like the supposedly kid-friendly Raiders of the Lost Ark, it freaked me out somewhat. Now, though, I'm not quite sure what the fuss was about. Live and Let Die is more camp than a row of tents.

Although, to be fair, the film does have it moments. For example, the opening sequence features three brutal slayings. Fair enough, the first one, with a British ambassador getting zapped, is rather comic, but after that we have a guy getting stabbed and a man getting bitten by a snake. No wonder it had me browning my pants as a child. And then there's the sadistic moment towards the end when Kananga (Yaphet Koto) slices Bond's arm. Once again the darkness is immediately relieved by the ludicrous way in which Kananga is dispatched (he literally goes pop: "He always did have an inflated opinion about himself"), but all those years back the damage was done.

There was also something rather unsettling about the rubber faced Mr Big and Tee Hee. And those scarecrows, too, gave me the creeps. But one thing that made me laugh as a kid and which still gives me the giggles now is Kanaga's lackey Whisper. You'd be hard pressed to find a more amusing Bond subordinate - a fat black man whose voice is perpetually hushed. Indeed, I only have to say to myself, in his silly voice, "Anybody home?...Your champagne…Shall I open it?...Shall I oooopen it?" and I'm laughing like an idiot. And what about the inflating couch that explodes from under him? Bloody hilarious.

Also hilarious is Bond's attitude to sex in this film. Every single lay is achieved via nefarious means – with the Italian girl he indirectly forces her to hide in the cupboard and then sneakily unzips her as she coos over him like a schoolgirl; with Rosie he lets her make a fool of herself before nailing her and then shoving a gun in her face; and with Solitaire he steals her virginity via a set of trick cards. What a rake.

But the very idea of Jane Seymour playing a meek virgin makes me laugh as well. She's one of those women, like Elizabeth Taylor, who made a habit of playing the English rose – women of principles and purity – who behind the scenes were getting more knob than a squad of streetwalkers. You just can't believe that Bond's the first to go there. But it says something for Bond that he's prepared to break her in. Black or white; good or bad; virgin or slut – Bond will shag them all.

But to be honest, the Bond girls in this film are rather sub-par. Rosie is played as a dimwit and Jane Seymour is, well, Jane Seymour. She's just a poor actress with too much hair. And it says something about her and her character that after her first shag she becomes obsessed with sex – all she goes on about is sleeping with Bond or finding a bed in which to sleep with him. And, of course, Bond is happy to comply. And this actually leads to a rather funny moment in the film. In a roundabout way Seymour asks Bond to service her again, and after acquiescing, he says there's no sense in going off half-cocked. How right you are, Rog.

However, Bond doesn't get his way with every woman. In one of my favourite moments in the film, Moore is watching a cabaret singer sing a rendition of 'Live and Let Die'. Moore smarms it up like crazy – as he nods his approval you can see him thinking, "I'd do her" - but before he can start working his magic, he disappears through a hole in the floor. The one that got away, eh? Oh well, there's plenty more fish in the sea.

Another detail that makes me laugh is the fact that there's only one point in the film where Bond looks genuinely worried. I mean, he faces crocodiles and sharks and does it with confidence. But when he's captured by Kananga and it's suggested that his more vital extremities might get cut off, a flicker of concern flashes across his face – for Moore's Bond there's no fate worse than having your cock snipped off.

Another amusing part of this scene are the chair restraints that hold Bond down. They look like they wouldn't hold back Stephen Hawking. And I also love the way that Bond gets knocked out by Tee Hee. He doesn't get hit so much as brushed, yet he goes down like a sack of spuds. Oh, and the 'butterhook' line a few moments earlier in the scene is delivered with toxic levels of smarm.

Perhaps the biggest laugh in the film, though, comes during the boat chase. Sheriff J. W. Pepper, hick extraordinaire, is waiting by the riverside for his cracker brother-in-law to come round the bend and chase Bond in his speedboat. Pepper is proudly telling his pals that if one side of the family doesn't get him, the other side will. And it's then, as Pepper's back is turned, that you see a big black guy driving the boat. It's a wonderful bit of comedy.

Having said that, as funny as the film is, I do prefer the more serious Bond films – with the Moore films I'm usually groaning as I laugh. However, Live and Let Die stands up as one of Moore's best entries. And after having seen the film more times than I care to mention, I only just noticed a wonderful detail rather late on in the film. In the fight at the end with Tee Hee, Bond defends himself by throwing a deck of cards in his face. A deadly weapon that – paper cuts are lethal.

I’m not quite sure what’s up with Robert Zemeckis’ animation fetish. First The Polar Express and now Beowulf (and in the future, A Christmas Carol). He seems to have got tired with any notion of reality, of the limitations that traditional filmmaking techniques put on him. After all, Beowulf could have been a live-action picture. With technology today, it wouldn’t have been that difficult. But instead Zemeckis decided against pursuing that route.

This decision has both benefits and drawbacks. Yes the characters often move in a weird, jerky way and yes it’s strange seeing animated versions of famous actors, but at the same time the fidelity to this technique gives you a certain purity of vision – there’s no awkward mixture of effects and reality; you either buy into this visualisation of the story or you don’t. And to be honest, the technique never took me out of the film.

Well, okay, there was one thing that took me out of the film. The hero is played by Ray Winstone. Okay, that shouldn’t affect me in any way – he’s a good actor. But the character here is ripped, whereas Ray is, well, fat. Everyone else looks like the actor who plays them, while Beowulf looks like Sean Bean. Weird.

But of course part of the point of filming the film this way is to do things that you couldn’t do in a normal film – impossible camera shots, have fantastical beasts interact more easily with humans and have the characters age more convincingly. And there are some beautiful moments. There’s one bit near the start where the King’s hall is celebrating and dancing and you slowly move out of the building and across the snowy fields. But then the camera keeps moving. It keeps moving through forests and mountains until it comes to a cave. We then see the monster Grendel scream in pain. It’s a flashy shot but it’s also a great way of explaining the character – the enjoyment of others, the pleasure this monster can never have, is what causes him pain.

And the monster is a pretty horrific creation. His screams are ear-splittingly loud and he cries like a child. But he also appears in the King’s hall and rips men to pieces – one even gets tossed in the air and lands on a spear. But worse than this, in a later scene, where Beowulf confronts the monster, he eats a soldier. For a while he stands there munching on the guy, a sad look on his face. Quite how this film got released as a 12A/PG-13, I don’t know.

But the confrontation between Beowulf and Grendel is probably the best scene in the film. It’s horrific, exciting and the monster’s ultimate destruction (by Beowulf ripping its arm off) is also quite sad. As well as being fearsome, Grendel is also incredibly pathetic. He’s a sad little child who is under the thumb of his demonic mother. And as Beowulf shouts at him while having him trapped, he can only whimper.

However, as well as all this, the scene is also amusing. Why, you ask? Well, for some reason, Beowulf decides he has to fight the monster naked. The explanation is something silly, like because the monster has no weapon he’s going to fight it without weapons as well. But when he disrobes, women squeal in excitement. And to hide his dangly bits from the children who will doubtlessly be seeing this film, objects are always obscuring his genitals. The best example of this is when he stands on a table and approaches a sword that is implanted in the wood. Yes, he has a large sword. Yes, he’s one hell of a man.

But there’s actually plenty of sex in the film. Not only do you have a gnarly buff warrior disrobing so that he can go toe-to-toe with a monster, but you have the soldiers flirting with a maid with large knockers and Grendel’s mother who has golden tits. Fighting and fucking are the film’s forte. And it’s weird that Angelina, without the tats and with some shape brought back to her increasingly emaciated face, looks better here than she does in reality. No wonder so many Kings have been brought to their doom – who wouldn’t want to nail a demon with golden tits and feet that are in the shape of high heels? She’s certainly a lot sexier than the bland Queen.

However, there’s a high price to pay for fucking Grendel’s mum. Her womb seems to be a bit messed up. One King gets a crying, ten-foot tall troll as a son and Beowulf gets a dragon. Yeah, that’s a high price to pay for some sweet, sweet demon pussy. The lesson to be learnt here: if her tits shine, just say no.

The final action scene, where Beowulf fights the dragon, isn’t as enjoyable as the scrap with Grendel, but it continues the theme of extreme violence. Not only does Beowulf hack off part of his own arm but he also reaches into the dragon’s chest and rips its heart out. And we see this in close-up. Nice.

But although the violence is fun, I was more impressed with the atmosphere and the tension the film creates. Sure there are one too many cheap-shots (‘we’re going to show this film in 3-D, so let’s just have things fly at the screen ad nausea; it’ll be great!’) and the sound is pumped up to 11, but the film is genuinely creepy in places, which pleased me a great deal. And I also like the theme that runs through the film of the importance of stories - how we need them to build heroes, heroes who make our normal lives more bearable. But with this you also have the poison of lies. Once we let them creep into our lives we'll always been enslaved to them. And with this in mind, I have to say that I enjoyed the open ending. Apparently the weakness of men is everlasting; pussy will ruin us all.