Just four more features to go and Frightfest will be over for another year. Having succumbed to the lure of sleep - there's been precious little of that this weekend - I was running a bit late and barely took my seat in time for the first short, the Alice in Wonderland flavoured O [2002] by Jonathan Beamish. Based loosely on the Greek myth of Persephone, the director [who was on hand to introduce it] claimed that it made allusions to all kinds of child welfare issue, but if they were there, they were well hidden beneath the surreal imagery.

The first feature of the day was another offering from the staggeringly prolific [and probably certifiably mad!] Miike Takashi. Forget everything else you've ever seen and leave all preconceptions at the door - Happiness of the Katakuris is absolutely unlike anything else you've ever seen. A jaw-dropping horror musical [complete with claymation sequences, a Japanese pretending to be a member of the British royal family and some corking spoofs of The Sound of Music and The Rocky Horror Show], Katakuris is one of those films that really does have to be seen to be believed. Certainly any attempt at a coherent synopsis is probably doomed to failure - it all has something to do with a luckless extended family who set up a guest house in the wilds of Japan in the shadow of a rumbling volcano. The guests have a habit of dropping dead withing minutes of checking in, leaving the family with a seemingly never-ending series of corpses to dispose of.

Unclassifiable and hugely entertaining, Katakuris got the day off to a riotous start, one greatly appreciated by the very vocal crowd who really seemed to be getting into it. There simply isn't anything quite like this anywhere, though amazingly it's a remake of a Korean film, Choyonghan kajok [1998] - I doubt the original could be anywhere near as bewildering, inventive and downright funny as Takashi's reworking, possibly the maddest film I'll see this year.

All weekend, director Julien Magnat had been mingling with the crowds in anticipation of the first UK screening of his debut feature, Bloody Mallory [2002], worryingly described in advance as "Buffy meets Indiana Jones" - as I'm one of the few yet to warm to the questionable charms of Buffy [I just can't get into a soap opera about a 20-something necrophile] it wasn't really a pitch guaranteed to raise my expectations. But if Buffy was only a tenth as much fun as Bloody Mallory, it might actually be worth watching.

Sexy Olivia Bonamy stars as Mallory who axes her husband to death on their wedding night when he turns out to be a demon in human guise, then spends years working as part of the Anti-Paranormal Commando Unit, tracking down and eradication supernatural creatures of all kinds. She's accompanied on her travels by the transexual explosives expert Vena Cava and young Talking Tina, a mute telepath who can transplant her psyche into any living creature. When the fallen angel Abbadon leads a pack of ghouls in an attack on a convent, then kidnaps the Pope, Mallory and her team are called in to sort out the mess.

Magnat made Bloody Mallory for a piffling L2 million, yet the lack of budget rarely shows - there's inventiveness by the bucketload and some glorious gags; Vena Cava's machine gun equipped boots are hilarious, though the best is saved for the very end. For those Frightfesters who left as soon as the credits started to roll, you missed out on a brief return appearance by the main villainess, Lady Valentine, now masquerading as a famous well-dwelling, video-obsessed girl from a popular series of Japanese horror films...

There's never a dull moment in Bloody Mallory and the cast give it all they've got to excellent effect - Bonamy in particular is fantastic as Mallory, a sort of grown-up Buffy with attitude, but even she's given a run for her money by Jeffrey Ribier as the amazing Vena Cava. Great characters, top notch action and fantastic monsters [Morphine is particulary impressive] make Bloody Mallory a hyper-kinetic treat, one not to be missed.

Having already cast my Robin Williams prejudices to one side after Saturday night's One Hour Photo, I was looking forward to Christopher Nolan's remake of Insomnia much more than I had been before the festival began. And what's this...? Another excellent performance from Williams? Looks like I need to sign that cheque for membership to the Robin Williams fan club straight away!

Williams is undeniably very good in another dark role as a writer of mystery novels implicated in the murder of a teenager in the frozen wastes of Alaska, but he's blown away completely by Al Pacino as a Los Angeles cop with a troubled past, under investigation by Internal Affairs, unable to sleep in the constant daylight and suffering horrendous guilt after he shoots and kills his partner while pursuing the killer. It's almost superfluous these days to praise a Pacino performance as the man can seemingly do no wrong - here he's simply astounding and one can only agree with Alan Jones' comment that this Academy Award nomination material. Nolan shows, after the convoluted Following [1998] and the reverse narrative of Memento [2000] that he's just at home with a straight-forward, linear narrative and he confirms his reputation as one of the best directors of suspense currently of his generation.1

After the screening, Nolan himself took to the stage for a fascinating interview conducted by Alan Jones, and also fielded questions posed by the audience. Nolan came across as a thoughtful and literate man, deeply passionate about his work, and one full of praise for his excellent cast.

Frightfest 2002 finally came to an end - 15 features, 1 one-reel preview and 9 short films later - with its 16th and final film of the weekend, Ted Bundy [2002], the second in a proposed trilogy of serial killer movies from Matthew Bright, the first of which, Ed Gein [2000], played at the very first Frightfest. The film was intoduced by Bright, producer Hamish McAlpine and supporting actress Alexa Jago.

Curiously, Bright seems to have played the story of America's most brutal serial killer, an outwardly charming and very intelligent man who claimed the lives of at least 150 young women, as a black comedy. The humour sits uneasily with the brutality of the killings [shockingly well staged here] but is mostly redeemed by Matthew Reilly Burke's excellent portrayal of Bundy. But the strange, almost indecisive tone of the film works against it, reducing the film to just another slasher movie. Although it's certainly watchable and never dull, and at least tries to stick to some of the facts [there are the inevitable ommissions and distortions], Ted Bundy never really quite makes the grade.

In their introduction, Bright and McAlpine noted that some critics have interpreted the ending as a vote of sympathy for Bundy. Certainly it skates very close to that, though to be fair to them, it may just be that they were just trying to humanise Bundy, to make him no different to you or I - the point is that Ted Bundy wasn't a monster, he was just the boy next door who did some atrocious things. It's a tricky and dangerous game to play and Bright only just manages to pull it off.

And so it was all over for another year. The third Frightfest turned out to be the biggest and best yet. In their opening statement, the organisers noted that diversity was the key to this year's line-up and they weren't wrong - the beauty of this year's line-up was that if one film left you cold, the next one was bound to be so different that it would more than make up for it. Not that there were that many causes for complaint with this year's selection of titles. To sum up:

The Good: Frailty, Donnie Darko, The Eye, One Hour Photo, Tuno negro, Dark Water [my personal favourite of all the films shown this weekend], Spider, Happiness of the Katakuris, Bloody Mallory and Insomnia.

The Bad: Nine Lives and Halloween: Resurrection.

The Indifferent: The Princess Blade, Swimfan and Ted Bundy.

It just remains to thank Kasia, Steve and Pete for their comapny throughout the weekend and also to thank everyone who came over and said hello between films. But most of all, a big thanks to Alan Jones, Paul McEvoy and Ian Rattray for their tireless efforts to put on another outstanding show. Having seen close up just a fraction of the hard work these guys put into getting Frightfest together, I'm even more impressed by the fantastic job they do. Frightfest has now firmly established itself as the yardstick by which all other genre festivals in the UK must be judged - and they simply don't get any better than this!
KEVIN LYONS