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Arriving in Britain for a symposium, American psychologist Dana Andrews is distressed to learn of the demise of scientist Maurice Denham. But he remains highly sceptical of suggestions that he was killed by supernatural powers rather then being electrocuted after his car collided with a power line. Even the discovery of demonic drawings among Denham's papers fails to convince Andrews of foul play, although he takes an instant dislike to occultist Niall MacGinnis, whom he encounters at the British Museum while examining Denham's claims that a devil cult is behind the murder for which catatonic magician Brian Wilde has been charged.

Unbeknown to Andrews, MacGinnis has slipped him a paper containing runic characters that condemn the bearer to a hideous death. However, he becomes aware of MacGinnis's malevolence after witnessing him summon a storm while conjuring as Bobo the Magnificent at a children's party and, on being informed of the parchment's hex, Andrews travels to Stonehenge in a bid to decipher the code. He also accompanies Denham's daughter, Peggy Cummins, to a seance given by MacGinnis's mother (Athene Seyler) and hears medium Reginald Beckwith describing in disturbing detail Denham's death at the hands of a demon.

Increasingly disconcerted by his discoveries, Andrews breaks into MacGinnis's mansion to look for proof of his involvement with the satanic cult and is attacked by a leopard and pursued through the woods by a sinister misty presence. He also witnesses Wilde emerge from his trance to place the blame for his crime on a fire demon. But it's only when he boards a train and finds that MacGinnis has kidnapped Cummins that Andrews is finally convinced that evil is afoot.

As he had demonstrated with Val Lewton's Cat People (1942), Jacques Tourneur was a master of intimation and it has often been stated that this would have been an even finer film had the producers not insisted on showing the demon in the climactic railtrack sequence. Yet, the crudeness of the fire-snorting terror in no way diminishes the effectiveness of Charles Bennett's eerie adaptation of the M.R. James tale, `Casting the Runes'. Indeed, it brings a macabre viscerality to proceedings and enabled Tourneur to breach the unbearable tension that had been building during Andrews's investigation. Released around the time that Terence Fisher's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) was establishing Hammer's reputation for horror, Night of the Demon was rather swept away by Eastmancolor gore. However, thanks to Tourneur's subtle direction and MacGinnis's knowing performance, it has long been a favourite of genre aficionados and has exerted a considerable influence on hit chillers like Richard Donner's The Omen (1981). Kenneth Branagh was rumoured to be keen on revisiting James's 1911 story. But, hopefully, this is one horror classic that can escape the curse of the remake.

Five decades hence, few film-makers will be queuing up to rework Takao Nakano's Big Tits Zombie, a 3-D schlocker whose appeal will be strictly limited to the post-pub crowd looking for some undemanding nonsense to consume with their kebabs. Based on Rei Mikamoto's manga, Kyonyu Dragon, this is a typically tasteful outing from the director responsible for Sexual Parasite: Killer Pussy (2005), Sumo Vixens (2001) and ExorSister (1994).

Returning to Japan from a miserable trip to Mexico, exotic dancer Sora Aoi is persuaded by her shifty manager to accept a gig in the rundown Paradise hot spring resort. As there are precious few punters to entertain, Aoi sets about getting better acquainted with workmates Io Aikawa, Tamayo, Risa Kasumi and Mari Sakurai. However, when boredom lures them into the basement, Aoi is powerless to prevent Sakuri's rebellious goth from opening a forbidding tome and reciting an incantation that unleashes a shuffling army of ravenous zombies.

Nakano only has one intention in this gleefully manic mix of sex, slaughter and surrealism and that is to plumb the depths of exploitation in all their stereoscopic glory. The splatter effects are adequate enough, but the sporadic 3-D doesn't really work on a small screen and offers little besides the odd flying entrail and incidence of buxom titillation. The performances are similarly eye-catching as opposed to convincing, with porn stars Aoi and Kasumi receiving passable support from pin-up Mari Sakurai and shock comic Minoru Torihada. Consequently, while this has its grotesque and goofy moments, it's insufficiently amusing or salacious to be anything more than a gimmicky romp.

Kevin Hamedani's Zombies of Mass Destruction is something of an improvement. But this grisly satire on conservative attitudes in Dubya's America too often opts for cheap laughs and easy scares, with the consequence that it winds up feeling more cartoonish than horrific.

Despite being born and raised in Fort Gamble, an island community off the coast of Washington state, college student Janette Armand has always been viewed as an outsider because of her Iranian antecedents. But, following the attack on the Twin Towers, her ignorant neighbours have become entirely convinced that she is a terrorist waiting to strike. Such bigotry forced gay businessman Doug Fahl to move away. But he has returned to introduce boyfriend Cooper Hopkins to mother Linda Jensen.

Unfortunately, his arrival coincides with an attack by an undead horde of unspecified origin and Fahl and Hopkins are barricaded into the local church so that evangelical minister Bill Johns can attempt to cure them and deliver the town from evil. Equally small-minded mayor James Mesher places the blame squarely on Saddam Hussein and Armand is captured by demented neo-con Russell Hodgkinson, who subjects her to a rigorous loyalty test before nailing her foot to the floor. Outside, however, the zombies are continuing their rampage and iconoclastic teacher Cornelia Moore is going to need some help to stop them.

Heavy-handed in its digs at backwoods Republicanism, this is neither amusing nor acute. However, the cast works hard at making the homophobic and jingoistic stereotypes as loathsome as possible and the make-up effects are gushingly effective. But this all seems a little less like a rollicking fantasy after Pastor Terry Jones's recent bid to burn the Koran in the grounds of his Florida church.

To his credit, Hamedani makes solid use of the small-town locale and the debuting Andrew Shortell similarly exploits his deserted hospital setting to the full in Psych: 9. However, the occasional shot of a CCTV screen or the flickering of a faltering light fitting can only do so much to disguise the shortcomings of this mediocre offering from the M. Night Shyamalan school of self-consciously clever thrillers.

With cabby husband Gabriel Mann already working nights, Sara Foster is happy to accept old friend Colleen Camp's offer of the graveyard shift at the local hospital in order to earn a little extra money. However, as her duties solely involve sorting through the medical records stored in the basement, she quickly becomes bored and wanders up to the fifth floor to chat over pizza with psychiatrist Cary Elwes. Naturally, Foster is slightly spooked by cop Michael Biehn's warning that a hammer-wielding serial killer nicknamed the Nighthawk has been seen prowling the grounds. But she feels safe in Elwes's company, even though the things that keep going bump in the night remind her of the childhood traumas that still haunt her dreams.

Despite some capable performances and Hamedani's ability to wring the odd shock (particularly during Foster's flashbacks and hallucinations), this variation on the old dark house scenario owes most to art director David Baxa and sound designer Michael Powell, as this is much stronger on atmosphere than it is on action. Each abandoned interior seethes with menace. But the storyline is nowhere near as disconcerting, despite the growing suspicion that Foster may not be quite the passive victim she initially seems.

Carlos Brooks follows suit in making decent use of the labyrinthine spaces devised by Mark Garner for Burning Bright, but that's about the only thing to be said in favour of this asinine creature feature that sees safari park owner Garret Dillahunt attempt to scoop an insurance payment by barricading stepkids Briana Evigan and Charlie Tahan into his old dark house during a storm, along with a ravenous tiger named Lucifer.

Evigan works hard as the resourceful twentysomething desperate to keep her autistic brother safe. But the dismal tone is set during the opening exchange between Dillahunt and circus owner Meatloaf, as they haggle at the side of the road over the tiger's value. It gets no better, as Evigan argues with Dillahunt over the theft of the savings she was going to use to pay for Tahan's care while she took up a student scholarship. But even after the reliance on hackneyed dialogue has passed, things scarcely improve as Evigan strives to stay one step ahead of the prowling predator, who seems intent on letting her off the hook at every available opportunity.

The beast is ferociously handsome and Miklos Wright's camera roves the narrow corridors to menacing effect. But the matte work is mediocre and, as is so often the case in modern horror movies, the combination of jerky camera movements and rapid editing reduces the critical action to an incoherent blur that is more infuriating than visceral.

Despite being set in a rambling mansion in the English countryside, Jonathan Glendening's 13 Hrs similarly rehashes the prowling predator theme.

Prodigal daughter Isabella Calthorpe returns home to find stepfather Simon MacCorkindale fretting over the bills and the urgent need to complete some maintenance work. But when he turns in for an early night, she goes to the barn in search of her brothers and friends. Old faithful Tom Felton is delighted to see her, but she receives a frostier reception from stepbrother Peter Gadiot and best friend Gemma Atkinson, who has started dating Gadiot since dumping Calthorpe's ex-boyfriend, Joshua Bowman.

A thaw sets in after a few drinks and they head back to the house for more booze. But, on entering, they find that MacCorkindale and the family dog have been torn to shreds and they only just manage to scamper from a rapidly gaining creature. Trapped in the eaves, and with Calthorpe's younger brother, Anthony De Liseo, still dozing on hay bales in the barn, the group decide that Calthorpe should act as a decoy while sibling Gabriel Thomson calls for help from their parents' bedroom. He gets through and trapper John Lynch braves the stormy night with local copper, Cornelius Clarke. But his quarry isn't any old animal, but a werewolf intent on wiping out the whole family within 13 hours.

Guarding its secrets reasonably well, this is an accomplished outing from the producers of Dog Soldiers (2002). Crisply photographed by Jordan Cushing and edited by Adrian Murray, the action is strewn with clichés and caricatures. But Glendening and his young cast make the most of them, as the body count rises and the awful truth slowly begins to emerge. With the lycanthrope wisely consigned to the shadows for much of the time and the carnage kept to a minimum, this is admirably brisk and brusque.

Another missing person drives the action in Johnny Kevorkian's The Disappeared. Released from a care home six months after his younger brother wandered off while he was supposed to be looking after him, Harry Treadaway returns to his South London flat and a hostile reception from unforgiving father Greg Wise. He watches coverage of the police press conference on video and suspects he can hear his sibling's voice in the background. He even thinks he sees him around the estate. But best mate Tom Felton is sceptical and it's only when his sister vanishes that Treadaway finally decides to do a little paranormal investigating.

Rooted in both the social realist and the post-Hammer horror tradition sustained by Amicus, Tigon, Tyburn and Benmar, this is an edgy chiller that becomes increasingly disturbing as Treadaway stumbles across satanic forces bent on causing murderous mayhem from an underground labyrinth. The use of the capital's concrete jungles and sinister backstreets is excellent. But Kevorkian also has plenty to say about domestic dysfunction, gang culture, the declining influence of religion and the manipulative power of the media.

The whole point of torture porn is to aggravate its opponents. Most will join the chorus of disapproval without actually bothering to watch what they're protesting against. Even fewer will recognise that their revulsion matters more to the director than the knowing gasps of the appreciative genre audience. Lars von Trier knew this when he produced Antichrist (2009) and Dutch provocateur Tom Six plays the same game, perhaps with even greater acuity, in The Human Centipede (First Sequence), right down to ensuring that everyone is aware that he had the idea for the film while joking with friends that the best way to punish a child molester was to stitch their mouth to the anus of an obese trucker.

Unsurprisingly, this calculating shocker has divided the critics, with some tutting in dismay, others applauding the Frankensteinian audacity of the conceit and others still expressing detached disdain while appreciating Six's ability to whip up the precise response he set out to achieve. Few, however, have suggested that The Human Centipede is actually rather tame. The BBFC passed it uncut, as much of the truly hideous action occurs off screen, and veterans of the Hostel and Saw franchises could well find themselves stifling yawns between emitting the occasional chuckle at the gleefully bleak gallows humour and deliberately outré performances.

American twentysomethings Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie are travelling in Europe and have been invited to a party in the back of beyond by a German waiter. Naturally, they get lost, puncture a tyre and resort to bickering as they teeter through the woods on high heels looking for help. Just as it starts to rain, however, they see a light in a remote house and ask the sinisterly taciturn occupant if he will call their rental car company. As we have already seen Dieter Laser stalking truck driver Rene de Wit with a rifle, it's pretty safe to assume that he has no intention of phoning anybody and two glasses of rohypnolled water seal the women's fate.

By the time they come to, Williams and Yennie are tethered to beds in Laser's underground laboratory and they watch in horror as he murders De Wit for being surgically incompatible with them. The next time the pair wake, they have been joined by Japanese tourist Akihiro Katsuro and are treated to an overhead projector presentation, in which Laser explains that while he made his name by separating conjoined twins, his real obsession lies in creating single life forms from multiple components. His previous experiment with three rottweilers ended unhappily, but he is nevertheless ready to attempt a human procedure involving oral-anal linkage.

As Laser anaesthetises her companions, Williams manages to free herself and hide in a bedroom. However, Laser smashes the window and sends Williams fleeing into his pool room, where he stands over her, rifle in hand, as she bobs helplessly in the water. A power cut affords another chance to escape, but Williams is sufficiently loyal to Yennie to go back and rescue her and she pays the price by being felled with a tranquilliser dart as she tries to haul her friend's comatose body across the lawn.

A short surgical montage ensues and Laser is soon rousing his creature from its slumbers, with Williams having been placed in the middle as punishment for her intransigence. There's no denying the grotesqueness of the aberration that Laser has fashioned, but strategically placed bandages mask the full extent of the degradingly barbaric connections. Consequently, only some livid cheek scars and the perpetual whimpering of the terrified women convey any sense of the pain and humiliation experienced by the unholy trinity as Laser first attempts to teach his new pet to fetch his paper and then watches in sadistic delight as Williams takes disgusting sustenance after Katsuro has eaten.

But Laser's triumph is short-lived, as he has been careless in covering his tracks and he makes an even bigger mistake in antagonising cops Andreas Leupold and Peter Blankenstein, who vow to return with a search warrant for his cellar. Moreover, Katsuro - who has been foiled in his efforts to alert the detectives to his presence - manages to get hold of a scalpel and he instigates a pitiless round of blood-letting that culminates in a gruesome twist on the Final Girl scenario.

Six has stressed the significance of the characters hailing from nations involved in the Second World War and the importance of the language barrier between Laser and Katsuro that prevents any meaningful interaction between the monstrosity and its creator. But while Laser consciously evokes a Nazi maniac capable of Mengele-like atrocities, the wartime allusion seems to be mere window-dressing to disguise the cynical attempt to hook the cult markets in America and Japan.

The influence of J-horror is certainly strong and Six is clearly indebted to the body horror of David Cronenburg. But the emphasis is much more firmly on suffering than suspense, with the result that this is a disappointingly mundane movie that rather lurches between key moments with an awkwardness to match that of the human hybrid. Laser makes a splendidly malevolent villain, but his panicked reaction to Leupold and Blankenstein's snooping is clumsily unconvincing and the action rather collapses in on itself after Katsuro's poignant speech about deserving a better fate, in spite of his many, but minor flaws.

More time might profitably have been devoted to the trio coming to terms with its new state or Laser's efforts to bend it to his will. But Six seems disinterested in psychological chills and this prevents the film from having anything more than a mild gross-out effect, when it might have moved away from the genre's trademark focus on humanity's dread of death to the much less explored fear of excruciation and physical mutilation.