“Dey’re Briddish movies - I can tell by de way dey tawk!”

Screamtime has a certain amount of last-gaspness about it - it's possibly the last true British anthology (although it wasn't filmed as such), it comes from a time long after the British horror industry had ceased being a rampant success, and it's got David Van Day out of 80s pop duo Dollar in it.

But it's also very good - surprisingly so, in fact. And the extra bits filmed to make the collection of three short films into an anthology (and bring a bit of American appeal to the proceedings) are so fantastically bad that they only improve the situation.

What we actually have is a trio of low budget horror shorts which have been spliced together using an even lower-budget American linking narrative. The American stuff has to be seen to be believed - it involves two men who steal a handful of video tapes from a rental store, go round to a girl's flat and watch them. They all have broad Noo Yawk accents and the girl is only there so she can take her clothes off and add a bit of sauce to the proceedings. In her limited screen time she manages to take a soapy shower and have sex with one of the men after they lose interest in the films and leave their colleague alone in front of the goggle box.

There's not a great deal of nudity once the British stuff gets going, but there is a surprising amount of horror and blood.

The first tale involves a Punch And Judy man and "born loser" called George who is getting grief from all sides of his family - neither his wife or his stepson take his job seriously, and they want to move to Canada (which for some reason will involve him burning all his puppets).

When the stepson (Bread’s Jonathan Morris - sample dialogue: "I should've been born a fuckin' puppet!") accidentally sets fire to the Punch and Judy stall during a fight (by knocking an unlit electric lamp onto it), something snaps and people start getting bludgeoned to death.

"I know who did it..." claims the distraught George to a doctor who's turned up apropos of nothing. "I know, I heard his voice. First the baby, then it's Judy... Then next it's always the doctor!”

Mr Punch has always been terrifying, so you can overlook any dodgy effects or plot holes when you see the little chap looming out of the dark screaming "What a pity! What a pity! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!"

So... so far, so scary. But the second story is better, involving a haunted house scenario and looking and feeling like one of the better episodes of the Hammer House Of Horror tv series. Sue (who wears the biggest pair of specs this side of Sue Pollard) is having trouble settling down in her new house. Blood keeps turning up everywhere, there's a spooky child riding a Raleigh Chopper around her garden, and she keeps hearing noises during the night. Then, in a spectacular "whoah!" moment, a man brandishing a knife runs silently past her open bedroom door and vanishes. Thinking she must be experiencing a haunting, she calls in a medium - but the medium can't sense anything. What's going on...?

Not only is this a genuinely disturbing segment, it also has a great twist ending and a really nasty death at the end, which wouldn't look out of place in an Italian gore movie. Screamtime is worth seeing for this bit alone...

"Preddy good, huh? Not that I get scared or nothin', cos I know they're just actors..." mumbles our fellow viewer as we get treated to another gratuitous shot of his naked lady friend.

The final story involves David "Burger" Van Day, who plays a hard-up pretty boy yob who takes a gardening job with a couple of old dears to earn a bit of spare cash. He's soon realised that they have a lot of money stored in the house, and decides to help himself. Unfortunately, he's not counted on their addled tales of fairies and gnomes at the bottom of their garden being true. If you can overlook the not-very-terrifying use of real garden gnomes as an instrument of horror, this story too has its moments (usually when someone meets a sticky end), and it plays like a weaker Amicus segment.

All in all, Screamtime is a forgotten classic. The American stuff is pure exploitation, but all three British stories are intelligent and well done (apart from the gnomes). I don't know what the shorts were paired up with at the cinema back in the 80s, but I wouldn't have liked to have come across the middle one without any prior warning....