"I had a neighbour I knew could control the weather just by looking out the window."

Thus spake novelist Fay Weldon when trying to explain the thinking behind her disturbing story of the resentment and spite a mother's pregnancy can inspire.

It doesn't sound too promising...but with the attachment of Nicolas Roeg, who in Don't Look Now made one of the finest supernatural chillers ever, you might think something interesting might emerge.

It doesn't. It's less Don't Look Now than Don't Bother.

A hysterical mess of a plot, barking references to Odin, decidedly dodgy acting (step forward Rita Tushingham) and a DJ Peter Powell lookey-likey makes this an unintentionally hilarious potboiler.

And this despite Weldon's son Dan, who also co-wrote the script, insisting "you mustn't laugh at this film."

Well, you can't help it. English architect Liffey (Reilly) sets local hackles rising when she find herself up the stick while remodelling a ramshackle cottage.

It turns out the hovel has a history, although we never find out exactly what, and the news has really cheesed off Mabs (Richardson), a farmers' wife, amateur vintner and mother of three girls who is desperate for a boy.

Mind you, if Mabs is mad what about her mum? Played by a button-eyed Tushingham, she spends most of the movie staring malevolently over hedgerows or gathering used condoms.

Shooting off in all sorts of bizarre, totally unbelievable tangents, this also has room for Donald Sutherland to pop up as a career architect who throws it all in after finding an ancient stone with a hole in it.

Former Radio 1 DJ Peter Powell - or his lost twin - also wades in as Liffey's ineffectual hubby (Pearce) while William Houston plays Mab's hunky hubby Tucker, who literally enjoys a roll in the hay with obliging architect.

It's a rambling, incoherent Irish stew of superstition, fertility rites and maternity myth that reduces a decent cast to desperation in their bid to find a point to it all.

Not a return to form, then.

Tim Evans