Five years have passed and the ghost-busting exorcisers have fallen on hard times.

Two of them (Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson) are reduced to entertaining at children's parties.

But help is at hand, in the form of a medieval madman who escapes from a painting and terrorises the city.

All the cast from the first film (that means Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis and sundry minor players) are reunited for this snappy sequel which provides a serviceable, if highly unlikely dose of spooky fun.

The special effects are perhaps not quite so spectacular as in the original, but this one does have a mobile Statue of Liberty to help clean up the bad guys, and a good sprinkling of laconic lines, of which, as usual, Murray makes the most in his deadpan fashion.

Moranis, too, scores again as the nerdish assistant.

A bit scary for younger children.