Films can affect you in different ways. They can inspire, scare, amuse or, in this case, put you off going into a toilet cubicle alone for life.

Convict-ship captain Campbell (Paul Brooke) is the unlucky fellow caught short when there's a serial killer on the loose.

And he has the bad luck to be trapped on the loo while deranged psycho Leo Rook (Adamson) is lurking outside the toilet door. With a machete.

The scene is one of many in British chiller Lighthouse that makes you glad the film is only 20 minutes long. Actually, it's not - it's almost five times that.

But you'll have your hand across your eyes for most of that, as Leo slices his way through lighthouse-keepers, prison guards and escaped convicts.

We first meet the monster on board The Hyperion, a rusting prison hulk that comes to grief on a reef off the Gehenna Rocks in the North Sea.

Among the survivors is criminal psychologist Kirsty McCloud (Shelley), who is writing a thesis on Europe's most feared killing machine.

Also swept up on the beach is Richard Spader (Purefoy), a convicted murderer who insists he is innocent, partners in crime Spoons and Weevil (Pat Kelman and Bob Goody) and myopic probation officer Goslet (Warrington).

Waiting for them is Leo, who earlier made his murderous escape from the Hyperion, and who has already despatched two lighthouse-keepers and is sharpening his blade for the survivors.

On the plus side, director Hunter has evoked a bleakly claustrophobic atmosphere in the spiral staircases of the old lighthouse and the treacherous rocks picked out by the reflector beams.

On the minus side, some of the acting is criminal (even for a bunch of convicts), provoking unintentional laughs, while the dialogue creaks almost as much as the doomed Hyperion.

However, Hunter shows he is a master of the nerve-tingling set piece, which is really why you pay your money to see this sort of thing in the first place.

Tim Evans