"Beware the moon," a Mystic Meg type tells a couple of airhead valley girls on the Pacific boardwalk in Los Angeles.

The warning is just the first of a boggling parade of horror clichés wheeled out by Wes "Nightmare on Elm Street" Craven in this goofy werewolf yarn.

But, although they may be clichés... they're good clichés and no one knows much better than Craven how to martial them into a decent frightener.

This falls somewhere between the genuine terror of his Elm Street series and the playful spoofing of the Scream run of horror parodies.

Orphaned siblings Ellie (Ricci) and Jimmy (Eisenberg) are driving through the dark on Mulholland Drive high in the Hollywood Hills when they hit something.

Swerving across the carriageway, they shunt another car off the road. The driver - the dim brunette given the lunar warning earlier - is trapped in the wreckage.

Just when Ellie and Jimmy think they've got her out something with big teeth and attitude grabs her and drags her away into the undergrowth.

In the confusion, the pair are bitten and scratched by the mysterious beast... and begin to feel kinda funny. Like, you know, really weird.

Thanks to the quality of the cast and spiky dialogue (it's best to ignore the plot), this turns out to be a thoroughly entertaining romp.

Eisenberg as the nerdy teen who Googles his way to werewolf literacy is particularly good. Good enough, in fact, to deliver lines like: "I'm not gay, I'm cursed."

Happy Days' Scott Baio gamely comes on to send himself up and there's some wry poking of fun at the vacuous world of daytime television, where Ellie works as a hotshot producer.

It bowls along at fair lick, never out-stays its welcome and also serves as a source of respectable public health information.

Apparently, "there's no such thing as safe sex with a werewolf". Don't say you haven't been warned.

Tim Evans