Eastern Europe appears to be the destination of choice if you want to end up horribly mutilated and despatched with a gory flourish.

In the Hostel series and Severance, innocent out-of-towners ended up strangled with their innards - or worse - after a meet and greet with the locals.

This time out a motley crew of gung-ho mercenaries face the fight of their lives when confronted by an army of undead SS stormtroopers armed with supernatural powers.

Ex-Royal Marine DC, played by Stevenson, a sort of bargain basement Sean Connery, leads a careworn crew of mercenaries recruited by the slippery Hunt (Wadham).

Their mission is to secure an old World War II bunker in an Eastern European forest they suspect is the resting place of a hoard of Nazi gold.

However, things get complicated when they find a pile of bodies in the basement, including a "breather" - one that is still alive.

Worse still, one of the guns-for-hire guarding the subterranean compound gets a bullet in the arm - a slug that's fifty odd years old.

Without winning a BAFTA for originality (it's basically a gory collision between The Bunker and straight-to-landfill video release SS Doomtrooper) this nevertheless achieves what it sets out to do.

Handsomely shot in muted greys and greens with Scotland doubling up for Eastern Europe, it's a chillingly atmospheric piece played pleasingly straight.

Let's face it, you can't really go wrong with a spectral SS killer looming out of the mist...and director Barker wrings every shred of dread from the apparition.

The central premise - some guff alleging the Nazis were planning to teleport an army of crack troopers onto the White House lawn - is the sort of thing that might have flashed through the deranged Fuhrer's mind as he awaited the arrival of the Red Army in his bunker.

But elsewhere, it's as efficient as a blitzkrieg, boasting some genuinely chilling setpieces. If homegrown horror is your bag then this is the Reich stuff.

Tim Evans