Picturesque Pettigo turned into a film set for cult movie company's gory comeback

Offensive? Puerile? Well, it made me laugh ...

The homegrown blend of Victorian melodrama and gothic is back

THE NEXT Star Wars film is scheduled for release on 4 May. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith will doubtless be the blockbuster of the summer. There may be many reasons why the producers and distributors want to release it on May the fourth. It is a bank holiday weekend so there will be an extra day when schoolchildren will be able to crowd into the morning and afternoon performances. It will also still be in the multiplexes for half term a few weeks later.

The Big Picture

James Herbert was born in 1943 in east London. After leaving art college, he worked as art director in an advertising firm. In 1979 he published his first book, 'The Rats', which became a bestseller. Nineteen books on, he has sold more than 42 million novels worldwide. He lives in West Sussex with his wife, Eileen. They have three daughters

WOULD WEATHERMEN be isobarred and vicars taken out of service? (JR Gore). And still they flood in, those appropriate sackings. So much excellent material was omitted, I will be self-publishing a Creativity Extra (magazine) to give it all a platform. Watch this space.

New Year's Day car chase charge

Blood-sucking fiends are back on our screens - the undead are out to get us all.

`The Wicker Man' soundtrack is available after 25 years.

This week sees the release of Alex The Crow Proyas' latest film Dark City, starring Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland and William Hurt. An ambitious, futuristic fantasy with a neo-noir feel, it shows Sewell's character Murdoch begin to question the very nature of reality, as he discovers a fiendish Underworld deep below the earth, inhabited by a people known as The Strangers.

Ten Thousand pounds a minute is not a bad rate of pay in any sport. For a chess game, however, it is extraordinary. Yet that was the rate at which Michael Adams added to his prize money when he defeated Nigel Short in the quarter-finals of the World Chess Championship in Groningen in the Netherlands on Christmas Day. With this victory, Adams has established himself as England's leading player, nudging Short into second place.

It's 26 years now since Christopher Lee last made a horror film. But that won't stop Marianne Brace saying `fangs for the memory' to cinema's own Prince of Darkness.

The Wicker Man, Pictureville Bradford (01274 732277)