Preview: Frightfest, Odeon West End, London

The dead will walk again

The festival's opening film is Land of the Dead, by the legendary horror director George A Romero. There will also be screenings of his Living Dead trilogy. Other highlights are the world premiere of Wild Country, a Scottish werewolf film, directed by Craig Strachan. Antibodies, by the German director Christian Alvart, is a bleak look at the serial killer. The closing-night film, Wolf Creek, a debut for the director Greg McLean, is based on the true story of the backpacker-killer who held the Outback in a grip of terror in the early 1990s.

The Evil Aliens cast includes Jodie Shaw, who plays the actress sent by a television crew to do a reconstruction of the alien abduction. "She transforms from a moaning actress to a full-on action heroine," says West about her role. "I made it as a valentine to a lot of the fun and gory splatter movies that I saw as a kid.

"A lot of good film-makers started in horror," West points out. "Sam Raimi [who made the Evil Dead trilogy] went on to do Spiderman I and II, and Peter Jackson [responsible for the ultimate splatterfests Bad Taste and Braindead] went on to do the Lord of the Rings films and King Kong. I am trying to follow in those film-makers' footsteps."

26-29 August (0871 221 4007)