URBAN LEGEND (cert 18) Running Time 99 mins. Starring Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Natasha Wagner, Michael Rosenbaum, Loretta Devine and Tara Reid. Directed by Jamie Blanks.

A group of American teeny-freshman students are taking a class in modern myths. Unfortunately, a roaming raving-mad campus slasher is loose and on the prowl for vulnerable young women to murder. Everyone is suspected.

The parallels to this film are too many to mention; suffice to say Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

The script is, rather sadly, a poor imitation of the above teen-gore films - lots of pretty young girls screaming around the place 'cos they're being chased by a man with a mask, hook, carving knife. (You know the script!)

Urban Legend may be urban, but it certainly won't become a legend. The acting - or should I say the mildly impressive range of screams and gasps all actors in this movie seem to possess - is rubbish.

But, to be fair, the concept is hardly ground-breaking, so the buck has to stop with the scriptwriter, distributer, director. I mean, if you like teen-gore films - and there are certainly a lot of people who do - then you'll probably dig this dirt.

But re-make after re-make of glossy, I Know How You Screamed Last Halloween type-films is frankly laughable and tiresome.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.