THE latest film by Newport director Julian Richards will be shown at a prestigious horror film festival this weekend.

The Last Horror Movie is on the bill of the Frightfest which is the UK's largest slasher, suspense, and gore-fest.

It tells the tale of a serial killer who uses a horror video rental to lure his victims.

What begins as a teen slasher style film develops into a disturbing journey of Max Perry, a mild mannered wedding photographer with a taste for human flesh.

The grissly scenario is not untypical of Newport's Mr Richards. His work includes the eerie Darklands which was set in Port Talbot.

That film was about industrial corruption and paganism as investigated by a reporter for a local paper.

The follow-up, Silent Cry, was a conspiracy thriller, but he's back on familiarly bloody ground with The Last Horror Movie.

'After touring the horror film festival circuit with my first feature film, Darklands and watching hundreds of new horror films from all over the world I concluded that the genre had become stale and too predictable to truly affect today's more sophisticated audience,' said Mr Richards.

'So, I set out to deconstruct the old values of the genre, then reconstruct them in an ultra real video diary as if the film were made by a real life serial killer.

'Of course one can draw comparisons with the current reality TV fads, Big Brother, I'm A Celebrity etc, but my real influence came from becoming addicted to News 24 after the September 11th attacks on America.

'Right now, reality is so much more profound than fiction and I find it increasingly more difficult to become involved in a TV drama or feature film that doesn't reflect in some way, the extraordinary times in which we live.

'But on a less serious note, I'm a terrible practical joker, and as my uncle Eddie from Pontypool put it, I made this film 'to put the wind up the population'. The Last Horror Movie is quite simply designed to scare the living daylights out of its audience and from the stunned reaction of the audience in Cannes, I'm pretty sure I delivered.

'In fact, it is reputed to be one of the nastiest films to be given a certificate in some years.'

At Frightfest it will be among good company with the UK premiere of Jeepers Creepers II and the debut feature by the one-time frontman of White Zombie, Rob Zombie, House of a Thousand Corpses.

Last year's films went on to to be the biggest horror hits of the year including One Horror Photo starring Robin Williams.

* The Frightfest is at the Prince Charles Cinema, Soho, London from tonight to Bank Holiday Monday. Dial 020 7494 3654 or surf to www.frightfest.co.uk for more information.