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This is an intriguing, exciting, dreem-wip of a revisionist superhero movie for about ten minutes when Sean Connery's doing an antique, prequel James Bond routine in Africa at the start.

After that, the only problem is the rest of the picture. And, as the punchline to a very old joke goes, "And the good news is...there's plenty of it."

I haven't read the Alan Moore comic book, so other than the general portentous plod of the overall enterprise due to lack of humour - the one trustworthy Achilles' Heel of probably the best writer comics ever produced - can't tell what was his fault and what we could paper-bag, set on fire, and lay at the door of the movie-makers' responsible.

This is probably not the first "high concept" movie to be all high-concept and otherwise entirely devoid of content, but it sure sets a lofty standard.

The basic idea is a period superhero team movie, and you could as easily call them The League of Out-of-Copyright Superheros. We've got the guy from "King Solomon's Mines", a minor character from "Dracula", Dr Jekyll and his famous alter-ego the Incredible Cockney Hulk, some bloke who knew the Invisible Man (why would I make this up?), and Captain Nemo from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea".

My favourites are Oscar Wilde's "Dorian Gray" as an invulnerable immortal - that whirring noise you're hearing is Oscar-baby reaching CD-playing speeds as he revolves in his grave - and the inclusion of Tom Sawyer as a US government agent (which agency remains a closely guarded secret between the screenwriter and his barber) - a conception only matched in its gratuitousness by its under-writing.

The initial plot is vaguely intriguing, so having hooked you with that, they abandon it about one ice-hockey period into the movie. No fooling. It's just "We've changed our minds and now we're going over here." You'd need gallons of cement and complete hunks of Stonehenge to fill in the holes in the writing throughout. If you're a fan of Deus Ex Machina type balderdash in plot-construction, such as the above, please enjoy the use of one character - just in case you're awake by that point, I won't spoil it by naming him/her for you - who disappears entirely from the picture for enormous swathes of it, only to re-appear to save the day out of nowhere when the plot hits yet another giant iceberg and all hope for the writers appears lost.

Apart from leaning heavily on the names of characters painfully extracted from their original fictional settings, they do nothing with them at all. It could as easily have been the Michelin Man as Dorian Gray, the blonde guy from Scooby Doo for Tom Sawyer, Allen Funt as Allan Quartermain, etc etc.

On the plus-side they've spent a lot of money right where you can see it, they eventually get to some action here and there (you know, explosions, gratuitous kung fu, and stuff), and it's all real LOUD in case your attention drifts off towards doing your laundry, or buying bread on the way home every ten minutes or so.

The only actor detectable in the picture is Sean Connery. The woman playing Mina Harker provides some added action-value wrestling with her accent, which skews all over the joint from Sydney's suburbs to various locales in London and rural England. They obviously told the Johnny Depp-looking guy playing Dorian Gray to keep his trick facial hair in shot and otherwise stand around looking bored, and he does a fabulous job in both regards.

Plum role must go the poor schlub landed with Captain Nemo. He has to chew all his dialogue through two ZZ Top members' worth of facial hair, which is probably meant to make him look mysterious, but is likely to draw considerable acclaim as the only detectable hilarity in the movie. He comes over like a tired, cranky shop-keeper, and either the guy's real short, or they've deliberately shot him to look like a midget. For little apparent reason twice in the picture he breaks out into his own fighting code - Sword-Fu. If it wasn't for Unnecessary Tom Sawyer, this would probably be a lock for dullest performance in the movie this year. (Except the yard-long beard, which should probably get a special comedy Oscar).

I can't wait for the next "League of Public Domain Superheros". Just imagine who we'll encounter in that one. Frankenstein's caterer, The Little Engine that Could, the Wolfman's cousin Myron, Pippi Longstocking, Lenny & Squiggy, Bill Sykes from "Oliver Twist" - the skies are the limit.

By the by, just when you think they've hit on something moderately conclusive and viable for the ending, they go and pimp on that too.

If you like big, dumb pictures where the villain puts the heroes through all manner of scantily-written trials and then they FIGHT BACK AND WIN - you know, like nine out of ten mainstream pictures - and everything explodes and it's all at AC/DC concert volume - then see "The League of Ultra-Ordinary Gentlefolk", because it's got all that stuff down to a skit. Otherw die-hard laugh-chasers might want to watch for Captain Nemo's comedy beard, or at least hope it stars in its own series of spin-off movies.

Up until Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" came along, this was arguably the best feature-length movie adaptation of an existing comics character. Maybe it still is.

The script and direction took the shrewd-ish tack of giving the characters of Tracy, his girlfriend and the Madonna character a little breadth and humanity, while retaining the grotesque nature of the Chester Gould villains which drove the comic strip. There are some concepts of loyalty, morality and personal ethic examined in the Tracy character reminiscent of the John Woo approach in some of his Hong Kong movies with Chow Yun Fat.

They manage to pull this off without dulling down the narrative, and without clashing with the highly stylised, cartoonish and riotously played villains, which is some feat.

When I saw this on release with a friend, we both thought it was an obvious major hit, and one that would become a favourite on video and in revival screenings. Actually it seems pretty much forgotten now. It was probably more intricate than the action movie crowd of the time really wanted (not that it's any devastating mental challenge or anything) and the idea of a superhero movie with at least the rudiments of heart and "issues" (crime v society/personal morality/what makes the hero tick etc) in a superhero type setting probably didn't come into its own in the mainstream until the "Spider-Man" movie.

Anyway, it's overlooked. Everything about it shows craft and care, from the design (particularly use of colour), visual direction, and the music. (Of the three soundtrack albums I believe there were, skip the instrumental one, and the Madonna songs one, and try and get the "various artists" song one, which is one of the best and most varied soundtracks of original material to accompany any movie.)

The battle between Al Pacino's caricature Al Capone character and Beatty's Tracy makes this come off as a musical and sometimes comedy (controlled) parody of Brian De Palma's movie version of "The Untouchables" - or "alternate-universe" version of that film - which is probably not an accident. It works on that level very well, and also on enough other levels to more than hold the attention.

Consistently enjoyable and refreshingly non-stupid big movie overdue for rediscovery, but with its current status, this would take some muscular archaeological work

This movie seems to have fallen through the cracks, in the sense that, of all the conventional westerns made around that time, this isn't one of them, and nobody seems to have found anything much to say about it.

It's supposedly a remake of "The Sea Wolf" (I haven't seen that) from the same source novel by Jack London.

A fairly evil joker (played by Raymond Massey) runs a gold mine like it's the prison work camp from "Cool Hand Luke". But there's no slow-burning, cool-talkin' anti-heroes here - Massey is the most dynamic character in the film, most of the men in his charge are a dim mob, and everybody is flawed in one way or another.

One man comes to town looking like the hero, but he's on the run from prison, not notably moral or likeable, and he gets beaten to a pulp by either the major heel, or the minor ones, on a regular basis throughout the picture.

There's a disgraced former judge who Massey keeps around apparently for personal amusement, who talks of faith and morals, but is a slave to the bottle.

And there's a well-spoken nosey gent, who also talks a good game but has a bad leg, and is even victimised by the comedy relief. The comedy relief, by the way, isn't funny, but is one of the more memorably slimy characterisations to turn up in a Western before the spaghetti westerns of a later period. Even the female love interest is on the run from prison.

Weird movie, due to the unusual perspective in which the most hateful character in the flick is also presented as clearly the most interesting, dynamic, and in some ways, admirable character.

"Barricade" is probably worth more attention than it's had, for all its flaws, including some weak acting among the featured characters, and some of the more memorably lousy fight scenes in Hollywood history.

Never really heard of director Peter Godfrey before, and his CV doesn't really include anything that would pointer you towards this, let alone what to expect out of "Barricade". If it comes up on TV, and you're not violently allergic to westerns, you might want to give it a look.