IT'S the clash of the horror movie titans.

In the red corner: razor-fingered child murderer Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) from the Nightmare On Elm Street films; and in the blue corner: machete-wielding behemoth Jason Vorhees (Ken Kirzinger) from the Friday The 13th series.

Two iconic figures who have thus far haunted completely separate worlds - Freddy stalking victims in their dreams, Jason running amok in the real world - until now.

In Ronny Hu's long-mooted horror-thriller, these two fearsome big screen boogiemen meet disfigured face-to-hockey mask in a showdown to prove who's the scariest of them all.

It should be a thrilling encounter, were it not for the workmanlike efforts of scriptwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift.

Freddy Krueger has been condemned to Hell for all eternity for his murderous sins. He is unable to terrorise the children of Elm Street in their dreams because their parents are doping them up with sleep suppressants. So the razor-clawed killer hatches a devious plan and hoodwinks the recently resurrected Jason Voorhees into stalking the youngsters Elm Street instead.

Caught between Freddy in their nightmares and Jason in the real world, plucky teens Will (Jason Ritter), Lori (Monica Keena) and Kia (Kelly Rowland) hatch their own outlandish plot: to drag Freddy into reality and then turn the two killers against one another.

Freddy Vs Jason opens with brief summaries of the Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th mythologies then ploughs straight into the bloodthirsty mayhem. The film adheres to all the classic horror movie conventions - the couple who have sex are doomed to a sticky end - and makes sure to include all of the necessary iconography.

Fans of each respective boogieman will no doubt thrill to all of these visual signposts, but once the nostalgia subsides, Freddy Vs Jason boasts only a few genuine thrills and spills. The young cast attempts to deliver the hokey dialogue with a straight face, which is a tall order considering the implausibility of the set-up and some of the Herculean leaps in logic.

Englund and Kirzinger go through the motions as the titular combatants, right up to the spectacular if somewhat overblown final showdown.

See it at UCI, Odeon