Drag Me To Hell is a hoot, opening with the old Universal Pictures logo and a suitably overblown 1960s prologue. Violence is exaggerated and cartoonish.

On one occasion, when Mrs Ganush attempts to throttle Christine, the loans officer looks wildly around the room and her eyes settle on an anvil-like weight hanging, fortuitously, above the old woman’s head, suspended by a nearby pulley rope.

After she releases the rope, the heavy metal crashes onto Mrs Ganush’s skull and the demented crone’s peepers pop out of her skull across the room. A centrepiece fight in a car is equally amusing when Mrs Ganush attempts to bite chunks out of Christine’s face, only to realise she has lost her dentures during the struggle – gumming the poor girl to death simply won’t work. Lohman opens her mouth beautifully to scream as the special effects team smothers her in all manner of viscous bodily fluids.

Raver is stomach-churningly repulsive, while the supporting cast fit snugly into their roles, all keeping perfectly straight faces amid the hocus-pocus.

Raimi directs with brio and an impish grin, including a scene with a housefly settling on the camera lens, forcing a close-up of the insect casually cleaning its proboscis.

In an age when too many horror films have become little more than an exercise in sadism, Drag Me To Hell is a welcome throwback to more playful times.

Long may it continue.

DRAG ME TO HELL (Cert. 15, 98 mins)
Stars: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, David Paymer, Dileep Rao, Adriana Barraza, Reggie Lee
Directed by Sam Raimi