During the Mexican-American war a cowardly army officer accidentally ingests human blood while hiding under a pile of corpses. Turns out it's good for what ails ye. When a movie makes you want to be a cannibal it must be said that it has succeeded on every level.

I personally don't eat animal effluents, guts, embryos nor muscle tissue. But I'm not strictly speaking a vegetarian, because this movie cured me of any quaintly outmoded scruples against the consumption of, as Lovecraft put it, "the meat one can neither raise nor buy", something "more the same".

What a beautiful movie. Not a single dull scene nor insipid line of dialogue nor cardboard character. Okay I could have done without the stoner guy - we even have to have a stoner in Westerns now? But Robert Carlyle as Colqhoun especially is just sick. I was going to say I even had the rare experience of enjoying action scenes, but then realised these aren't action scenes at all, they're horror violence. That's a distinction most horror movies fail to understand. Shooting at the monster with a post hole digger while orchestra hits are going off is action; people butchering each other for meat while this sound is shifting your insides is horror.

Most fantastic, unforgettable, hardest working soundrack I've ever heard in any film. Gave me the chills, tears, and a shit-eating grin all at once, so I now own exactly one horror movie soundtrack, and I'd sooner part with my digitally remastered blu-plasma holodisc of Bananarama's greatest hits. You know how TV chefs always harp don't cook with wine you wouldn't drink? I don't know about that, but I say if you wouldn't listen to a piece of music on it's own it has no business being in a movie, or anywhere else for that matter. But instead film after film is saturated with Brand X freeze-dried artificial nonfat pasteurised musical substitute (not kidding - www.brandxmusic.net). I can count on my fingers the number of horror movie sountracks I even remember three notes of. Halloween, The Shining, Suspiria, maybe Phantasm...

All that's enough to make it a good movie, but what makes it a great movie for me is the wonderful and rare phenomenon of actually buying into a story's psychological mumbo-jumbo. When a sick compulsion takes root in one's fragile, quivering brain there are basically two paths to take. One may, like Colqhoun, embrace it, revel in it, run headlong into its beckoning arms and to hell with the consequences; or, like Boyd and Hart, become sickened by what it makes one do, and what one has lost, and seek only the release of oblivion. If you had to choose, would you be a cannibal, or would you be meat? That's real stuff.

Tip: You really need to be eating something while you watch this film for maximum enjoyment - preferrably something hot, red and salty.