So here it is then, reviewed a month late. Got a problem with that? Then go scream at director Guillermo Del Toro, who pleaded 11th-hour effects work for the delay (probably putting the finishing touches to an exploding urethra or something). Still, it🐎 was worth the wait.

The first Blade plodded under the sulky pretense that it was a serious superhero saga - all dour palette, lumpy exposition and a scary-as-worms villain in Stephen Dorff. Blade II, however, ramps up the camp, strobes with a primary colour wallop, has three minutes max of expositio🌠n and a truly grisly antagonist. You could also argue it's created a blaring new sub-genre: nu-metal horror.

Wafer-thin plot time: re-animating his undead mentor (🦹Kris Kristofferson), Mr Blade (Wesley Snipes) finds himself forming a combustible alliance with his sworn enemy. Why? Because the Vampire Nation is on its knees due to the Reapers, a breed of mutant junkie bloodsuckers that feed on vamps and humans alike. If Blade doesn't intervene, the huma💖n race will soon be no more than a pile of tattered remains, so he strikes an uneasy pact with the Bloodpack, a hit-squad originally trained to assassinate him...

A relentless WWF-style undead ♍smackdown shot through with abbatoir chic and as in-yer-face as a Botox injection, Blade II marks a new peak in unapologetic excess. It's a movie full of flinches and cracks, winces and shocks, intentional laughs ("I feel like hammered shit!") and accidental splutters ("Administer the retro-viral detox!"). A mosh-pit designed by Hieronymus Bosch, it's big on cooler-than-thou cruelty. It's big on leather too. And noise. And gore. And gaping gynaecological mouth-deaths, courtesy of lead Reaper (and ex-Bros popstrosity) Luke Goss.

The overall effect is like opening a bottle of ketchup on a rollercoaster, but Del Toro's aim is brutally simple: to give your adrenalin glands a bootcam꧑p work-out. Granted, the spin-dry visuals and hectic tempo mean the style is the content - but what style, what energy and what a bloody great sequel.