Sky UK TV Guide

06:00 Sky Movies Preview
Entertainment A preview of upcoming films on Sky.

07:00 Sky Movies Preview
Entertainment A preview of upcoming films on Sky.

08:00 Hush Little Baby
Film Made-for-TV drama about a mother who, after suffering the death of her first daughter by drowning, believes that her new baby is being haunted by her dead child's spirit.

09:35 Dead Again
Film Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in this determinedly old-fashioned thriller in the tongue-in-chic Hitchcock tradition. He's a cynical LA private detective hired to research the background of amnesiac mystery woman Emma Thompson, who's obsessed by scissors and tormented by nightmares from someone else's life. An enjoyably overdone, stylish mix of films noirs trivia, eccentric plotting, gender-bender twists and razzle-dazzle turns, Branagh's darkly delicious reincarnation parody will keep you guessing right up until the deliriously OTT finale.

11:30 The Raven
Film The most flippant of Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe cycle, this is, nevertheless, a minor B-movie classic, and a cast containing Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and a young Jack Nicholson alone makes it a must-see. But there is also a script littered with throwaway one-liners and some unashamedly home-made special effects that add considerably to the charm of this beautifully pitched gothic romp. As the duelling masters of the black arts, Price and Karloff selflessly send up their screen images, but it's Lorre's performance of tipsy comic incompetence that lives in the memory.

13:05 Severance
Film Following his terror-on-the-tube-tale, Creep, British film-maker Christopher Smith here goes above ground and delivers a skilful blend of comedy and horror. Pitched somewhere between TV's The Office and British horror Dog Soldiers, this follows a group of armaments firm employees on a team-building weekend in rural Hungary. Lost in the woods, it's not long before the talented ensemble cast, headed by Human Traffic's Danny Dyer as a permanently stoned slacker, are caught up in something much more deadly than paintball games. Smith effectively switches between crowd-pleasing comedy and genuine suspense as he stages a series of gory deaths. Some might argue this is merely a disposable B-movie, but others will be won over by its sheer insouciance. After all, how many other slasher movies feature surface-to-air missiles?

14:50 Hush Little Baby
Film Made-for-TV drama about a mother who, after suffering the death of her first daughter by drowning, believes that her new baby is being haunted by her dead child's spirit.

16:25 The Top 10 Show
Entertainment A look at the biggest films in the UK and US charts, featuring clips of the best movies on offer at the cinema.

16:40 Sphere
Film A submerged spacecraft from the future containing a golden sphere that has the ability to physically manifest the darkest fears of anyone who enters its enigmatic interior is at the centre of this cerebral adaptation of Michael Crichton's bestselling novel from director Barry Levinson. Alternating between being genuinely creepy (the aquanauts' phobias are all unseen) and overly tame through the deliberate under-use of shock effects, this underwater Solaris relies on moody dread rather than cheap thrills to weave its spell. It's a wittily scripted science-fiction chamber piece that focuses on characters thrust into an extraordinary situation rather than the situation itself.

19:00 Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home
Film Star Trek fans may have grumbled, but this Leonard Nimoy-directed instalment is easily the most entertaining of the spin-offs from the cult TV series. After three impressive but rather po-faced adventures, the Enterprise regulars got the chance to let their hair (what was left of it) down a little for this hugely enjoyable trek. This time around, the crew has to travel back to 1980s San Francisco to free a couple of whales that can save the Earth from a destructive space probe. William Shatner gets to romance whale expert Catherine Hicks, although his comic double act with Nimoy is a lot more fun, and, while there is little in the way of traditional sci-fi spectacle, the crew clearly relishes the opportunity to poke fun at the idiosyncrasies of life in modern-day California.

21:00 Black Christmas
Film Bob Clark's 1974 movie Black Christmas was a progenitor of the slasher genre and paved the way for the likes of Halloween and Friday the 13th. This cheeky but no less brutal remake pays its dues to Clark's cult classic, borrowing wholesale from its gruesome tableaux as a killer stalks a sorority house in the run-up to Christmas, suffocating his victims with plastic bags. Producer James Wong cut his teeth on the Final Destination franchise and employs the same mix of gore and black comedy here, as the incongruities of murder in a Christmas setting are given a grotesque spin. Eyeballs are used as Christmas tree decorations, a candy cane is turned into a deadly weapon and even Santa's sack doubles as a body bag. All this gives an otherwise forgettable horror movie a likeable chutzpah.

22:30 Dead Again
Film Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in this determinedly old-fashioned thriller in the tongue-in-chic Hitchcock tradition. He's a cynical LA private detective hired to research the background of amnesiac mystery woman Emma Thompson, who's obsessed by scissors and tormented by nightmares from someone else's life. An enjoyably overdone, stylish mix of films noirs trivia, eccentric plotting, gender-bender twists and razzle-dazzle turns, Branagh's darkly delicious reincarnation parody will keep you guessing right up until the deliriously OTT finale.