All forms of excess can be found in the long-running Midnight Madness strand in the Toronto programme, and this year's line-up yields a true curiosity piece in Trapped Ashes, which, we are promised, will be "shocking, seductive and surreal".

A throwback to the old horror movie anthology format, it features four short films, with a fifth providing a framing story. Six people (among them veterans John Saxon and Henry Gibson) are touring a legendary film studio when they are trapped inside the House of Horrors set from a notorious 1960s shocker.

Joe Dante directs that linking segment, with the other vignettes provided by Friday the 13th maestro Sean Cunningham, cult favourite Monte Hellman, Matrix visual effects whiz John Gaeta, and arch provocateur Ken Russell, whose entry, The Girl With Golden Breasts, is described in the programme as "outlandish". No surprises there, then.