What exactly Stone was trying to make a film about is anybody’s guess. Seizure gives the impression, not unlike the scenario fictionalised in the film Loaded (1994), of a group of actors gathering at a big old house for a weekend, under the influence of some substances, having made up whatever came into their heads and filming whatever occurred. Possibly Oliver Stone was trying to make a film about the way people confront their deaths – each killing is interspersed with long, confused sequences where people philosophise about meeting their deaths. The film ends on the deathdream twist familiar from the classic Ambrose Bierce short story An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge (1891) – see the film version An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1962).

The most interesting thing about Seizure is the cast Oliver Stone has assembled – including dark, mysterious Hammer beauty Martine Beswick; cult queen Mary Woronov; Jonathan Frid, vampire Barnabas Collins from tv’s Dark Shadows (1966-71); and Herve Villechaize, later to become Ricard Montalban’s sidekick on Fantasy Island (1977-84), as the evilly ambiguous dwarf.

Oliver Stone has made a number of other ventures into genre material. He subsequently made another horror film with The Hand (1981), which featured Michael Caine being stalked by his severed hand, and Natural Born Killers (1994) about a couple on a mass murder spree. Stone also co-wrote the screenplay for Conan the Barbarian (1982) before becoming a top-list director. Following his success, Stone has acted as producer on a number of other directors’ work including:– Kathryn Bigelow’s psycho-thriller Blue Steel (1990), the superb Cyberpunk tv mini-series Wild Palms (1993) and Freeway (1996), Matthew Bright’s deconstructed version of Little Red Riding Hood.