EASTENDERS bad boy Craig Fairbrass gets his comeuppance in a controversial Welsh horror film being premiered on British TV tonight.

Craig, who played Dirty Dan in the hit BBC1 soap, tonight stars in the movie Darklands, which was filmed in Newport - home town of the film's writer/director Julian Richards - five years ago.

The film, shot before Craig joined the cast of EastEnders, also features many local people.

And two tracks from Newport band Toffeeworld - We Are One and Blind Leading the Blind - are used on its soundtrack.

In the film, Craig plays a Port Talbot newspaper reporter lured into a conspiracy of pagan rituals by sultry trainee Rowena King.

But he soon finds himself up to his elbows in pigs' blood and human sacrifice until he's caught - literally - on a one-way train to hell and damnation.

Darklands so offended a pagan cult in Aberystwyth that they cursed the film and all who watch it.

"They didn't like being portrayed as bloodthirsty killers," said Craig. "But nobody knows better than I that somebody's got to play the bad guy."

Darklands won the Melies Award for Best European Fantasy Film in 1997, and the Best Film and International Jury Award for the best screenplay and best original film at the Manchester Fantasy Film Festival.

The film became an international hit, but both Korea and the Philippines banned the production for its alleged "subversive nature".

Julian Richards, 34, a graduate of Newport Film School, said: "The fact that Darklands is being screened tonight is very exciting because it is reaching a much wider audience. "I grew up watching the Hammer House of Horror films in the Sixties and Seventies, and I also loved conspiracy theory films, such as Coma, also on TV this week."

Julian's second feature film, Silent Cry, will be premiered in the forthcoming International Film Festival of Wales, at the UGC Cardiff, on November 28.

He said: "It's a thriller about a single mother whose baby is snatched. This time, we filmed it in London."

And he is already working on his third feature film, Monkey Farm.

Darklands can be seen tonight on ITV at 12.25am. You can visit the Darklands Movie Website at http://www.prolificfilms.freeserve.co.uk