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Move over Freddy Kruger, here comes Fiendish Freddy, as sweet as a Jelly Baby made from Semtex. In disguise he is a corrupt and psychotic circus clown, in real life he's a corrupt and psychotic property type who wants to tear down the big top and build multi-storey real estate.

Freddy has a killer cork, a hairdryer in his holster, and an arsenal of deadly toys straight out of the Merry Melody school of wanton destrution. The gameplay is thin but, then again, Fiendish Freddy's animation is as good as you'd get from a Warner Bros cartoon.

The circus is snowed under with loans and the deadline for repayment is midnight tonight. No dosh and the deeds to the site will go to Freddy's chums at the Swiss bank. There's only one hope: to swell admissions and the coffers by staging the biggest and grandest big top show ever. But Freddy will make sure that everyone wants their money back - by ruining the show, and bumping off the performers.

And that, I'm pleased to say, is where the delightful animated sequences come in. It's also, I'm sad to say, where the gameplay tumbles down.

There's little point in explaining the mechanics of the game. When you walk the tightrope you have to move forward but not fall off; when you play the human cannonball you have to judge distance and trajectory. Once you've worked this out, it's down to practise rather than challenge. What you are treated to are Freddy's dark and daffy deeds. Freddy will blow the high diver off course (who, amongst other things has to land in a bucket in the lotus position) by hovering about with a huge hairdryer. Freddy will bung up the end of the human cannonball's cannon with a monster rubber cork. He will stamp on your hands as you cling desperately to the high wire, and he will lure away the juggling seal and throw you a bomb. And when you fall to your death, it's straight out of a scene from Road Runner; a tearful wave, bemused expression and overhead perspective.

The opening and closing titles are magnificent. The former has a snootmobile pulling up and an unknown figure handing the ringmaster a threatening letter. The latter, if Freddy is victorious, shows the big top being pulled down and high rise maisonettes rising in its place. The judges are a rum bunch of artistes who prefer throwing custard pies and poking out each other's eyes to doing their job.

The biggest pain with a game so packed with complex graphics is the amount of disk swapping and the loading time, which seems to go on forever. This is almost a game I'd rather see on a coin-op than a home computer. Fiendish Freddy is something you will put away fairly soon after purchase, but will take out now and again to perfect your favourite sequence. The soundtrack is a variation on popular classics and fairground noise, but nevertheless it's weedy.

Even so, a million times sharper than a 'Monty Python' licence, Fiendish Freddy is a thoroughly nasty treat in which the bad guy often wins. It also marks a welcome return for Chris Gray who wrote Infiltrator and Boulderdash for the C64. He spent two years doing this and it shows in the polish. I love it.