Film review An evil penguin returns to up the aaargh! ante

This Christmas, the BBC is giving us a cracker: the first new Wallace and Gromit for 16 years. It has all the trimmings: Nick Park as co-director; a starring role for the Pontcysyllte aqueduct; cheese.

- Catherine Shoard

But before its 25 December TV debut, the film premieres at the American Film Institute festival in Los Angeles tomorrow - presumably to enable an Oscar run next year. Perhaps there's another reason. A Halloween premiere feels more fitting than a festive one.

Wallace and Gromit has always been surprisingly frightening. The Wrong Trousers was classic noir, all oblique angles and chiaroscuro. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit featured a vampiric bunny. In A Matter of Loaf and Death, Wallace was romanced by a serial killer. Their latest outing ups the aaargh! ante even higher by bringing back one of cinema's most sinister villains: Feathers McGraw, the penguin who hijacked Wallace's automatic slacks in The Wrong Trousers to commit a jewel heist. Feathers - brimful of an unfathomable evil - was sentenced to substantial zoo time. He plots escape and revenge by hacking Wallace's latest invention: Norbot, a robot gnome with an enthusiasm for topiary and mopping.