Can there be a perfect murder? A killing so fiendishly plotted that no-one would ever suspect foul play?

American maths student Martin (Wood) and Wittgenstein professor Arthur Seldom (Hurt) believe they have stumbled across someone attempting suspicion-free homicide when bodies start dropping in the cloistered colleges and paved streets of Oxford.

But, who is behind the slayings? Prime suspects seem to be Beth (Cox), the daughter of the frail woman Martin is lodging with (Peeping Tom’s Anna Massey) or twitchy, Russian student Podorov (Gorman), whose every sentence seems to point to his guilt.

Or is it Seldom, a philosopher who lectures on the meaningless of existence, or buxom nurse Lorna (Watling), or has Martin’s jetlag put murder into his mind?

The Oxford Murders boasts more red herrings than Billingsgate market and director de la Igelsia plays the bonkers plot admirably straight, just about managing to tame various whiplashing plot threads.

Adapting Guillermo Martinez’s novel, the director and co-writer Jorge Guerricaechevarria handle the philosophical theorizing that underpin the murders well, but not even they can make both Cox and Watling’s heavy-breathed passion for forever-Frodo Wood remotely believable.

Luckily, well-staged murders, including a race across the rooftops during a fireworks concert and a tricksy tracking shot that links all the main players just before the killing starts, make this a fun romp in the tradition of such Euro shockmeisters as Dario Argento.

In flaming ham mode, Hurt is the film’s trump card, devouring scenery in a long overdue return to leading roles and jumping into the grisly silliness feet first, while rising star Watling fills the void left by an underwhelming Wood.

Amelie co-star Dominique Pignon makes a welcome cameo, as does cult director Alex Cox, in a bizarre sequence as a professor taking painfully extreme measures to unlock the riddles of the Universe.

All in all, The Oxford Murders is a bouncy antidote to the po-faced Da Vinci Code.

Rob Daniel