One of the unspoken rules for surviving the movie game is "Always sign up for your next film before the one you just finished comes out."

Thus, the news that director Neil Marshall ("The Descent") was signing up to do another horror piece, "Sacrilege," this past week, could be taken as a sign. Whatever the studio thought of "Doomsday," which was so bad it didn't bother to preview it for critics, and whatever the box-office take, Marshall will work again.

Imagine a sci-fi thriller that begins by copying "28 Days Later" and every other "virus wipes us out" movie of recent vintage and rolls on to steal from "Escape From New York" (Glasgow, in this case), then climaxes with a blatant "let's not even pretend we're not doing it" "Road Warrior" rip off.

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'Doomsday'

1 1/2 stars = Bad
Ratings explained

• Starring: Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Malcolm McDowell, Adrian Lester.
• Rating: R for strong bloody violence, language and some sexual content/nudity.

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Imagine a villain, a scientist trapped in the netherworld of a Scotland that Britain has to quarantine to prevent the spread of a new zombie virus, a man (Malcolm McDowell) who takes fellow survivors to a Scottish castle where he re-creates a medieval world of ad hoc knights and peasants that he rules from his throne like a nut who has memorized Marlon Brando's turn as Col. Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now."

Imagine a heroine in "Underworld"/"Aeon Flux" tights (Rhona Mitra) sent to retrieve "the cure" to this virus from that Scottish heck-on-Earth, who plots her escape in a 2008 Bentley, which turns out to be the slowest getaway car on the market.

In this mad and maddening mash-up genre picture, the virus strikes in April 2008. It is contained, limited to Scotland. Sinclair (Mitra) escaped the quarantine as a child. Now, 27 years later, the virus is back, about to overwhelm London. But there were survivors in Scotland. Perhaps the mad scientist (McDowell) found a cure. Sinclair, at the head of a crack team packed into inadequately armored combat vehicles goes to fetch it.

She finds a cannibalistic culture that has ingested every hair and tattoo style from the "Mad Max" movies, that stages rock revues (set to tunes by Fine Young Cannibals, cute) as they char-broil their prisoners into Glasgow barbecue.

Just down the railroad, Sinclair finds the castle where Kane (McDowell) runs his own, equally violent alternative nation, one built on feudalism. His last radio broadcast from Glasgow should have tipped people off.

"It's getting medieval out there!"

Bob Hoskins is Sinclair's boss, a cop struggling to save Britain from an idiotically scripted government conspiracy to let millions die off in a survival-of-the-fittest "living space" scheme straight out of Nazi Germany.

Marshall mimics scenes and shots from "Apocalypse Now," "Escape From New York" and "The Road Warrior" in Scottish settings. Those movies aren't holy writs, so remaking them is fair game. But did he have to do it so incompetently?

His "Descent," about a group of women cavers who stumble across an Appalachian nightmare deep in the bowels of the mountains, was chilling. "Doomsday" manages no scares, just graphic scenes of cannibalism, torture and dismemberment.

Whatever level his skills have descended to, Marshall was smart about one thing. He signed his next deal before the first reviews of this dreck became his career "Doomsday."