Horror without embellishment

By the time the camera zooms in on hands efficiently looping the heavy chains through the push-bars of emergency exit 3, before locking them, we have met the lively Keegan girls.

We have seen Martina, Mary and Antoinette, prepare for their big Valentine's night out, sulking, laughing and arguing in the bedroom with the Bob Geldof poster on the wall, watched indulgently by their mother Christine and 13-year-old sister Lorraine.

We've met their father, big John Keegan, working double shifts and worrying about his girls.

We've watched Jimmy Buckley in his three-piece suit, being interviewed by Eamon Butterly for a storeman's job and later, Jimmy and his young wife - on a rare night out since the birth of their baby - being given a free pass into the Stardust, by his magnanimous new boss.

As the pulsing, disco beat of Born to be Alive brings a mass of exuberant dancers on to the heaving dance floor, the camera in Stardust zooms in on emergency exits numbers 4 and 5, where doubled chains are being wrapped between the push-bars. These are the harbingers of catastrophe.

They think it's dry ice when smoke swirls across the ceiling. Then the lights fail as fire engulfs the room and the ceiling becomes a molten, toxic mass.

Director Ciaran Donnelly uses no fancy camera work, no gimmickry, no soaring orchestral accompaniment.

The simple horror of scores of hysterical young people fighting for their lives, banging frantically on barred, steel-plated windows, limbs of blackened flesh desperately reaching out through tiny openings in chained doors, against an aural onslaught of sobs, screams and sirens needs no embellishment.

And afterwards, we are led on the anguished trawls through the hospitals and the injured lists, the charred, blackened bodies, the corridors crammed with shrouded corpses, the despairing journey to the Dickensian city morgue. Images of 13-year-old Lorraine Keegan being called to identify Martina's necklace are among many that will haunt viewers.

Those who have followed the many legal actions and campaigns over the years will find nothing new in what follows. Those not familiar with the story will find themselves plunged into a surreal series of events.

Confined as it is, to the five years following the disaster, the power and value of Stardust lies in the sum of its parts and its production values.

To see the aftermath, intercut with scenes of disintegrating lives and families, is to understand frustration and a consequent, murderous anger.

John Keegan died from stomach cancer in 1986, but he lived long enough to witness the extraordinarily rapid renewal of the Butterlys' licence.

He heard the Keane tribunal's damning indictment of both the authorities and the Butterlys, but saw any possibility of establishing blame vanish with the chairman's finding that the cause of the fire was "in all probability, arson".

This was the finding that enabled Eamon Butterly to claim "vindication" - "I see no reason why it shouldn't be business as usual" - and to win over £580,000 for malicious damage. A voiceover reminds us that, in fact, there was no evidence either of an accidental or deliberate starting of the fire.

Despite Mr Justice Keane's stunning indictment of named authorities and individuals, the only person charged in connection with the Stardust catastrophe was John Keegan himself, convicted for assaulting Eamon Butterly and ordered to pay him £1,457 in damages.

In the end, this drama offers little hope. We see Antoinette Keegan's attempted suicide and young men turned to drunks.

We learn that 245 writs were lodged by victims and not one come to court, except for the Butterlys'; that State compensation was offered to victims on condition that all further claims against defendants (including the Butterlys) would be waived - and that the deal was accepted but would be bitterly regretted by many.

To this day, no liability has been established. Could it happen again? "Yes", says a quote from the chief fire officer, in words printed across the screen in silence.