Help wanted: how can we commit a grisly murder?

Every horror fan has a favourite celluloid murder scene, be it Hitchcock's slasher shower from Psycho or the gore-fest in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when teenage hitchhikers are hung on meat hooks.

But a filmmaker is now enlisting those who feel they have better ways to screen a killing. Tom Atkinson has sent out a brief to film fans to create a death scene which is as inventive as it is abominable in the hope of selecting one or more for a film in the pipeline. Atkinson, a Cannes Festival-nominated producer who set up the 10 Pound Horror Film Company, has launched the competition to "create a kill".

More than 150 ideas have been proffered so far; one suggested a scene in which a victim is hung upside-down with their head in a bucket to have their jugular cut "so they bleed to death and as the blood in the bucket rises, they are drowned at the same time".

Another suggested gutting a victim, skinning them before dunking them in vinegar or burying them alive in fresh cement (reminiscent of the final scene in the arthouse Mafia movie The Consequences of Love).

Atkinson said: "The very best kills will have a chance to be included in the final film. This is a real opportunity for fans to be a part of movie history."