The ancients used to a dream of a place so dark and demented it would leave a man crazed in seconds; a fiery hell-pit filled with skull-flaming banshees and howling devil-beasts. Dante wrote a poem about it and called it 'Inferno'. You may know it simply as Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance.

If you have the vaguest notion that the second Ghost Rider outing is going to be a low-key, demure affair, these new images should set you straight. The so-so reception that greeted the first Marvel adaption has stirred co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor to new heights. Yes, that is Johnny Blaze with his head on fire.

Blaze's return is bonkers and badass, just don't use the 'S' word. "It's not a sequel," Mark Neveldine told Empire when we took the hell express to Transylvania to survey the mayhem first hand. There was plenty of it, with Nicolas Cage throwing himself into the fray as the self-exiled Ghost Rider and Idris Elba as the baddest looking monk in the history of religion.

Co-director Brian Taylor offered a reminder of their star's collaborative approach: "Nic trusts us. He was actually one of the guys we wanted for Crank, but we was out of our price range. Now we've got him and he's absolutely fearless. You invite him to go there, he'll go there. He just needs to be invited - like a vampire."

For more pick up the new issue of Empire magazine, on sale now.