Still stand by my thoughts
I can appreciate your position on the movie, while I don't know Neil Marshall by name (till now) I have seen both "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent". I enjoyed both movies, the Descent was great simply because it played on two human fears, claustrophobia and nyctophobia (fear of the dark), and it played them well. Dog Soldiers though appeared to be more of a straight up horror movie than a comedy, this can be attributed to some creative editing by someone who felt it sold better here in the states as a horror flick or just simply cultural differences, I'd have to watch it again to be sure but I don't recall all that much humor. But I agree it was great nonetheless, especially being his first feature length film.
As far as Doomsday goes, I still have to maintain that the movie is just plain bad, though I will say I did laugh especially hard during the party just before Sean Pertwee was "barbecued". Unfortunately that was part of the problem, by lightening the mood with comedy when a guy is about to be roasted over an open flame, it takes the seriousness of the situation away, that would be like having Dane Cook do a comic routine while at somebodies funeral, while its sure to lighten most peoples moods, its just simply inappropriate for the situation. Now, granted most action movies require an amount of reasonable suspension of disbelief to help the person watching focus more on the action and less on the fact that what they are seeing is downright impossible. But I feel Doomsday failed to do that. I couldn't help but pick apart many of its "less than plausible" concepts. Not to mention much of the movie seems to "rob" scenes from the "Road Warrior". Some might argue that this is an homage of sorts to the Road Warrior, but I would have to disagree with that as well since this movie couldn't decide if it wanted to be a serious action movie or a silly action adventure.
Lastly, you said yourself that there "are many nice inside jokes for us Brits" and that being the case it was destined to do terrible over here. I enjoy inside jokes in movies as well, but such things can kill a movie. When a person is trying to make a movie, inside jokes generally do more harm since only a select part of your audience gets the joke while the other is left in the dark. This is part of the reason why so many movies do better on DVD than they do in theaters. So you can see why many people would find this movie less funny than other people did.
When it comes down to it the movie doesn't play both action and comedy well, as it can't decide what it wants to be. With such an identity crisis how can the audience immerse themselves into the world presented before them? Oh BTW, while my DVD collection isn't quite as impressive as yours, I do have a BS in television production and an Associates in Film production so I know a lot as well.
For me 2 out of 3 isn't bad, he hasn't alienated me with this movie I understand that a lot of times, especially when big budgets are involved, the bean counters like to muddle things up with their ideas, they think just because they put the money up that they can have creative control. Many movies here in the states which could have been really good have fallen to this malady. But hey, I'll keep an eye out for his next one.