Blood Orange (1953)

The latest in Hammer's series of posh whistles and bells 4K releases is what many will consider to be this curious choice from before the studio made it big with THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT (1955) and the gothics that followed. It's a film not many will have heard of and while it will have Hammer fans nodding at some familiar faces in the cast and names in the credits, it's not a film to expect too much from if you've never seen it before.

Tom Conway plays Tom Conway (yes, really) a private investigator who works for Mr Mercedes (Eric Pohlman), a man who lends jewellery to a fashion house for their exhibitions and gives them a percentage should anyone wish to buy it. When some of the jewellery is stolen and the police (headed by Richard Wattis) are called in, things rapidly get worse when women wearing the house's 'Blood Orange' dress start dying. Is Mr Mercedes behind it? Is it the owners of the fashion house? Or perhaps one or more of the other models?

BLOOD ORANGE is what one can kindly call a solid mystery picture of the period and is strictly 'B' programmer stuff. In fact if you're expecting something of the quality of Merton Park's slightly later series of Edgar Wallace pictures you're going to be disappointed. It's directed by Terence Fisher but there's little evidence of the style he would bring to his later gothics. Cast-wise familiar faces also include Michael Ripper and Roger Delgado, and fans will spot Jimmy Sangster and Renee Glynne's name in the credits. 

Hammer have done their best to dress BLOOD ORANGE up with a wealth of extras. You get UK and US versions of the film, the latter under the title THREE STOPS TO MURDER and with a slightly different title sequence but the running time is the same for both. There's a different commentary track for each. If you don't know much about Hammer and Exclusive Films then start with the track by Lucy Bolton and Phuong Le. Advanced students of Hammer (and British Film) will want to go straight to the commentary from Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw. 

Otherwise extras include Dressed to Kill in which David Pirie and Wayne Kinsey look at the work of producer Michael Carreras during Hammer's 'early' days. I'm Just a Girl! has Alice Lowe discussing the film's male gaze, while The House of Glamour has fashion historian Liz Tregenza discussing the fashion industry at the time the film was made. The ABC of British B! has three academics sitting round a table (or rather on stools) discussing British B movies of the period. Finally there's a still gallery.

Also included in the set (but not provided for review) is a handsome-looking paperback featuring new writing on the making of the film, Exclusive Films, Hammer's femme fatales, Tom Conway, and James Carreras. As with their release of SHATTER some will find it's less the film and more all these extras that will make BLOOD ORANGE an essential purchase.

Hammer's BLOOD ORANGE will be released in a limited collector's edition including both UHD and Blu-ray transfers of the film as well as a book and slipcase on Monday 11th August 2025

When Evil Lurks (2023)

Following a successful streaming release on Shudder, Argentinian writer-director Demian Rugna's follow-up to his excellent 2017 TERRIFIED (which you can also find on Shudder) is getting a whistles and bells 4K UHD and Blu-ray release in both limited and standard editions from Second Sight.

Investigating gunshots they heard in the night Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and his brother Jimi (Demian Saloman) come across a severely mutilated body in a field lying next to a box filled with esoteric equipment. At a nearby shack they find an old woman whose son is very ill. In fact he has become a 'rotten' - a term for someone in whom a demon has taken root and will soon be birthed. The son himself has been 'possessed' for over a year and is now little more than a huge festering bag of pus.

Killing him is out of the question as apparently that will release the demon as well, so they conspire to drag the man's body to a more remote location to avoid their village coming under the demon's power. 

The body falls off the back of their truck and disappears.

Meanwhile more demonic stuff is going down. The owner of the land they are on sees one of his goats possessed, kills it and suffers the consequences. In town Pedro tries to warn his ex-wife and her new husband that Evil is coming. His warning falls on deaf ears until something really awful happens involving the family dog and their little girl.

And that's just the setup for a movie that moves at a clip, is outstandingly gory, and for once doesn't spoon-feed its audience explanations as to what is going on. Instead you have to put the various bits of information together to understand how the world we are being given a glimpse of works. It's another excellent piece of horror cinema from Rugna and marks him out as a talent to follow. 

Extras on Second Sight's disc include a commentary track from academic author Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodriguez who helpfully fills in some background of the political situation in Argentina at the time of filming as well as analysing the film. Another excellent piece of analysis is provided by Mike Muncer's nine minute video essay that looks at the different techniques director Rugna uses to inspire terror. There are also interviews with Rugna (28 minutes), Ezequiel Rodriguez (23 minutes), Demian Saloman (18 minutes) and actress Virginia Garofalo who plays Pedro's ex-wife. All these extras are on both the UHD and Blu-ray discs, both of which are included in the limited edition while being available separately as standard releases.

Exclusive to the limited edition is a 120 page book with new writing on the film, six art cards, a behind the scenes gallery and storyboards and a box to keep it all in.

Demian Rugna's WHEN EVIL LURKS is out in both limited (UHD and Blu-ray and book, etc) and standard UHD and Blu-ray releases on Monday 28th July 2025

The Banished (2025)

THE BANISHED is the new film from writer-director Joseph Sims-Dennett, whose OBSERVANCE played the London Film Festival in 2015 and which I also reviewed on here. It's getting a digital release from Blue Finch at the end of this month.

After her father dies Grace Jennings (Meg Clarke) embarks on a hunt for her missing brother David who has apparently joined a mysterious cult of ex-drug addicts deep in the woods. The only person who knows how to get there is her old geography teacher Mr Green (Leighton Cardno) who only agrees to take her if she pays him $10 000.

They set off into the wilderness but soon Mr Green has disappeared and Grace is lost. Her walkie-talkie picks up the voice of a mysterious Michael who claims he's also lost. Her attempts to meet him and to find the cult culminate in a finale that almost makes up for the dirge-like pace of the opening hour of this 96 minute film.

There's no doubt that part of the problem with THE BANISHED is its low budget, meaning that many of the conversations Grace has before she leaves town are shot in close-up (and we're in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio here), presumably because filming is taking place in people's front rooms and there's not the space for a wide shot. Also, every character speaks in the same, measured, monotonous style which may be intended to add to the style of the piece but which, coupled with the slow pace, quickly becomes soporific.

And that's a shame because if you can stay awake until the end the final act of THE BANISHED is very good, with some extraordinary and arresting imagery, much of it religious, that ties together the backstory we have been drip fed in flashbacks throughout the film. So THE BANISHED is not a failure, in fact it builds to a climax that will weird you out very nicely, but it is one for the very patient, perhaps with a flask of coffee.

Joseph Sims-Dennett's THE BANISHED is out on Digital from Blue Finch on Monday 28th July 2025

Zero (2025)

The new film from Jean Luc Herbulot (SALOUM) is getting a UK cinema and digital release from Blue Finch.

An American man wakes up on a bus in Dakar with a bomb strapped to his chest. It's already counting down as a voice (played by Willem Dafoe) tells him he's going to have to complete five missions before he will be set free. The first involves obtaining a mobile phone from a well-known wrestler and the tasks escalate from there. 

Along the way he encounters another American in a similar situation, with the two being expected to work together on the tasks. Meanwhile they continue to try and find ways to escape their situation while attempting to discover why they have ended up as they have in the first place.

This all sounds fairly generic and entertaining Hollywood thriller stuff, but this is a film that may well subvert your expectations from that point of view. Seasoned fans of this sort of plot may well be able to guess what's going on, at least in part, but it's still worth sticking with this one until the end.

Herbulot's previous SALOUM was a horror picture about mercenaries getting more than they bargained for in a remote town. ZERO is an effective and engrossing action picture that at less than 90 minutes doesn't outstay its welcome. It also suggests Herbulot might be keen to become a one man Senegalese exploitation industry and on the basis of these two eminently effective films that is to be both admired and encouraged. Here's the trailer:

Jean Luc Herbulot's ZERO will have a limited cinema release on Friday 25th July 2025 before coming out on Digital on Monday 11th August 2025

Zombie Flesh Eaters 4K UHD

"The Boat Can Leave Now. Tell the Crew They're in 4K"

ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, arguably director Lucio Fulci's best film, and certainly his most iconic, is getting a 4K UHD release from Arrow with a 4K restoration from the original 2-perf Techniscope negative.

If you're a fan of the film all you need to know is that the transfer is delicious, with Giannetto de Rossi's makeups frequently holding up very well indeed to the increased resolution. Fabio Frizzi's score is also worth listening to on the three sound options included here - Dolby Atmos, original mono (English and Italian) and DTS-HD 7.1 (Italian) because each offers a slightly different listening experience.

If you've not seen ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS before then you're in for a treat. At the time of release Fulci cited Val Lewton's I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE as one of his influences and while at the time critics huffed about how such a gorefest could be compared to the master of the understated chill, it's easy to see now what he was talking about. Back then the amazing gore effects drowned everything else out but there are plenty of atmospheric and ominous sequences on the island that, if you were to remove all the violence, would still give you a film worth watching. 

In terms of extras, material new and exclusive to this release includes a commentary track by the familiar team (to buyers of US Blu-rays at least) of Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson and, most ubiquitous of all, Troy Howarth. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas gives us a 15 minute video essay on the use of sound in the film, and Chris Alexander helps those of us of a certain age (and some of us who are even older) to revisit those heady days of discovering Fulci's movie on VHS. Also welcome to scholars and obsessives is the entire screenplay which you can access on screen. There are two pages missing but it's a tiny fragment of the whole.

Archival extras are basically what was available on Arrow's 2012 Blu-ray release which include two commentary tracks - with screenwriter Elisa Briganti and Calum Waddell and the other by Stephen Thrower and Alan Jones which is unsurprisingly the best of the lot. Also included are High Rising's 2012 documentary which runs nearly an hour, and interviews with Ian McCulloch (46 minutes), Gino DeRossi (27 minutes) and the script bit with Dardano Sacchetti (3 minutes). The Fabio Frizzi Q&A from Glasgow (29 minutes) is also on there. 

As with the 2012 release you get the option of playing the film either as ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, ZOMBI 2 or ZOMBIE. There's no difference in the running times and it's just the title cards and font that are different. However, if you've never watched the film in Italian it's worth it as the dialogue sounds a lot less 'Nick Alexander and the gang in a dubbing studio' and the translated subtitles have more gravitas to them then the English dialogue. Ian McCulloch's 2012 introduction in which he expresses regret at talking the film down in previous years is also on there.

Finally Arrow's release comes with a booklet with new writing on the film plus a reversible sleeve, poster, and six collector's postcards. Oh, and Easter Eggs which I haven't found yet. 

The classic that is Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS is out on 4K UHD from Arrow Films on Monday 28th July 2025

Gazer (2025)

A low budget crime drama with shades of both Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich which played the Cannes Directors' Fortnight and premiered at this year's Glasgow Film Festival here, director Ryan J Sloan's GAZER is getting a limited UK cinema release courtesy of Bulldog Distribution.

Frankie (Ariella Mastroianni who co-wrote the screenplay with Sloan) suffers from dyschronometria, a progressive deteriorating condition that causes her to 'zone out' for periods and then have no idea how much time has passed. She relies on audio cassettes and in watching other people to help keep her grounded. 

It's during one of these period of 'gazing' that she witnesses an act of brutality in an apartment. Next day the woman concerned approaches her and offers Frankie $3000 to drive her as far away as possible from her abusive brother. Frankie, unable to hold down a job and desperate to save money to give to her daughter who is in care, takes the job and ends up in serious trouble as a result.

GAZER takes a while to get going such that even by the halfway mark you may wonder if it's worth sticking with. Be assured that it is, however, with plenty of twists and turns and a satisfying denouement. The grainy 16mm photography gives the film that cold grungy feel of many a 1970s New York crime movie (we're actually in Jersey here) and the performances from a bunch of unknowns are all good.

The film takes a little detour to fit in a dream sequence that's redolent with Cronenberg and Lynch-inspired imagery and Sloan just about pulls it off such that you don't mind, and the added mysterious backstory of what actually happened to Frankie's husband (who figures in the dream) adds another layer to what is ultimately a satisfying film. Worth catching if you can. Here's the trailer:

Ryan J Sloan's GAZER is out in UK cinemas from Bulldog Distribution on Friday 25th July 2025

Crumb Catcher (2024)

"Pinteresque Black Comedy...Up to a Point"

Writer-Director Chris Skotchdopole's feature debut, made with the backing of Larry Fessenden, is getting a Blu-ray release from Arrow Films.

Prickly, bickering newlyweds Shane (co-writer Rigo Garay) and Leah (Ella Rae Peck) leave their hotel the day after their reception, managing to finally shake off John the annoying waiter (John Speredakos), and head off to spend their honeymoon at a remote house owned by Leah's boss.

Unfortunately, John follows them, with his wife Rose in tow.

John claims to be there to deliver a cake that never made it to the reception but what the two of them are actually there for is to pitch their new invention, the 'Crumb Catcher'. As the atmosphere starts to feel distinctly threatening Shane and Leah realise they may have to resort to extreme measures. And that's exactly what John and Rose are thinking too. 

CRUMB CATCHER has a running time of 103 minutes and that's really too long. The opening act drags and could easily have had ten minutes taken out. The highlight of the movie is the scene in which John & Rose pitch their useless (if beautifully designed) machine, and it's here that CRUMB CATCHER starts to come alive and suggest we're in for something distinctly quirky. But it all goes downhill from there, sacrificing its strange Pinteresque vibe for violence and running around. As such, CRUMB CATCHER would have worked much better as a short film with everything else feeling like padding to make this into a feature.

Extras include a commentary from Skotchdopole, a 38 minute making of featuring cast and crew (including Larry Fessenden) and plenty of on-set footage. We also get two Skotchdopole short films: Camp Out from 2010 (13 minutes) and The Egg and the Hatchet from 2016 (21 minutes) starring indie favourite Jeremy Gardner. The set also comes with a booklet featuring new writing on the film & a reversible sleeve. 

Chris Skotchdopole's CRUMB CATCHER is out on Blu-ray from Arrow Films on Monday 14th July 2025