Invaders From Mars 4K (1953)

“Impressive Restoration of a SciFi Classic”

The BFI are releasing William Cameron Menzies’ classic tale of a young boy who helps thwart a martian invasion, in its new 4K restoration on UHD, Blu-ray, Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

Early one morning during a terrible storm David McLean (Jimmy Hunt) witnesses a flying saucer land in a sandpit beyond the fields next to his home. The next day his engineer father (Leif Erickson from NIGHT MONSTER and THE HIGH CHAPARRAL)  goes off to investigate and comes back changed. Soon other people are behaving strangely and it’s up to David with Dr Pat Blake (Helena Carter whose final film role this was before she left show-business) and astronomer Stuart Kelston (Arthur Franz) to convince the authorities that the threat is real.

Shot in colour in a way that suggests the process was as novel for the film-makers as it would be for the audience of the period, INVADERS FROM MARS is obviously low budget but benefits immensely from both the creative use of colour and from director William Cameron Menzies’ production design which allows for some images to exhibit great depth. In fact, while some sources suggest the film was supposed to be in 3D this actually wasn’t the case, but with those long corridor shots (and the title design) it’s easy to see why. The film also scores points for having an alien that isn’t a simple man in a suit (although there are also four of those) but is instead ‘an advanced human’ - all head and tentacles.

The BFI’s disc comes with a new commentary track from Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw which is up to their usual excellent standard. You might want to watch Tobe Hooper's 1986 remake before playing this and some of the other extras, though. There's also a new short piece (16 minutes) from Nic Wassell about the twin subtexts of paranoia and hope in the film. Other extras have been ported over from the 2022 Ignite Films release and include a piece from Menzies biographer James Curtis (16 minutes), an interview with Jimmy Hunt (11 minutes), a 22 minute discussion between directors John Landis, Joe Dante, editor Mark Goldblatt, VFX specialist Robert Skotak and film preservationist Scott MacQueen, a seven minute piece on the 4K restoration, a festival introduction to the film from film-maker John Sayles (7 minutes), director Ernest Dickerson talking about the film (5 minutes) and two sequences seen in European prints (6 minutes in all). There’s also a trailer and image gallery with plenty of publicity materials as well as images from the BFI National Archive. Finally, the first pressing comes with a booklet featuring new writing on the film by Deborah Allison and Barry Forshaw and more. 

William Cameron Menzies’ INVADERS FROM MARS is out in 4K from the BFI on UHD, Blu-ray, Apple TV & Amazon Prime on Monday 11th May 2026 

Cold Storage (2026)

“Even More Fun that the Source Novel”

After its recent run in UK cinemas, director Jonny Campbell’s film of David Koepp’s novel (Koepp also wrote the screenplay for this) is getting a 4K, Blu-ray and DVD release from Studio Canal and is already out on Video On Demand.

Like the recent TV show THE LAST OF US, COLD STORAGE uses the very real concept of the Cordyceps fungus, which is capable of taking over ants and using them as ‘zombies’ to spread the fungus further, and applies it to human beings. In this case the fungus comes crashing back to earth from Skylab and is eventually contained within a secure military storage facility.

Time passes and unfortunately pretty much everyone except bioterror operative Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson) has forgotten about it, so much so that the place where it’s kept secure has now been sold to a storage company. Employed as night watch-people are Teacake (Joe Keery) and Naomi (Georgina Campbell) who are the ones present when everything starts to kick off in a highly entertaining zombie apocalypse kind of way.

COLD STORAGE the film is quite the surprise. David Koepp’s novel is entertaining page-turning pulp but the film version ramps this up to give us a movie with likeable characters, gruesome special effects, and pacing that’s just right. Horror fans who have been around long enough will be thinking it opens like Deran Serafian’s ALIEN PREDATOR / MUTANT II (Skylab falls to earth bringing with it a disease that takes over your nervous system and causes you to explode), carries on like THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (a very nice opening bit set in an Australian town) and then becomes pleasantly reminiscent of Dan O’Bannon’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (“We’re calling the emergency number for the military that’s written here!”

The film is a Studio Canal production, and for UK viewers there’s the added fun of seeing British sitcom stars (Brassic’s Aaron Heffernan, Flowers’ Daniel Rigby) as well as Lesley Manville and Vanessa Redgrave, all doing American accents. The special effects are deliciously gloopy and the whole thing bombs along, wrapping up in less than 100 minutes. It’s all great stuff and highly recommended to pulp body horror exploding-head-loving film fans everywhere. On the one major down side, Studio Canal’s disc contains no extras at all (Boo!). HMV will be carrying a limited edition of 1000 copies with different cover art, a slipcase and art cards but again no other extras.

COLD STORAGE is out from Studio Canal on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on Monday 11th May 2026 

Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters Blu-ray Release (2024)

Following its big screen premiere at London's Cineworld in Leicester Square, and subsequent TV showings on Sky Arts, Freeview Channel 36 and Now on October 31st 2024, this brand new documentary about one of the world's most famous film companies is now getting a double disc Blu-ray release. 

Narrated by Charles Dance (a good choice), there won't be anything here that Hammer obsessives don't already know but for the curious, this is a well-presented history of Hammer Films with lots of interviews that include Hammer cast members Martine Beswick, Caroline Munro, and Madeline Smith. In a change from many documentaries Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, while mentioned, are allowed less discussion time here to allow for profiles and anecdotes on more of the behind the scenes artists like Terence Fisher, Brian Clemens,  James Bernard, Jimmy Sangster, Anthony Hinds and Michael Carreras, the latter two to some extent via interview footage from previous BBC documentaries.

It's also great to see acknowledged Hammer experts Jonathan Rigby, Wayne Kinsey and David Pirie giving their thoughts, while the presence of Sarah Appleton will be a reminder to some of us that her late father (and another fantastic author on British genre subjects), Denis Meikle, is sadly missing from this lineup of genre luminaries. Meanwhile, John Carpenter, John Landis, Joe Dante and Tim Burton (but no Martin Scorsese although I expect he was asked) are the directors who get to pay tribute to the studio. 

Quibbles? Well, Hammer House of Horror is only mentioned in passing and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense doesn't rate a mention at all. These may not  have represented the pinnacle of Hammer production quality but they are important, not least because many people watching this will be able to remember them. If there was a limited running time perhaps some of the stuff about the very early days could have been cut to make way for it. There's a very odd (and misjudged) bit of AI at the end that has justifiably put many people's backs up. All I can suggest is that you close your eyes when the tarot dealer takes off their hood.

Hammer’s Blu-ray presentation is spread over two discs. The first contains the documentary as it was shown on Sky, plus ten minutes of behind the scenes clips and a trailer. Disc two contains an alternate version of the documentary, with the main difference being what many will believe to be a much better ending. Other than that there’s extended interview footage with John Logan (29 minutes), Martine Beswick (17 minutes), Janet Clemens (14 minutes), Blair Mowat (15 minutes), Caroline Munro (14 minutes), Madeline Smith (18 minutes) and Matthew Kneale (12 minutes). 

HAMMER: HEROES, LEGENDS and MONSTERS is getting a double disc Blu-ray release from Hammer Films on 

Monday 11th May 2026

Fall 4K (2022)

“Still the Best Film Set at the Top of a 2000 Foot Pole”

Yes it really is. Admittedly it’s a very small genre to be the king of but it is very much head and shoulders (and 2000 ft) above anything else like it. Director Scott Mann’s FALL, which received a memorable IMAX premiere at 2022’s London Frightfest film festival, has just had a welcome 4K release from Signature Entertainment.

Successful films are often the result of a simple idea done well, and FALL deals with the concept of two girls trapped on a 3 foot by 2 foot square very, very high up in the air extremely well. The two in question are Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner), Both are experienced climbers who plan to climb a television mast in the desert, firstly to scatter the ashes of Becky's husband who fell to his death a year ago when the three of them were climbing together, and also to get Becky out of the year-long depression into which she has subsequently plummeted. 

All goes well on the ascent, but when they try to come down the rusting ladder  at the very top of the tower collapses, leaving the two girls stranded and having to rely on their wits both to survive and to work out how to get back down. Director Scott Mann wrings the maximum amount of tension out of the situation, the two leads are charismatic and have a great rapport and the film doesn’t waste a second of its 107 minute running time.

Signature’s 4K looks excellent and is the best and most vertigo-inducing way to watch this outside of a cinema. Extras are the same as the previous 2022 Blu-ray release with a commentary track by Mann and producer James Harris which is crammed with production information, a 15 minute making of featuring interviews with Currey, Gardner and Mann and plenty of on-location footage as well as rehearsals on a plywood square in Mann’s garden, and a Madison Beer pop video with lyrics on screen for those who fancy a singalong, perhaps up a ladder.

Scott Mann’s FALL is out on 4K UHD from Signature Entertainment now

The Snake Woman (1961)

The film director Sidney J Furie made after DR BLOOD’S COFFIN, for the same company (Caralan Productions) and for even less money, gets a posh restoration release on Blu-ray on the Hammer Presents label.

In the wilds of Northumberland mad Victorian herpetologist Horace Adderson (John Cazabon) has been injecting his wife with cobra venom to ‘keep her sane’. She gives birth to a ‘cold baby’ called Atheris. When the baby grows up she’s played by Susan Travers. Atheris turns feral and goes to live in the Northumberland countryside, biting some poor chap to death once a month (not the same one each time, obviously). She also sheds her skin, five years before we saw the same thing in Hammer’s own THE REPTILE. Before we get to the climax THE SNAKE WOMAN also gives us a disgruntled low-budget Northumberland mob (the budget can only stretch to four torches), a mad old lady, voodoo, and cobras living quite happily in the North of England. 

Susan Travers would go on to be best known for playing Nurse Travers who gets smeared in sprout juice and eaten by locusts in Robert Fuest’s THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES while Furie would soon escape low-budget efforts like this and go on to direct THE IPCRESS FILE (1965). Screenwriter Orville H Hampton also wrote 1959’s superior THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE. His SNAKE WOMAN screenplay set the action in the United States which explains some of the discrepancies in the story’s relocation to the UK.

THE SNAKE WOMAN is all pretty rough low-budget stuff, but Heidi Honeycutt and Sarah Morgan do their very best in their commentary track to eke out worthwhile things to say about it. Hammer’s presentation is the best THE SNAKE WOMAN has ever looked on home video. Other extras on the disc consist of a trailer and an image gallery and that's it.

Sidney J Furie’s THE SNAKE WOMAN is out on Blu-ray on the Hammer Presents label on Monday 4th May 2026

Dr Blood’s Coffin (1960)

The ‘Hammer Presents’ label strikes again! This time it’s with a UK blu-ray release of one of director Sidney J Furie’s early movies, one that boasts a great title, some lovely locations, and Hazel Court.

People are disappearing in the small Cornish village of Porthcarron (actually the small Cornish village of Zennor). Could the recent arrival of local GP Dr Blood’s son Peter (Kieron Moore) have anything to do with it? We don’t have to wait long to find out, but we do have to wait rather longer (almost the entire film, in fact) to see the zombie promised by the posters. 

Was this the first colour zombie picture? That’s one of the many things discussed by Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons in their accompanying commentary track which, chatty, convivial and fact-packed, is worth the price of the disc on its own. The zombie himself (Paul Stockman) is brought back to ‘life’ in a climactic surgery sequence that involves a transplant with a rather floppy-looking heart, but medical accuracy is hardly the point of this or we wouldn’t have Dr Blood performing open heart surgery on people while they look at him.

As mentioned on the commentary, there’s not really enough here for a 90 minute feature, with the most shocking thing being that the Cornish weather stays nice for almost the entirety of filming. Hazel Court plays the zombie’s (still-living) wife and helps to up the acting quality in a film that also boasts genre favourite Kenneth J Warren. Nathan Juran supplies the script, Buxton Orr the music, and Furie manages a number of nice setups, all making the film worth watching if you’re a fan of the above. 

Hammer’s disc gives us the film in two aspect ratios - 1.66:1 and 1.85:1. They are listed as ‘UK and US versions’ but apart from the screen shape there’s no identifiable difference. Apart from the commentary you also get a trailer and an image gallery which is worth perusing for its wealth of publicity material for a film that’s not that well known.

Sidney J Furie’s DR BLOOD’S COFFIN is out on Blu-ray on the Hammer Presents label on Monday 4th May 2026

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple 4K (2026)

“Essential for Horror Fans”

Following its release in UK cinemas in January, Nia DaCosta’s direct sequel to Danny Boyle’s 28 YEARS LATER (2025) is now getting a 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD disc release from Sony. When DaCosta was initially announced as director concerns were expressed in some quarters that she might not be able to successful follow Boyle’s combination of horror and satire tinged with outright comedy. However it’s a delight to report that, if anything, THE BONE TEMPLE contains even more extreme horrors than its predecessor while skimping not a jot on the heavy dose of satire in returning screenwriter Alex Garland’s script.

Starting pretty much immediately where the previous film left off, we join young Spike (Alfie Williams) having been rescued by the ‘Cult of Jimmy’ and about to fight for his place among the followers of the group's cruel and (literally as we find out later) psychotic leader ‘Sir Jimmy Crystal’ (a mesmerisingly disturbing performance by Jack O’Connell). 

Meanwhile Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) the builder of the bone temple, is making inroads, DAY OF THE DEAD-style, into communicating with the infected, specifically a large brutal individual called Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) who he is able to control with large doses of morphine. But the world of the doctor and the world of Jimmy Crystal are about to meet, resulting in a climax in which not everyone will make it out alive.

Nia DaCosta’s 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE is for everyone who thought Danny Boyle’s 28 YEARS LATER was way too lighthearted, coming across as it does like an extra grim episode of Terry Nation’s frequently exceedingly grim 1970s TV series Survivors. The emphasis here is on the insanity of many of the uninfected human characters, and it fully justifies the 18 rating it has been given by the BBFC with some wincingly effective torture scenes.

DaCosta also manages a few really stylish touches that show her effective CANDYMAN (2021) was no fluke. The sound editing deserves a shout out, too. Watch this with a good surround sound system and you’ll be convinced zombies are creeping up behind you. An essential film for fans of modern horror and an excellent entry in what is shaping up to be the best satirical horror film series of the 2020s. 

        Sony's 4K disc release includes an excellent commentary track by DaCosta who easily conveys the enthusiasm she obviously still has for the project. This is backed up by the 17 minutes of making of featurettes we also get in which she is interviewed along with Ralph Fiennes, Jack O'Connell, Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and others. There's a three minute blooper reel which is more people acting silly rather than making actual mistakes, and a one minute deleted scene.  

Nia DaCosta’s 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE is out now to buy on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD and 4K UHD Steelbook