Excalibur 4K (1981)

 

“Impressive, Definitive, Essential”

John Boorman’s unique, stunning retelling of the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is getting a 4K restoration release as part of a three disc set from Arrow Films.

There’s nothing quite like EXCALIBUR, a film that took a markedly different approach to the King Arthur movies that both preceded and followed it, emphasising the mythic aspects and deliberately setting it ‘out of time’ (to use Boorman’s words) rather than giving it a traditional medieval setting. The film boasts a glorious, otherworldly look (thanks to both Boorman and DP Alex Thomson) and has a cast that does the subject matter justice, playing up the dramatic while never descending into pulp parody. 

It’s by no means a perfect film. At 140 minutes it’s a bit too long and it does have a tendency to be a bit overly pompous at times (two things that spoiled its chances at the box office in 1981), but considering this is essentially the unique vision of one man, John Boorman can be forgiven for not getting it exactly right, and for not catering to the mainstream too much.

So what’s on Arrow’s set? Disc One has the film in 4K and in the correct aspect ratio of 1.66:1. Of course, being clearer means you can see the grain a lot more so some may wish to hang onto their Blu-ray copies for nostalgia’s sake. We get the previously released archival commentary from the director, plus two new ones. The first is from Brian Hoyle, author of The Cinema of John Boorman, and he very sensibly does his best not to repeat what the director says on his own commentary. Second is film-maker David Kittredge who at the time of recording was completing his documentary Boorman and the Devil and who talks more about how the film fits into Boorman’s oeuvre as a whole. 

Disc Two is a veritable treasure trove of excellent extras, starting with Neil Jordan’s 48 minute 1981 Making Of which has only been rarely seen previously. Boorman himself takes us through the film-making process and there are interviews with stars Nicol Williamson, Cherie Lunghi, Nicholas Clay, Paul Geoffrey and Helen Mirren, as well as DP Alex Thomson, choreographer Anthony Van Laast and armorer Terry English.

New extras include interviews with John Boorman and his son Charley (28 minutes), Neil Jordan (25 minutes), and art director Anthony Pratt (26 minutes). Howard S Berger provides us with a massive, career-encompassing interview with second unit director Peter MacDonald (75 minutes) and returns with his Flying Maciste brother Kevin Marr for a 30 minute looks at ‘The Death and Life of Cinematic Illusion’ in Boorman’s cinema. There’s also an excellent visual essay / interview about Boorman’s writing collaborators including Alexander Jacobs and Bill Stair but concentrating mainly on Rospo Pallenberg who gets to talk at length (38 minutes). Finally for disc two you get trailers and a still gallery, which includes the original screenplay by Pallenberg and Boorman. 

Disc Three opens with the ‘TV Version’, which will be something of a curio for UK viewers who got to experience EXCALIBUR in all its uncut glory when it premiered on Channel 4 back in the day. Apparently this is the version shown on US TV (aha!) and is twenty minutes shorter to remove ‘controversial content’. It was also the version shown in US schools (aha again!) whereas UK school-kids, made of sterner stuff, got to debate how Uther Pendragon could possibly have sex with Ygraine while wearing all that armour. Also on Disc Three is the 2016 documentary “Excalibur: Behind the Movie” which includes interviews with Liam Neeson, Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne, Nigel Terry, Paul Geoffrey, Cherie Lunghi, Clive Swift and all the Boormans.  Arrow’s set also comes with a perfect-bound book with new writing on  the film, a double-sided poster, a reversible sleeve and six art cards.

John Boorman’s landmark EXCALIBUR is out from Arrow in a limited edition three disc set (one UHD and two Blu-rays) on Monday 23rd February 2026

 

Westworld 4K (1973)

 

Arrow Films are releasing Michael Crichton's WESTWORLD  in a new 4K restoration (that looks excellent) on both UHD and Blu-ray.

Delos is an all-new all-futuristic theme park consisting of three different worlds: Romanworld, Medievalworld and, of course, Westworld. Each provides the guest with a hyper-realistic experience with one key selling point: every 'actor' in each park is actually an android, programmed for the entertainment and pleasure of the guests. Peter (Richard Benjamin) and John (James Brolin) are enjoying a vacation in Westworld when a malfunction turns the androids of all three worlds into killers and they find themselves having to fight their way out, including a relentless duel with a black-clad android gunslinger (Yul Brynner).

Produced pretty cheaply (producer Paul N Lazarus III goes into actually how much in the extras) WESTWORLD did so well for MGM that it saved them from bankruptcy (although this was far from the only time the studio teetered on the edge of having their lion never roar again). Even now, over 50 years later, it's easy to see why it did so well: the combination of a novel science fiction concept combined with the disaster movies that were so popular at the time (with this being a different, more low-key kind of disaster) meant the public flocked to see WESTWORLD. Performances are all top notch but it was Yul Brynner who became the iconic face of the film in much the same way that he had for THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN several years before.

New extras on Arrow's 4K disc kick off with an excellent fact-packed commentary from Daniel Kremer. Star Richard Benjamin is interviewed by fan and renowned Hollywood screenwriter Larry Karaszewski (12 minutes) and there's a new interview with Benjamin's costar James Brolin here too (17 minutes). Producer Paul N Lazarus III provides the longest of the new interviews at 34 minutes. Interviewed over Zoom he provides an essential history of the nuts and bolts of how the film got made at MGM.

Archival extras consist of a nine minute location report, and Beyond Westworld, the pilot episode of the short-lived (five episodes) 1980 spinoff TV series starring Jim McMullan and Judith Chapman. If you're expecting more Michael Crichton theme park excitement you're going to be very disappointed. There's also a trailer and an image gallery. Arrow's limited edition also includes a booklet featuring new writing on the film, a double-sided poster, six art cards and a reversible sleeve.

Michael Crichton's WESTWORLD is out from Arrow Films in 4K in both UHD and Blu-ray editions on Monday 23rd February 2026

The Ugly Stepsister 4K (2025)

After a successful run on the streaming service Shudder and appearing on quite a few Best of 2025 lists, Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt's rich, heavily gothic retelling of the Cinderella story from a different point of view to that envisioned by Giambattista Basile and afterwards by the Brothers Grimm is getting a 4K UHD and Blu-ray special edition release from Second Sight.

The stepsister of the title is Elvira (Lea Myren) who, along with her sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) ends up having to live with her recently widowed mother Rebekka (Ahe Dahl Torp) and Rebekka's new husband Otto (Ralph Carlsson) and his daughter Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess). Otto soon dies in a cake-throwing incident and it turns our he wasn't as wealthy as the rest of the family had previously thought.

Elvira dreams of marrying a prince but with her radiant beauty Agnes is highly likely to beat her in the courtship game. So Elvira embarks on a series of increasingly desperate measures that include considerable body modification / self-mutilation in an attempt to make her more appealing than her sister. As with the traditional tale, it all comes to a horror-filled climax at a ball and I won't spoil the surprise of what happens.

As gorgeously filmed as the best Italian gothics of the 1960s, Emilie Blichfeldt's film is a must see for any fan of European horror cinema. The director has cited her influences as David Cronenberg (there is a character named Kronenberg in the film) as well as Argento, Fulci and Julia Ducournau and the film certainly bears this out. Of all the strong performances in the film it's Myren who stands out in the lead (at least until she mutilates her foot) offering a compelling sympathetic performance that you cannot help feeling sorry for.

Second Sight's disc comes with two commentary tracks, the first from Blichfeldt with Patrik Syversen and the second from academic Meagan Navarro. There are interviews with Blichfeldt (35 minutes), Myren (19 minutes), Naess (14 minutes) and SFX artist Thomas Foldberg (18 minutes) followed by a very entertaining piece with him on the effects where he demonstrates some of the prosthetics surrounding him during the interview (11 minutes). Kat Hughes provides an 18 minute visual essay, there's a three minute deleted scene and two Blichfeldt short films: How Do You Like My Hair? (10 minutes) and Sara's Intimate Confessions (22 minutes). 

Finally, the limited edition comes with a 120 page book featuring new writing on the film, six art cards and a rigid slipcase. Also worth noting is that the disc does not contain the English dub of the film that is currently available on Shudder.

Emilie Blichfeldt's THE UGLY STEPSISTER in 4K is being released in a limited edition UHD / Blu-ray combo with all the trimmings as well as standard edition UHD and Blu-ray editions on Monday 23rd February 2026

Stolen Face 4K (1952)

The first posh Hammer 4K release on UHD and Blu-ray for 2026 is Terence Fisher's STOLEN FACE, a film that will be fondly remembered by those who caught it on ITV afternoon screenings in the 1980s, or who bought the first UK Blu-ray release of Hammer's THE MUMMY and found it as a nice extra.

Philip Ritter (Paul Henreid) is a brilliant plastic surgeon who 'gives back' to society by correcting the scarred faces of prison inmates in the hope that good looks will prevent them offending again. It's an idea that was a bit daft in Universal's THE RAVEN nearly 30 years previously but the film treats it with an admirable straight face (sorry).

Ritter decides to take a short holiday and at a pub meets concert pianist Alice (Lizbeth Scott). The two fall in love. However Alice is due to be married to David (Andre Morell, always worth watching, even in a thankless role like this) and so she and the doctor cannot be. What's a plastic surgeon with the ability to change faces to do? Well if this was a Jess Franco film he'd find a willing victim and surgically alter their face to resemble the woman he can't have to satisfy his own perverse and vaguely mad desire. It isn't but that's what the film does anyway. Then Alice decides she can't marry David and returns to find Ritter married to her lookalike, who is already beginning to misbehave. Trouble ensues.

As is noted in one of the extras on here, STOLEN FACE pre-dates Hitchcock's VERTIGO and the Boileau & Narcejac novel the film was based on by several years. The angle it takes is an interesting one, playing up  the romance and lost love angles and being sympathetic to a man whose modus operandi would become the stuff of so many horror films of the next few decades. As a period piece it's well made and never less than interesting, with cast members including BBC comedy regulars Arnold 'Godfrey' Ridley and Richard Wattis, but modern audiences may find themselves baffled by the film's attitude to class and criminal behaviour.

As is frequently becoming the case with these releases, the real value for money here is in the extras. You get two versions of the film - the UK print with commentary from academics Cathy Lomax and Lucy Bolton, and the US print with commentary from former Hammer podcasters Lizbeth Myles and Paul Cornell. Both versions are actually more or less the same length (the US is slightly shorter by a matter of seconds) and the commentaries are aimed at listeners who haven't spent their lives studying every issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors. 

Talking of that splendid publication, its esteemed editor Richard Klemenson pops up to introduce an extremely valuable 39 minute audio interview he conducted with Hammer makeup artist Phil Leakey back in the day. Chris Alexander gives us 31 minutes on the life and career of Lisabeth Scott, and Thomas Doherty provides 37 minutes on the actions of the Un-American Activities Committee and how it affected UK cinema of the period. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas presents a visual essay on the film and its influences, all the way from Ovid through to film noir, and Liz Tregenza gives us 18 minutes on the history of costume designer Edith Head. 

The set comes with a book featuring new writing about the making of the film,  Lizbeth Scott, composer Malcolm Arnold, plastic surgery as related to the film, and a lot more. 

Terence Fisher's STOLEN FACE is out in 4K from Hammer in a limited edition two disc UHD and Blu-ray set on Monday 16th February 2026

Save the Green Planet! 4K (2003)

 

The 2003 Korean original that was recently remade by director Yorgos Lanthimos as BUGONIA is getting a two-disc 4K restoration release from Arrow Films.

Conspiracy theorist Lee Byeong-gu (Ha-kyun Shin) is convinced that pharmaceutical boss Kang Man-shik (Yun-shik Baek) is actually an alien from Andromeda, whose race intends to invade the earth. He kidnaps the man, shaves off all his hair so he cannot communicate with his fellow aliens, and imprisons him in the depths of Lee’s mountain hideaway where he tortures him.

But there’s other stuff going on as well. Lee’s mother has been in a coma for four years which again Lee believes is due to the aliens, whom he also blames for the death of his girlfriend. But a lot of other people from Lee’s past have gone missing, too, and the police are closing in on him. Is he mad, or is there something to what he believes?

A wildly original work that combines comedy, science-fiction, horror and more in a great big melting pot that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before, unless of course you’ve seen BUGONIA, in which case it’s worth pointing out that Lanthimos streamlines and calms down director Jang Joon-hwan’s vision somewhat. SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! has more screaming, graphic torture, and some scenes do go on a bit too long. There’s also the always controversial (and in this case I would argue unnecessary) use of real atrocity footage near the end, so be warned. 

Arrow’s set consists of two discs. The first is UHD and contains the new 4K restoration of the film along with two commentary tracks. The first is with the director and the star who reminisce about the production. The second is from critic and producer Pierce Conran and SFX artist Dan Pierce, both huge enthusiasts for Asian cinema in general and Korean cinema in particular. You also get a two minute introduction from the director and the 32 minute Q&Q from the 2024 BFI screening of the film.

Disc Two is a Blu-ray and contains new interviews with the director (28 minutes) and DP Hong Kyoung-pyo (16 minutes) as well as an unboxing video of the rare Korean DVD release that also included a soundtrack CD, filmstrip, flannel and bottle of menthol rub. There are also two short film from the director - Hair and Lazy Mirror, as well as a new interview with the director about his short film Imagine.

The rest of the extras are archival and include making of featurettes on the CGI (14 minutes), art design (23 minutes), SFX (9 minutes), makeup (5 minutes), stunts (14 minutes), music (15 minutes), behind the scenes (11 minutes), the circus performers (4 minutes) and some interviews (16 minutes). There are more archival interviews as a separate extra, totalling an extra 32 minutes in all. Then there’s  the promotional material including footage of the premiere (11 minutes), fan Q&A (19 minutes), and talks with fans (11 minutes). You also get nine deleted scenes with director introduction, trailers and still galleries including Hidden Images which is worth checking out. Arrow's limited edition set also comes with a double-sided poster, booklet and reversible sleeve. 

Jang Joon-hwan’s SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! is out from Arrow in a two disc set (one 4K UHD and one Blu-ray) on Monday 16th February 2026

The Visitor 4K (1979)

Arrow Films are bringing out the quite remarkable experience that is director Giulio Paradisi's THE VISITOR on 4K UHD. I tried to convey the quite awesome incoherence of this film 12 years ago in my review of Arrow's Blu-ray release. Looking back I don't believe I can top it, so here it is reproduced below, along with some updated pertinent info on the extras. 

How does one begin to describe THE VISITOR? Attempting a plot summary won't do, because that way lies madness. If I were to tell you who is in it that won't help either, because there's no way the mixture of star turns this movie features could possibly help give you a feel for how insane this film is. I could say it's from Ovidio Assonitis, who gave us TENTACLES - a daft Italian film about a monster octopus, and BEYOND THE DOOR  - a daft Italian OMEN ripoff that gets more incoherent as it goes on. Incoherent, now there's a word we can use to describe THE VISITOR. Mind you, that's a word we can also use to describe quite a lot of Italian exploitation cinema of the 1970s. But if any single movie can be described as the apotheosis of 1970s Italian incoherence, it is indeed, THE VISITOR.

In a galaxy far, far away (I think) John Huston awaits a dark shape that turns into a little girl while the sky turns the colour of tea being tipped into a glass of water. We cut to Franco Nero as Jesus addressing a room full of bald children. Enter John Huston looking vaguely normal. Just as we expect him to tell Mr Nero to get back to the psychiatric ward and leave the paediatric oncology patients alone we realise we are still on the other planet / galaxy / dimension / whatever. Jesus Franco (some delightful unintentional subtext there) has been relating the raison d'etre of everything we are about to watch, so we had better have been paying attention. In fact let's rewind and watch it again.

Sateen, Yahweh, flock of ravens, three survived, escape ship fell to earth, Sateen's genes, power of evil, etc etc. Got it? Never mind, now we're in Atlanta about to embark on a tour of the city's highlights thanks to some sort of deal the film-makers made with the mayor and made sure to point out in the very first caption onscreen. There's a basketball game that goes on for far too long, then we meet Lance Henriksen, who has been assigned by Mel Ferrer and his gang of evil lawyers (?) to get his girlfriend Joanne Nail pregnant. She carrying the genes of Sateen you see, and while she already has a foul-mouthed hawk-wielding daughter, a son is needed to...I don't know - fulfil a prophecy or something? Joanne doesn't want to get pregnant so when her daughter gets a gun for her birthday the little girl shoots mother in the back and paralyses her.

Joanne seems remarkably chipper for someone who will never walk again. Soon she's back home in her wheelchair while John Huston arrives from...I don't know...space? He's brought a group of bald men with him who proceed to erect some white sheets in a pleasing arrangement on top of a skyscraper. I still have no idea why. Mr Huston is here to stop / get the little girl & defeat the bad guys. I think. The daughter goes ice skating and flings some men around. There were meant to be elephants in this scene as well because the director thought people liked them.

Shelley Winters turns up as the anti Mrs Baylock and proceeds to serenade everyone with a traditional Negro folk song. John Huston arrives at the house, announces he's the babysitter and everyone believes him. Some more stuff happens that's so out there I really can't assemble it into any kind of logical sequence anymore, and I've only just watched the film. It all ends with...oh, but that would be telling. Actually it wouldn't but I can't actually remember. I think Jesus pops up again and the reason for the bald children is explained. Kind of. But actually not at all, really.

Plotwise THE VISITOR is an unbelievable mess, acting wise it's an unbelievable display of name stars giving their all to something where no-one could possible have had any idea what was going on. I was delighted to see that Arrow have retained their archival interview with screenwriter Lou Comici on their new release and it's still possibly the highlight of the entire disc, in which you get the feeling he had to write the script based on the gesticulations of a madman who couldn't communicate in any known language. And yet despite all this, the direction is really rather stylish. Immense care has been taken to compose shots for dialogue scenes that would otherwise be utterly disposable. The other planet is rather trippy. So are some effects in the sky we get to see at the end (I wasn't sure what was happening). Lance Henriksen gets attacked by a flock of birds & I'm sure the wooden one we see pecking at him is intended to be wooden. But why?

Arrow's 4K transfer looks even better than THE VISITOR's previous Blu-ray release. New extras include a commentary track from critics BJ and Harmony Colangelo who open by admitting they weren't alive during the 1970s (Arrow could easily have found film-savvy people who were but there you go) but feel the film emulates a lot of what that decade was about, a new visual essay from Meagan Navarro on the film's context within the exploitation cinema of the time (19 minutes) and another from Willow Catelyn Maclay discussing the influence of society's attitude to abortion that influenced both this and other 'devil child' movies (11 minutes). It's good to see Arrow have retained the interview with Lance Henriksen which is almost as funny as Lou Comici's and definitely worth a watch, as well as their interview with DP Ennio Guarnieri. There's also a booklet with new writing on the film.

Crazy, incoherent and trippy, THE VISITOR nevertheless makes you wish there had been more films made like like this, because whatever pioneering new form of film-making it was, it needed an awful lot of refining before it could be considered a viable entertainment medium. As it is you'll probably only be able to make it all the way through THE VISITOR's nearly two hour running time once. But you'll be showing bits of it to your friends forever.

Arrow Films are releasing the unique cinematic experience that is THE VISITOR on 4K UHD on Monday 16th February 2026