It Ends (2026)

        First-time director Alexander Ullom’s ultra low budget (it was made for under $100 000) creepy road movie is getting a UK digital release from Signature Entertainment.

Three twenty-somethings who have recently graduated meet up with their friend Tyler who has been in the army. Together they set off in their car to get some food. Their GPS suggests a short cut which takes them into a forest. When the cut turns out to be anything but short they turn around, only to be confronted with a dead end, on a road that has had no turn-offs. With no choice but to continue the way they were going, it soon transpires that both the road, and the forest through which it passes, seem to be endless. And there’s another problem. If they stop the car for more than 90 seconds they are besieged by hordes of people their own age who emerge from the forest and attack them.

As the miles click by they encounter other cars that have been left by the side of the road, their odometers reading over a million miles. Meanwhile inside the car they try to work out where they might be (the conclusion is either purgatory or hell) and why they might be there. As frustrations increase it looks like if their car does ever get to ‘the end’ then not all of its passengers will still be inside it.

Very much an art house horror piece, Ullom’s movie stands alongside other recent movies like TALK TO ME and OBSESSION in examining the concerns of an emerging younger generation, including an over-riding fear of aimlessness in the face of either not knowing what to do with their lives or being too afraid that what they do decide will be wrong. Apparently the director has claimed the film was his attempt to deal with his own depression and, while it is far from perfect, it certainly benefits from an integrity to its construction that runs a bit too long at 89 minutes, but is still certainly effective in its use of minimal resources to get you feeling sympathu for its young protagonists. Ullom’s next film, 4x4: THE EVENT sounds even more interesting with its plot of people fighting to the death but only allowed to use items they have bought online and had delivered to their homes, suggesting he’s a director to keep an eye on.

Alexander Ullom’s IT ENDS is out on Digital from Signature Entertainment on Monday 5th October 2026

Crushed (2025)

“Excellent, But Not For The Faint-Hearted”

After a successful international festival run last year, the latest feature from writer-director Simon Rumley (CROWHURST, FASHIONISTA, JOHNNY FRANK GARRETT’S LAST WORD and more) is getting a digital release through Grimmvision.

Daniel (Steve Oram) is a priest living in Bangkok with his wife May (Nattapohn Rawddon) and their ten year old daughter Olivia (Margaux Dietrich). One day Olivia goes to stay with a friend. The friend’s older teenaged brother shows them both an example of a ‘Crushing’ video, in which animals meet their ends beneath the boot heels of women in stockings. Don’t worry, you don’t actually get to see the kitten’s demise.

Needless to say the little girl is traumatised. The next day her own pet kitten goes missing and she wanders the streets looking for it until her parents pick her up. She then follows a boy (who has bought some small pets) to a dubious-looking house and sure enough she ends up getting abducted, with the plan being to sell her to a sex tourist.

Meanwhile Daniel and his wife are beside themselves looking for Olivia. Daniel in particular believes God will help them. However when the man who did take her is caught Daniel then finds it difficult to practice what he preaches and forgive his daughter's abductor.

CRUSHED is gruelling, serious material and that warning up the top there should not be taken lightly. That said, if you’re made of sufficiently stern stuff the film is excellent. The main plot-line is suspenseful and disturbing while the themes it addresses of what it is like to be a Christian and thus consider yourself tested by God and then to completely fail that test is something for plenty of post-movie discussion. Rumley’s direction makes clever use of a novel split screen technique and even cleverer use of a number of hymns, some played without the words but if you know them you’ll appreciate even more what a bitterly cynical film this is. Highly recommended, IF you can take it. Here’s the trailer:

Simon Rumley’s CRUSHED is out on Digital from Grimmvision on Monday 5th October 2026

Colony (2026)

“Rip-Roaring Zombie Picture from the director of TRAIN TO BUSAN”

Yes that’s right. While it may not be quite as good as Yeon Sang-ho’s zombies on a train masterpiece, COLONY is still terrific stuff and it’s about to get a DVD, Blu-ray, 4KUHD and Digital release in the UK from Studio Canal.

A disgruntled and dismissed research employee at biotech company Chains Bio creates a slime mold that turns people into high speed zombies with a collective intelligence and the ability to communicate in a way akin to that used by fungal networks. He infects the CEO at the company conference, which just happens to be taking place in a tower block in Seoul that also contains a shopping mall. 

He rings the police beforehand to warn them of the impending act of bioterrorism and very soon the building is both full of the infected and cordoned off from the outside world. The employee claims he himself is a living vaccine for what he has created, but will the usual motley band of survivors be able to get him to the authorities before they are all killed?

COLONY is a rip-roaring, action-packed zombie movie with some memorable imagery, plenty of suspense, and a climax that erupts into bloody chaos on the streets. In fact, rather than comparing it to TRAIN TO BUSAN, COLONY feels like a big budget, hugely polished riff on Italian 80s classics like Lamberto Bava’s DEMONS or Umberto Lenzi’s NIGHTMARE CITY. The mycelial communications network is a nice idea and allows COLONY to be something a little different from previous Korean zombie efforts. The actors ensure that their characters are engaging and either sympathetic or ‘ones you love to hate’ and as a result COLONY’s two hour running time just flies by. 

Extras on Studio Canal’s disc are limited to a few tiny featurettes - Choreography (2 minutes), a short Making Of (4 minutes) and a piece on the zombie makeups (2 minutes). But don’t let that put you off getting this. COLONY is the best zombie picture you’re going to see this year and if you get the option go for the 4K disc where all that splatter really pops. 

Yeon Sang-ho’s COLONY is out on DVD, Blu-ray, 4KUHD and Digital from Studio Canal on Monday 28th September 2026

Sexy Beast 4K (2000)

        Jonathan Glazer’s ‘One Last Job’ gangster picture is getting the posh box set treatment from Second Sight, with a limited edition containing both UHD and Blu-ray discs, a 160 page hardback book filled with new writing on the film and six collectors’ art cards. There will also be separate standard UHD and Blu-ray editions of the film. The transfer itself is a new 4K restoration that has been supervised by Jonathan Glazer.

Gal Dove (Ray Winstone) is a retired gangster living the good life in Spain with his wife DeeDee (Amanda Redman) and friends Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and Jackie (Julianne White). However, Gal’s past rears its ugly head in the form of the psychopathic Don (Ben Kingsley) who comes to Gal’s villa to convince him to do one more job for gang boss Teddy (Ian McShane). Gal refuses but Don just won’t take no for an answer. Could the recent damage to the Dove swimming pool provide an answer?

Jonathan Glazer is a British director with a string of must-watch movies under his belt that includes BIRTH (2004), UNDER THE SKIN (2013) and THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023). SEXY BEAST was his feature debut and as such it’s a tremendously assured work that’s anything but a run of the mill gangster movie. Water is a major motif, as is the theme of hunter and prey and, along with an arresting visual sense, Glazer is aided by an excellent cast, especially Ben Kingsley (Oscar nominated) who does the acting while Ray Winstone (no less exceptional) does the reacting in their scenes together. 

Second Sight’s 4K disc includes a wealth of excellent extras, including new interviews with Ray Winstone (30 minutes), Ben Kingsley (16 minutes), Ian McShane (11 minutes), producer Jeremy Thomas (21 minutes), and editor Sam Sneade (16 minutes). Creating Don Logan is a 25 minute video essay by Leigh Singer that gives us a thumbnail guide to Ben Kingsley’s career before going into the movie in more detail. There’s also 8 minutes of behind the scenes, 3 minutes of location shooting, and 12 minutes of archival cast and crew interviews. Finally, there’s an audio commentary from John Bleasdale who literally wrote the book on Jonathan Glazer’s work in cinema. The only thing missing is the Ben Kingsley / Jeremy Thomas commentary from previous Blu-ray releases so you may want to hold onto your old disc for that, but otherwise this is a superb upgrade of a genuine classic.

Jonathan Glazer’s SEXY BEAST is out from Second Sight on 4K in a limited edition UHD / Blu-ray combo and separate UHD and Blu-ray editions on Monday 28th September 2026

Forbidden Planet 4K (1956)

        Arrow Video are releasing, in limited edition 4K two disc sets (either one UHD and one Blu-ray or two Blu-rays) one of the all-time classics of science fiction. It’s a brand new 4K restoration from Arrow from the original 35mm negative and, according to the press release, is presented in its original 2.55:1 Cinemascope aspect ratio with its theatrical ‘Perspecta’ soundtrack for the ‘very first time’. The first disc has the film and a commentary while the second disc has a bunch of worthwhile extras, so let’s look at what we get:

Disc One - The Film

You probably know the plot, based loosely on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It’s the 23rd century. On the planet Altair IV live Dr Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), his daughter Altaira (Anne Francis) and their robot Robby (“himself” and an icon to several generations of SF fans). To Altair IV comes Commander John Adams (Leslie Nielsen, who became such a comedy icon in later life new viewers may need a moment to realise he’s not going to do anything silly) and his United Planets team to determine what happened to an earlier expedition.

Morbius and Anne are the only survivors of that expedition, and as members of Adams’ own crew start to be bumped off by a huge invisible something, it transpires that they aren’t alone on the planet. Might it have anything to do with Altair IV’s now long-dead original inhabitants the Krell, that also mysteriously perished?

If you’ve never seen FORBIDDEN PLANET you’re in for a treat, especially if your idea of an alien planet is based on movies like Ridley Scott’s ALIEN (itself groundbreaking for all kinds of reasons). Here we have a world depicted in the brightest, most eye-popping colours possible, with shot after shot resembling SF magazine covers of the period brought to life. The music score is revolutionary, too - all atonal blips and bloops and ominous vibrations.

Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw are on hand to provide brand new commentary duties. Its always a pleasure to be in their company for 90 minutes or so and the track here doesn’t disappoint, kicking off with matching up the characters here with characters in The Tempest before going on to discuss other aspects of the production. 

Disc Two - The Extras

New to this release is a piece by Neil Brand looking at Louis and Bebe Barron’s electronic score (23 minutes), how it was created and how they pitched their original ideas to the then head of MGM. You also get the shooting script. Otherwise it’s all archival material previously available on the previous Warners blu-ray released. First off we have THE INVISIBLE BOY (1957), Robby the Robot’s second film appearance and a film much harder to see back in the day (in the UK, anyway) than FORBIDDEN PLANET. Unlike that film this one is by no means a classic, telling the story of ten year old Timmie Merrinoe (Richard Eyer the year before THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD) who ends up with enhanced intelligence which allows him to rebuild Robby who has been brought back from the 24th century. Together they embark on an adventure to defeat an evil supercomputer. One for completists but it’s nice to have it as an extra.

If you want more classic Robby there’s also an episode of late 1950s The Thin Man TV series (“Robot Client”) starring Peter Lawford and Phyllis HOUSE OF WAX Kirk and two excerpts from MGM Parade. You also get the documentary Watch the Skies!: SF, the 1950s and Us (56 minutes) two featurettes on the film (41 minutes in total), 13 minutes of deleted scenes, 9 minutes of lost scenes, plus trailer and image galleries. The set also comes with a booklet featuring new writing on the film from Johnny Mains and Frank Collins. 

FORBIDDEN PLANET is out in 4K on a two disc release (either UHD and Blu-ray or two Blu-rays) from Arrow Video on Monday 28th September 2026

 

Bluebeard 4K (1972)

 

        Studio Canal are releasing, on both 4K UHD and Blu-ray, this rather singular and frequently outrageously entertaining piece of EuroTrash from the early 1970s. Mind you, at first glance BLUEBEARD looks like it might actually be rather classy. Produced by Pierre Spengler and the Salkinds just before their blindingly good adaptations of THE THREE MUSKETEERS & THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, starring Richard Burton and Raquel Welch, and with music by Ennio Morricone, the film’s pedigree doesn’t suggest the pile of deliciously lurid nonsense that it actually is. 

But just scrape beneath the surface and we see the cast also includes Sybil Danning (BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS and HOWLING II), Agostina Belli (HOLOCAUST 2000) and Karin Schubert (COLD EYES OF FEAR, BLACK EMANUELLE). But the real secret as to where this film is coming from lies with its director, Edward Dmytryk, the man who, during a somewhat chequered career, gave us movies like Universal’s CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943). 

Richard Burton gets out of his biplane, takes off his cunning concealing leather mask to reveal...a blue beard! Cue the titles in case we didn’t quite get that. There’s something about his face being mutilated during the war but as this is mixed in with something about how much his beard tickles it’s all a bit confusing. Richard is very rich Kurt von Sepper, who explains all this beardy stuff to Karin Schubert just before marrying her. For reasons that aren’t yet quite clear Karin dies in a hunting accident when Richard accidentally points his gun at her and shoots her. A lot of actual animals also get actually shot in the run up to this sequence so be warned. Retiring to play his massive organ while his dog wanders in to the most inappropriate introductory music for a canine in movie history, we then flash forward unannounced to Joey Heatherton’s over the top dance act. 

Bewitched by her dainty clodhopping in red high heels Richard is soon inviting her back to his castle, marrying her and giving her surreptitious glimpses of his old serving woman Martha brushing the hair of the corpse of his dead mother before pushing Martha down the stairs. Joey has a nervous breakdown. Richard goes to Vienna, leaving her the keys to his castle but saying that on no account must she use the gold one. That’s because it opens a secret chamber where the preserved naked bodies of his former wives are kept. Unfortunately his naughty latest wife opens Pandora’s Box, which all proves to be a trap for her unwary self. Because he loves her more than any of his other wives Richard says that before he kills her he’s going to tell her all about why he did all of the other wives in. 

We’re about halfway through this two hour film now and the series of flashbacks that now ensue are the excuse for a string of cameos from various Euro-actresses who get done in by Richard in a number of silly ways including an eagle, a giant elephant tusk, being flogged and then drowned in wine, and being nailed inside a coffin. Most of them manage to end up naked before they die, except for Raquel Welch, probably more because it was in her contract than because she plays a nun in a series of increasingly revealing outfits. The whole thing is rounded off with the kind of revelation we've all been expecting, followed by an appropriate come-uppance.

The first twenty minutes of BLUEBEARD are a triumph of ludicrous dialogue, beautiful women and opulent sets, but this one really needed a Robert Fuest or someone similarly mad to bring it all off. But the film isn’t an entire dead loss by any means, and any movie that has Richard Burton putting several bullets into a stuffed owl he has turned into a taxidermy alarm clock so it won’t frighten his wife deserves an albeit very tiny place in cinema history.

Studio Canal’s disc also comes with a commentary track from Howard S Berger and Nathaniel Thompson who enthusiastically embrace the lunacy of all I have described above. There’s also a new interview with Anna Bogutskaya who discusses both the movie and Richard Burton's career in relation to it, and an archival interview with Edward Dmytryk's wife Jean Porter which covers his career (34 minutes). Finally the set comes with a 12 page booklet featuring new writing on the film by Peter Raleigh.

Edward Dmytryk’s BLUEBEARD is out from Studio Canal in 4K on both UHD and Blu-ray on Monday 28th September 2026

Lenore (2026)

        After its UK premiere at Horror On Sea last January, this intriguing ultra low budget Australian attempt at giving us a variation on ‘Poe for the internet age’ is getting a digital release from Seven Tales.

In a grim basement room filled with monitors, computers and recording equipment Max Wren (Nicolas Jaquinot) is putting together a documentary on Lenore. Up until recently Lenore, whose real name is Victoria Brand (Ruby Duncan), has been an online phenomenon and internet personality, with millions of followers thanks to her variety of chat, music videos and immense number of costume changes. 

But Lenore has disappeared after what seems to have been a controversial publicity stunt where seven minutes of her having a miscarriage in the bath was edited into prime time children’s TV show Play School (a real Australian show and, of course a major one in the UK from 1964 - 1988). Max intends the documentary as a tribute but strange things start to happen. Someone visits with a tape that reveals part of Victoria’s early life and other messages start to appear on Max’s monitor. Is he going insane or is something else going on?

The surnames of the protagonists (Wren and Brand) are steals from David Cronenber’s VIDEODROME, but the aesthetic here is closer to Poe in its conceit. LENORE is ultra low budget but opens very well indeed and also has a banger of an ending, to the extent that it can be forgiven for a middle sequence that drags and feels garbled and confusing. Performances are all absolutely fine and if you fancy a low budget tale of incipient claustrophobic madness, LENORE is worth a watch.

LENORE is out on Digital from Seven Tales on Monday 21st September 2026