Obsession (2026)

 

“Great Horror from a Grand Tradition”

After its phenomenally successful theatrical run, during which it became one of the top ten moneymakers of the year, writer-director Curry Barker’s debut feature is now on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD from Universal.

Bear (Michael Johnston) is hopelessly in love with long-term friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) but has no idea how to explain how he feels. When she drops he crystal necklace down the sink Bear sees it as an ideal opportunity to get her a new one with the plan of using it as an inroad to telling her everything. However, instead he comes out of the necklace shop with a ‘One Wish Willow’ - a piece of wood which the instructions claim will grant you a single wish, and that it will be forever. Bear makes the wish, snaps the wood, and his world changes.

Everything is okay for a bit, but then it becomes obvious that instead of just being the lover and friend Bear craves, his wish has turned Nikki into a pathologically (and homicidally) jealous monster, one that will stop at nothing to have her Bear with her all the time and forever. Is there any way the wish can be broken?

OBSESSION belongs to a very long tradition of horror based around the simple premise of ‘Clueless individual does something without thinking it through properly and disaster ensues’. Examples include everything from W W Jacobs’ classic tale The Monkey’s Paw through the tales of EC comics and Robert Bloch to mad scientist movies and more. What Barker’s film cleverly taps into is the very real concerns modern audiences have about loneliness, relationships, abuse and sexual politics. Nikki becomes a monster but Bear is very much the creator of that monster and, in that great horror tradition, he, and everyone around him including Nikki herself, suffer accordingly.

Add in the fact that Barker has hit the ground running in terms of his ability to create extremely effective, shocking and often violent moments of horror, and that he has the skill to sometimes have you laughing at the proceedings, and it’s not surprising that the film has done so well. Johnston is excellent as the bumbling, socially hopeless Bear but the breakout star of OBSESSION is Inde Navarrette who has quite justifiably received high praise for her interpretation of the role of Nikki. Navarrette evinces audience sympathy while at the same time terrifying them, while also possessing the skill to make the laugh out loud moments work deliciously well.

Universal’s disc comes with a 19 minute extra that features the main stars (Johnston, Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson and Megan Lawless) and Curry Barker discussing the film, while Barker returns for a feature length commentary track. As you might expect for a horror fan who has got to direct his first feature, he’s bursting with enthusiasm while at the same time extremely grateful to the talented newcomers who sound as if they gave their all to make OBSESSION as good as it is. A deserved hit, a future classic and an essential movie for every serious disc collector's library. 

Curry Barker’s OBSESSION is out from Universal on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD now

The Desperate Hours (1955)

 

        Arrow Films are releasing William Wyler’s tense and suspenseful THE DESPERATE HOURS on Blu-ray. It’s a film that, if you watch it in the right frame of mind, may well remind you of John Carpenter’s classic HALLOWEEN in places, with its suburban setting and the way in which the police hunt their quarry. But that’s getting ahead of things. 

Glenn Griffin (a wonderfully worn-looking Humphrey Bogart), his brother Hal (Dewey Martin) and their accomplice, the brutish Sam Kobish (Robert Middleton), escape from prison. They decide to hole up in the suburban home of Daniel Hilliard (Fredric March) and his wife and two children. Meanwhile the Griffins’ old foe Deputy Sheriff Jess Bard (Arthur Kennedy) is hot on their trail, but narrowing down exactly where they are will depend on the family they are terrorising giving the police a clue.

The screenplay for THE DESPERATE HOURS  is by Joseph Hayes and is based on both his novel and his play. For a film that takes place mainly in a single house, director William Wyler does a great job of making the story as cinematic as possible, with angled shots and composites that makes this feel anything but stagey. As I mentioned above, if you love HALLOWEEN you may be struck by a number of similarities, to the point where when Bogart is punching through a door you’ll be convinced John Carpenter must have seen this and been influenced by it to make his landmark slasher. Well written, well acted and supremely suspenseful, THE DESPERATE HOURS was quite likely the inspiration for a host of home invasion movies that followed.

Extras on Arrow’s Blu-ray include a new commentary track from Daniel Kremer, as well as a 39 minute appreciation from University of Warwick film specialist José Arroyo that goes into the background of the making of the film. Eloise Rose provides a 15 minute visual essay on the film and there’s a 12 minute audio interview with William Wyler’s daughter who was present on set at the time of filming. There’s also a trailer and lobby cards as well as a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film from Philip Kemp and Neil Sinyard. 

William Wyler’s THE DESPERATE HOURS is out on Blu-ray from Arrow Films on Monday 14th September 2026 from Arrow Films

Tequila Sunrise 4K (1988)

Writer-director Robert Towne’s late 80s neo-noir is getting a limited edition 4K release (on both UHD and Blu-ray) from Arrow Films in a set that will also include a booklet featuring new writing on the film from Sean Hogan and Josh Nelson.

Dale ‘Mac’ McKussic (Mel Gibson) and Nick Frescia (Kurt Russell) were childhood buddies. While Mac went on to become a drug dealer, Nick became a cop. Now Nick’s a detective while Mac is apparently retired from the drugs business. However, news that the mysterious drug lord Carlo is coming to town has the police keen to keep tabs on Mac as they know each other well.

Meanwhile, both Mac and Nick get involved with restaurateur Jo Ann Vallenari (Michelle Pfeiffer), further complicating things. When the Mexican drug squad headed by Commandante Xavier Escalante (Raul Julia) get involved as well, events reach a head.

A Tequila Sunrise is a cocktail made from tequila, orange juice and grenadine, and apart from Mel chugging a couple, the title here (probably) refers to the love triangle between the three leads. For a movie from one of Hollywood’s most respected screenwriters, TEQUILA SUNRISE is surprisingly slow and uneventful. Certainly some of the dialogue crackles and there are some memorable speeches and one-liners, but the whole thing adds up to not very much indeed plotwise. However, if you’re a fan of the leads, or of DP Conrad Hall’s cinematography (which is excellent) those might be reasons enough to make you want to take a look at this one. Just don’t expect anything on the level of Towne's screenplay for CHINATOWN. 

Arrow’s disc comes with a commentary track by producer Thom Mount (who comes in at around the 43 second mark so wait for it), who also provides a new 21 minute interview. There are also interviews with second assistant director Robert Roda (17 minutes) and Lala Sloatman (16 minutes) who played ‘Sin Sister 2’. Lucy Bolton provides a very useful appreciation and overview of Towne’s career (25 minutes), plus you get the usual trailers and image gallery. 

Robert Towne’s TEQUILA SUNRISE is out on 4K from Arrow in both UHD and Blu-ray editions on Monday 14th September 2026

Marshmallow (2026)

“Refreshingly Different Summer Camp Horror”

Director Daniel Purgatorio’s MARSHMALLOW has been available on Shudder in the US for a while, and now it’s finally getting a UK release on Blu-ray courtesy of new label Toy Robot Video.

12 year old Morgan (Kue Lawrence) is about to attend his first summer camp, which will hopefully provide a distraction from his recurring dreams of drowning. He finds the camp to be the usual movie mix of bullies and nerds but soon makes some friends, including Pilar (Kai Cech). One night, around the campfire, the counsellors tell the made-up tale of The Doctor, apparently a lunatic who lived near the camp and stitched his victims’ bodies together. But for Morgan and his friends (and the rest of the camp’s attendees) The Doctor is about to become frighteningly real.

And that’s all that can be safely said about MARSHMALLOW, a film that plays with expectations, suffice to say if you’re expecting a generic slasher piece (and the film spends a good half an hour convincing you that’s what this is going to be) then you’ll be very pleasantly surprised at how things pan out. It also gives you pause to think about the long-term implications of its central concept, something we see all-too rarely in low budget horror films.

Toy Robot’s Blu-ray includes a commentary track from Purgatorio, Lawrence and Cech. There’s also a one minute deleted scene, three minutes on the filming of the dream sequences which look as if it was shot on a phone, as well as three video podcast interviews: director Purgatorio (10 minutes), writer Andy Gresgoviak (1o minutes) and Purgatorio and actor Dylan Friedman, who plays one of the kids. 

You also get two Purgatorio-directed short films: Other (15 minutes) and Body(s) (18 minutes), as well as storyboards, a behind the scenes gallery, three trailers and what looks like the entire screenplay. 

Daniel Purgatorio’s MARSHMALLOW is out on Blu-ray from Toy Robot Video on Monday 14th September 2026

 

The Spirit Lock (2026)

 

        Seven Tales are releasing new British horror film THE SPIRIT LOCK on digital. It’s directed by Steven Fierberg who has a stack of cinematographer credits but will probably be best known to readers here as being the DP of Renny Harlin’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 4: THE DREAM MASTER. 

Karl Mellor (Joe Anderson) and his wife Vanessa (Yasmin Al-Khudhairi) are convinced there is something horribly wrong with their son Kit (Stefanos Paraskevopoulos), to the point where they believe he may be possessed. They turn to the church but Father Bailey (Tim Downie) can find no evidence for concern, in fact the boy can handle a Bible and quote from it better than most children his age.

Karl isn’t reassured, and turns to a dodgy bloke in a pub car park from whom he buys the Spirit Lock of the title - a device that can apparently draw a demon out of someone and cause its destruction. But Karl is also warned that the device may not work in the way he wants.

Director Fierberg isn’t the only one with genre credentials in THE SPIRIT LOCK. Star Joe Anderson was also in 2008’s THE RUINS (“I can’t feel my legs!”), the remake of THE CRAZIES and Darren Lynn Bousman’s ABATTOIR (2016), and look down the crew list and you'll find one of the first assistant directors is Peter Manoogian - the same Peter Manoogian who directed the Empire classic ELIMINATORS. The location - a gloomy old country house in Norfolk - and the Spirit Lock device itself all add to the atmosphere, but the script is very slight, such that you quickly get the feeling this would have worked better as a 30 minute segment in an anthology movie, or TV show like Tom De Ville’s Urban Gothic or even Night Gallery. But if you’re looking for something creepy that might remind you of the kind of thing Dan Curtis used to put in his anthology movies then you might want to give THE SPIRIT LOCK a look.

Steven Fierberg’s THE SPIRIT LOCK is out on digital from Seven Tales on Monday 7th September 2026

Underworld 4K (1985)

 

        George Pavlou’s film of Clive Barker’s original story (Barker would claim in interviews at the time that it was rewritten by a ‘tits and car chase man’ even though the final film features neither) is getting a two disc limited edition release fromArrow Films.

Nicole (Nicola Cowper) is kidnapped from a high-end brothel run by Pepperdine (Ingrid Pitt) by a group of masked strangers. Bain (Larry Lamb) is recruited by Motherskille (Steven Berkoff) to get her back and finds himself in a strange underground world of mutants created by mad scientist Savary (Denhom Elliott) who has been experimenting with a new type of painkiller. Nicole is valued by the mutants as she is also on the drug but seems to have no side effects. Is she the saviour the underworld is looking for?

UNDERWORLD marked a change from the more traditional type of home-grown British horror movie that, after the demise of Hammer, had been kept going by directors like Norman J Warren. In fact the film has a look more akin to an MTV music video (or rather a whole series of them welded together) and at times it’s difficult to shake off the feeling that someone is going to start singing. As well as the above there are a bunch of other familiar faces including Art Malik (TRUE LIES), Brian Croucher (the ‘other’ Travis from Blake’s Seven), Miranda Richardson (the same year as DANCE WITH A STRANGER) and Trevor Thomas (INSEMINOID and SHEENA QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE). 

Arrow’s set comes with two discs, with the first disc a UHD that has the film in 4K with accompanying commentary by George Pavlou and Stephen Thrower. There are interviews with DP Sydney Macartney (26 minutes), Brian Croucher (12 minutes), and Nicholas Vince (17 minutes), who talks about his lengthy association with Barker. There are also makeup tests, storyboards, stills galleries and a trailer. Disc Two is a Blu-ray and has the US cut entitled TRANSMUTATIONS, which is a composite edit between the 4K and laserdisc inserts. It’s about 12 minutes longer but the extra material doesn’t add anything special (and certainly doesn’t contain any more horror) but it’s there if you want it.

UNDERWORLD is out in 4K on a limited edition two disc (UHD and Blu-ray) set from Arrow Films on Monday 7th September 2026

The Abominable Snowman 4K (1957)

“Hammer + Nigel Kneale = Excellence in Cinema”

The latest film to receive the extra posh Hammer treatment is the film version of Nigel Kneale’s BBC TV play The Creature, broadcast twice in 1955 and then never seen again, so thank goodness for this superior Hammer adaptation which we can now enjoy in sparkling (especially with all that snow around) 4K. The film is being released in both separate Blu-ray and UHD editions, as well as a limited edition set that includes both UHD and Blu-ray discs plus a 120 page book (not provided for review), double-sided poster and reproduction lobby cards.

Peter Cushing stars as Dr John Rollason, a scientist staying at a remote Himalayan monastery where he, his wife Helen (Maureen Connell) and assistant Peter (Richard Wattis) are collecting rare botanical specimens for transport back to London. But Rollason, a proficient mountaineer, has another reason for being there. He has planned to meet up with Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker) and his team who are planning an expedition to find the yeti.

They set off despite both Helen’s protestations and the monks’ reticence and it soon becomes apparent that Tom’s plans for the yeti, should they find it, extend to rather more than just documenting the experience. As they climb higher and higher, the men find themselves challenged not just by the creature they may be looking for, but by their own collapsing sanity.

Nigel Kneale was always more interested in human interaction than in getting to the monsters, so don’t expect to see any yeti in the opening half of this. What we do get to see, however, is the conflict between the thinker and scientist (Rollason) and the two-fisted money maker (Friend). In QUATERMASS AND THE PIT terms they are akin to Quatermass and Colonel Breen - neither man understands the other and argument only serves to reinforce how little they have in common. Apart from the leads the other stars here are art director Bernard Robinson, whose sets are more detailed than they need to be but make the monastery scenes all the more of a pleasure to watch, composer Humphrey Searle who provides a near-otherworldly score, and director Val Guest who keeps things grounded (although one wonders what someone like Jacques Tourneur might have done with this kind of material). Oh, and fans of Eugenio Martin’s HORROR EXPRESS may get a feeling of deja-vu in the sequence where a scrabbling yeti claw tosses away a rifle.

As mentioned above the limited edition comes with both UHD and Blu-ray discs, and here’s what you get on them:

Disc One (UHD) and Disc Three (Blu-ray)

This offers you the UK theatrical cut running just over 90 minutes and two commentaries. Start with the 1999 one featuring Guest, Kneale, Marcus Hearn and Ted Newsom before moving over to the new commentary with Toby Hadoke and Kneale expert Andy Murray. You get the usual censor card and trailers and then there’s Abominable! a 58 minute documentary in which Wayne Kinsey, Andy Murray, Toby Hadoke, Jon Dear, Richard Hollis and Dick Klemensen discuss both the film and the lead up (in terms of BBC TV plays and Hammer’s adaptation of them) to the making of it.

The Art of Design is an excellent 25 minute piece from Wayne Kinsey about Bernard Robinson and specifically how Hammer sets were redressed and reused from the period when THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN was made. There’s an academic video essay from Heather Wixson on Fear and the Unknown in Monster Cinema in which she talks both about this film and movies like ALIEN and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Captured! is 8 minutes of Nigel Kneale’s own snapshots of his visit to the Hammer set, there’s an image gallery, and there are two Val Guest interviews: audio from 1988 (29 minutes) and video from 2003 (18 minutes). 

Disc Two (UHD) and Disc Four (Blu-ray)

Here we have the US cut of the film entitled THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN OF THE HIMALAYAS which runs five minutes shorter. We also have the very chatty Toby Roan and Heath Holland to provide a new commentary. A second commentary track is given over to cryptid enthusiast Stephen R Bissette who provides a whopping two hour and twenty seven minute audio essay that means they have to start the film over again.

Exhuming The Creature is a 54 minute piece in which Andy Murray, Gavin Collinson, Toby Hadoke, Jon Dear, Hannah Cooper and Richard Hollis talk about the original Nigel Kneale TV play, while The Legend of the Yeti: From Myth to Movies is 40 minutes of chat from Ted A Bohus, Stephen R Bissette, Michael Gingold and Casey Walker, writer-director of Hammer’s forthcoming ITHAQUA. Tim Lucas and Stephen R Bissette chat about the film over Zoom for 75 minutes in another of their ‘Sidebars’ and the disc and set is rounded off by an audio interview with BBC producer Rudolph Cartier from 1991. 

THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN is out in 4K from Hammer in separate two disc UHD and Blu-ray sets, and in a limited edition combo set with all the extras listed above, on Monday 31st August 2026