Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972)

Next up in the Hammer Presents line of British-made horror films not actually made by the company is this AIP thriller from director Curtis Harrington and starring Shelley Winters, who plays the title character. 

Rosie ‘Roo’ Forrest (Winters) lives in a big old house in the country by herself, with her British magician husband no longer alive, and her young daughter dead after Roo encouraged her to slide down a lengthy banister rail and then didn’t move at all to try and catch the girl when she fell from it to her death. Every year she holds a special Christmas party for children from Rosalie Crutchley’s orphanage. Christopher and Katy Coombs (Mark Lester and Chloe Franks) aren’t supposed to be there but they stow away in the boot of a car so they can come and join in the fun.

Roo takes a liking to Katy and wants to keep her there. Meanwhile her staff (Michael Gothard and Judy Cornwall) blackmail her out of £2000 and leave her service, leaving Roo with Katy and Christopher alone in the house after the others have all gone. It’s then up to the children to find a way to escape.

WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO also features Lionel Jeffries (director of THE RAILWAY CHILDREN and THE AMAZING MR BLUNDEN), Pat Heywood (MUMSY NANNY SONNY AND GIRLY) and Hugh Griffith (the Dr Phibes films). All of those titles are better movies than this, a film that tries hard to be a sinister version of Hansel and Gretel but ultimately ends up being less than riveting, especially in its second half. Kenneth V Jones’ music score is over the top and the best bit of the film is the pre-title sequence which has you thinking we’re going to get the AIP equivalent of a Hammer psycho-thriller, especially with Jimmy Sangster’s name in the credits, but sadly it’s not to be.

If you want to hear far more upbeat and praising assessments of WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO then head for the commentary track by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and the 19 minute video essay by Heather Wixson entitled Grief as Horror, both of which find a lot more to love about the film. Hammer’s disc also comes with the film in two aspect ratios: 1.85:1 (cinema version) and 1.37 (likely how it was shown on the TV). There’s also a trailer with and without text, a three minute radio spot and an image gallery.

Curtis Harrington’s WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO is due out on Blu-ray from Hammer on Monday 24th August 2026

 

The Name of the Rose 4K (1987)

“Beautiful Transfer of a Timeless Classic”

Brother Cadfael goes EuroGothic as Second Sight bring us their whistles and bells 4K restoration of Jean-Jacques Annad’s excellent adaptation of Umberto Eco’s bestselling novel in a limited edition UHD and Blu-ray combo package, as well as standard separate UHD and Blu-ray editions.

The year is 1327. William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) travels with his young novice Adso (Christian Slater) to form part of a contingent of Franciscan monks due to debate a religious issue with representatives of the Catholic church at a remote abbey in Northern Italy. However, when they arrive, they find themselves embroiled in a series of murders. William is called upon by the Abbott (Michel Lonsdale) to use his well-known deductive powers to solve the mystery, but with the arrival of Grand Inquisitor Bernardo Gui (F Murray Abraham) things turn from bad to worse.

An atmospheric, well-acted, beautifully designed (by Dante Ferreti) and shot (by Tonino Delli Colli) French-Italian-German-20th Century Fox coproduction, perhaps the greatest asset of THE NAME OF THE ROSE is its screenplay, the writing of which is detailed in one of the excellent extras on this disc. Umberto Eco’s complex literary work had to be stripped down and what was left reassembled with an eye on it being approachable by the average cinema audience member. By centring on the murder mystery (at least to start with) Andrew Birkin was also able to include some of the symbolism, philosophy and religious discussion that the book is filled with.

But everyone is playing their ‘A’ game here. Composer James Horner offers a score that’s mainly synthesisers but which feels perfectly suited to the medieval period, while the casting director must have had a ball looking for the most interesting faces in Italy and German to populate the monastery. Among the cast are also a swathe of familiar faces including Feodor Chaliapin, Jr (Argento’s INFERNO and Soavi’s THE CHURCH), William Hickey (THE BOSTON STRANGLER and TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE), Ron Perlman (HELLBOY et al), Leopoldo Trieste (Bava’s BAY OF BLOOD), Donald O’Brien (ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST) and Valentina Vargas (HELLRAISER IV).

Second Sight’s 4K transfer is second to none, with the film never having looked this good. Those of you familiar with older BBC TV screenings should note that the Latin uttered here does not get translated with subtitles, which is the same as it was with the UK cinema print. Extras include a new commentary from James Marsh but if you’ve not listened to it before you should start with the excellent archival commentary from director Annaud that will tell you more than a few things to raise your eyebrows.

Other new extras include a set of excellent interviews, including the one with screenwriter Andrew Birkin mentioned above (22 minutes), as well as Ron Perlman (23 minutes), Christian Slater (24 minutes) and director Jean-Jacques Annaud (39 minutes). There’s also an archival German making of (45 minutes). Finally, the limited edition comes with a 120 page book with new writing on the film (not provided for review), six collectors’ art cards and a slipcase to keep it all in. 

Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s THE NAME OF THE ROSE is out from Second Sight in a limited edition combo UHD and Blu-ray set and separate UHD and 

Blu-ray editions on Monday 10th August 2026

30 Days of Night 4K (2007)

        Director David Slade’s adaptation of the graphic (and graphically violent) vampire novel by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith is getting a 4K UHD / Blu-ray steelbook combo release from Icon, along with a separate standard Blu-ray release (with the same disc extras) for those of us who don’t need all the metal trimmings.

Barrow in Alaska is the northernmost town in the United States, and one that, every year, has to endure thirty days of continuous darkness before sunlight returns. So what better hunting ground for a literal boatload of vampires? Their human Renfield substitute (a great grubby performance from Ben Foster) ensures all mobile phones are burned, all dogs are killed (that's a warning for pet lovers) and the power to the town is cut, after which it’s up to Sheriff Eben (Josh Hartnett), his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George) and the few survivors to make it through the rest of the month until the sun comes back, begging the question: who will survive and what will be left of them?

Aside from being action and gore-packed, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT gives us some great, original (and especially nasty) vampires and sets out its own rules: it looks like only decapitation or sunlight will kill them, there’s no mention of crucifixes or holy water and if the town has a church no-one ever mentions it. At nearly two hours it’s a tiny bit long for what is essentially an action-heavy horror, but Slade really grabs his material with both hands and runs with it, making this an essential movie for vampire fans.

Icon’s 4K disc is a new restoration scanned on the Laser Graphics Director scanner with 16bit colour depth. For a film that is so dark so much of the time, the transfer really benefits from this and all the picture noise of previous releases is gone. 

The disc comes with a bunch of new interviews, including Slade (27 minutes) which includes his resisting of producer Sam Raimi’s suggestions he make the film funnier, composer Brian Reitzell (25 minutes), actor Mark Rendall who plays Jake Olsen (15 minutes) and creator and screenwriter Steve Niles (14 minutes).

Archival material has been ported over from the previous two disc DVD release including the commentary with Hartnett, George and producer Rob Tapert, and eight Making Of featurettes which vary in length from 4 - 8 minutes). The steelbook also comes with a booklet with new essays on the film and an A3 poster.

David Slade’s 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is out in 4K from Icon in a UHD / Blu-ray combo steelbook or single Blu-ray disc now

The Fires (2026)

The new Icelandic disaster movie that features footage of actual volcanic eruptions is getting a digital release from Signature Entertainment.

Anna Arnardottir (Vigdis Hrefna Palsdottir) is a top vulcanologist assigned to look at a series of volcanic eruptions on Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula. She finds that the earthquakes which herald these eruptions are moving inland towards Reykjavik. Could the capital city be on a course for destruction by lava? And can she convince a government keen to reassure tourists that it’s still okay to come to Iceland that it probably isn’t? 

That all sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, rather than follow traditional Hollywood disaster movie templates, THE FIRES saddles its sour-faced lead with an uninspiring love affair with hunky photographer Thomas (Pilou Asbaek from Game of Thrones) and spends far to much time on her home life with her husband and child instead of getting on with showing us scenes of devastation (even a couple of model shots would have been welcome). 

Yes we do get some authentic footage of volcanos erupting but by the hour mark you’ll be wishing those eruptions were a little more frequent and a lot more violent. The final twenty minutes does offers us the promised disaster, but it’s decidedly low budget and consists mainly of a dust storm as our lead has to go in search of her little girl who has placed herself in peril in the latest in a series of lazy plot contrivances. Performances are middling (you really need an actress of Amy Adams’ calibre to make an audience invested in what happens to the decidedly dreary Anna) and the music score doesn’t pull its finger out when it really needs to. One for disaster movie completists and Icelandic cinema obsessives only. Here’s a trailer:

THE FIRES is out from Signature Entertainment on digital on Monday 27th July 2026

Soylent Green 4K (1973)

         Arrow Films are bringing out Richard Fleischer’s adaptation of Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room! Make Room! on 4K in UHD and Blu-ray editions in a brand new restoration from the original 35mm negative. The disc will also come with a collectors’ booklet with new writing on the film and a reversible sleeve. 

It’s 2022 and the population of New York is 40 000 000. Climate change has wrecked the planet. Everyone lives in a perpetual heatwave and food is scarce, the main supplier being the Soylent Corporation who make three foodstuffs - Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow and, their newest, Soylent Green which apparently comes from sea plankton. The word Soylent is never explained in the film but in the book it comes from a combination of the words Soybean and Lentils.

When Simonson (Joseph Cotton in an electric blue velvet suit), a high up member of the Soylent Corporation, is murdered, Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) is assigned to the case. With the help of his associate Sol (Edward G Robinson in his final film role) Thorn uncovers the horrible truth behind the company.

The final line of dialogue in SOYLENT GREEN has become something of a cliché now but if you’ve not seen the film I’m not going to spoil it for you. Sadly, for a film that’s over 50 years old, much of what we see in it about how humans have destroyed the world is even more horribly relevant today. It’s a film from (arguably) America’s Golden Age of science fiction film production, a glorious ten years when Hollywood movies were trying really pretty hard to match up to the literature of the era for intellectual ambition, starting with PLANET OF THE APES in 1967 and ending with a colossal financial bang when STAR WARS came out a decade later and sent everyone back to making ray gun and spaceship adventure pictures. Which is understandable, actually, as many of these films, SOYLENT GREEN included, offer little to no hope for a human race that has caused its own undoing.

Arrow’s disc comes with two commentary tracks, an archival one featuring director Fleischer and lead actress Leigh Taylor-Young, and a brand new, chatty and highly informative track from Michael Brooke and Johnny Mains. Other extras consist of an archival making of (10 minutes), MGM’s Tribute to Edward G Robinson (5 minutes), Charlton Heston at the BFI from 1985 (which runs as an extra audio track lasting 72 minutes) and Richard Fleischer at the BFI from 1994 (76 minutes). You also get a trailer and image galleries.

Richard Fleischer’s SOYLENT GREEN is out on 4K in UHD and Blu-ray editions from Arrow Films on Monday 27th July 2026

Mockbuster (2026)

“Hugely Entertaining Look at Making Movies for The Asylum”

It’s highly likely that everyone visiting this site will have seen at least one movie made by American ultra low budget exploitation outfit The Asylum (“We make shitty movies for people with bad taste. And alcoholics.”). Highlights include ABRAHAM LINCOLN VS ZOMBIES, MEGA SHARK VS GIANT OCTOPUS and the entire SHARKNADO series. But what’s it like to direct one of these hastily shot, cobbled together pieces of trashy cinema? To work with stars like Michael Paré or Eric Roberts? And to do it all within the allotted shooting schedule of six days?

Well that’s what MOCKBUSTER, which is getting a Digital release from Miracle Media, is all about. Film-maker Anthony Frith, who up until the point of starting this project had basically only made corporate training films and silly YouTube videos, decided to film his journey when he applied to The Asylum to direct a movie. And they said yes.

The extra element here is that Anthony wasn’t based in Hollywood but in Australia, and when the studio okayed his project it was up to him to find a cast and crew all by himself while still waiting for a script to turn up and with very little prep time. What MOCKBUSTER does is follow his progress through production ‘conferences’ (often taking place on a park bench), casting, script read throughs and the shooting of the movie - an extremely loose and not at all faithful version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT. 

Full marks are due to Mr Frith who, as well as weathering the storm of insane low budget film-making, also managed to make an impressively entertaining documentary about the whole experience. Even of you’ve never seen an Asylum movie, and if you never have any intention of doing so, MOCKBUSTER provides a fascinating, valuable and above all highly enjoyable look at movie-making that’s decidedly outside the mainstream. Absolutely worth a look if you have any interest in how movies are made. Here’s the trailer:

Anthony Frith’s MOCKBUSTER is out on Digital from Miracle Media on Monday 27th July 2026

X the Unknown 4K (1956)

Hammer’s follow up (of sorts) to their 1955 hit THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT is the latest film to receive the company’s whistles and bells deluxe treatment, with a special four disc limited edition set being released that includes a book, lobby card reproductions and a poster. 

In Scotland a large crack opens up in the ground where military training is taking place, killing one man and causing severe radiation burns on another. Because of this the help of the nearby Atomic Energy Laboratory is sought, including Quatermass stand-in Dr Adam Royston (Dean Jagger), his assistant Peter Elliott (William Lucas) and their boss John Elliott (Edward Chapman before he was Mr Grimsdale in Norman Wisdom comedies).

There’s a raid on the base, during which a safe door is melted and nuclear material stolen. A small boy sees something moving in the woods and gets the same radiation burns as the soldier. It turns out the crack in the earth has unleashed a large energy-hungry blob and it’s on the way to the atomic station for its next meal.

An entertaining, brisk, well-shot variation on the Quatermass theme, X THE UNKNOWN benefits from straight-faced performances and scientific explanations that you can just about believe for the length of the running time. Fans will spot plenty of familiar faces and if you’ve not seen this and love British SF you deserve to treat yourself.

As mentioned above, X THE UNKNOWN is getting the deluxe treatment. but if you want just the discs then those are being released in separate two-disc UHD or Blu-ray sets as well. However if you go for the limited edition, aside from the printed material, here’s what you’re going to get:

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

As with Hammer’s CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and other limited edition sets, these two discs have the same material on them. Disc one offers you the UK cut of X THE UNKNOWN in two aspect ratios - 1.66:1 (with optional Toby Hadoke and Andy Murray commentary) and 1.37:1 (with optional Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr commentary). The film really benefits from the 4K transfer and the two commentaries work well in terms of complimenting one another.

There’s a 62 minute new making of documentary, Into the Unknown, which, if you’ve listened to both commentaries, will feature quite a bit of familiar information from Toby Hadoke, Andy Murray, Wayne Kinsey, Dick Klemensen and Frazer Hines. There’s a 2003 Jimmy Sangster interview (22 minutes) but perhaps the highlight of the disc is a 49 minute in depth and quite touching documentary on special effects wizard Les Bowie, hosted by his co-worker Mike Tilley and featuring Wayne Kinsey. It’s excellent and features a number of models, matte paintings and other examples of Bowie’s work. 

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

This disc offers the US cut of X THE UNKNOWN in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio with an optional commentary by David Kalat, whose commentaries are always excellent although again if you’ve already listened to the two previous commentaries you may get a little bit of unavoidable deja vu. Disc two also has a plethora of bits and pieces including textless and mute opening titles, a trailer, censor card, the 8mm version of the film (26 minutes), a piece on the restoration (11 minutes), image gallery, and a sidebar in which Tim Lucas and Stephen R Bissette discuss the film for longer than X THE UNKNOWN’s running time (87 minutes).

The undisputed highlight of disc two, however, is Displaced and Damned, a 76 minutes career overview of director Joseph Losey with contributions from Melanie Williams, Gavrik Losey, John Hamilton, David Huckvale, and Lauren Barnett. This being a Hammer disc it’s understandably Hammer heavy, detailing Losey's nearly-directing of X THE UNKNOWN and his actual directing of 1962’s THESE ARE THE DAMNED. We also get the Losey-directed and Jimmy Sangster-scripted short (29 minutes) A MAN ON THE BEACH (in colour and 2.35:1 widescreen) in which criminal Michael Medwin ends up at the house of Sir Donald Wolfit. 

As is so often the case with these releases, the film feels more of an extra to support the special features and as such this package offers excellent value for money, with three commentaries and two excellent documentaries, plus of course you get X THE UNKNOWN looking absolutely pristine. 

X THE UNKNOWN is out in a limited edition four disc UHD and Blu-ray set, and in standard separate two disc UHD and Blu-ray editions on Monday 27th July 2026