The Frighteners 4K (1996)

 

        Arrow Films are releasing a three disc set (either one 4K UHD and two Blu-rays or three Blu-rays) of THE FRIGHTENERS, the film Peter Jackson made in between HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994) and THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (2001), with that latter film partly coming about because of all the computers left over from this, at least according to Jackson’s own three minute introduction here. 

Frank Bannister (Michael J Fox) works as a psychic detective in the small seaside town of Fairwater. There’s a lot of psychic phenomena there, mainly because Frank’s ghostly friends (Chi McBride, Jim Fyfe and John Astin as an ancient cowboy) are causing it, with Frank being called in to sort things out and, of course, be paid for it.

But there’s something else going on in Fairwater as well - a large number of unexplained deaths in otherwise healthy people whose hearts have just stopped. When Frank starts seeing numbers carved into the heads of future victims it kicks of an investigation that leads back to the infamous Fairwater massacre back in 1964.

THE FRIGHTENERS represented a comedy horror step up for Jackson after his gore comedies BAD TASTE (very homemade but still lots of fun) and BRAIN DEAD (much more professional but just as outrageous), and while there is levity here be prepared for things to get serious in places. Jackson also benefits from having an excellent cast that includes fantasy favourites Fox, Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs and Jake Busey. The effects were groundbreaking for the time but the 30 year old CGI will look a little clunky to people unfamiliar with technology in any movie more than ten years old, especially with Arrow’s 4K transfer, which is crisp and lovely and shows off the New Zealand locations to their best advantage.

Arrow’s set consists of three discs. Disc One (4K UHD) has two versions of the film - theatrical cut (110 minutes) and director’s cut (122 minutes), with a ported over Peter Jackson commentary on the longer version. There’s also the previously mentioned introduction (recorded for the film’s tenth anniversary release) and a trailer. Disc Two is the same, but on Blu-ray and with open-matte versions of the film.

Disc Three has the extras, which kick off with a 2022 retrospective (95 minutes) featuring interviews with Stone, Busey, editor /producer Jamie Selkirk, DP John Blick, and creature FX supervisor Richard Taylor and others. The picture quality of the interviews is rough, possibly because they were conducted over Zoom, but it may be deliberate. The other big extra is the 1998 making of which was originally on the laserdisc release. This runs just over four and a half hours and is as exhaustive as you might expect, featuring interviews with all the major players and a lot of on-set footage. There’s also a dedicated 41 minute interview with Richard Taylor from 2022 and an image gallery. Finally the limited edition sets both come with a reversible sleeve and a booklet featuring archival material that includes original production notes.

Peter Jackson’s THE FRIGHTENERS is out in 4K from Arrow Films in limited edition three disc sets of either 1 x UHD and 2 x Blu-rays, or 3 Blu-rays, on Monday 26th October 2026

Ice Cream Man (2026)

“Would Cause Mr. Whippy to Shed a Tear”

Hot on the heels of its brief UK theatrical run (when it garnered pretty much universal poor reviews), writer-director Eli Roth’s latest movie is getting a Blu-ray, DVD and Digital release from Studio Canal.

One day an ice-cream van turns up in the small American town of Bayleen. Its vendor, who never speaks, serves all the children ice-cream which causes them to become super-strong maniacs who proceed to kill all the adults in the town with whatever they have to hand.

And that’s pretty much it for the plot of ICE CREAM MAN, a film that frequently feels like one of those terrible Stephen King adaptations where Mr King wrote a five page short story that someone thought they could turn into a 90 minute (or in this case 86 minute) feature. First the positives - if you are looking for a film filled with absurd over-the-top gory kills, many of them based around the schoolroom or playground, then you will have a whale of a time. Also the theme tune the ice cream van plays is quite fun and we get a couple of decent scary variations of it.

As for the negatives - the writing is lazy (the ice cream man’s back story is so slapdash and perfunctory that the script doesn’t even grant him the dignity of a name) and the direction is sloppy, missing numerous opportunities to make the film more suspenseful and just downright scary. Dialogue, especially in the opening act, has been written by someone who likely thinks they are being very funny. That feeling is misjudged. Instead a lot of what we hear conveys to us that the characters uttering it are awful people undeserving of audience sympathy. The climax is contrived and while it's likely intended to deliver a shocker of a twist, instead it all comes across as very silly indeed. All this means that ICE CREAM MAN is quite possibly the worst film so far from the man who gave us THE GREEN INFERNO and BORDERLANDS. 

Extras include a commentary track with Roth and co-writer Noah Belson which it could be argued is more engrossing than the actual film, as well as five featurettes (Back Story, Kidpocalypse, Working with Eli Roth, Ice Cream Truck and Working with Kids) which all last between two and three minutes, and four behind the scenes segments lasting 12 minutes in total. 

Eli Roth’s THE ICE CREAM MAN is out from Studio Canal on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on Monday 26th October 2026

Friday the 13th 4K (1980)

“Grand Guignol Plus Giallo Equals Seminal Splatter Classic”

Warners are bring out Sean S Cunningham’s remarkably successful horror film on 4K in steelbook and standard editions, with the steelbook having the film on both UHD and Blu-ray.

Watching the film again, with the movies that inspired it now available in 4K editions of their own, it’s easy to see how many of the elements of Mario Bava’s 1971 BAY OF BLOOD is in Cunningham’s film. However, FRIDAY THE 13TH differs in a number of significant ways, and it’s very much due to those differences that the film was likely so successful.

First - the victims. Instead of a bunch of scheming grown-ups like the Bava film (and indeed many a giallo) instead FRIDAY THE 13TH gives us a bunch of likeable and essentially innocent teenagers, practically none of whom realise that someone is out to get them until it’s too late. Second is Harry Manfredini’s score which, as John McCarty put in his book Splatter Movies, sounds like ‘Bernard Herrmann but with half the orchestra'. But apart from a bit of irrelevant banjo near the beginning it’s music that never lets up, right until the end when it’s used to play a trick on the audience that must have worked perfectly back in the day. 

And finally, and some would argue most importantly, and the thing that really set the film apart in 1980, there’s the Grand Guignol aspect, with Tom Savini’s makeup creations jaw-dropping in a ‘How DID they do that?’ when the film was originally released and still holding up pretty well on 4K now,  the big trick being that Cunningham’s camera never lingers on them for any longer than necessary. 

Warners’ 4K gives a slightly crisper and more vivid look to the daylight scenes and, significantly, you can see a bit more of what’s going on in the darker scenes with no problems with picture noise. Extras are all archival and include the Sean S Cunningham commentary, making of (22 minutes), 2008 panel reunion (22 minutes), Sean Cunningham interview (nine minutes), Lost Tales From Camp Blood Part I (8 minutes), The Friday the 13th Chromicles (21 minutes), Behind the Gore (10 minutes) and Fresh Cuts - New Tales from Friday the 13th (14 minutes). 

Sean S Cunningham’s FRIDAY THE 13TH is out now on 4K in steelbook (UHD and Blu-ray) and standard editions (possibly UHD only - check the disc as the press release isn’t clear) now. 

Little Shop of Horrors 4K (1986)

           To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of director Frank Oz’s film version of the off off Broadway musical - that was itself inspired by a film that has become a legend in itself - Warner Bros. are bringing out LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS on 4K UHD in standard, steelbook and collector’s editions.

Why is the original film a legend? Made in 1960 and the brainchild of writer Charles B Griffith (who also voiced Audrey the man-eating plant) and producer-director Roger Corman, it's the story of browbeaten Seymour Krelborn who works in a flower shop and finds fame when he discovers a ‘strange and interesting new plant’ which turns out to need human blood to survive.  Allegedly it was shot over just a couple of days. (“We were going to play tennis,” quipped Corman, ever the showman, “but it was raining”).

The film was eventually turned into a musical and then into a big budget Hollywood picture with Rick Moranis as Seymour, Ellen Greene as the woman he loves, Vincent Gardenia as Mr Mushnik the flower shop owner, and Levi Stubbs and about forty other people as Audrey the Man-Eating Plant. Despite featuring memorable toe-tapping songs and likeable characters, preview audiences were upset with the original ending, and so more than ten minutes of complex and extensive effects work (and one of the songs) were sacrificed and a new ending filmed, which was then what audiences got to see when the film was released.

This is being mentioned because Warners’ new 4K gives you the option of playing the original director’s cut (103 minutes) or the version that was seen in cinemas (94 minutes). There’s an archival Frank Oz commentary on the theatrical version, with the original ending separate with an accompanying commentary amongst the ported over extras.

New to this disc is a featurette (15 minutes) in which Frank Oz and Ellen Greene share their memories of making the film, and a new piece on the creation of Audrey II (eight minutes). Otherwise extras are archival including Frank Oz discussing the director’s cut from 2012 and nine minutes of deleted scenes and out-takes.

If you go for the collector’s version you get the film on UHD and Blu-ray discs in a steelbook as well as two posters, a 34 page booklet, 4 character cards and 2 behind the scenes cards. You can also get the steelbook alone, or a standard edition which contains the UHD disc only. 

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is out in 4K from Warner Bros. in collectors, steelbook and standard UHD editions on Monday 19th October 2026

Evil Dead 4K (2013)

 

        Studio Canal are releasing Fede Alvarez’s remake of the Sam Raimi classic in a special two disc UHD edition that will also include a booklet, poster, slipcase and O-ring with the credits on to keep the slipcase free of them. Both versions of the film - theatrical (just over 91 minutes) and unrated cut (just over 96 minutes) are in 4K, with other special features all on disc one.

Four friends meet up at a remote cabin with the intention of helping the fifth, Mia (Jane Levy) to go cold turkey with her heroin addiction. The cabin is in quite a state, but that’s nothing compared to the basement, where they discover numerous dead cats hanging from the ceiling, and what looks like a book wrapped in barbed wire.

Presumably unable to resist the lure of an unopened book that’s been bound in human skin, Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) cuts the wire off, opens it up, and is pretty soon uttering some familiar words to fans of the franchise. Before you can say ‘Necromicon’ something is rushing through the grim forest and taking up residence inside Mia, but it’s not long before the demonic presence is causing others to hack off their faces and arms and generally causing mayhem.

EVIL DEAD 2013 does it’s absolute best to be as bloody and as painful as possible, especially if you watch the unrated cut (which of course you should). Other than that its greatest strength is in not trying to slavishly remake the original. It’s far slicker than the Raimi film, of course, and lacks that nightmarish quality that had so many of us rewatching it time and again in the early 1980s. But in terms of gore and grue for a modern audience it does a good job.

New to this release is a short, decent talking head piece on the movie from critic Chris Tilly where he talks about the film & ties it into EVIL DEAD RISE and EVIL DEAD WRATH at the end. Otherwise extras are all archival, including a commentary track from Alvarez, co-writer Rodo Sayagues and actors Levy, Pucci, and Jessica Lucas (Olivia). There are a host of featurette interviews, including Alvarez (seven minutes and four minutes), Levy (nine minutes and two minutes) and Bruce Campbell (nine minutes) as well as two interviews with producers Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell and others (ten minutes and five minutes). Finally there’s an on-stage Q&A from The Ritzy in Brixton from 2013 with Alvarez and Levy. 

Fede Alvarez’s EVIL DEAD is out from Studio Canal in a two disc UHD set (ie no Blu-rays) on Monday 19th October 2026

The Screaming Skull (1958)

“Welcome Blu-ray Release of a Minor Unsung Classic”

It’s time to follow the bouncing a skull as Eureka releases director Alex Nicol’s ‘AIP Does REBECCA - Sort Of’ on Blu-ray. The limited edition release of 2000 also comes with a booklet featuring new writing on the film by Jon Towlson.

Eric Whitlock (John Hudson) brings his new bride Jenni (Peggy Webber) back to his country mansion. We learn that Jenni has just been released from a sanatorium where she’s been recovering from the death of her parents by drowning. It turns out Eric first wife Marion (a nice touch as this is adapted from the story of the same name by Francis Marion Crawford) also drowned, after first falling and hitting her head so hard she crushed the base of her skull.

Jenni starts the see the skull, and yes it screams. Or is it just the peacocks in the garden? Could the shifty gardener Mickey (director Alex Nicol) have anything to do with it? Or is it just another ‘drive the rich wife mad to inherit everything she owns’ plot?

Well, THE SCREAMING SKULL may have a few surprises in store for you as its story unfurls, surprises that will be extremely welcome to fans of the EuroGothic horrors that followed in its wake in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, the combination of small cast plus single location with impressive architecture plus lead actress role that requires extreme behaviour plus director playing a mentally challenged gardener will have fans wondering if Jess Franco was inspired by this one.

The film seems to have poor ratings on internet review sources like imdb but don’t believe them. The final twenty minutes of this contain at lease two bits that will cause anyone kindly disposed to this sort of thing to get shivers and then nod with pleasure at a job well done. 

Eureka’s disc comes with a 13 minute introduction by Stephen Laws who sets the scene nicely, and doubly so for British film fans of a certain age who will be able to easily sympathise with his hunt to watch this one, and his frustration at it never being shown on British television. There’s also a 29 minute piece from Mary Going on the film and gothic cinema, in which she compares it to Hitchcock’s REBECCA as well as mentioning the kind of ad campaign beloved of William Castle that the film used. Finally there are a couple of scratchy trailers sourced from Something Weird Video. 

THE SCREAMING SKULL is out on Blu-ray from Eureka in a limited edition of 2000 on Monday 19th October 2026