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

The Curse (2026)

“Splatter-Filled J-Horror”

After its UK premiere at Glasgow Frightfest (and its world premiere at Fantastic Fest), Blue Finch are releasing director Kenichi Ugana’s new J-Horror picture THE CURSE on digital. 

Riko works at a hair salon. Scrolling through her social media one morning she comes across a photograph of one of her  friends that shows an unnerving spectre in the background. When she tries to contact the friend it turns out the girl died months ago. Her flatmate presumes it’s someone impersonating her and puts a post on the picture, only to be rewarded with a string of insults and a video showing someone smashing a bleeding doll with a hammer while chanting a curse.

Riko’s flatmate starts bleeding from the eyes and soon she’s committing violent acts upon herself, as well as eating a local dog. Eventually she kills herself (very graphically) by stabbing herself in the throat. It’s not long before Riko realises she’s the next target of the curse and, together with three friends, tries to find a way to stop it.

THE CURSE is low budget but does its damnedest to keep you interested with over the top gore, some eye-catching special effects and, most important of all, a climax that could stand alongside some of the crazier Italian giallos for the amount of mayhem that ensues. Anyone expecting the ‘quiet horror’ of RINGU or JU-ON should be warned that THE CURSE gets pretty noisy pretty quickly, and as such it makes for a highly entertaining, of not exactly subtle, modern entry in the J-Horror subgenre. Here’s the trailer:

THE CURSE is out on Digital platforms from Blue Finch Releasing on Monday 13th July 2026

The Morrigan (2026)

“Reminiscent of Late 1980s Italian Horror”

That is not a recommendation by the way, unless you are a fan of a very particular type of exploitation cinema. Marcello Avallone’s SPECTERS (1987), the films Lucio Fulci made when he wasn’t very well, and pretty much the entire oeuvre of Claudio Fragasso (MONSTER DOG, TROLL 2) will all occur to fans of a certain age if they watch THE MORRIGAN, a film filled with non-sequiturs, name actors uttering nonsensical dialogue, and a complete lack of understanding of how radios and telephones work.

Archaeologist Fiona Scott (Saffron Burrows) wants to go to a remote island off the coast of Ireland to excavate the site where she believes The Morrigan is buried. Folklore suggests it’s an ancient and powerful demon but she thinks it’s probably just a powerful female chieftain who got a bad press. She gets to go but because of The Patriarchy her horrible boss Dr Jonathan (Jonathan Forbes) gets to lead the expedition.

To cheer herself up Fiona takes her whiny, petulant, vodka-swilling recently-expelled reprobate of a teenaged daughter Lily (Emily Flain) with her to a place with no internet or mobile phone signal. But it does have priest James Cosmo who can be contacted by radio (although he answers the phone when contacted which suggests some novel wiring, or possibly editing) as well as hotel owner Toby Stephens.

The excavations proceed! They dig a tiny tunnel. Fiona crawls to its end. The tunnel collapses. Fiona finds herself in a cavern with a sarcophagus, In the next scene this extremely heavy-looking object that could not possibly fit down a tiny Saffron Burrows-sized tunnel is back at the hotel. Lily opens it, turns into a monster and goes on the rampage.

THE MORRIGAN wastes a bunch of good actors and some decent locations. Credit is due to Emily Flain who really lets rip with her transformation into the title creature, but overall the execution is all too ramshackle, careless and clumsy, making you think of a bad Jess Franco film in its ‘couldn’t be bothered’ lack of attention to things that repeatedly draw you out of the action. One only for obsessive fans of the leads, and those of us who have to watch everything. Here’s a trailer to help you make up your mind if you want to:

THE MORRIGAN is out on Digital from Thunderbird Releasing on Monday 29th June 2026

The House of Hammer: Volume One (2026)

 

        As well as bringing out their own output in 4K editions in lavish box sets, and providing some much-needed releases for some of the other British horror movies made during Hammer’s heyday, the Hammer label is now also venturing into ‘video magazine’ territory. From this initial ‘issue’, The House of Hammer looks as if it promises to be an ongoing series that will collect documentaries, talking head pieces, short films and other bits and pieces that either work better outside of being attached to a formal Blu-ray movie release, or possibly got missed off previous discs, about which more later. This first volume consists of two Blu-ray discs and a 120 page book, along with the usual luxury packaging. So let’s take a look at what we get:

Disc One

The centrepiece (and very much the highlight) of the first disc is the first part of Masques, Monsters and Madmen, what promises to be a lengthy (part one runs 111 minutes) documentary on the history of American International Pictures . Director John Hamilton has assembled quite the collection of experts (including himself) to talk about the company, and these include Jonathan Rigby, Steve Haberman, Chris Alexander, Heidi Honeycutt, Richard Klemensen, Bruce G Hallenbeck and David Pirie. Of course any history of AIP is going to have a major Vincent Price element so its good to see both Vincent’s daughter Victoria and Keeper of the Sacred Flame Peter Fuller in here too. The documentary is divided into three parts: ‘The Drive-In Empire’, ‘Made in Britain’ and ‘The American Invasion’ and covers AIP’s beginnings, their Poe cycle of movies, and there’s welcome emphasis on the relationships between AIP and UK companies Anglo Amalgamated and Tigon. In fact that’s where we cut off this time around, with discussion of WITCHFINDER GENERAL and THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR but the documentary stopping short of THE OBLONG BOX.

Also on disc one is The Land Demands Blood, a 38 minute piece about Cornwall and featuring interviews with film-makers and writers all with Cornish links, including Mark Jenkin (BAIT, ENYS MEN, ROSE OF NEVADA). It’s divided into four parts with part three looking at Hammer’s PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES and THE REPTILE.

Finally for new material we get Off the Leash, a 45 minute piece from Jonathan Rigby looking at the career of Michael Gough. The disc is rounded out with Ticket to Happiness, a 30 minute obscure Hammer short written and directed by Peter Bryan and starring Michael Goodliffe and Charles Lloyd Pack, and a collection of lobby cards from STOLEN FACE that were missed off the 4K release of that film.

Disc Two

Disc two kicks off with a decent thumbnail summary of the history of film censorship both in the US (Chris Alexander, Heidi Honeycutt, John Logan) and the UK (Jonathan Rigby, John Hamilton and David Pirie). Do you know what the ‘X’ stood for in the UK certification? Find out here. That’s followed by Making Monsters, a 39 minute interview with special effects artists Dave and Lou Elsey who have worked on numerous big budget Hollywood projects, often influenced by the classic horrors of old. My favourite story was how they wanted a CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF look to one of the lycanthropes in Joe Johnston’s 2010 THE WOLFMAN.

After that is the highlight of disc two for film music fans as David Huckvale spends 39 minutes looking in some detail at the scores for Harry Robinson’s TWINS OF EVIL and James Bernard’s CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, with some choice bits from THE MUMMY’S SHROUD, THE DEVIL RIDES OUT and THE MUMMY in there, too. 

To tie in with this first issues’s AIP theme there’s the archival Roger Corman at FoFF (37 minutes), recorded in 1995 and featuring Roger providing an introduction to two of his black and white pictures, taking part in a panel that also features Norman J Warren and Robin Hardy, and finally being interviewed by Stephen Laws. 

We finish off with the Q&A panel from the CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN restoration premiere from last year in which surviving star Melvyn Hayes was joined on stage by Kim Newman, Wayne Kinsey, David Pirie and Lucy Bolton. And as a tiny epilogue there’s the UK trailer for QUATERMASS II in which Valentine Dyall urges you to ‘Run!’ in his fruity voice.

The set also includes a 120 page book which wasn’t provided for review but which will apparently contain essays on the making of CRY OF THE BANSHEE, Caralan Productions, and more AIP. Overall, how much this set is going to appeal to the average buyer is difficult to say, because on the downside, and with the absence of any kind of ‘host’ to what is essentially a video magazine, (and with not even some explanation or curation on the menu pages), it could also be described as a collection of Blu-ray extras with no actual film to act as a thematic centrepiece. It’s all absolutely worthwhile stuff but at times it’s hard to shake off the feeling that quite a lot of it was intended to be included as extras on other discs, but there just wasn’t the time or space to do it. That said, the whole thing really is an impressive set of talking head and documentary pieces, and British horror obsessives are going to love it. 

The House of Hammer: Volume One is out in a two disc Blu-ray set from Hammer Films on Monday 15th June 2026

Signal One (2026)

 

“Thoughtful, Well-Made Science Fiction”

SIGNAL ONE, a new and engrossing piece of ‘quiet SF’ is getting a digital HD and DVD release from Signature Entertainment.

Annika (Isabelle Fuhrman from the ORPHAN movies) is a quantum physicist who has made great progress in the analysis of dark matter. She is offered a job by tech billionaire Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) to work for him for a year on a secret project on an isolated island off the coast of Cuba. The twist is she won't know what she's working on until she gets there.

When she arrive she finds herself joined by an electronics wizz (Josh Hutcherson) and they both quickly realise they are there to assist David Thewis’ former alcoholic and drug abusing pioneering astrophysicist. He has built a machine that he believes can communicate with alien life. The two of them are essentially there to iron out a few teething problems which prove to be minor, leaving them to debate the question: should they send the message and thus reveal the earth’s existence to the rest of the universe, or not?

Of course it would be a less interesting film if they didn’t, so rest assure they go ahead, but what happens as a result will provide as much fodder for post-film thought and discussion as whether or not they should have in the first place. 

        SIGNAL ONE is well shot, well acted and, at 87 minutes, doesn’t outstay its welcome. In fact it feels very much like a good old-fashioned television play - more interested in ideas and philosophical concepts than special effects, although the ones we get are absolutely fine. It could therefore could be considered to sit in the same subgenre of speculative SF as Denis Villeneuve’s ARRIVAL. And if you liked that then you’ll certainly want to give SIGNAL ONE a look. Here’s the trailer:

SIGNAL ONE is out on Digital HD and DVD from Signature Entertainment on Monday 15th June 2026

Affection (2026)

 

Blue Finch are releasing writer-director B T Meza’s AFFECTION on Digital platforms. It’s a film you can’t say too much about in reviews for fear of spoilers, but let’s take a look at the setup.

Ellie (Jessica Rothe from the HAPPY DEATH DAY movies) wakes up one morning to find herself married to someone she doesn’t recognise and with a daughter she doesn’t know. In fact she’s convinced she has a son and that, in fact, she has a completely different name from the one her husband Bruce (Joseph Cross) says she does. 

But Ellie has other problems, too. Bruce tells her she suffers from a rare neurological condition that involves seizures causing her brain to ‘reset’, and that she has been prescribed complete isolation in order for her to rehabilitate. Of course that’s not what’s going on at all but to say any more would be to spoilt it. 

Seasoned viewers of Hammer psycho thrillers, LES DIABOLIQUES ripoffs and all kinds of classic television (including at least one episode of The Avengers) will be wondering which variation on a well-worn plot AFFECTION is going to use. So be assured it doesn’t use any of them and begins its second act with some very strange stuff indeed that will have you wondering where it's all going. 

The leads performances are good, with Rothe giving another likeable and sympathetic performance, and while AFFECTION is essentially “a couple of people on a farm with a kid” it transcends this setting to become something quite original. Here’s the trailer:

AFFECTION is out on digital platforms from Blue Finch Releasing on Monday 8th June 2026

Kraken (2026)

“What’s That Coming Out of the Fjord?”

Actually you can probably guess, going by the title of this one. New Norwegian monster movie KRAKEN is getting a digital release from Signature Entertainment.

In Norway’s deepest fjord, with a maximum depth of 1300 metres, a salmon farm is using a revolutionary new sonic delousing device to rid its fish of unwanted parasites. But strange things are happening. Fish are throwing themselves onto the beach, crabs are leaving the water in a mass exodus and, as the film opens, two jet-skiers are pulled under the water by something huge.

Marine scientist Johanne (Sara Khorami) helped design the device and, now working for the environment, is called into find out what might be going on. She finds herself faced with a Norwegian salmon company keen to sign a massive deal with the Japanese and the discovery of some large bioluminescent parasites the size of dinner plates that suggest their host is colossal, while all the time the bodies are piling up.

KRAKEN doesn’t do anything especially new. In fact it’s derivative and cliched but it embraces those cliches in a setting we don’t see very often in monster pictures. It takes a while to get going, and the pacing is a little off as the film reaches its climax, but those who are old enough can think of this as a similar to a 1970s-era Dr Who six parter where all the action happens in episode five. Budgetary constraints mean we don’t get to see a lot of the titular monster (but you do see it, for those who might be worried) and while there’s some necessary reliance on CGI there could have been a lot more, and the Norwegian locations frequently look refreshingly green-screen free. Not a bad time at all if you’re looking for a new monster movie to watch. Here’s the trailer:

KRAKEN is out on Digital HD from Signature Entertainment on Monday 1st June 2026