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

The Visitor 4K (1979)

Arrow Films are bringing out the quite remarkable experience that is director Giulio Paradisi's THE VISITOR on 4K UHD. I tried to convey the quite awesome incoherence of this film 12 years ago in my review of Arrow's Blu-ray release. Looking back I don't believe I can top it, so here it is reproduced below, along with some updated pertinent info on the extras. 

How does one begin to describe THE VISITOR? Attempting a plot summary won't do, because that way lies madness. If I were to tell you who is in it that won't help either, because there's no way the mixture of star turns this movie features could possibly help give you a feel for how insane this film is. I could say it's from Ovidio Assonitis, who gave us TENTACLES - a daft Italian film about a monster octopus, and BEYOND THE DOOR  - a daft Italian OMEN ripoff that gets more incoherent as it goes on. Incoherent, now there's a word we can use to describe THE VISITOR. Mind you, that's a word we can also use to describe quite a lot of Italian exploitation cinema of the 1970s. But if any single movie can be described as the apotheosis of 1970s Italian incoherence, it is indeed, THE VISITOR.

In a galaxy far, far away (I think) John Huston awaits a dark shape that turns into a little girl while the sky turns the colour of tea being tipped into a glass of water. We cut to Franco Nero as Jesus addressing a room full of bald children. Enter John Huston looking vaguely normal. Just as we expect him to tell Mr Nero to get back to the psychiatric ward and leave the paediatric oncology patients alone we realise we are still on the other planet / galaxy / dimension / whatever. Jesus Franco (some delightful unintentional subtext there) has been relating the raison d'etre of everything we are about to watch, so we had better have been paying attention. In fact let's rewind and watch it again.

Sateen, Yahweh, flock of ravens, three survived, escape ship fell to earth, Sateen's genes, power of evil, etc etc. Got it? Never mind, now we're in Atlanta about to embark on a tour of the city's highlights thanks to some sort of deal the film-makers made with the mayor and made sure to point out in the very first caption onscreen. There's a basketball game that goes on for far too long, then we meet Lance Henriksen, who has been assigned by Mel Ferrer and his gang of evil lawyers (?) to get his girlfriend Joanne Nail pregnant. She carrying the genes of Sateen you see, and while she already has a foul-mouthed hawk-wielding daughter, a son is needed to...I don't know - fulfil a prophecy or something? Joanne doesn't want to get pregnant so when her daughter gets a gun for her birthday the little girl shoots mother in the back and paralyses her.

Joanne seems remarkably chipper for someone who will never walk again. Soon she's back home in her wheelchair while John Huston arrives from...I don't know...space? He's brought a group of bald men with him who proceed to erect some white sheets in a pleasing arrangement on top of a skyscraper. I still have no idea why. Mr Huston is here to stop / get the little girl & defeat the bad guys. I think. The daughter goes ice skating and flings some men around. There were meant to be elephants in this scene as well because the director thought people liked them.

Shelley Winters turns up as the anti Mrs Baylock and proceeds to serenade everyone with a traditional Negro folk song. John Huston arrives at the house, announces he's the babysitter and everyone believes him. Some more stuff happens that's so out there I really can't assemble it into any kind of logical sequence anymore, and I've only just watched the film. It all ends with...oh, but that would be telling. Actually it wouldn't but I can't actually remember. I think Jesus pops up again and the reason for the bald children is explained. Kind of. But actually not at all, really.

Plotwise THE VISITOR is an unbelievable mess, acting wise it's an unbelievable display of name stars giving their all to something where no-one could possible have had any idea what was going on. I was delighted to see that Arrow have retained their archival interview with screenwriter Lou Comici on their new release and it's still possibly the highlight of the entire disc, in which you get the feeling he had to write the script based on the gesticulations of a madman who couldn't communicate in any known language. And yet despite all this, the direction is really rather stylish. Immense care has been taken to compose shots for dialogue scenes that would otherwise be utterly disposable. The other planet is rather trippy. So are some effects in the sky we get to see at the end (I wasn't sure what was happening). Lance Henriksen gets attacked by a flock of birds & I'm sure the wooden one we see pecking at him is intended to be wooden. But why?

Arrow's 4K transfer looks even better than THE VISITOR's previous Blu-ray release. New extras include a commentary track from critics BJ and Harmony Colangelo who open by admitting they weren't alive during the 1970s (Arrow could easily have found film-savvy people who were but there you go) but feel the film emulates a lot of what that decade was about, a new visual essay from Meagan Navarro on the film's context within the exploitation cinema of the time (19 minutes) and another from Willow Catelyn Maclay discussing the influence of society's attitude to abortion that influenced both this and other 'devil child' movies (11 minutes). It's good to see Arrow have retained the interview with Lance Henriksen which is almost as funny as Lou Comici's and definitely worth a watch, as well as their interview with DP Ennio Guarnieri. There's also a booklet with new writing on the film.

Crazy, incoherent and trippy, THE VISITOR nevertheless makes you wish there had been more films made like like this, because whatever pioneering new form of film-making it was, it needed an awful lot of refining before it could be considered a viable entertainment medium. As it is you'll probably only be able to make it all the way through THE VISITOR's nearly two hour running time once. But you'll be showing bits of it to your friends forever.

Arrow Films are releasing the unique cinematic experience that is THE VISITOR on 4K UHD on Monday 16th February 2026

Zombie Flesh Eaters 4K UHD

"The Boat Can Leave Now. Tell the Crew They're in 4K"

ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, arguably director Lucio Fulci's best film, and certainly his most iconic, is getting a 4K UHD release from Arrow with a 4K restoration from the original 2-perf Techniscope negative.

If you're a fan of the film all you need to know is that the transfer is delicious, with Giannetto de Rossi's makeups frequently holding up very well indeed to the increased resolution. Fabio Frizzi's score is also worth listening to on the three sound options included here - Dolby Atmos, original mono (English and Italian) and DTS-HD 7.1 (Italian) because each offers a slightly different listening experience.

If you've not seen ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS before then you're in for a treat. At the time of release Fulci cited Val Lewton's I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE as one of his influences and while at the time critics huffed about how such a gorefest could be compared to the master of the understated chill, it's easy to see now what he was talking about. Back then the amazing gore effects drowned everything else out but there are plenty of atmospheric and ominous sequences on the island that, if you were to remove all the violence, would still give you a film worth watching. 

In terms of extras, material new and exclusive to this release includes a commentary track by the familiar team (to buyers of US Blu-rays at least) of Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson and, most ubiquitous of all, Troy Howarth. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas gives us a 15 minute video essay on the use of sound in the film, and Chris Alexander helps those of us of a certain age (and some of us who are even older) to revisit those heady days of discovering Fulci's movie on VHS. Also welcome to scholars and obsessives is the entire screenplay which you can access on screen. There are two pages missing but it's a tiny fragment of the whole.

Archival extras are basically what was available on Arrow's 2012 Blu-ray release which include two commentary tracks - with screenwriter Elisa Briganti and Calum Waddell and the other by Stephen Thrower and Alan Jones which is unsurprisingly the best of the lot. Also included are High Rising's 2012 documentary which runs nearly an hour, and interviews with Ian McCulloch (46 minutes), Gino DeRossi (27 minutes) and the script bit with Dardano Sacchetti (3 minutes). The Fabio Frizzi Q&A from Glasgow (29 minutes) is also on there. 

As with the 2012 release you get the option of playing the film either as ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, ZOMBI 2 or ZOMBIE. There's no difference in the running times and it's just the title cards and font that are different. However, if you've never watched the film in Italian it's worth it as the dialogue sounds a lot less 'Nick Alexander and the gang in a dubbing studio' and the translated subtitles have more gravitas to them then the English dialogue. Ian McCulloch's 2012 introduction in which he expresses regret at talking the film down in previous years is also on there.

Finally Arrow's release comes with a booklet with new writing on the film plus a reversible sleeve, poster, and six collector's postcards. Oh, and Easter Eggs which I haven't found yet. 

The classic that is Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS is out on 4K UHD from Arrow Films on Monday 28th July 2025

The House by the Cemetery (1981)

"Arrow Give a Fulci Classic the UHD Treatment"

One of the all-time classics of Italian horror cinema gets a UHD release from Arrow, utilising Blue Underground's 4K scan and including all the new extras from their US release for UK viewers to now enjoy, as well as including a plentiful pile of archival extras as well.

So which is the best of the seminal horror films Lucio Fulci directed in the late 1970s and early 1980s? HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY is certainly in the running and it's a fine example of the director's approach to horror cinema. It has a horrible premise, plenty of graphic gore, a fantastically monstrous creation responsible for it all, and an ending that culminates in arguably the most nightmarish sequence the director ever created. The fact that ultimately the film doesn't make a lot of sense will by the icing on the cake to enthusiasts, while being a possible stumbling block for those who aren't. 

I'm not going to reveal much about the plot because if you're a horror fan and you've never seen HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY you're in for a treat, suffice to say that, over 40 years since it was made, it remains the ultimate in mad zombie doctor horror films.

Arrow's 4K UHD presentation looks excellent, with a crisp, clear, chilly feel to the picture that has never been quite so successfully presented in previous transfers.  Extras kick off with the new commentary recorded for Blue Underground by Troy Howarth, as well as two archival commentaries, one with star Catriona MacColl and the other with star Sylvia Collatina.

The other new extras from Blue Underground's 4K are also included, consisting of a new interview with co-writer Giorgio Mariuzzo, a Catriona MacColl Q&A, and an interview with Stephen Thrower. There's also a ton of other interviews with cast and crew (including the one with Giovanni Frezza where he apologises for the dubbing of Bob even though he had nothing to do with it), a deleted scene, alternate credits with different music, a cast Q&A from 12 years ago, trailers, TV spot and image galleries.

Exclusive to Arrow's set is limited edition packaging with a reversible sleeves featuring new and original art, plus a 60 page perfect bound book featuring new writing on the film, a fold-out double-sided poster and six double-sided collector's postcards.

Lucio Fulci's HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY is out on limited edition 4K UHD from Arrow Films on Monday 9th October 2023

The Antichrist (1974)

 

Following on from Frightfest's 50th anniversary screening of THE EXORCIST, it's really only natural that Albert De Martino's L'ANTICRISTO, aka THE ANTICHRIST aka THE TEMPTER, the first Italian ripoff of Friedkin's film to make it out of the gate back in the day, should get a Blu-ray release (from Studio Canal) this year as well. 

When she was a child Ippolita Oderisi (Carla Gravina) was in a car accident that rendered her unable to walk properly. Italian exploitation doctors have diagnosed her problem as psychological, and true to the spirit of the genre she's also sexually frustrated as well.

Her father (Mel Ferrer) decides that the best treatment for this is to take her to a religious ceremony where she sees a man vomiting green bile throw himself from a great height. After that they try hypnosis, but all that does is release suppressed memories from a past life when she was burnt at the stake for being a witch. After all that it's not surprising that poor old Ippolita should agree to being possessed by the devil.

Once she's possessed she vomits, swears, levitates, and does pretty much everything De Martino and his screenwriters scribbled down from their trip to see THE EXORCIST. Arthur Kennedy, fresh from playing the swearing and hippy-accosting police inspector in Jorge Grau's superior LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE, plays a priest but he's not up to exorcising Ippolita - that job goes to dubbed George Coulouris playing Father Mittner (and definitely not Merrin) during a welter of early 1970s Italian special effects.

THE ANTICHRIST isn't a great film. It's not even that good, but it is a fascinating snapshot of the Italian film industry of the period and of what stars who had been in much bigger and better things ended up working in during the 1970s. Full marks go to Ms Gravina who really gets put through being soaked, thrown around and having to behave like a wild thing for half the film (she's very good at it). Film score fans will delight to the music by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai, and one of the extras on here, Raising Hell, will tell you who scored which bit.

Other extras include the audio recollections of De Martino from an interview conducted with Eugenio Ercolani back in 2012, opening credits for THE TEMPTER and a 30 second TV spot. The set also comes with four art cards. Finally you get a commentary track from Lee Gambin and Sally Christie which is vigorous and lively but takes a while to get going with gaps big enough at the start that you may be checking to make such you haven't inadvertently switched audio channels. 

Alberto De Martino's THE ANTICHRIST is out on Blu-ray from Studio Canal on Monday 11th September 2023 

Gothico Fantastico: Four Italian Tales of Terror (1963 - 1966)

"Excellent Presentation of Four Great Italian Gothic Obscurities"

Arrow are releasing a Blu-ray box set of lesser known (to me, anyway) black and white Italian gothics from the 1960s, a decade when that country's horror cinema was informed as much by its own pioneers, including Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda, as it was by the movies being made by Hammer in the UK and Roger Corman in the US. Four films are presented here over four discs, each one packed with fascinating extras, so let's dive and see what each has to offer:

Disc One: Lady Morgan's Vengeance (1965)

We kick off with this cracking, fast-paced, event-filled gothic from Massimo Pupillo, who was also responsible for the same year's BLOODY PIT OF HORROR and TERROR CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE before he decided he didn't want to be typecast and sadly (very sadly on the basis of this) didn't make any more.

LADY MORGAN'S VENGEANCE welds together two familiar gothic tropes: 'Let's drive a young woman mad to inherit her fortune' and 'Ghost gets revenge on its murderers.' Barbara Nelli plays the title character and Erika Blanc (THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE and THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE amongst others) and Paul Muller (LADY FRANKENSTEIN and some of Jess Franco's best work) are the two doing the driving mad, with the help of the servants. The acting is vigorous, the photography is atmospheric and the location is the same one used in Fernando Di Leo's ASYLUM EROTICA (or whatever of its myriad titles you prefer to call it). It also has an ending that's not at all typical for the time. Lovely.

Extras on Arrow's disc include Vengeance From Beyond which is a short four minute introduction to the movie by Mark Thompson Ashworth that's best watched before the film and sets up what you're about to watch succinctly and enthusiastically. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas provides commentary duties with an academic approach to the film's themes, including gaslighting and domestic violence. 

The Grudge is a 21 minute video essay by Kat Ellinger that discusses 1960s Italian horror's focus on female lead characters, drawing fascinating parallels with Japanese and South Korean cinema of the period. When We Were Vampires is 24 minutes with Erika Blanc who at 79 still has an amazing memory for detail, talking about the movie and DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE a bit as well. The Blanc interview is new, whereas Paul Muller's interview, Born to be a Villain, is from 2014. He remembers very little about the film but has plenty of stories about his life and career (and his meeting Bette Davis) that keeps this 20 minutes piece interesting. The Pupillo Tapes is a 20 minute audio interview with the director from 1993 recorded for Italian radio where the director talks about his career and clears up who 'Ralph Zucker' (credited director on one of his movies) actually was. 

You also get the 1971 Cineromanzo of the film - basically a photonovel in 59 pages, and an image gallery of eight stills and posters. 

Disc Two: The Blancheville Monster aka Horror (1963)

There's a heavy Poe influence to this Italian-Spanish co-production, in which Ombretta Coli (billed as 'Joan Hills') returns to her crumbling ancestral home to both mourn the death of her father and celebrate her 21st birthday. The fact her older brother is called Roderick (Gerard Tichy) suggests there's a family curse at work here and the presence of Helga Liné as a stern-looking housekeeper suggests other shenanigans might be at work as well, which they most certainly are. 

Alberto De Martino's THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER (US title - I actually prefer the less specific HORROR as it was known in Italy) boasts some fabulous locations, including a crumbling Spanish abbey where you'd swear the Blind Dead are about to pop out of the ground. There's also a model castle and some matte paintings, all rendered more effective by the black and white photography. Carlo Franci's score provides some splendidly manic harpsichord. The film was directly influenced by Roger Corman's movies and there's a dream sequence present and correct here, as well as a premature burial.

The extra you should watch before the film starts is Mark Thompson Ashworth's seven minute Castle of Blood where he again talks a little about the production of the movie & sets the scene for what you are about to see. Film historian and film-maker Paul Anthony Nelson provides scene-specific commentary duties on this one. 

Other extras include Are You Sure It Wasn't Just Your Imagination?, a video essay by Keith Allison that covers the 1960s Poe cinema bases without adding anything new, and I cannot agree with him that 'there's nothing much to say about' the style of director Alberto De Martino, who I think gives us a number of memorable shots and set-ups in this one. In fact I enjoyed BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER more than his later HOLOCAUST 2000.

Welcome to the Manor is film historian Antonio Tentori talking about the film, its influences (including Riccardo Freda's HORRIBLE DR HICHCOCK). You also get a trailer, an image gallery that consists of two posters, and the US opening titles from a rather scratchy print. 

Disc 3: The Third Eye (1966)

Franco Nero in a film that apparently inspired Joe D'Amato's BEYOND THE DARKNESS? Count me in! And yes, Franco does indeed play a rich, taxidermy-obsessed young man. When his fiance (Erika Blanc) dies in a car accident he hits on the perfect way to preserve her memory and, well, her body as well. Of course that's not enough and so off he goes to pick up strippers and prostitutes to take home. After he's finished with them Marta his evil sexy housekeeper (Gioia Pascal) disposes of them in acid. Gleefully perverse and unashamedly lurid it's a great shame director Mino Guerrini didn't make more films like this. 

You know the drill by now. Start with The Cold Kiss of Death which is Mark Thompson Ashworth's introduction. Rachael Nisbet's commentary track provides plenty of detail about the production, the cast and crew and the movie's influences. All Eyes on Erika is another 15 minutes with Erika Blanc who again demonstrates her amazing memory for movies made nearly 60 years ago. Nostalgia Becomes Necrophilia is a 12 minute video essay in which Lindsay Hallam essentially describes the onscreen action in selected scenes and then compares some of them to sequences in Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO. There's also an image gallery with a couple of posters and stills.

Disc 4: The Witch (1966)

As Mark Thompson Ashworth asserts in his introduction to this one, THE WITCH isn't like the other films in this box set. Instead of gloomy castles, Poe, Hammer and similar influences what we get here is a very modern gothic (for 1966, anyway) indeed, suffused with influences from contemporary 'mainstream' cinema of the period. 

Richard Johnson plays a character who could easily be a John Osborne-type Angry Young Man who has by happenstance found himself living La Dolce Vita, picking up and dropping women to suit his needs. He gets a job working in the library of elderly Consuela (Sarah Ferrati) and is soon finds himself under the spell of her beautiful daughter Aura (Rosanna Schiaffino at her most bewitching). His rival for her affections is the current librarian (Gian Maria Volonte) with whom she seems to have already established a relationship. But nothing is quite what it seems.

THE WITCH aka STRANGE OBSESSION is by far the most 'modern' of the films presented in this set. Even though most of the (dialogue heavy) action takes place in a huge old house, some of the scenes (especially between Johnson and Volonte) are reminiscent of British kitchen sink dramas. It all goes pleasingly gothically mad at the end, though.

The commentary track for this one is from Kat Ellinger who provides plenty of insight and opinion on this one, and plenty of enthusiasm, too. You need to watch Miranda Corcoran's 25 minute video essay on the history of witches in myth and folklore after the film because it's got plenty of spoilers - you have been warned. Antonio Tentori's piece is another 18 minutes about the film and its makers. His comment that director Damiano Damiani is best known for his social commentary movies might raise a smile amongst those who know him mainly for directing the best Amityville movie (not exactly difficult) AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION. Finally you get an image gallery that concentrates on Rosanna Schiaffino and why not?

The bottom line: Arrow's box sets are far more often hit than miss but Gothico Fantastico really is something extra special, preserving and restoring four lesser known Italian classics that many fans will be surprised to learn exist and delighted to experience. That plus a wealth of extras makes this one of the releases of the year. A must buy.

Gothico Fantastico: Four Italian Tales of Terror is out in a four disc Blu-ray box set from Arrow Films on Monday 17th October 2022, in plenty of time for Halloween