The Snake Woman (1961)

The film director Sidney J Furie made after DR BLOOD’S COFFIN, for the same company (Caralan Productions) and for even less money, gets a posh restoration release on Blu-ray on the Hammer Presents label.

In the wilds of Northumberland mad Victorian herpetologist Horace Adderson (John Cazabon) has been injecting his wife with cobra venom to ‘keep her sane’. She gives birth to a ‘cold baby’ called Atheris. When the baby grows up she’s played by Susan Travers. Atheris turns feral and goes to live in the Northumberland countryside, biting some poor chap to death once a month (not the same one each time, obviously). She also sheds her skin, five years before we saw the same thing in Hammer’s own THE REPTILE. Before we get to the climax THE SNAKE WOMAN also gives us a disgruntled low-budget Northumberland mob (the budget can only stretch to four torches), a mad old lady, voodoo, and cobras living quite happily in the North of England. 

Susan Travers would go on to be best known for playing Nurse Travers who gets smeared in sprout juice and eaten by locusts in Robert Fuest’s THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES while Furie would soon escape low-budget efforts like this and go on to direct THE IPCRESS FILE (1965). Screenwriter Orville H Hampton also wrote 1959’s superior THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE. His SNAKE WOMAN screenplay set the action in the United States which explains some of the discrepancies in the story’s relocation to the UK.

THE SNAKE WOMAN is all pretty rough low-budget stuff, but Heidi Honeycutt and Sarah Morgan do their very best in their commentary track to eke out worthwhile things to say about it. Hammer’s presentation is the best THE SNAKE WOMAN has ever looked on home video. Other extras on the disc consist of a trailer and an image gallery and that's it.

Sidney J Furie’s THE SNAKE WOMAN is out on Blu-ray on the Hammer Presents label on Monday 4th May 2026

Dr Blood’s Coffin (1960)

The ‘Hammer Presents’ label strikes again! This time it’s with a UK blu-ray release of one of director Sidney J Furie’s early movies, one that boasts a great title, some lovely locations, and Hazel Court.

People are disappearing in the small Cornish village of Porthcarron (actually the small Cornish village of Zennor). Could the recent arrival of local GP Dr Blood’s son Peter (Kieron Moore) have anything to do with it? We don’t have to wait long to find out, but we do have to wait rather longer (almost the entire film, in fact) to see the zombie promised by the posters. 

Was this the first colour zombie picture? That’s one of the many things discussed by Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons in their accompanying commentary track which, chatty, convivial and fact-packed, is worth the price of the disc on its own. The zombie himself (Paul Stockman) is brought back to ‘life’ in a climactic surgery sequence that involves a transplant with a rather floppy-looking heart, but medical accuracy is hardly the point of this or we wouldn’t have Dr Blood performing open heart surgery on people while they look at him.

As mentioned on the commentary, there’s not really enough here for a 90 minute feature, with the most shocking thing being that the Cornish weather stays nice for almost the entirety of filming. Hazel Court plays the zombie’s (still-living) wife and helps to up the acting quality in a film that also boasts genre favourite Kenneth J Warren. Nathan Juran supplies the script, Buxton Orr the music, and Furie manages a number of nice setups, all making the film worth watching if you’re a fan of the above. 

Hammer’s disc gives us the film in two aspect ratios - 1.66:1 and 1.85:1. They are listed as ‘UK and US versions’ but apart from the screen shape there’s no identifiable difference. Apart from the commentary you also get a trailer and an image gallery which is worth perusing for its wealth of publicity material for a film that’s not that well known.

Sidney J Furie’s DR BLOOD’S COFFIN is out on Blu-ray on the Hammer Presents label on Monday 4th May 2026

Danger: Diabolik 4K (1968)

“Psychedelic 1960s Comic Book Caper”

Esteemed director Mario Bava’s much-loved comic book movie is getting a 4K restoration dual format release on UHD and Blu-ray from Eureka. The limited edition of 2000 also includes a 60 page book with new writing on the film from Roberto Curti, Jochen Ecke, Sergio Angelini and Troy Howarth all housed within a hardbound slipcase.

Brilliant and resourceful criminal Diabolik (John Phillip Law) has two loves in life: stealing things and Eva (Marisa Mell). The police, led by Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli) try to catch him by baiting him with a million dollars (which he steals), a fabulous emerald necklace (which he also steals) and an enormous bar of gold (guess what happens to that). All this contributes to the Diabolik Enormous Flamboyant Underground Lair where, when he’s not plotting amazing crimes he’s either asleep or being tickled by Eva and her enormous feather. But have the police finally managed to outwit him?

A big budget comic book movie from the Dino De Laurentiis studios, if you’ve seen Roger Vadim’s BARBARELLA (1967) or Mike Hodges’ FLASH GORDON (1980) you’ll have an idea what you’re in for here: glossy, brightly coloured, ultra-cool mayhem with sleek cars, amazing sets, and costumes that range from the extremely desirable (I’ve never wanted to own so many of the ties worn in a movie) to the ludicrous. Indeed, so colourful and over the top are parts of this that some may find it hard not to think of Mike Myers’ AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY series of films, which seem to draw at least as much from this as they do James Bond. 

Eureka’s 4K transfer is delicious and the ideal way to appreciate not just all that colour, but also Bava’s intricate compositions, matte paintings and model work which we, sophisticated viewers that we are, will all be looking out for now but which back in the day would have wowed cinema audiences. Sound options include the two different English dubs (one of which is in both mono and 5.1 surround) and an Italian mono track.

Eureka’s disc comes with three commentary tracks. Tim Lucas is the acknowledged expert of Mario Bava’s cinema and his commentary track will have you rewinding the film to look more closely at the cleverest bits of Bava's camera trickery which Mr Lucas superbly deconstructs for us. Tim returns for another commentary, this time with star John Phillip Law where obviously more time is spent on Mr Law’s recollections. Finally we get Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson who still find a lot to say that hasn’t already been covered.

Other extras include Leon Hunt who gives us an excellent 22 minute guide to Diabolik the comic book and the character’s screen incarnations. Rachael Nisbet provides a 27 minute academic look at the ‘pop art politics’ of the film in a video essay (27 minutes) and there’s an archival piece ‘From Fumetti to Film’ (20 minutes) to which Stephen R Bissette, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, De Laurentiis, composer Ennio Morricone and others all contribute. Mr Yauch returns to provide a commentary track for the DIABOLIK-themed video to the Beastie Boys song Body Movin’. There are also a couple of trailers.

Mario Bava’s DANGER: DIABOLIK is getting a dual disc UHD and Blu-ray 4K release in a limited edition of 2000 on Monday 20th April 2026

Strongroom (1962) & The Man in the Back Seat (1961)

 

The cover of this new BFI release (out soon on Blu-ray, Apple TV, Amazon Prime and - in a bit - on BFI Player) may only mention STRONGROOM (newly remastered in 2K) but be assured that as a bonus you also get another superb Vernon Sewell-directed thriller THE MAN IN THE BACK SEAT as well. So let’s take a look at both.

STRONGROOM is a seriously decent little 79 minute B picture about a bank job gone wrong, resulting in the bank manager and his secretary being trapped in the vault. The robbers concoct a plan to free them but then the only one able to do it is almost immediately killed in a car accident. Should the others go back and risk being caught? Or leave the prisoners there to die and risk being caught and hanged? 

        The leads (Derren Nesbitt, Colin Gordon and Ann Lynn) are all very good but the best bit is the writing, which quickly starts piling disaster upon disaster in such a breathless way that by the time the baddies are loading their van with oxy-acetylene equipment and the police are hot on their trail all you're wondering is if the two stuck in the vault might actually die. You’ll have to watch the film to find out.

THE MAN IN THE BACK SEAT was made before STRONGROOM and also features Derren Nesbitt and Keith Faulkner, who got on so well with Vernon Sewell that he cast them in STRONGROOM the following year. They are two crooks who plan to steal the takings from a greyhound racetrack. The only problem is the bag is handcuffed to the man they beat senseless to get it. How to remove it? First they have to get him to a place where they can do it, which is how he ends up as the title character. This is great, tense stuff that by the end transcends the crime genre into something approaching pure horror, and the film is one of the best of a series of Leslie Parkyn - Julian Wintle crime pictures made at Beaconsfield Studios in the early 1960s.

Extras on the BFI’s Blu-ray include a new commentary track from Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt on STRONGROOM and another from them on MAN IN THE BACK SEAT, a two part audio interview with editor John Trumper that's spread over two tracks on STRONGROOM, Footpads - a one minute British crime film from 1896 (!), Donovan Winter’s 1957 heist short THE AWAKENING HOUR (21 minutes) and a couple of public information films - AFTER DARK (14 minutes) from 1979 about road safety and A TEST FOR LOVE from 1937 (27 minutes) which is about the perils of STDs and is on here because it was directed by Vernon Sewell. The first pressing of the disc also includes a booklet with new writing on the film from James Bell, Barry Forshaw and Tony Dykes.

STRONGROOM and THE MAN IN THE BACK SEAT are coming out from the BFI on Blu-ray, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime on Monday 23rd February 2026 and on BFI Player on Monday 23rd March 2026

The Assassination Bureau (1969)

Arrow Films start the year with a winner with their new Blu-ray of Basil Dearden and Michael Relph's THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU, which features a quite glorious transfer as well as all-new extras.

It's just before World War I and the Assassination Bureau of the title is a Europe-wide organisation dedicated to the requested bumping off of individuals who are deemed to pose a threat to the world order. Enterprising journalist Sonia Winter (Diana Rigg) backed by newspaper magnate Lord Bostwick (Telly Savalas) requests a hit on the very chairman of the organisation itself - Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed). Dragomiloff accepts the challenge with a twinkle in his eye & sets off around Europe with Sonia in tow, avoiding assassination attempts left and right. But there's a greater, more evil plan at work here, too.

A cheerful, colourful film about organised murder, THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU takes the same approach to its subject matter as Robert Hamer's 1949 KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS or Brian Forbes' 1966 THE WRONG BOX while packing it with familiar faces in the style of MONTE CARLO OR BUST and similar colourful epics from the period. It's all very jolly stuff and will no doubt be remembered with affection by many from all its TV screenings in the 1980s. 

Producer Michael Relph was also the production designer and has a whale of a time coming up with some (occasionally James Bond-like) gorgeous sets. If he did the hats too this must have been the job of a lifetime for him. Ron Grainer supplies the bouncy score and some of the harpsichord-driven bits will remind 1960s TV obsessives of some of his work for The Prisoner amongst others. 

THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU has already seen release in Blu-ray by Imprint / ViaVision in Australia. However, if you are a fan and bought that version you are definitely going to want to double dip as not only are the extras all different but Arrow's transfer is infinitely better. Reliable hands (and voices) Kim Newman and Sean Hogan provide a chatty, knowledgeable commentary track while Matthew Sweet gives is a 28 minute piece where he talks more about the book and the times in which the book was published and the film was released in and how the word 'Assassination' wasn't really suited to a jolly romp with exploding zeppelins. There's also a trailer and a stills gallery, plus a booklet with new writing on the film by Katherine McLaughlin.

Basil Dearden and Michael Relph's THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU is out on Blu-ray from Arrow Films on Monday 5th January 2026

Eyes Without a Face 4K (1960)

The very first film I wrote about for House of Mortal Cinema gets a sparkling 4K restoration release on UHD, Apple TV and Amazon Prime courtesy of the BFI.

Plastic surgeon Dr Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) has, through his careless driving, caused extensive damage to the face of his daughter Christianne (Edith Scob). Being the kind of surgeon usually encountered in pulp horror fiction of the period, Genessier hasn’t heard of trying to take skin grafts from elsewhere on Christianne’s body to try and improve her appearance, even though he gives a lecture on the subject at the start of the film. But why should he when he lives so near Paris and there’s a bevy of beautiful women whom he can kidnap and graphically remove the faces of in increasingly desperate acts of transplantation?

With its pulpy source material it’s not surprising that George Franju’s film kick-started a subgenre of horror cinema that concentrated on the lurid rather than the lyrical aspects of his movie. The tale of the surgeon responsible for destroying his own daughter’s face and willing to do anything to repair his actions is the stuff of pulp paperback luridness, and Franju certainly elevates it way above its penny dreadful potential, making as fine a horror film as one could hope for with the material. 

Apart from the nasty bits there’s a pervasive gloom to the film that serves to augment the desperate situation of its central character, wandering her father’s isolated country mansion, a literally faceless wraith assumed dead by the rest of the world. One imagines the city-set scenes at the police station and its environs would be grey even if the picture were in colour, and it never seems to stop raining. Almost from the beginning there is no suggestion that the film is going to end anything other than badly, which is possibly why the final scene is all the more moving, simultaneously suggesting hope and hopelessness, freedom and utter loneliness.  

EYES WITHOUT A FACE was made in 1959 but it’s best viewed out of context with contemporary horror cinema of the time, when Hammer was well on its way to becoming the most successful producer of horror films in the world, Hitchcock was about to make PSYCHO, and British company Anglo Amalgamated had just released Michael Powell’s PEEPING TOM. Compared with these slicker movies the Franju film seems a bit creaky. The horror is no less effective, but nevertheless the movie feels as if it belongs to a different age, making the surgical scenes and the deaths at the climax possibly even more shocking and unexpected. 

As I’ve mentioned above, the BFI’s 4K transfer looks excellent, and really gives this film a new lease of life. Extras include a new commentary track from Alexandra Heller-Nicholas with the archival commentary track by Tim Lucas also present and correct. We also get Mark Kermode's introduction to the film from 2016 (3 minutes), a fifty minute Franju career overview (LES FLEURS MALADIVES), an interview with Edith Scob from 2014 (17 minutes), and two short films: MONSIEUR ET MADAME CURIE is fourteen minutes long and tells of the work of the scientists from the point of view of Marie Curie; and LE PREMIER NUIT, which comes with a Georges Delerue score and tells the twenty minute tale of a young boy spending a night on the Metro. The disc also comes with a reversible sleeve featuring new art and a booklet with archival writing on the film. 

Georges Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE is out on 4K UHD, Apple TV and Amazon Prime from the BFI on Monday 20th October 2025

The Diabolical Dr Z (1966)

It's time for a welcome release of some more Jess Franco on UK Blu-ray as one of the best films from his early black and white period gets a release from Eureka.

Dr. Zimmer (Antonio Giménez Escribano) has developed a technique for drilling into the brains of criminals and removing their ability to be evil, turning them into placid subservients. Zimmer’s research presentation is laughed out of a meeting with his colleagues and he dies from a heart attack as a result. His daughter Irma (Mabel Karr) is also a doctor (so this could have been called ‘THE DIABOLICAL DR ZS’) and decides to take revenge on the three doctors she holds most responsible for her father’s death. To effect this, Irma uses the brain-drilling machine and a kidnapped nightclub dancer with poisoned fingernails. 

For anyone claiming Jess Franco was a shoddy filmmaker (as opposed to making some shoddy films, which he certainly did), THE DIABOLICAL DR Z is one to show them. The black and white photography is sharp, the lighting carefully considered, and the opening scenes of the Woodside Strangler escaping from prison could look at home in a classic film noir. The plot is crazy but in the best way, and while there’s not a lot of subtext, Franco can’t help but include some of his recurring obsessions, the poisoned nightclub dancer ‘Miss Death’ aka Nadia (Estella Blain) among them.

Archival extras on Eureka's disc include Tim Lucas' commentary track ported over from Redemption's Blu-ray, and a trio of fascinating talking head pieces from a French 2018 release, with DIABOLICAL DR Z's screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere talking about his work with Franco (18 minutes), Franco expert Lucas Balbo discussing this period of Franco's film-making (16 minutes) and journalist Stéphane Di Mesnildot talking about the film (12 minutes).

New extras consist of Xavier Aldana Reyes discussing European Gothic Cinema including Caligary, Mario Bava, Georges Franju, Paul Naschy and others including, of course, Jess Franco. Samm Deighan offers a 19 minute piece on Mad Science in Gothic Cinema which is absolutely fine if you haven't read my Frightfest Guide to Mad Doctors or attended my lectures on the subject. Finally the set comes with a collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film from Antonio Lazaro-Reboll, co-editor of The Films of Jess Franco.

Jess Franco's THE DIABOLICAL DR Z is out on Blu-ray from Eureka on Monday 20th October 2025