Nuts in May — Nuts in May( Blu Ray)

Released first in 1976 as an episode of the BBC series Play for Today, Nuts in May was the breakthrough film for English screenwriter/director Mike Leigh. It’s a dark comedy drama/tragicomedy about a city-dwelling middle-class husband and wife going camping in the countryside. The film blends cringe inducing/ awkward humour, glum travel logging, with plenty of pathos. It not only helped launch Leigh as a household name but also became generally influential to the likes of The Office, Ben Wheatley's Sight Seers & much more. Here from BFI is a recent Blu-ray release, taking in a new 4k scan and a decent enough selection of mainly archive extras.

Cradle Of Fear — Cradle Of Fear ( Blu Ray)

From the early 2000s, Cradle Of Fear is an extremely gory and fairly sleazy SOV anthology film from the UK, trying to recapture the spirit of the likes of the films put out in the 70/early 80’s by Amicus and Tigon. It features Dani Filth (of Cradle of Filth), as our sinister-yet- largely silent bridging character. It’s certainly got a lot of impressive/ gruelling gore, but the surrounding acting/ production is decidedly mixed/ cheap in places, so you have to ready/ open to this. Here from Unearthed, those uncovers of extreme/ brutal film is a double region A Blu-ray of the film- the first disc features the film & extras, and on the second a selection of short films by the same director.

Having Fun And Enjoying Casual Misery

King Futile Interview

King Futile is the new project from Scotland-based Lea Cummings( Kylie Minoise, Official Music Team, etc), and it’s a big departure from his normal noise or retro sample & electronica sound. It's lo-fi acoustic music, with an outsider feel, and often quite tongue-in-cheek/ sharply sarcastic tone to the lyrics. So far, the project has put out three albums- Casual Misery, How To Have Fun, and Zen As Fuck. I tracked down Lea for an email interview.

Mancunian low-budget Movie Mogul

Cliff Twemlow On Severin

One of last year’s real big surprises in the world of Blu-ray box sets was Bloody Legend: The Complete Twemlow Collection, as it was a wholly entertaining, fascinating, and at times heart-warming set. The Severin released boxset brought together the work of one of the UK’s unlikeliest movie moguls- Cliff Twemlow, a Mancunian bouncer/ body builder, who went on to write/star in/produce a series of low-budget/ largely SOV films in the early 80s to early 90s- these moved between action, thriller, sci-fi, and horror. His most notable/notorious film was 1983’s G.B.H., which landed on the video nasty list, though he was connected to other ten feature films, many of which got their first real full/proper release on the boxset. Opening up the set was the excellent 2023 documentary Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow, which really pulls you into the set. I caught up with Severn’s David Gregory and Jake West, director of Mancunian Man, to discuss the boxset and all things cliff.