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Appearing four years after the first film, Sex & Zen II is another period-set cinematic slice of sex comedy & fantasy- mixing softcore, raunchy/ at times bad taste humour, wackiness, light touches of horror, and general lush/ colourful look. Here from the fine folks at 88 Films, who reissued the first film last year (reviewed here), is a Blu-ray, taking in a high-def/ fully uncut print, a new commentary track, and a few other things.
The Cars That Ate Paris is a decidedly woozy & uneasy blend of black-as-your-hat comedy, grimly quirky drama, consumerism satire and low-key horror. The early 1970’s Australian film regards a small town, where the citizens are deliberately causing car crashes, and the rather meek & mild man who gets stuck in said town. It’s a film that is very hard to pin down into one genre, but there's often a keen sense of both menace and low-key absurdity. Here from the BFI is a two-disc Blu-ray release of the film, taking in a 4k scan, new commentary track, and a mix of new/ archive extras. Also included is The Plumber, a made-for-TV thriller by the same director, with its own extras. This release is also available as a UHD variant.
Sidewinder is a two-track HNW release from Ohio’s Stalk Market. According to the releases write up, it’s meant to offer up a short and longer version of the same track, but I found a few differences between the tracks.
Dominion Of The Predator is a new fifty-minute release from Hana Haruna, aka Portland's Ken Jamison. It takes in two twenty-five-minute ‘walls’ that focus on the denser/ thicker side of the project's sound.
Here’s a split that severs up two around half-an-hour slices of searing-to-overloaded wall noise. Featured here are Switzerland’s Earthflesh and Brazil’s Kadaveric Kommando.
Jörg Buttgereit's Nekromantik is an underground classic, well known even by those that have yet to witness its perverse love story and bloody climax...literally. However, the man behind the score, Hermann Kopp, has been weaving tense, eerie scores into two other Buttgereit films, as well as releasing many well-received solo works. His love of cinematic scoring hit another milestone when he scored the Wegener silent classic, Der Golem, in 2025. After two different presentations (Paris and Wroclaw), his modern score for the expressionist classic is now available through Cold Spring Records. Engaging all on its own, cinephiles will want to cue up their copy of Der Golem, a copy of Kopp's new score, hit play, and see the film with entirely new eyes.
Composer Ed Cooper offers here an album titled Vestibule, released on the label Thanatosis, with a trio of short tracks one to two minutes long, and a pair of much longer pieces, roughly twenty-five minutes each. I would describe it as a minimalist soundscape, which is apparently performed by several musicians and arranged by Ed.
The Living Dead Girl was the 31st feature film from French director Jean Rollin. It’s very much of a crossbreed bringing together the macabre and tragic gothic of his earlier work, with the extreme gore of the 1980’s. It regards a blond-haired heiress who is brought back to life by a toxic spill, to become a blood-sucking, later mentally tortured zombie.Here from Powerhouse, as part of their series of reissues of Rollin’s work, is either a UHD or Blu-ray release of the film. It takes in a new 4k scan of the picture, two versions of the movie, a new commentary track, and a mix of new/archive extras.
Geschrieben In Wasser brings together five modern chamber works from Austrian composer, organist, and improviser Klaus Lang. They are played by the highly respected ensemble, Apartment House. Sonically, the works shift between pitch swooning bleakness, spritely angularity, and wonky-to -wavering gracefulness.
Here’s a longform/fifty-four-minute piece from Swiss composer Jürg Frey. This is his first work for a clarinet quintet, and it’s most certainly a sombre to hauntingly simmering affair. The pieces' forlorn, at times poignant melody and structure shift from steady ‘n’ graceful builds, onto cloud-like drifts, through paring back glooming and at points plucking grace, with subtle hints of angularity.
It’s fair to say, by and large, the found footage genre is a decidedly mixed bag, both in content & delivery. One of the finer examples of the genre is 2014’s Creep. The film focused on Arron (Patrick Brice), a young videographer, taking a job filming Josef ( Mark Duplass), who he believes to be a dying man, but as things unfold, it becomes clear that Josef is not dying, but he’s a cunning killer, and Arron is his next victim. The film blended awkward/ dark humour with some effective jumps and several unsettling moments. In 2017, there was a second film, Creep 2, which managed to keep the spirit of the first film and added to it. And then in 2024, we got The Creep Tapes, a six-part series on Shudder, which found us being presented with the tapes of victims from the killer's cupboard- with episodes playing out around the twenty-five-minute mark. Here we have a Blu-Ray release of the second series from Acorn Media International with commentary tracks for each of the six episodes from the lead actor, director, and editor.
Post-production is our reality; the musical one, too. That’s stating the obvious, I realise, but it helps maybe to couch how things once marshalled in service of a final, organic whole, have now splintered into effects that any DAW-savvy doofus can cull together. While that may sound derisive, it might just be a way to come to terms with the jarring, cut-and-paste aesthetic of Forest Factory’s (Elvin Brandhi and Andreas Trobollowitsch) Holzweg.
From the late 70’s, Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is an Estonian film which mixes neo noir, with drama & mystery- finished off with light touches of surrealism, sci-fi & (very) low key horror. It’s set in an isolated/end-of-the-road/snow-bound hotel, where a policeman is called out seemingly by mistake to get involved with a selection of quirky guests, a murder, criminal intrigue, and possible aliens.. Here from Deaf Crocodile is a dual UHD & Blu-ray release of the film. It features a new 4k scan, a commentary track, and a blend of new & archive extras.
From the late 1990’s, Chameleon is a low-budget body jumping sci-fi movie, with light touches of bloody horror and raw arty elements. The film sits between being a short film & feature, with a runtime of forty-one minutes. It regards a nurse who encounters an escaped entity, which sucks in the spirits, bodies, and all of those it encounters. Here from those resurrectors, all things low-budget sci-fi/ horror SRS Cinema is a Blu-ray. It takes in a new scan of the picture, a selection of short films by the same director, and an interview.
Busted Babies is a deeply puzzling shot of lo-fi SOV sci-fi/fantasy regarding a group of black-winged, polka-dotted, and horned humanoid creatures. Two big-haired suited henchmen seeking an amulet, and a shedload of surreal cardboard-edged oddness. Here from Blood Sick Productions is a Blu-ray release of the 2024 film, which really is unlike anything I've seen in recent memory.
Italian art collective, NEA, has released their first combined, recorded efforts on the upcoming Orizzontale. Utilising many different art forms and expressions, the album allows each of the twelve artists to create and express themselves unrestrictedly, allowing each voice to be heard and lift the collective up. NEA believe in horizontality, eschewing hierarchies and giving each artist an equal voice, and Orizzontale presents this collective as it is meant to be heard and experienced. With a dozen artists working on their own but as a team, the album can take many different directions and forms, allowing unfettered collaboration to reign supreme.
Signal One (2026) is a science fiction thriller written and directed by Jonathan Sobol(The Art of the Steal, The Baker), arriving on UK VOD on 15 June via Signature Entertainment. The film stars Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan: First Kill) as Annika Kask, a brilliant computer scientist who is recruited by tech billionaire Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid, The Substance) to join his private facility on a remote Caribbean island. Also starring Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) as Charlie Kaminsky and David Thewlis (Avatar) as Perry Glassner, the nihilistic creator of LITTLEMOUTH, a machine capable of communicating with alien intelligence.
First released in the late 1990’s, Hail Horror Hail stands as one of the most unpredictable, at times jarring, and creatively demented black metal albums of all time. The nine-track affair blends BM/ metal stylings with rapid jumps/ darts into other genres, for a true sonic ghost train/ rollercoaster experience. Here on, Peaceville is a recent two-CD reissue of the album. On the first disc, there’s the original album and on the second disc are ten tracks- bringing together a selection of unreleased/ rough mixes and promo tracks.
First released in 1997, Ghastly Funeral Theatre was the beginning of Sigh’s shift into more avant-garde/experimental black metal. It was originally released as an EP, but here on Peaceville is a recent two-CD reissue of the release. On the first disc, there’s the original six-track EP, and on the second disc are seventeen tracks- bringing together a fascinating selection of covers, unreleased/ rough mixes, and promo tracks.
Prenez Votre Ticket (Take Your Ticket) is one of the longer examples of the wall form I have heard in some time. Clocking in at one hour and twenty-four minutes, the single track is all about creating a huge, murky, and rather abstract sound world, where bass-bound judder ‘n’ roll meet cluttering billows, shredding static fields, and sweeping sear blends.
Limbic System & Nostalgia finds this Oregon-based project serving a thirty-minute slice of compacted & bass-bound walled noise. The whole thing has a wonderful constricting at times crude, quality about it, feeling akin to being wrapped in a thick blanket as a bunch of horses constantly gallop over you.
Polish director Jan Komasa’s first English-language film, The Good Boy (2025), also known as Heel, is a darkly comic thriller with an eye on society. The opening scenes, when we’re invited out on a night out with Tommy (Anson Boon), leave us in no doubt that he’s a delinquent and an anti-social problem—the question is, can and should something be done about him?
The Last Match is a 1991 action movie directed by Frabrizio De Angelis (Deadly Impact, Killer Crocodile and the Thunder trilogy). For a cheap movie, it has a pretty stacked cast including Ernest Borgnine (Escape from New York, The Poseidon adventure and The Devil’s Rain), Olive Tobias (‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, The Stud and the Dad’s Army movie), Charles Napier (Rambo, Supervixens and Silence of the Lambs), Henry Silva (The Manchurian Candidate, Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai and Above the Law) and Martin Balsam (All the President’s Men, Psycho and 12 Angry Men).
No Hope is album number two from Maginot- a project that brings together Frenchman Romain Perrot (Vomir, Trou Aux Rats, Free As Dead, Roro Perrot), and Brit Paul Hegarty (Safe, author of Noise/Music: A History). I must say it’s a difficult album to put under one genre, as the three-track album blends da-da doom/ avant jazz, sluggish/ spastic noise rock with mumbled vocals, and found sound/loose jamming.