The Screaming Skull & Ghouls Gone Wild on Blu-ray from Eureka in October
This October, Eureka Entertainment is delivering two very different horror releases on Blu-ray, both for the first time in the UK. First is The Screaming Skull, an atmospheric blend of Gothic horror and psychological suspense from actor-director Alex Nicol. Released the same day will be Ghouls Gone Wild, a collection of three wildly entertaining tales of ghosts, magic and supernatural mayhem from East Asia.
THE SCREAMING SKULL (USA 1958)
Limited Edition Blu-ray | 19 October 2026 | RRP £22.99, pre-order from the Eureka Store for £17.99
Adapted from a short horror story by Francis Marion Crawford and marking the directorial debut of Alex Nicol (better known for his acting performances in the likes of The Man from Laramie and The Twilight Zone), The Screaming Skull is a hidden gem from the vaults of American International Pictures – an atmospheric and deeply eerie gothic chiller than plays like a meeting between Daphne du Maurier and William Castle.
Following her marriage to Eric Whitlock (John Hudson), the wealthy Jenni (Peggy Webber) moves into her husband’s secluded country mansion, inherited following the death of his first wife Marion. Upon arriving at the house, Jenni begins to feel uneasy about Marion’s fate: supposedly, she drowned after hitting her head on the edge of a decorative pond in the gardens. Jenni then learns that Mickey (Alex Nicol), the groundskeeper, believes that Marion’s ghost roams the estate – and soon Jenni herself has experienced things she can’t explain, terrified that she is in the grip of the supernatural.
Clearly influenced by gothic melodramas such as Rebecca and Gaslight and presaging the disquieting menace of such haunted house classics as House on Haunted Hill, The Innocents and The Haunting, The Screaming Skull is filled with hair-raising set-pieces and deserves its place in the pantheon of independent American horror cinema. Eureka Classics presents the film on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.
EUREKA LIMITED EDITION 4BLU-RAY FEATURES:
- Limited edition O-card slipcase and interior packaging featuring new artwork by John Dunn [2000 copies]
- Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the production and marketing of The Screaming Skull by film historian Jon Towlson, author of Subversive Horror Cinema [2000 copies]
- 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray
- Original English mono audio
- Optional English subtitles (SDH)
- New introduction to The Screaming Skull by horror novelist Stephen Laws
- Shrouded in Mystery – new video essay on The Screaming Skull and the gothic horror tradition by film and literature scholar Mary Going
- Trailers
GHOULS GONE WILD (Hong Kong / Taiwan 1987-1988)
Limited Edition Blu-ray | 19 October 2026 | RRP £39.99, pre-order from the Eureka Store for £31.99
Following the breakout success of pioneering genre films Encounter of the Spooky Kind, The Dead and the Deadly and Mr Vampire, horror movies became a mainstay of film production in Hong Kong and Taiwan throughout the 1980s. Collected here are three of the standout titles from that horror boom, starring the likes of Chow Yun-fat (The Seventh Curse), Wu Ma (A Chinese Ghost Story) and Ricky Hui (Mr Vampire): Scared Stiff, The Haunted Cop Shop and Magic of Spell.
Lau Kar-wing (Crouching Tiger, Fatty Dragon) directs Scared Stiff (Siu sang mung ging wan, 1987), in which a young everyman develops the ability to enter other people’s dreams following an accident – and then finds himself using his gift to bring a sadistic murderer to justice. Co-written by Wong Kar-wai (Ashes of Time) and indebted in equal measure to Mr Vampire and Fright Night, The Haunted Cop Shop (Mang gwai chai goon, 1987) sees cops and crooks alike forced to confront vengeful beings from beyond the grave in a police station built on a site of violence. Finally, in a supernatural wuxia fantasy on par with The Miracle Fighters and Shaolin Drunkard, Magic of Spell (Tao da liang da xian shen wei, 1988) follows a kung fu master who must defeat the infernal demon responsible for his mother’s death.
Ranging in tone from laugh-out-loud comedy to straight-faced terror (sometimes in the same film) and featuring a litany of ruthless killers, restless spirits, vengeful jiangshi and infernal devils, Scared Stiff, The Haunted Cop Shop and Magic of Spell encapsulate the incredible range of Chinese-language horror filmmaking in the 1980s. Eureka Classics is presenting all three films for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK.
EUREKA LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES:
- Limited edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling [2000 copies]
- Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring an essay on the borrowing and remixing of world genre traditions in Scared Stiff, The Haunted Cop Shop and Magic of Spell by Iain Robert Smith, author of The Hollywood Meme: Transnational Adaptations in World Cinema [2000 copies]
- 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from new 2K restorations
- Two presentations of Scared Stiff, the original Hong Kong theatrical cut and uncut extended version
- Original Cantonese mono audio tracks
- Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release
- New audio commentary on Scared Stiff by East Asian cinema expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival)
- New audio commentaries on The Haunted Cop Shop and Magic of Spell by genre cinema expert Arne Venema and filmmaker Domting
- Restless Spirits – new interview on the history of horror cinema in Hong Kong and Taiwan with film writer, curator and East Asian film expert Fraser Elliott