I'll start this quick guide with a quick anecdote, much like a cooking blog would — but, you know, about geeky media and not how my husband was always watching tooooo muuuuuch football after 9/11 and needed healthy nachos.
A few years back during a midnight horror movie marathon at my house (we do one every Halloween), I watched the 2005 Japanese horror film Noroi: The Curse. It blew my mind. I had never engaged with a film like this before. Folk horror, demons, psychics, aliens maybe, found footage — it has quickly become my favorite horror film since 1971's The Abominable Dr. Phibes. But Noroi: The Curse was only available on streaming services. There was no way to bring the joy and terror into my own home to purchase forever
I had not been into J-horror before, other than watching Ju-On in college and Ringu at another Halloween marathon, but I wanted to watch more after Noroi: The Curse. Streaming channels only have a sliver of what's out there, so where does an upwardly mobile gentleman of the town go to find creepy ghosts galore? And what if I also wanted to buy cult films? Or other foreign horror movies that weren't only from Japan? Or lesser-known Blaxploitation films? Or strange niche comedies from an earlier age? WHO WOULD TAKE MY MONEY?
The search uncovered some incredible companies that are putting some of the most exciting rare films on physical media — many for the first time. If you're like me and want to amass a collection of weird, odd, kooky, creepy, terrifying, and off-beat films and TV shows, you'll want to take a walk through the online genre movie ecosphere.
Shout! Factory
The folks at Shout! Factory have been on the front lines of delivering CD, Blu-rays, DVDs, and box sets for 23 years, making them one of the most recognizable names in the business. They're well known for putting out TV series on DVD/Blu-ray, especially entire series all in one package, and large sets of film collections (I treasure their box set of all the Abbott and Costello Universal pictures). They offer unique steelbooks and are great about letting you know when things are going to go out of print — and dropping prices to clear out inventory. They have a streaming channel where you can pop in and check out some of their offerings, and are closely partnered with Mystery Science Theater 3000 for all their releases.
Vinegar Syndrome
Vinegar Syndrome, named after the smell of deteriorating film, began as a distributor for classic X-rated cinema,\ but has ballooned their output to include super stylized genre releases in horror, suspense, Blaxpolitation (I have their full collection of Rudy Ray Moore films), documentary, comedy, and even accessories like shirts, posters, and books. The high quality of their releases (packaging included) and amount of extras have catapulted them to the forefront of underground distributors. Their site also offers some good discounts you might not get elsewhere.
Arrow Video
Arrow is out of the UK but they have a US distribution arm and region-free releases. Like Vinegar Syndrome, they develop their own eye-catching packaging, including some massive box set releases and individual films packed with tons of physical extras. For example, Harrison Ford's 1985 Amish film Witness is packaged with a poster, postcards, and a mind-blowing 60-page booklet with essays from film critics and historians.
Personally I don't think their extras are matched by any other distributor, adding commentaries, interviews, featurettes, behind-the-scenes footage, and making-of documentaries to so many of their releases. This is where I finally found my copy of Noroi: The Curse as part of their 5-disc, 7-film set J-Horror Rising that included audio commentary, separate interviews with the director and producer, two featurettes from J-horror film historians, a half hour of deleted scenes, two additional featurettes about curses, an image gallery, and a trailer collection. And that's just for one film out of seven!
Umbrella Entertainment
This company hails from Australia and has been focused on releasing media from Australia, Asia, and Oceania since 2001. As such, it's kind of niche in its focus and less-well known to Americans, but has a ton of titles under their belt. Like Arrow, Umbrella releases load up the extras like toppings on a baked potato. You get audio commentaries, interviews, custom artwork, behind-the-scenes and deleted footage, and tons of physical bonuses like posters, postcards, and booklets. I admit that I haven't heard of most of these southern hemisphere films and shows, but that only means that there's a lot to explore and discover (and the Ted Danson sitcom Becker, they are handling that release it seems). I've already preordered their 8-disc Thai horror film set that's packaged with a 100-page booklet.
Severin Films
Severin came on my radar with their 2022 release of the immense 15-disc folk horror box set All The Haunts Be Ours that paired classic films like Penda's Fen and Viy with little-seen yet thematically appropriate horror shorts, commentaries, and special features — like a flat out book that they also sell for $35 independent of the Blu-ray set. It's almost too much content. You could spend weeks absorbing all of All The Haunts Be Ours and its 2024 companion release that doubles down on international folk horror with a mountain of films and extras. (Severin also went a little lowbrow with 2010's cheesy Birdemic: Shock and Terror.) They have an evident respect for genre films, as even the smallest pictures get great packaging and extras. Severin also sells tons of merchandise to surround their films, including shirts, pins, figurines, and art.
Kino Lorber
Probably the oldest of this gang at 48-years young, Kino Lorber specializes in foreign films and documentaries, but also packages Hollywood hits and indie movies. You won't find the exploitation aesthetic of some of the other distributors here. Kino Lorber skews more highbrow, leaning towards arthouse rather than grindhouse. In fact, they release 35 films per year into theaters to match their 350 films per year home video output. I love that they're preserving and distributing films going all the way back to the beginnings of cinema, including the upcoming release of the Oscar Micheaux collection, a pioneering Black filmmaker from the 1920s whose work is mostly lost media today. Don't worry horror and cult fans: They have you covered, with releases like the slasher pic April Fool's Day and the director's cut of Alex Cox's western Straight To Hell.
Eureka Entertainment
Another UK company with global reach, Eureka came to my attention with its six-film Mabuse Lives! collection, a box set of previously uncollected German films about the fictional crime boss Dr. Mabuse (sans The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, which got a Criterion release). They handle a lot of international releases, and take pride in their selection of martial arts films, including offerings from the Shaw Brothers, Chang Cheh, and Joseph Kuo, all with original case art. Eureka tends to release in small batches of 1,000-3,000 copies, so once they're gone, they might end up going for higher prices on the secondary market.
I like that they include multiple audio commentaries on a lot of their releases, including separate tracks for different genre experts to speak to the same film (an Asian film scholar track paired with an action film scholar track, for instance). Their "Masters of Cinema" series repackages older films like Touch of Evil and Fantomas with new materials added in gorgeous packaging. While they're in the UK, you can find their products on sites like Amazon and Diabolik DVD.
Powerhouse Films/Lime Wood
I love Powerhouse's commitment to getting stellar films out in massive collectible Blu-ray/DVD/ UHD sets, I just wish they'd make more of them! They're the brains behind the incredible 6-volumes of Hammer horror box sets and the 9-film Ray Harryhausen collections that come with so many extras you'll lose weeks of your life, but they're all out of print as of this writing. Still, their distributor, Lime Wood Ltd, puts out some great collections of noir, horror, Ozploitation, and Mexican films, including some kick ass 4K restorations starring Santos, the famous Mexican wrestler. Plenty of horror here, but more highbrow than slaughterhouse.
Via Vision
Another great distributor out of Australia! That nation is so much more than giant spiders and Bluey! Via Vision is distributor to lots of international TV shows and films, not just from Australia, so you'll be searching through some of the best of the best from around the globe (Murdoch Mysteries is Canadian and thoroughly a joy). Frankly, so little Aussie media gets through to us that you could scroll for several pages and not recognize any titles, but get intrigued enough to place an order anyway.
It's their "Imprint" line of DVDs and Blu-rays that hold the genre film goodness, as well as high quality sets of TV like I Dream of Jeannie and UFO. Old school horror, action, and sci-fi get individual releases as well as box sets. On the downside, I would say that they offer fewer special features than some of the other distributors on this list (mostly theatrical trailers and the occasional commentary track). On the plus side, they do bundle every month's releases into one discounted package, so you can take advantage of all they produce for one price on a regular basis. It's like a subscription to cinema!
Did we overlook your favorite cult genre film distributor? Let us know on Bluesky!
