Despite boasting for years about not owning a TV or DVD player, a TV and Blu-ray player happened to come my way recently, and I decided to delve into the world of ‘boutique Blu-rays’. These are DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K UHDs distributed by niche, independent companies, apparently catering for discerning cinephiles, and offering an alternative mix of cult, classic and world cinema. And a healthy dose of trash too.

They are usually quite expensive; Blu-rays can be twice the price of DVDs; UHDs more expensive than Blu-rays. Some 4K UHD & Blu-ray editions can cost £50 or upwards – for a single film. This could be for a dreadful 1980s straight-to-video slasher movie – but with a 4K restoration, plenty of extras, beautiful packaging and a limited release, it becomes a sort-after item. The power of marketing. From VHS to UHD: the medium is still the message.

The UK rarely makes decent films or TV but it’s good to see it producing so many good boutique Blu-ray labels – I think all on my list are UK with the exception of Criterion, who are from the States.

Many of the boutique Blu-ray labels listed here have the same About Us blurb – ‘we specialise in classic and cult film / 4K restorations / extra features / deluxe packaging’. What now makes a cult classic nowadays seems to be more to do with the passing of time – and being ignored at the time of release, usually for being a bad film – than any bona fide cult authenticity (whatever that may be, but you certainly can’t market it). Come on, The Hitcher or Risky Business or Basket Case or Wild Orchid (and a thousand other dodgy films in the collections) were never that good to start with, but now they’re so-called cult classics, commanding high price tags with glorious 4K restorations. There always was a fine line between cult and crap.

Both the labels releasing the films and the reviews of them seem to be obsessed with the technical quality of a film with little regard for what makes a good film. So, on the AV Forums review site, for example, The Chronicles of Riddick and Risky Business get the same score (9 out of 10) as Le Samouraï and Chinatown. If it’s a successful 4K transfer (from Blood on Satan’s Claw to Tremors 2) it gets a 9 or 10 rating, regardless of what the film is like.

Boutique Blu-ray YouTubers (yes, there is such a thing) are no exception. These are guys in their bedrooms talking about their Blu-ray collection. Despite them getting thousands of views, there’s something quite sad about it. The thing that gets me most about these people harking on about the quality of the digital transfer, the 4K restoration, the extras, the packaging – is that they have no taste whatsoever. They’ll be going on about all this and be referring to Conan the Barbarian, RoboCop or Flatliners. I mean, come on! They seem to have no taste criteria, except that if it’s 1980s and tacky, they need it on 4K UHD.

What all the boutique Blu-ray YouTubers say is that we’re living in a golden age of physical media, despite all reports to the contrary – it was apparently big news that Netflix stopped its DVD service recently (though no one knew it had one) and Big Buy (an American store I’d never heard of) stopped selling DVDs and Blu-rays. Sales of physical media have dropped hugely, but interest is now certainly in the boutique Blu-ray section of the market. Which I’m all for, mostly. I love the fact that obscure films are being given a new lease of life, fully restored with new packaging artwork and interesting extras including short films and documentaries.

But there’s no accounting for taste – there seems to be an awful amount of dodgy crap being released, from rubbish gory horror and exploitation films to Chuck Norris films and, er, Weird Science (Arrow Video, who released a 4K restoration of it back in 2019, felt compelled to release another version this year). I don’t really object to these films existing, just that the labels all pitch themselves as connoisseurs of high quality films catering to cinephiles.

The death of physical media has long been predicted but boutique Blu-rays are putting up a good fight. I still don’t go for streaming much (though I currently have a mubi subscription which I rarely watch) but I’m still in two minds about a DVD collection – I only need to watch most films once.

All the labels in this list have online shops. Usually they charge less than eBay or Amazon for their discs, so I recommend clicking on the links first and having a browse. They also often have decent sales and 3 for 2 deals.

Other popular labels with the reddit generation include Synapse, Severin and Vinegar Syndrome, who all release mostly crap horror and exploitation flicks (though I’m sure I saw Singapore Sling at the Scala).

1. BFI (British Film Institute)
“The British Film Institute is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, distribution, and education.”

Not many DVD labels can say that about themselves, but the BFI is also the NFT (National Film Theatre), Sight & Sound magazine, and lots more besides. I probably own more BFI DVDs than any other label – who else would release a headache-inducing boxset of the late, great Jeff Keen?

Favourites: Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films; Kenneth Anger: Magick Lantern Cycle; GAZWRX: The Films of Jeff Keen; British directors including Bill Douglas, Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman and Terrence Davies; Celine and Julie Go Boating, Woman of the Dunes, The Changes, Deep End… and many others too numerous to mention.

2. Curzon Film (formerly Artificial Eye)
Along with the BFI, Artificial Eye were the label I turned to in the 1990s when I wanted quality VHS films, which became DVDs, which became Blu-rays.

Favourites: The Films of Jean Vigo, The Andrei Tarkovsky Collection, The Aki Kaurismäki Collection, The Apu Trilogy, Béla Tarr, Wim Wenders, Fantômas, lots of New Wave French directors like Rohmer, Truffaut, etc.

3. Eureka!
They’re the leading distributor of classic silent/early films in the UK, as well as world, action, horror, sci-fi and martial arts movies. In 2004 they established the award-winning Masters of Cinema series, a director-led Blu-ray series using the finest available materials. That’s their blurb, and their DVDs are wonderfully designed. I’m looking forward to their upcoming Blu-ray release, Louis Feuillade: The Complete Crime Serials.

Favourites: Fantastic Planet, Onibaba, Rocco and his Brothers, Touch of Evil, On the Silver Globe, Encounter of the Spooky Kind, Mr. Vampire, House.

4. Second Run DVD
Second Run have been going since 2005 and release ‘rare and important classic and contemporary films from around the world’, specialising in European cinema.

Favourites: Daisies, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, The František Vláčil Collection, Twilight (Szürkület), Andrzej Wajda’s War Trilogy.

5. Mr Bongo
The phrase ‘boutique Blu-ray’ usually involves a hefty price tag, but not with Mr Bongo, whose main business is music but they also have a mission to “unearth iconic, stylish, hard-to-find gems and cult classics and make them readily available to cinema lovers”. Virtually all Blu-ray and DVDs on their shop site are under £10, with most DVDS £3.99 and Blu-rays not much more. I’m tempted to buy their whole collection (for the price of a Criterion box set). It includes films by well-known directors like Welles, Bunuel, Antonioni, Pasolini and Fellini as well as less well-known directors like Mikhail Kalatozov, whose visually striking I am Cuba I recently watched.

Favourites: The Hourglass Sanatorium and The Saragossa Manuscript, both directed by Worjciech Has.

6. Second Sight Films
DVD and Blu-ray company distributing ‘cult and classic’ films but from its website it looks mostly like horror, with a splash of Parajanov.

Favourites: Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, It Follows, Martin, Dog Soldiers, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Colour of Pomegranates.

7. Indicator
Powerhouse Films’ Indicator series are releasing ‘classic and criminally overlooked films’; I found plenty of barngains in their 3 for £20 offer. And though their release of Magic, Myth & Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J Murphy, 1967–2015 is to be applauded, a box set of The Complete Confessions (i.e. Confessions of a Window Cleaner with Robin Askwith) should best have been forgotten. I’m on the fence about their Pryor & Wilder box set.

Favourites: Age of Consent, Charley Varrick, Fat City, Housekeeping, The Last Movie, The Passenger and Winter Kills.

8. Criterion
I asked Cult or con? in a blog post earlier this year, and I’m still not sure – both? They produce lovely, overpriced films, some great, others not so – Risky Business on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray for £30, anyone?

Favourites: I don’t own any but as mentioned before, that Before Trilogy looks cool.

9. 101 Films
Distribution company releasing cult and classic films, but also fare like Delta Force II starring Chuck Norris – hopefully ironically.

Favourites: Phase IV, A Boy and his Dog (weird 1975 post-apocalyptic sci-fi film set in the year… 2024, starring a pre-Miami Vice Don Johnson and his telepathic dog who get lured down into a surreal underground city).

10. Arrow Films
Mainly specialising in cult genre films, they’ve built up a reputation as the Criterion of horror films. But if the best they’ve got to offer is the likes of Dario Argento, Robocop, Basket Case, True Romance, An American Werewolf in Paris and – inexplicably – Weird Science, then I’m not their target audience. Their packaging is often better than the film inside.

Favourites: Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection, The Thing, Society, Hellraiser, Donnie Darko.

Previously on Barnflakes
My VHS Film Collection
Quality criteria
Revenge of the VHS tape
Lifetime subscription
The top 100 films
The lost art of the double bill
Scala Beyond
Scala Forever!
Double Bill Me
858 films in two years
My top 5 DVD Box Sets
Quality Dichotomy
A Guide to Buying a New Television

Elsewhere on Barnflakes
My very own Boutique Barnflakes’ DVD, Homeless Movies, is still available to buy.