Mike Spring
What’s New in Home Video & Pop Culture – March 10, 2026
It’s a bit of an odd week this week, with no big name movie releases hitting shelves that I received for review. That probably means I’ll have twice as many this week, but this week belongs to the more unique home video titles plus a couple of big name book/graphic novel releases.
In This Week’s Column:
- Duel to the Death (Blu-ray)
- SpongeBob Squarepants: The Art of an Undersea World (Book)
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Omnibus (Graphic Novel)
- Retribution (4K Ultra HD)
- The Ghost (Blu-ray)
- Elvis ’56 (Blu-ray)
- A Little Prayer (Blu-ray)
- Flathead (DVD)
Duel to the Death (Blu-ray)
Official Synopsis:
Every ten years, a duel is held between the finest Japanese and Chinese martial artists to determine whose Swordsmanship is superior. During the Ming Dynasty, as the next duel approaches, the chosen candidates are caught in the middle of a battle between Ninjas and Shaolin monks. Only a Duel to the Death will settle the countries’ conflicts and stop the bloodshed.
Known for his classic film, A Chinese Ghost Story, as well as for directing Tsui Hark’s the Swordsman saga, this debut feature from director Ching Siu-tung is filled with dazzling visuals and astonishing martial arts choreography (also by Ching Siu-tung, who would later choreograph the action sequences for Zhang Yimou’s acclaimed wuxia triptych; Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower), Duel to the Death comes to Blu-Ray for the first time in the USA from a brand new 2K restoration.
The Movie:
Director Ching Siu-tung may not be a household name outside of Asia, but his film A Chinese Ghost Story is one of the most popular films to come out of China in the last 50 years, spawning two sequels and global fandom. Here, we have a new special edition Blu-ray of an earlier movie from the director, Duel to the Death, courtesy of 88 Films, who specializes in bringing lesser-known Asian movies to a wider audience.
This 1983 production comes from Golden Harvest, so you know it’s going to be fun, or at least going to have a certain easily-identifiable aesthetic. With a Chinese-warriors-versus-Japanese-warriors story at the heart of it, it doesn’t take long for the action to start. I expected more of a traditional action movie here, but Duel to the Death features all of the weirdness that the 1980s had to offer, including a naked sorceress, animated special effects (on occasion), lots of wire work, and – of course – a good dose of fun. It’s clearly a product of its time, but Duel to the Death is an exciting and enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.
This new Blu-ray from 88 Films comes with awesome new packaging and gorgeous cover art, plus it’s decked out with a nice complement of bonus features. Another top-quality release from the distributor!
The Bonus Features:
- Audio Commentary with Asian Cinema Expert Frank Djeng
- Duel Identity – Archival interview with actor Norman Chui Siu-keung
- Flora Cheung on Duel to the Death – Archival interview with actress Flora Cheung
- Alternate English credits
- Image Gallery
- Original Hong Kong Trailer
- Reconstructed Tai Seng Trailer
Digital Copy Included: No
Spongebob Squarepants: The Art of an Undersea World (Graphic Novel)
Official Synopsis:
Celebrate over 25 years of SpongeBob SquarePants! Take a stroll through Bikini Bottom and celebrate all your favorite characters in this collectible art book with special focuses on the original TV series, its spinoffs, and every movie!
Take a journey under the sea with early concepts from series creator Stephen Hillenburg, as well as storyboards, backgrounds, final images, and everything else that went into making SpongeBob SquarePants the beloved phenomenon it is today. Get special glimpses into characters such as Gary, Patrick Star, Squidward, Mr. Krabs, and more. Then travel to iconic locations like Conch Street, the Krusty Crab, Sandy’s Dome, Mrs. Puff’s School, and Ukulele Bottom!
Go behind the scenes of the award-winning television series and its spinoffs—along with all feature films, including SpongeBob’s newest big screen adventure, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants! Everyone’s favorite undersea world and its cast of characters and places are all showcased in this ultimate art guide to the world of SpongeBob SquarePants!
The Book:
Okay, everyone always seems to blow a gasket when I say that I’m not a huge SpongeBob Squarepants fan. Let me clarify before your blood pressure starts to rise. I like SpongeBob just fine. I used to watch the show with my kids, and I can recognize that its funny and clever. But did my fandom ever go beyond that? No. I just never got so into SpongeBob that I felt the need to wear him on T-shirts or keep watching his adventures once my kids had grown out of it. But I don’t dislike SpongeBob or his friends in any way.
That said, I am obsessed with SpongeBob SquarePants: The Art of an Undersea World! This book is simply incredible. To start with, it’s a massive coffee-table-book-sized tome, coming in at over 400 pages. Even more impressive, though, is the content, which is just incredible. Effectively what you’re getting here is a history of SpongeBob Squarepants and the residents of Bikini Bottom, told through the artwork that has brought the show to life over the past 25 years. You get concept art, storyboards, production art, hero shots, quotes, interviews… pretty much anything ever put to paper in terms of designing the look, feel, and humor of the show (and the movies!) is collected here. Honestly, it’s a SpongeBob fan’s dream. As I stated, I’m not even the biggest fan of SpongeBob, and I couldn’t put this book down.
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Art of an Undersea World is a top-quality effort from start to finish. It has the perfect blend of text and artwork so that you’re not blowing through it in five minutes because it’s just a fancy picture-book, but not so much text that it feels like you’re reading a school textbook. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in animation in general, but especially for SpongeBob Squarepants fans.
The Specs:
- Publisher: IDW Publishing
- Format: Hardcover
- Page Count: 416 pages
- Cover Price: $49.99
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Omnibus (Graphic Novel)
Official Synopsis:
Three graphic novels that let fans of the classic Star Trek series dive deeper into the world of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine! Don’t miss out on these exclusive “lost episodes” celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fan-favorite show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine!
In Fool’s Gold, the station begins to be overrun by thieves, treasure-seekers, bounty-hunters, and other assorted ne’er-do-wells, Major Kira and Constable Odo must find out why. Can they get to the bottom of it before the station’s new visitors bring things to a boiling point?!
After this, return to DS9 in Too Long a Sacrifice as death casts its shadow on the station in this space noir! With a murderer on the loose, the inhabitants of Deep Space 9 start to divide into factions, made even worse when the Ferengi government gets involved!
In The Dog of War an extremely rare purebred corgi from Earth makes its way aboard Deep Space 9 when Quark cuts a deal to procure it for a high buyer. However, all plans are upended when a crew member discovers a Borg component on the pup!
Collects the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine miniseries Fool’s Gold, Too Long a Sacrifice, and The Dog of War plus the short stories “Latinum Glove,” “Mother’s Walk,” “Frontier Doctor,” “Only You Can Save Yourself,” and “The First Year.”
The Book:
Like many true Star Trek fans, I realize that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is, of course, the best Star Trek series. (I’m kidding, sort of – “True” Star Trek fans can obviously love whichever series they want, but I know a lot of Trek fans like myself consider Deep Space Nine to be the pinnacle of the franchise.) So naturally, I was excited to dig into the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Omnibus, a new compendium graphic novel from IDW.
There are three DS9 stories collected here, each of which was originally a four or five part miniseries from IDW. Fool’s Gold, Too Long a Sacrifice, and The Dog of War. Part of the trick of bringing DS9 to comics is that the end of the series basically blew everything up. (I mean, not literally, but it seismically shifted the status of most of the characters.) These stories get around that by setting their stories before the end of the show, which is a smart move in my opinion. Fool’s Gold is a solidly fun story that sees the station set upon by thieves and pirates and chaos in the aftermath. Too Long a Sacrifice shifts the focus to a more serious story, with Odo taking the central role and a murder mystery driving the heart of the action. The Dog of War is my favorite story of the three, focusing on an intergalactically sought after corgi, of all things, and it has that perfect DS9 blend of humor and hard sci-fi that feels like you’re watching the show at its prime.
This almost-400 page book collects the three DS9 miniseries that have been published by IDW in recent years (none of the old Marvel/Malibu stories are collected.) Each of the three stories collected here have been in trade paperback form before, but I believe one or two of them are out of print, and even at cover price, collecting all of them would cost you two or three times as much as this book. Plus, you wouldn’t get the bonus short stories that are collected as well. It’s a terrific book for any Deep Space Nine fan!
The Specs:
- Publisher: IDW Publishing
- Format: Softcover
- Page Count: 384 pages
- Cover Price: $24.99
Retribution (4K Ultra HD)
Official Synopsis:
After an emotionally fragile painter miraculously survives a horrific suicide attempt, he discovers he may be possessed by a vengeful spirit. In 2021, Severin Films was proud to resurrect the “gory, bizarre and intense” (McBastard’s Mausoleum) forgotten classic from co-writer/director Guy Magar on Blu-ray. But in 2025, our search of a Los Angeles lab vault led to the discovery of the unclaimed negative for the thought-lost Unrated Version just days prior to its destruction. ’80s splatter fans rejoice: Magar’s neon and viscera-soaked saga of possession, vengeance and carnage has never looked or sounded more harrowing. Dennis Lipscomb (EYES OF FIRE), Leslie Wing (THE FRIGHTENERS), Suzanne Snyder (WEIRD SCIENCE) and Hoyt Axton (GREMLINS) star in this “relentless squishy joy that makes us angry we’ve lived this long without having seen it” (Bleeding Skull), now on 2 discs with both the Unrated and Theatrical Versions scanned in 4K from their original camera negatives and over 3 hours of Special Features.
The Movie:
Guy Magar was a director in the ‘80s and ‘90s who specialized in helming episodes of popular TV shows like La Femme Nikita, Sliders, The A-Team, and Riptide, but who also made a couple of movies that squarely ended up in the “cult classic” category. It seems that when he wasn’t making studio-driven TV shows, he wanted to embrace his more creative side and let his freak flag fly a bit.
And so we ended up with Retribution, a 1987 genre cult classic that is hard to define or explain but will definitely appeal to certain kinds of film fans. The movie is – as best as I can describe it – a combination of ghost movie and vengeance thriller, with a hefty dose of shlock cinema thrown in. There’s no shortage of gore, offbeat special effects, and just plain weirdness. I don’t even know if I can safely say whether I really liked it or not, but I can certainly recognize it as a unique voice in filmmaking.
Apparently, the film has never been seen before in this Unrated Version, making this new home video release unique. (It also explains why it’s coming out just five years after the last home video release of the movie.) In addition to that version of the film being included, you also get copious bonus features included on this top-notch release from Severin Films. I definitely can’t say that Retribution is for everyone, but for the more cult-film-oriented fans out there, this is a worthwhile release.
The Bonus Features:
- Audio Commentary with Co-Writer/Director Guy Magar
- Writing Wrongs – Interview with Co-Writer Lee Wasserman
- Shock Therapy – Interview with Actress Leslie Wing
- Angel’s Heart – Interview with Actress Suzanne Snyder
- Santa Maria, Mother of God, Help Me! – Interview with Actor Mike Muscat
- Settling The Score – Interview with Soundtrack Composer Alan Howarth
- Visions Of Vengeance – Interview with Special Effects Artist John Eggett
- The Art of Getting Even – Interview with Artist Barry Fahr
- Living In Oblivion – Interview with Production Designer Robb Wilson King
- BINGO – Student Short by Guy Magar with Optional Director Commentary
- Promotional Trailer Show Reel
- Trailers
- Stills & Poster Gallery
Digital Copy Included: No
The Ghost (Blu-ray)
Official Synopsis:
In turn-of-the-century Scotland, a young wife conspires with her lover to murder her wealthy, paralyzed surgeon husband. Direct from its triumphant 2025 premiere at the Venice International Film Festival comes “Riccardo Freda’s masterpiece” (At the Mansion of Madness) featuring a stunning performance by “the greatest femme fatale of EuroShock cinema” (Through the Shattered Lens) Barbara Steele, now on Blu-ray for the first time ever: In turn-of-the-century Scotland, a young wife (Steele) conspires with her lover to murder her wealthy paralyzed husband. But when the dead spouse’s spirit returns, it will unlock a nightmare of spectral terror, sudden violence and depraved vengeance. Peter Baldwin (THE WEEKEND MURDERS) and Harriet Medin (THE WHIP AND THE BODY) co-star in the 1963 classic that re-sets the bar for Italian horror, co-written by Freda and Oreste Biancoli (BICYCLE THIEVES), newly scanned in 4K from the thought-lost original camera negative and restored by Severin Films with 4 hours of Special Features.
The Movie:
Not content with one horror-themed release this week, Severin Films brings us another cult classic horror movie, this time from the 1960s. The Ghost is an old-school Italian chiller that predates (or at least coincides with) the star of the infamous Giallo genre that made Italian horror films so famous.
The luminous Barbara Steel stars as a woman who conspires with her lover to murder her rich, wheelchair-bound husband. They manage to pull it off, but what they don’t count on is her husband’s vengeful spirit coming back to haunt them and cause havoc. It’s a melodramatic affair, steeped in the production values of the 1960s, so it’s not the most subtle film in the world, but it is pretty effective. I had never come across this movie before, but it’s not hard to see why it has its fans.
As I’ve come to expect from Severin Films, this home video release of The Ghost is a terrific product, with excellent sound and picture for a movie that’s over 60 years old, plus a deep bench full of bonus features.
The Bonus Features:
- Audio Commentary with Kat Ellinger, Author of Daughters of Darkness
- Audio Interview with Barbara Steele (Played in Conjunction with THE GHOST)
- Audio Interview with Actress Harriet Medin and Tim Lucas, Author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of The Dark
- Barbara Steele Presents The 4K Restoration at The Venice International Film Festival and L’Étrange Festival in Paris
- Till Death Returns – Interview with Roberto Curti, Author of Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957–1969
- Wounds Of Deceit – Video Essay On Barbara Steele by Dr. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Author Of 1000 Women in Horror, 1895–2018
- Give Up the Ghost – Video Essay by Tim Lucas
- Italian Trailer
- U.S. Trailer
Digital Copy Included: No
Elvis ’56 (Blu-ray)
Official Synopsis:
The definitive film about Elvis Presley in his breakthrough year: 1956. Includes clips from TV and public appearances. 1956 was Elvis Presley’s breakthrough year, and this program takes you back, including his early television performances on the Dorsey Brothers Show and the Ed Sullivan Show (where the cameramen were instructed not to shoot the lower half of his body!). This DVD has an entire hour of rare footage and performances captured during the amazing year when Elvis Presley became not only a star, but a phenomenon. So slip on your blue suede shoes and step back to the beginning of an era, with rare early recordings and never-before-seen footage. Narrated by The Band’s Levon Helm. Directed and produced by Oscar-winning directors Alan and Susan Raymond. Including iconic photos by the photographer who toured with Elvis that year (Al Wertheimer) who captured many intimate moments from this one year.
The Movie:
I love it when hidden gems like this get home video releases. Elvis ’56 is a terrific documentary that actually came out as a TV special in 1987. Now, there’s no shortage of Elvis Presley material out there, so why is this one so special? Well, the film is packed with early live performances by The King, and because they were cleared for reproduction back in 1987, we still get to see them today. So many times these days, I get music documentaries to review that have no actual performances by the subjects of the film. This one is jam-packed with live Elvis music.
The film itself, while just over an hour, focuses on the year 1956, which is a pivotal one in Elvis’s history. That’s the year he went from being a complete unknown to an American superstar, all in the course of one calendar year. This film focuses on those early electric performances (on shows like The Milton Berle Show) and how he electrified audiences with his controversial hip-shaking. It’s really a rise to stardom that happened so fast, it’s almost unmatched in popular culture.
While not the deepest or most comprehensive Elvis documentary around, if you want to go back and see footage of The King at the peak of his powers while still maintaining some of his raw, youthful energy, Elvis ’56 is a great way to do it.
The Bonus Features:
There are no bonus features on the disc.
Digital Copy Included: No
A Little Prayer (Blu-ray)
Official Synopsis:
“One of the most moving films you’ll see this year.” Bill (David Strathairn) is a pillar of his Winston-Salem community: a business owner, veteran, and proud patriarch of an unruly but loving family, including daughter-in-law Tammy (Jane Levy), who he holds especially dear. When Bill discovers an extramarital affair involving David, his son and Tammy’s husband, the whole family must confront the consequences. A poignant and emotional drama about finding kindred spirits in unexpected places, Angus MacLachlan’s A LITTLE PRAYER is a sensitive and searching portrait of an American family.
The Movie:
There’s a surprisingly powerhouse cast for a movie that I would say most people probably haven’t heard of in A Litle Prayer. At the heart of the film is David Strathairn and Jane Levy, but supporting roles go to Celia Weston, Anna Camp, and Billie Roy, and pretty much everyone in the cast shines.
The movie, despite its title, is not a faith-based drama, but rather a family dramedy. Strathairn and Levy play a father-in-law and daughter-in-law who are especially close. Strathairn’s Bill, a Vietnam veteran who lives a quiet life in North Carolina, suspects that Levy’s Tammy’s husband is having an affair, and he’s right. Meanwhile, his actual daughter (Anna Camp) returns home with her daughter, once again on the outs with her own husband. While the film definitely has a plot, it’s not a plot-heavy movie, if that makes sense. Rather, it’s about these characters and the moments between them, and it’s surprisingly effective, especially thanks to a dry, subtle sense of humor that runs throughout.
Writer-director Angus MacLachlan is best known for his 2006 movie Junebug, starring Amy Adams. I’m not sure why it took him 20 years to pen a follow-up, and it’s not the kind of movie that made a huge splash at the box office or on the pop culture radar, but A Little Prayer is a sweet little movie that’s worth watching.
The Bonus Features:
- Audio Commentary by Director Angus MacLachlan
- Inside the Arthouse with Angus MacLachlan and Jane Levy
- Panel Discussion from EbertFest 2025
- Image Gallery
- Theatrical Trailer
Digital Copy Included: No
Flathead (DVD)
Official Synopsis:
Late in life, Cass is drawn to his long-forsaken childhood home of Bundaberg, where he finds himself on a spiritual search for redemption
The Movie:
“Docu-fiction” is a term I’m hearing bandied about more often lately, although it’s not a new concept. In the case of Flathead, the film is a lo-fi drama about a man late in life who is trying to find himself and some redemption for the life he’s led. While it is somewhat of a fictional narrative, the lead actor is a real aged Australian man who is introspective about his life and he’s revisiting his real life hometown.
This is a small, quiet film, shot in black and white with no bells or whistles. There is some score music, but everything else is as spare as can be. And while there are some moments of genuine emotion in the film, it’s a bit too navel-gazing in nature for me. I don’t know that I ever felt particularly invested in lead character Cass’s journey, and his decision to turn to religion towards the end of his life didn’t really resonate. Flathead isn’t not a badly made film, it’s just not my cup of tea.
The Bonus Features:
- Short Film: Andrew’s Meditation
- Short Film: Country Singing Boy
Digital Copy Included: No
