Severin Films has opened pre-orders for Morbid Pleasures: A Compendium of Grand Guignol & the Grand Guignolesque, a 12-disc Blu-ray box set the label calls its most monumental collection to date.
Morbid Pleasures: A Compendium of Grand Guignol & the Grand Guignolesque — 12-disc Blu-ray set. Courtesy of Severin Films.
The set gathers more than 60 films dating from 1895 to 2025, many on home video for the first time, along with more than 80 hours of combined content. It includes rare and rediscovered silent films with new scores by Steven Severin (Siouxsie and the Banshees), David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets), Tim Newman, Stephen Thrower (Coil), and accompanists Michael D. Mortilla and Neil Brand.
At its center is David Gregory’s award-winning documentary Theatre of Horrors: The Sordid Story of Paris’ Grand Guignol, which examines the infamous Parisian theater and its graphic influence on popular culture. The collection also spotlights Paula Maxa, “The Most Assassinated Woman in the World,” along with filmmakers Fred Paul, Maurice Tourneur, Robert Hossein, and Vernon Sewell. New interviews trace the theater’s gore-fueled influence on modern cinema, the true crime phenomenon, and even live heavy metal, with Alice Cooper, GWAR, and the W.A.S.P. “Rack Girls.”
The box also includes a new 350-page, full-color book, Blood, Sweat & Sperm: The Visceral Horrors of the Grand Guignol, with writings by André Breton, Richard J. Hand, Aleister Crowley, André de Lorde, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Alfred Binet, and Maxa. Disc 12 is a strictly limited edition bonus disc featuring Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1970 landmark The Wizard of Gore and Jeremy Kasten’s 2007 remake, starring Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Bijou Phillips, and Crispin Glover (Back to the Future).
Watch the trailer below.
