Borley Rectory stunning horror doc goes to Blu-ray

You can bring on of the country’s most haunted house right into your home as Borley Rectory goes on Blu-ray.

Blu-ray extras

The Borley Rectory Blu-ray is absolutely packed to the gills with hours of new features. There’s even a documentary on the Usborne World of the Unknown series featuring key Usborne staff and star of the film Reece Shearsmith reminiscing about the original books.

It was as a child that writer director Ashley Thorpe came across the story in the Usborne series.

“Haunted by the story for 40 years and a film subsequently 6 years in the making, Borley Rectory was a labour of love,” Ashley told D&CFilm.

“There was never a chance of me handing it over to anyone who I didn’t believe would do it justice.

“The Nucleus release of Borley Rectory is everything I could have hoped for and more,” said Ashley.

Digging deeper into pristine film

“Not only does it feature a pristine transfer of the film, it also boasts an incredibly in-depth, highly entertaining and informative feature-length ‘making of’ covering not just the colourful production of the film, but the journey that led me there.

“Nucleus also allowed and encouraged me to dig deeper into both the legend and the obsessions that led to the film being made.

“The disc is literally groaning with extras; ghost related featurettes, in-depth interviews with Borley experts, insights from Stephen Volk, Reece Shearsmith and Jonathan Rigby, and an exclusive interview with the publishers of the children’s book that started this journey way back in 1979. Borley Rectory was the Mount Everest of hauntings. This Blu-ray is the Everest of releases.”

True story

The visually stunning animated documentary Borley Rectory film is based on the true story of famed paranormal investigator Harry Price (Jonathan Rigby) looking into the supernatural ‘goings on’ at a Victorian mansion in Essex. It also stars Reece Shearsmith as the Daily Mirror journalist VC Wall.

The notoriety led Borley Rectory to be known as ‘the most haunted house in England’. The legends attached to the rectory and subsequent investigations of them caught the public’s imagination during the 1930s. It became known as one of the world’s most notorious ghost stories and influenced Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Richard Matheson’s Hell House.

The Borley Rectory Blu-ray is released in time for Halloween, on October 14, 2019.

Best seller

And if the Amazon Best Seller chart is anything to go by, the pre-orders are doing very well, putting it at number 1.

This Blu-ray release has inspired Usborne Publishing to re-release their classic “The World of the Unknown: All About Ghosts” book, which was a huge influence on director Ashley Thorpe and actor Reece Shearsmith, who has written an introduction to the new edition. You can pre-order it.