Yet Skare still delivers on a number of fronts. Hardcore horror fans will doubles appreciate its nods to 80s slashers and the work of Herschell Gordon Lewis, the grisly nature of the makeup effects, and the cheery brightness of the liberally splattered blood. The early scenes also wittily invert the traditional leery male and his potential female victim aspect of the genre, with the young muscular male asylum escapee seriously intimidated by the sensuality and confidence of a lonely older woman. Murphy even flips a famous image from Psycho by having Martha remove a picture that covers a hole in the wall that allows her to watch the naked Dan in the shower, complete with a huge close-up of her widened eyeball. Others will relish this one, and while it's not one of my favourites, I have to admit that my fondness for it grew with a second viewing.

The clue to why lies in the subtitle of this box set, The Microbudget Cinema of Michael J. Murphy. Murphy never made a film that was widely distributed in cinemas or screened on any of the main British TV channels. He never took any of his movies to Cannes, and he was never even in consideration for any category of BAFTA. Yet after watching everything in this mammoth set, I was left with the suspicion that had he followed a different path, he might have done all three.Audio commentaries on Invitation to Hell and The Last Night with Murphy, Lyndon and Sally Duncan (2008)

Michael J Murphy on 'Beast' (2010): interview with the filmmaker about Chris Jupp's remake of his lost version of Skare

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All-new 2K restoration by Powerhouse Films of Moonchild (1989), using 16mm film elements from the Murphy archives Standard Definition presentation of Avalon (1988), newly digitised from Michael J Murphy’s original tape master

The only surviving seven minutes of an ambitious-looking apocalyptic drama, in which a couple whose friend dies of a mysterious disease (at least that's what I'm guessing from what remains), so they bury the body and flee into town, where they discover that he was not the only one affected. Murphy's developing skills as cinematographer deliver a couple of neat and expressive shots here, my favourite being the wide pan of the couple running down the quay that ends on a closeup of a dead girl slumped over a table. This has been sourced from Murphy's own tape copy and has no sync sound, and instead has an unsettling violin score. The Making of ‘Atlantis’(2010): two-part retrospective documentary featuring interviews with Murphy, Lyndon, Bunday and Holding The Making of ‘Atlantis’ (2010): two-part retrospective documentary featuring interviews with Murphy, Lyndon, Bunday and HoldingThis Halloween in the UK and the USA, Indicator will release its grandest, most ambitious collection to date when Magic, Myth & Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J Murphy, 1967–2015 arrives on Blu-ray. In this final segment of Murphy's Lore, several individuals pay tribute to Murphy's work and reveal how they first discovered it (usually through the double-bill of Invitation to Hell and The Last Night) and how it influenced them. Curiously, at least on the review disc version, none of them are identified with name captions, although there is a roll call of participants in the closing credits, and I instantly recognised the voice of Johnny Walker, who provided the second commentary on Invitation to Hell. High Definition presentations of Nekros: Isle of the Dead (2014) and The Return of Alan Strange (2015), newly remastered from Murphy’s digital archive Audio Commentary on 'Invitation to Hell' with Michael J Murphy, Phil Lyndon and Sally Duncan (28 July 1980) The Making of 'ZK3' (2012): retrospective documentary featuring interviews with Murphy, Holding and Lyndon

Two versions of the film have been supplied for your edification here, the original 109 minute version and an 88 minute recut by Murphy himself that removes twenty minutes of footage to create a tighter version. Which you prefer will be a matter of personal taste – frankly I was fine with the original edit. Murlyn’s Cave (2023, 22 mins): footage of Murphy’s friends and collaborators salvaging rare promotional materials, production equipment, props and other materials from the director’s home shortly after his death in 2015The performances of the leads are once again impressive, with three of the key players from Road to Nowhere returning here in very different roles and again really bringing Murphy's script to life. It's a glum-looking film, with interiors that look brighter than the footage shot outside in the daylight, but this adds to the film's increasingly unsettling atmosphere, and I'll freely admit that by the halfway point, I genuinely didn't know how the rest would play out. It leaves some questions teasingly (and a little frustratingly) unanswered, but is still an intriguing and enjoyable genre work that nicely misdirects us and plays its winning cards close to its chest.