It all begins with an idea.

It began with a Freudian script by Poe fan, playwright and cryptographer Leo Marks, who considered his role as a (famous) WWII codebreaker a highly voyeuristic one. It was such a personal project for director Michael Powell that he cast himself and his son as (abusive) father and (disturbed) child. It was famously condemned by critics of the time: Sight & Sound’s Derek Hill likened it to concentration camp atrocities, while, in 1994, Dilys Powell boldly admitted it was a masterpiece, reversing the hatred she expressed decades earlier.

Located in New Scotland Yard, the Black Museum is an all-encompassing archive of criminal memorabilia that has been collected over the years by the police; a ghoulish collection of various pieces of evidence including murder weapons that have in many ways left their mark on British society. Culturally it has a small number of fictional counterparts, a 2017 episode of Black Mirror and a far future equivalent located in Mega City One that features regularly in the Judge Dredd Megazine. One of the earliest examples however, and perhaps the one that cemented its place in pop culture is this 1959 British horror, nicely remastered and presented here on Blu-ray from Studio Canal.