The Best Movies Coming To The Criterion Channel In October 2021
“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make!” Criterion is bringing grotesqueries and chills to your watchlist in time for Halloween!
This October, the streaming service calls back to the early howls of horror cinema with a studio that churned out classic tales that would be told again and again and influence a genre for the next century and beyond. For those who have seen the Universal monster staples, perhaps something that hits closer to home is what gets your ghost. Criterion also boasts a robust True Crime section for your viewing pleasure, and the meek and mild can stick with non-scary spotlight collections on Kirk Douglas, Cicely Tyson, and Curtis Mayfield, among other industry luminaries.
Horror-heads can enjoy the original icons of gothic horror with a handful of films that signal the horror genre’s penchant for pushing taboo, including the eyebrow-raising Spanish-language version of Tod Browning’s “Dracula” (1931), “The Mummy” (1932), “The Invisible Man” (1933), “The Black Cat” (1934), “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), “The Raven” (1935), “The Wolf Man” (1941), and “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954).
Not sure where to start? To narrow down your choices, here are five of the best movies coming to Criterion this October.
Let Him Have It
First up is a film that isn’t horror at all, but will grip you with clammy hands nonetheless. Hot on the heels of his account of 1960s gangsters “The Krays” in 1990, Peter Medak followed up the following year with a stern look at a flawed justice system hellbent on revenge in a gut-punch portrayal of the tragic real-life case of Derek Bentley.
Played to perfection by Christopher Eccleston, the character is accused of acting as an accomplice to a cop-killing (by uttering the movie’s titular phrase — much of the trial concerns itself with whether he meant it literally or colloquially). Pleading as much with the audience as he is to his cruel jailers, the BAFTA-nominated actor shows early teases of the commanding presence that would elevate acclaimed later works like “Elizabeth” and Danny Boyle’s edge-of-your-seat rage horror “28 Days Later.”
The Honeymoon Killers
Much has been made of horror and exploitation films that glorify their killers, but where are the stories that are just as repulsed by their subjects as the viewer might be? It’s a concept Leonard Kastle applies to the story of the Lonely Hearts Killers, with raw precision, in “The Honeymoon Killers.”
Following the exploits of Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler) and Ray Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco) as they embark on a con-and-kill spree across North America, Kastle’s flat-lit, grimy, bare-bones production is a dignity-stripped account of sleazy people operating in a bleak moral landscape. Shot with a documentary’s authenticity and stuttered editing, “The Honeymoon Killers” is unconcerned with empathetic leads and even less concerned with audience comfort, subbing out romanticized crime for small-scale brutishness.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Henry (Michael Rooker) is a bad news bear. Following his release from prison for his mother’s murder, he works as an exterminator by day and a vicious murderer by night along with his unstable accomplice Otis (Tom Towles). The 1986 film, helmed by John McNaughton (a storyteller with a penchant for urban outlaws) is based on the true-life story of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas and doesn’t pull punches in its pathologization of the slayer.
Coming out amid the 80s slasher movie cycle, “Henry” contains blood and gore (enough to initially earn it an X rating from the MPAA) but it is hand-delivered with unblinking seriousness, a necessary counterweight to the 13th Fridays and Elm Street nightmares. One of its most disturbing moments comes justaftera graphic murder scene, when Otis rewinds the video footage of the kill (the victim’s screams and struggles can still be heard offscreen) so that he can re-live the experience. See the film that many call the most disturbing of all time, if you dare.
Bride of Frankenstein
In her original 1818 novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,” Mary Shelley re-orients the woman’s place in a realm dominated by male scientists. For his sequel to the 1931 film adaptation, James Whale leans into that gender-sexual warfare and the anxieties that men hold over womens' reproductive power.
The movie even tries to anticipate outrage with a prologue, in which Mrs. Shelley (also played by Lanchester) states her intent to impart a moral lesson on the audience — according to David J. Skal’s “The Monster Show,” the prologue had close-ups of Shelley in a low-cut gown that still drew the ire of notorious film censor Joseph Breen, who clutched his pearls at the cleavage and demanded cuts to the footage. So in a way, watching this nearly century-old Gothic horror picture is an act of rebellion.
Anyone who has ever navigated the dingy bowels of Club Rectum in “Irreversible” has had concerns about the warped mind that brought that movie to the big screen. Fortunately for Criterion viewers, Gaspar Noe has cited “Angst” among his heaviest influences. Promptly banned over most of Europe upon its 1983 release, Gerald Kargl’s Austrian home invasion horror is less of a movie experience and more of a festival of dread.
Focusing on the exploits of an unnamed serial killer (but loosely based upon the case of mass murderer Werner Kniesek) and lifted by the bleak compositions of Klaus Schulze (who scored the equally powerful Ozploitation horror film of the same year, “Next of Kin”), “Angst” is a film that has little plot and less arc but, like “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,” anything more would take away from its power of observation and its immaculate characterization.
Movies To Die For
Whatever you stream this season, Criterion has something to keep you shuddering under the blankets and flannel. Here is the complete list of films premiering on the Criterion Channel on June 23, 2025:
