Why So Blu?

The Others, Freaks, Videodrome 4K & More Coming to The Criterion Collection October 2023

Coming this October: Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers, three pre-Code spine-chillers from a master of the morbid; The Others, a gothic supernatural tale set on a remote country estate from Alejandro Amenábar; and Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny, a haunting modern-day fable of cultural dislocation in New York City. Plus: Videodrome, David Cronenberg’s ingeniously prescient 1980s body-horror vision, and Don’t Look Now, Nicolas Roeg’s unforgettably disturbing psychodrama—now on 4K UHD.

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DON’T LOOK NOW

Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie mesmerize as a married couple on an extended trip to Venice following a family tragedy. While in that elegantly decaying city, they have a series of inexplicable, terrifying, and increasingly dangerous experiences. A masterpiece from Nicolas Roeg, Don’t Look Now, adapted from a story by Daphne du Maurier, is a brilliantly disturbing tale of the supernatural, as renowned for its innovative editing and haunting cinematography as for its naturalistic eroticism and its unforgettable climax and denouement—one of the great endings in horror history.

1973 • 110 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Anthony Richmond, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Conversation between editor Graeme Clifford and film writer and historian Bobbie O’Steen
• “Don’t Look Now”: Looking Back, a short documentary from 2002 featuring Clifford, Richmond, and director Nicolas Roeg
• “Don’t Look Now”: Death in Venice, a 2006 interview with composer Pino Donaggio
• Program on the writing and making of the film, featuring interviews with Richmond, actors Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, and coscreenwriter Allan Scott
• Program on Roeg’s style, featuring interviews with filmmakers Danny Boyle and Steven Soderbergh
• Q&A with Roeg from 2003 at London’s Ciné Lumière
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic David Thompson

Available October 3, 2023

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VIDEODROME

When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new material for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called “Videodrome.” His attempts to unearth the program’s origins send him on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily transformation. Starring James Woods and Deborah Harry, Videodrome is one of the most original and provocative works from writer-director David Cronenberg, and features groundbreaking makeup effects by Academy Award winner Rick Baker.

1983 • 89 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restoration of the unrated version, approved by director David Cronenberg, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Two audio commentaries, one featuring Cronenberg and director of photography Mark Irwin, the other actors James Woods and Deborah Harry
• Camera (2000), a short film by Cronenberg
• Forging the New Flesh, a short documentary by filmmaker Michael Lennick about the creation of Videodrome’s video and prosthetic makeup effects
• Effects Men, an audio interview with special makeup effects creator Rick Baker and video effects supervisor Lennick
• Bootleg Video: the complete footage of Samurai Dreams and seven minutes of transmissions from “Videodrome,” presented in their original, unedited form, with filmmaker commentary
• Fear on Film, a roundtable discussion from 1982 with Cronenberg and filmmakers John Carpenter, John Landis, and Mick Garris
• Original theatrical trailers and promotional featurette
• Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos and posters
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: Essays by writers Carrie Rickey, Tim Lucas, and Gary Indiana

Available October 10, 2023

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FREAKS / THE UNKNOWN / THE MYSTIC: TOD BROWNING’S SIDESHOW SHOCKERS

The world is a carnival of criminality, corruption, and psychosexual strangeness in the twisted pre-Code shockers of Tod Browning. Early Hollywood’s edgiest auteur, Browning drew on his experiences as a circus performer to create subversive pulp entertainments set amid the world of traveling sideshows, which, with their air of the exotic and the disreputable, provided a pungent backdrop for his sordid tales of outcasts, cons, villains, and vagabonds. Bringing together two of his defining works (The Unknown and Freaks) and a long-unavailable rarity (The Mystic), this cabinet of pre-Code curiosities reveals a master of the morbid whose ability to unsettle is matched only by his daring compassion for society’s most downtrodden.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration of Freaks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

• New 2K digital reconstruction and restoration of The Unknown by the George Eastman Museum, with a new score by composer Philip Carli

• New 2K digital restoration of The Mystic, with a new score by composer Dean Hurley

• Audio commentaries on Freaks and The Unknown and an introduction to The Mystic by film scholar David J. Skal

• New interview with author Megan Abbott about director Tod Browning and pre-Code horror

• Archival documentary on Freaks

• Reading of “Spurs,” the short story by Tod Robbins on which Freaks is based

• Prologue to Freaks, which was added to the film in 1947

• Program on the alternate endings to Freaks

• Video gallery of portraits from Freaks

• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• PLUS: An essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme

FREAKS

The most transgressive film produced by a major American studio in the 1930s, Tod Browning’s crowning achievement has haunted the margins of cinema for nearly one hundred years. An unforgettable cast of real-life sideshow performers portray the entertainers in a traveling circus who, shunned by mainstream society, live according to their own code—one of radical acceptance for the fellow oppressed and, as the show’s beautiful but cruel trapeze artist learns, of terrifying retribution for those who cross them. Received with revulsion by viewers upon its initial release, Freaks effectively ended Browning’s career but can now be seen for what it is: an audacious cry for understanding and a singular experience of nightmarish, almost avant-garde power.

1932 • 64 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

THE UNKNOWN

The most celebrated and exquisitely perverse of the many collaborations between Tod Browning and his legendary leading man Lon Chaney, The Unknown features a wrenchingly physical performance from “the Man of a Thousand Faces” as the armless Spanish knife thrower Alonzo (he flings daggers with his feet) whose dastardly infatuation with his beautiful assistant (Joan Crawford)—a woman, it just so happens, who cannot bear to be touched by the hands of any man—drives him to unspeakable extremes. Sadomasochistic obsession, deception, murder, disfigurement, and a spectacular Grand Guignol climax—Browning wrings every last frisson from the lurid premise.

1927 • 67 minutes • Black & White • Silent • 1.33:1 aspect ratio

THE MYSTIC

A fantastically atmospheric but rarely seen missing link in the development of Tod Browning’s artistry, set amid his favored milieu of shadowy sideshows and clever criminals, The Mystic provides a striking showcase for silent-era diva Aileen Pringle, who sports a series of memorably outré looks (courtesy of art-deco designer Erté) as Zara, a phony psychic in a Hungarian carnival who, under the guidance of a Svengali-like con man (Conway Tearle), crashes—and proceeds to swindle—American high society. Browning’s fascination with the weird is on full display in the eerie séance sequences, while his subversive moral ambiguity extends surprising sympathy to even the most seemingly irredeemable of antiheroes.

1925 • 73 minutes • Black & White • Silent • 1.33:1 aspect ratio 

Available October 17, 2023

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THE OTHERS

A remote manor; hushed, candlelit atmosphere; and shivery, supernatural menace. With his first English-language feature, Chilean Spanish writer-director-composer Alejandro Amenábar resurrected the classic gothic chiller to create a ghost story of uncommon emotional resonance. Nicole Kidman stars as a World War II–era mother whose imperiousness masks a terrifying pain, as she keeps her light-sensitive children enshrouded in darkness on her country estate. The arrival of three new servants punctures her insular world—and seems to disturb the balance between the living and the dead. With each stunning twist and turn, Amenábar immerses us more deeply in a realm haunted not only by spirits but also by guilt, trauma, and repression.

2001 • 104 minutes • Color • Dolby Atmos • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Alejandro Amenábar, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Amenábar
• New conversation between Amenábar and film critic Pau Gómez
• New making-of program featuring Amenábar, actors Nicole Kidman and Christopher Eccleston, and producer Fernando Bovaira
• Archival programs about the film’s production, costume design, soundtrack, and visual effects, featuring interviews and footage recorded on the set
• Audition footage of actors Alakina Mann and James Bentley and photography from the “Book of the Dead”
• Seven deleted scenes
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Philip Horne

Available October 24, 2023

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NANNY

A spellbinding blend of social observation and artful shocks, the debut feature from Nikyatu Jusu plunges into the increasingly fractured consciousness of Aisha (Anna Diop), a Senegalese immigrant who takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy white family in New York City. Separated from her own son and casually exploited by her employers, Aisha finds herself consumed by unsettling visions and a growing rage—one that could either destroy or empower her. This visually captivating tour de force—the first horror movie to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival—distills complex ideas about motherhood, inequality, and cultural dislocation into a work of dreamlike dread.

 2022 • 98 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround/Stereo • In English and Wolof with English subtitles • 2.00:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital master, approved by director Nikyatu Jusu, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed stereo soundtracks on the Blu-ray
• New program featuring Jusu, actors Anna Diop and Michelle Monaghan, and director of photography Rina Yang
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
• PLUS: An essay by critic Angelica Jade Bastién

Available October 31, 2023

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