The Criterion Channel’s October Lineup Features Highway Horror, Possessions, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, The Last One for the Road & More

The Criterion Channel has long excelled in horror programming, making little surprise that this year’s October lineup is replete with thrills and chills. The scares get expansive with Highway Horror, which features The Hitcher, Maximum Overdrive, and Spielberg’s Duel, plus the surreal car crash of Lindsay C. Vickers’ deeply unsettling The Appointment; it’s more confined with Unwelcome Guests, a series of close-quarters classics (Night of the Hunter, Rosemary’s Baby, Funny Games) and a few things that are just a bit nastier (You’re Next, When a Stranger Calls Back); and genre gets all the more interior with Possessions, featuring… well, Possession, plus The Entity, Lifeforce, Jennifer’s Body, and The Wailing.

For us auteurists, a Kiyoshi Kurosawa program combines some mainstays (Cure, Pulse) deep cuts I don’t recall seeing on official channels (Door III, Charisma, Eyes of the Spider), as well as the streaming debut of the Serpent’s Path restoration and remake. A Dario Argento program should scratch a similar itch; don’t sleep on Harvey Keitel as a hoity-toity photographer in the George A. Romero collaboration Two Evil Eyes. Made-for-TV terror has the aforementioned Spielberg picture, plus John Carpenter’s super-underrated Someone’s Watching Me! and Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot, the latter complementing programming of Texas Chain Saw. 

Criterion Editions of Don’t Look Now, Altered States, Rosemary’s Baby, Dead Ringers, and The Others continue the trend, while Barry Lyndon ties nicely to the release of their Stanley Kubrick set. New to streaming, too, is Francesco Sossai’s underseen The Last One for the Road, which suggests nothing is scarier than adult friendships. It also makes a nice, albeit chilling, pairing with Batch ’81, which is newly restored in a Mike De Leon program. Arguably most exciting of everything from October, though, is Shinichiro Watanabe’s Terror in Resonance, the complete run of which is added to Criterion’s ever-growing Anime series.

Also: a full reclamation of Michael Mann’s The Keep starts now.

See the full list of titles below and more at the Criterion Channel:

Alone, John Hyams, 2020*

Altered States, Ken Russell, 1980

And Soon the Darkness, Robert Fuest, 1970

The Appointment, Lindsay C. Vickers, 1982

Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick, 1975

Batch ’81, Mike De Leon, 1982

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Dario Argento, 1970

Bright Future, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2003*

By Hook or by Crook, Harry Dodge and Silas Howard, 2001

The Cat o’ Nine Tails, Dario Argento, 1971

Charisma, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1999

Cohen and Tate, Eric Red, 1989

Creepy, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2016

Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Frank De Felitta, 1981

Dead Ringers, David Cronenberg, 1988

Demon Seed, Donald Cammell, 1977

Don’t Look Now, Nicolas Roeg, 1973*

Door III, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1996

Duel, Steven Spielberg, 1971*

Dust Devil, Richard Stanley, 1992*

The Entity, Sidney J. Furie, 1982

Eyes of the Spider, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1998

Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick, 1999

The Faculty, Robert Rodriguez, 1998*

Gerontophilia, Bruce LaBruce, 2013

The Gift, Joel Edgerton, 2015*

Hideous, Yann Gonzalez, 2022

Highway to Hell, Ate de Jong, 1991

The Hitcher, Robert Harmon, 1986*

Homebodies, Larry Yust, 1974

Hustler White, Bruce LaBruce, 1996

Inferno, Dario Argento, 1980

Itim, Mike De Leon, 1976

Jennifer’s Body, Karyn Kusama, 2009

Joy Ride, John Dahl, 2001

The Keep, Michael Mann, 1983*

Kisapmata, Mike De Leon, 1981

The Last Jiangshi, Yu Chih-Chieh, 2025

The Last One for the Road, Francesco Sossai, 2025

Lifeforce, Tobe Hooper, 1985

Lolita, Stanley Kubrick, 1962

Magazine, Lane Stewart, 2026

Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King, 1986

The Omen, Richard Donner, 1976

The Others, Alejandro Amenábar, 2001

Otto; or, Up with Dead People, Bruce LaBruce, 2008

Party Girl, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, 1995

Play Misty for Me, Clint Eastwood, 1971*

Pulse, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001

Race with the Devil, Jack Starrett, 1975

Ring 2, Hideo Nakata, 1999

Road Games, Richard Franklin, 1981

Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski, 1968*

Salem’s Lot, Tobe Hooper, 1979

Serpent’s Path, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1998

Serpent’s Path, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2004

The Social Network, David Fincher, 2010

Someone’s Watching Me!, John Carpenter, 1978

Tenebrae, Dario Argento, 1982

Terror in Resonance, Shinichiro Watanabe, 2014

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Tobe Hooper, 1974

Three, Kim Jee-woon, Nonzee Nimibutr, and Peter Ho-sun Chan, 2002

To the Ends of the Earth, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2019

Two Evil Eyes, George A. Romero and Dario Argento, 1990

The Wailing, Na Hong-jin, 2016

When a Stranger Calls Back, Fred Walton, 1993*

Will Your Heart Beat Faster?, Mike De Leon, 1980

The Wraith, Mike Marvin, 1986

You’re Next, Adam Wingard, 2011

*Available in the U.S. only