Spirit Entertainment has revealed that the Criterion Collection UK releases for October 2025 will be David Lynch's surreal and emotionally devastating prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, David Cronenberg’s subtly provocative A History of Violence, Ken Russell’s electrifying head-trip Altered States and – postponed from its originally intended July release – William Friedkin’s pulse-pounding The Wages of Fear remake Sorcerer, all in dual format UHD and Blu-ray editions. Full details below.
TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (USA / France 1992)
Dual Format UHD & Blu-ray | 13 October 2025
In the town of Twin Peaks, everybody has their secrets—but no one more than Laura Palmer. In this prequel to his groundbreaking 1990s television series, David Lynch resurrects the teenager found wrapped in plastic at the beginning of the show, following her through the last week of her life and teasing out the enigmas that surround her murder. Homecoming queen by day and drug-addicted thrill seeker by night, Laura leads a double life that pulls her deeper and deeper into horror as she pieces together the identity of the assailant who has been terrorizing her for years.
Nightmarish in its vision of an innocent torn apart by unfathomable forces, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is nevertheless one of Lynch’s most humane films, aching with compassion for its tortured heroine—a character as enthralling in life as she was in death.
DIRECTOR APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- 4K digital restoration, with 7.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, both supervised by director David Lynch
- Alternate original 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- The Missing Pieces, ninety minutes of deleted and alternate takes from the film, assembled by Lynch
- Interview by Lynch with actors Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, and Grace Zabriskie
- Interviews with Lee and composer Angelo Badalamenti
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Excerpts from an interview with Lynch from Lynch on Lynch, a 1997 book edited by filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (Canada / USA / UK / Germany 2005)
Dual Format UHD & Blu-ray | 27 October 2025
In David Cronenberg’s subtly provocative film, one of his most celebrated, all is not as it initially seems. In his first of many collaborations with the director, Viggo Mortensen delivers a highly nuanced performance as Tom Stall, a small-town husband and father who is hailed as a hero when he kills the would-be perpetrators of a violent robbery. But how did this ordinary family man dispatch them with such skill?
Working with an exceptional cast that also includes Maria Bello, Ed Harris, and William Hurt, Cronenberg slyly deconstructs the mythos of the American action hero, posing elemental questions about identity, human nature, and the violence that we both abhor and can’t look away from.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration of the international cut, supervised by director of photography Peter Suschitzky and approved by director David Cronenberg, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring Cronenberg
- New interview with screenwriter Josh Olson, conducted by writer-producer Tom Bernardo
- Excerpts of Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortensen in conversation at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival
- Acts of Violence, a documentary on the making of the film, featuring behind-the-scenes footage
- Three featurettes
- Deleted scene with commentary by Cronenberg
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- An essay by critic Nathan Lee
ALTERED STATES (USA 1980)
Dual Format UHD & Blu-ray | 27 October 2025
The ultimate cinematic head trip of the 1980s, British renegade Ken Russell’s first Hollywood film—adapted by the legendary screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky from his own novel—is part hallucinogenic freak-out, part gonzo creature feature, part transcendent love story, all played at a fever pitch. When researcher Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) begins using himself as a test subject for his mind-expanding psychological experiments, it sends him on an increasingly dangerous, substance-fueled odyssey from humankind’s primordial past to the outer limits of consciousness.
It’s all visualized by Russell in a psychedelic supernova of out-there imagery that encompasses everything from the pagan to the cosmic sublime, culminating in a brain-wave-blasting battle between the mind and the heart.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Alternate 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New audio commentary featuring film historian Samm Deighan
- Archival interviews with director Ken Russell and actor William Hurt
- New interview with special-visual-effects designer Bran Ferren
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- An essay by film critic Jessica Kiang
SORCERER (USA / Mexico 1977)
Dual Format UHD & Blu-ray | 6 October 2025
hallucinatory journey into the heart of darkness, William Friedkin’s pulse-pounding reimagining of the suspense classic The Wages of Fear was dismissed upon its release, only to be recognized decades later as one of the boldest auteur statements of the New Hollywood.
In a remote Latin American village, four desperate fugitives—a New Jersey gangster (Roy Scheider), a Mexican assassin (Francisco Rabal), an unscrupulous Parisian businessman (Bruno Cremer), and an Arab terrorist (Amidou)—take on a seemingly doomed mission: transporting two trucks full of highly explosive nitroglycerin through the treacherous jungle.
Aided by Tangerine Dream’s otherworldly synth score, Friedkin turns each bump in the road into a tour de force of cold-sweat tension—conjuring a hauntingly nihilistic vision of a world ruled by chance and fate.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- ew 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack approved by director William Friedkin, and alternate original theatrical 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- [UHD ONLY] One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
- Friedkin Uncut (2018), a documentary by Francesco Zippel featuring interviews with Friedkin, screenwriter Walon Green, filmmakers Wes Anderson and Francis Ford Coppola, and others
- New conversation between filmmaker James Gray and film critic Sean Fennessey
- Conversation from 2015 between Friedkin and filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn
- Archival audio interviews with Green and editor Bud Smith, from the collection of Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, author of William Friedkin (2003)
- Behind-the-scenes footage
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- An essay by film critic Justin Chang
|
