What to watch at home in October

Anton Bitel pro­vides a look at six titles head­ing to stream­ing and phys­i­cal media releas­es this month that you should add to the top of your view­ing list.

It is 1945 and the war has end­ed, but on the con­test­ed ground of Jer­sey in the Chan­nel Islands, only recent­ly lib­er­at­ed from Nazi occu­pa­tion, Catholic, neu­rot­ic Grace Stew­art (Nicole Kid­man) still feels ​“total­ly cut off from the world.” Her hus­band Charles (Christo­pher Eccle­ston) has not returned from the front, her staff have fled with­out warn­ing, her large estate is shroud­ed in fog, and she can­not leave the prop­er­ty, or there would be no one to look after her young chil­dren Anne (Alak­i­na Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley).

Their extreme pho­to­sen­si­tiv­i­ty requires that the house be kept in shad­ow, and Grace’s pro­cliv­i­ty to migraines neces­si­tates qui­et – but the arrival of three replace­ment staff mem­bers (Fion­nu­la Flana­gan, Eric Sykes, Elaine Cas­sidy) will coin­cide with esca­lat­ing para­nor­mal activ­i­ty, and even­tu­al­ly let in some light.

With its dark old house, its per­sis­tent past and its inva­sive haunt­ings, writer/​director Ale­jan­dro Amenábar’s fifth fea­ture offers all the trap­pings of a clas­sic goth­ic, while turn­ing the screw with a very unusu­al per­spec­tive on these super­nat­ur­al goings-on. Play­ing out in a post-war, post-trau­mat­ic daze, this ghost sto­ry shows the oth­ers rein­hab­it­ing these stuffy, repres­sive inte­ri­ors, while fam­i­ly and class rela­tions remain unchanged and eternal.

The Oth­ers is released on 4K UHD/​Blu/​DVD, 2 Oct via Stu­dio Canal

In a sepia-toned all-ana­logue retro­fu­tur­ist post-apoc­a­lyp­tic Paris, where food is scarce, puls­es are cur­ren­cy and civil­i­sa­tion bare­ly holds on, a dilap­i­dat­ed apart­ment building’s res­i­dents are more or less com­plic­it in the crimes of their land­lord Clapet (Jean-Claude Drey­fus), who lures in strangers on the promise of live-in work, then butch­ers them at night to feed every­one else. For his next vic­tim, Clapet lines up mul­ti­tal­ent­ed ex-clown Loui­son (Dominique Piñón), whose essen­tial decen­cy wins over Clapet’s daugh­ter Julie (Marie-Lau­re Dougnac). Hop­ing to save Loui­son, Julie turns to lit­er­al­ly under­ground veg­e­tar­i­an rebels, and chaos ensues.

The pipes and ducts of this creaky old struc­ture reecho with the rhythms of the res­i­dents’ lives, mak­ing it a micro­cosm of French soci­ety, for bet­ter or worse. There are also, in keep­ing with Louison’s for­mer pro­fes­sion, plen­ty of sight gags, slap­stick prat­falls and grotesque, larg­er-than-life char­ac­ters. All at once night­mar­ish can­ni­bal hor­ror and roman­tic com­e­dy, good-natured fairy­tale, and hyper-stylised alle­go­ry of French wartime col­lab­o­ra­tion and resis­tance, this col­lec­tive debut from Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet is dizzy­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to pin down, but full of sur­prise and charm from bit­ter begin­ning to sweet end. A classic.

Del­i­catessen is released on 4K UHD/​Blu/​DVD/​digital, 16 Oct via Stu­dio­Canal

This is a film of mis­nomers. Where its ear­ly work­ing titles Morak’s Chant and Cantrell’s Mes­si­ah work, it was released in 1976 as Hol­ly­wood Meat­cleaver Mas­sacre – in lurid imi­ta­tion of Tobe Hopper’s The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre (1974), despite a con­spic­u­ous absence of cleavers – and then rere­leased in 1977 with a short­ened ver­sion of the title but a longer ver­sion of the film (an added pro­logue and epi­logue, in fact repur­posed from an entire­ly dif­fer­ent project, have Christo­pher Lee nar­rat­ing goth­ic gen­er­al­i­sa­tions to cam­era). The direc­tor too, named as ​‘Evan Lee’, was real­ly Kei­th Burns, until he was replaced mid-pro­duc­tion by Ed Wood (!).

When a quar­tet of thrill-killing male stu­dents, led by the psy­cho­path­ic Mason (Lar­ry Justin), invade the home of aca­d­e­m­ic occultist Cantrell (James Habif), mur­der­ing his wife and teen chil­dren, the pro­fes­sor, now paral­ysed in hos­pi­tal, sum­mons the Gael­ic god Morak to wreak vengeance upon them one by one – or are the young men just over­come by their own guilt?

Improb­a­bly blend­ing pagan folk­lore with a post-Man­son mind­set, this is a bad trip through the para­noia of 1970s Los Ange­les, where mon­sters and mad­ness cohab­it. It’s cheap, scuzzy and bonkers, with its own psy­che­del­ic vibe.

Meat­cleaver Mas­sacre is released on Lim­it­ed Edi­tion Blu-ray, 16 Oct via 101 Films

“Demons aren’t real – they’re para­bles, metaphors,” insists a priest (Clay­ton Hill) near the end of this sec­ond sequel to Clive Barker’s Hell­rais­er (1987). Yet here demons are both. For Pin­head (Doug Bradley) and his all-new, ridicu­lous­ly Nineties army of Ceno­bites are any num­ber of things: trans­gres­sive art come to life, the trau­ma of end­less war made flesh, avatars of for­bid­den plea­sure, dop­pel­gängers of our dark side, Fred­dy Krueger-like dream war­riors and also just plain demons who lam­poon Jesus and the Sacra­ment for edge lord kicks.

Direc­tor Antho­ny Hick­ox relo­cates the action to New York City (or at least to Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na, stand­ing in for the Big Apple), where ambi­tious reporter Joanne ​‘Joey’ Sum­mer­skill (Ter­ry Far­rell) inves­ti­gates a bizarre mur­der at the vague­ly BDSM Boil­er Room night­club and takes guid­ance from Great War veteran/​interdimensional ghost Cap­tain Elliott Spencer (also Bradley) in how to put his id-like alter ego Pin­head back into the box. The ensu­ing pan­de­mo­ni­um, lack­ing the bite of the pre­vi­ous two films, just goes through the myth­ic motions. Also, while Bradley is prob­a­bly the best per­former here, it’s tempt­ing fate to have him utter the line: ​“I can­not act in your world.”

Hell­rais­er III: Hell on Earth is released on UHD/​Blu as part of the Hell­rais­er Quar­tet of Tor­ment, 23 Oct via Arrow

“They say that night­mares are dreams per­vert­ed. I’ve told them here it wasn’t a night­mare, but they don’t believe me.”

From her asy­lum home, Arlet­ty (Mar­i­an­na Hall) is recount­ing a sto­ry of the recent past, where a trip to Dune on the Cal­i­forn­ian coast in search of her miss­ing artist father led to the dis­cov­ery that this ordi­nary, respectable small town is falling prey to a Love­craft­ian apoc­a­lypse fore­told a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er. As the blood moon approach­es (and the colour red dom­i­nates), Dune’s denizens bleed from the eyes and hunt in canine packs, grad­u­al­ly ​“spread­ing their sick­ness” beyond the town’s limits.

Or that, at least, is Arletty’s ver­sion of events, as co-writ­er­s/­co-direc­tors Willard Huy­ck and Glo­ria Katz con­found life and art, real­i­ty and dreams, san­i­ty and mad­ness in their sur­re­al vision of con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­ca suc­cumb­ing to – or bit­ing back against – the encroach­ing coun­ter­cul­ture. The townsfolk’s behav­iour may some­what recall George A. Romero’s The Night of the Liv­ing Dead, but the som­nam­bu­lar vibe is more akin to Herk Harvey’s Car­ni­val of Souls or Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond. In this haunt­ed com­mu­ni­ty, or at least in Arletty’s night­mare in a dam­aged brain, nowhere – not the con­sumerist super­mar­ket nor even the cin­e­ma – is safe.

Mes­si­ah of Evil is release on Blu-ray, 23 Oct by Radi­ance

With her hus­band Satoru (Shi­ro Shi­mo­mo­to) often away for work, and her young son Taku­to (Taku­to Yonezu) at school all day, Yasuko Hon­da (direc­tor Ban­mei Takahashi’s wife Keiko Taka­hashi) spends a lot of time alone in their high-rise home, belea­guered by an end­less array of insis­tent door-to-door sales­men. When one of these, Yamakawa (Dai­jiro Tsusu­mi), a lit­tle too keen to hand over a leaflet on Eng­lish lessons, tries forc­ing open her bolt­ed door, Yasuko slams it back hard on his hand – and so this man, as lone­ly as she is, begins an esca­lat­ing cam­paign of harass­ment to reassert con­trol and remas­cu­late himself.

Com­ing out in the same year as Toshi­haru Ikeda’s Evil Dead Trap, this home inva­sion thriller is anoth­er ear­ly Japan­ese slash­er that, in the absence of local antecedents, makes up its own rules (although it does crib from both The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre and The Shin­ing). Here mar­gin­al char­ac­ters sound bizarrely like they are talk­ing on the phone. Here a fran­tic dash around the apart­ment is tracked at a high angle like a videogame – or like John Wick: Chap­ter 4 avant la let­tre. And here Yamakawa’s intru­sions are overt­ly sex­u­alised, as he attempts more than one kind of forced entry. This is man, woman and chain­saw, sexed-up and stylised, expos­ing a Japan­ese housewife’s indoor appetites and anxieties.

Door is released on Blu-ray, 30 Oct by Third Window