Spirit Entertainment has announced that the The Criterion Collection UK releases for November will be Guillermo del Toro’s haunting descent into the illusory abyss of the American dream, Nightmare Alley, Reginald Hudlin's dazzlingly imaginative debut feature, House Party, Luis Buñuel’s fiendish tale of love gone wrong, Él, and Howard Hughes' high-flying feat of adventure filmmaking, Hell's Angels.
NIGHTMARE ALLEY (USA / Mexico / Canada 2021)
4K UHD + Blu-ray | 3 November 2025
Noir fatalism has rarely been so alluring as in this vision of the world as a soul-sick carnival of corruption. Putting his own luxuriantly stylized spin on the classic hard-boiled novel by William Lindsay Gresham, master fabulist Guillermo del Toro conjures a sordid, seductive portrait of America on the cusp of World War II. The film follows Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a roustabout in a traveling sideshow who uses charm and deception to become a phony mentalist preying on the rich and powerful—but at what cost?
A remake of director Edmund Goulding's1947 noir classic and brought to life by an all-star cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, and Rooney Mara, and nominated for four Oscars (including Best Picture), Nightmare Alley is a haunting descent into the illusory abyss of the American dream.
DIRECTOR APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- 4K digital master of Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light (2025), a new 159-minute, black-and-white extended director’s cut, supervised by director Guillermo del Toro, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- 4K digital master of the theatrical version of the film, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
- Two 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the films and special features
- New audio commentary on the extended director’s cut featuring del Toro
- New documentary on the film’s performances, visual language, costume and production design, and score
- New conversation between del Toro and actor and producer Bradley Cooper
- New conversation between del Toro and co-screenwriter Kim Morgan
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
- PLUS: An essay by crime-fiction and true-crime expert Sarah Weinman
HOUSE PARTY (USA 1990)
4K UHD + Blu-ray | 17 November 2025
In this dazzlingly imaginative teen comedy, the breakthrough feature debut by writer-director Reginald Hudlin, hip-hop duo Kid ’n Play bring their star power to the big screen as aspiring MCs preparing for the party of the year. When Kid’s father (Robin Harris) forbids him from attending Play’s party, Kid sneaks out anyway, kicking off a wild night full of dance-offs and rap battles, run-ins with bullies and cops, and a bit of romance.
With an ensemble cast that also includes Tisha Campbell, AJ Johnson, Martin Lawrence, Daryl “Chill” Mitchell, and members of the music group Full Force, plus a hit soundtrack, House Party is a beloved, feel-good snapshot of early-1990s hip-hop culture that brought Black teenage experience to the mainstream, and that shines bright to this day.
DIRECTOR APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Peter Deming and approved by writer-director Reginald Hudlin, with 4.0 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 Hudlin
- New conversation featuring Hudlin, producer Warrington Hudlin, and film scholar Racquel Gates
- New cast reunion featuring actors B-Fine, Bowlegged Lou, and the Legend Paul Anthony of Full Force; Tisha Campbell; AJ Johnson; Christopher “Play” Martin; Daryl “Chill” Mitchell; and Christopher “Kid” Reid
- House Party (1983), the student short by Reginald Hudlin on which his feature is based
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Michael Harriot
ÉL (Mexico 1957)
4K UHD + Blu-ray | 24 November 2025
Spanish surrealist master Luis Buñuel’s fiendish tale of love gone wrong is among the most perverse and unsettling films he made during his two decades of exile in Mexico. Folding his own neuroses into an adaptation of Mercedes Pinto’s autobiographical novel, Buñuel crafts an expressionistically stylized nightmare in which a young woman (Delia Garcés) discovers that the outward sophistication of her new husband (Arturo de Córdova) masks disturbing depths of jealousy and paranoia.
A characteristically raw indictment of religious and social hypocrisy, Él stands as the director’s greatest excursion into melodrama, a vivid portrayal of society’s inability to restrain the irrational urges of the human id.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by photographer Gabriel Figueroa Flores, director of photography Gabriel Figueroa’s son, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New video essay on director Luis Buñuel by scholar Jordi Xifra
- Appreciation by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro
- Interview with Buñuel from 1981 by writer Jean-Claude Carrière, a longtime collaborator of the director's
- Panel discussion from 2009, moderated by filmmaker José Luis Garci
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Fernanda Solórzano and an interview with Buñuel by critics José de la Colina and Tomás Pérez Turrent
HELL'S ANGELS (USA 1930)
4K UHD + Blu-ray | 24 November 2025
A high-flying feat of adventure filmmaking and a testament to the audacious, spare-no-expense vision of Howard Hughes, this landmark aviation epic remains exhilarating both for its daredevil aerial sequences and its nervy pre-Code punch.
With the onset of World War I, two British brothers recruited into the Royal Flying Corps (Ben Lyon and James Hall) find their bond tested by their differing attitudes toward the war and their love for the same woman (Jean Harlow in her bombshell breakthrough).
The product of a notoriously long and dangerous production that resulted in the deaths of multiple crew members, Hell’s Angels broke new technical ground, making use of early sound and color technologies, and capturing some of the most thrilling dogfight scenes ever filmed.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration of the Magnascope road-show version, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New interview with Robert Legato, the visual-effects supervisor for the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, on the groundbreaking aerial visuals of Hell’s Angels
- New interview with critic Farran Smith Nehme about actor Jean Harlow
- Outtakes and rushes from the film, with commentary by Harlow biographer David Stenn
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author and journalist Fred Kaplan
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