Synth Soundtracks - The Criterion Channel (2024)

22 Episodes

• 00:41

  Synth Soundtracks Teaser

  Episode 1

  Synth Soundtracks Teaser

  Episode 1

• 2:16:39

  A Clockwork Orange

  Episode 2

  A Clockwork Orange

  Episode 2

  Directed by Stanley Kubrick • 1971 • United Kingdom
  Starring Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates

  Stomping, whomping, stealing, singing, tap-dancing, violating . . . Derby-topped hooligan Alex (Malcolm McDowell) has a good time—at the tragic expense of others. His journey from amoral p...

• 2:04:45

  Thief

  Episode 3

  Thief

  Episode 3

  Directed by Michael Mann •1981 •United States
  Starring James Caan, Tuesday Weld, Robert Prosky

  The contemporary American auteur Michael Mann’s bold artistic sensibility was already fully formed when he burst out of the gate with THIEF, his debut feature. James Caan stars, in one of his most ri...

• 1:41:08

  Tenebrae

  See Also

  ISZTAR4 - Tariff Browser - Startup file downloadThe criterion of 'sufficient interest' in the context of collective actions: Three dimensions of article 3:303 DCC

  Episode 4

  Tenebrae

  Episode 4

  Directed by Dario Argento • 1982 •Italy
  Starring Anthony Franciosa, John Saxon, Daria Nicolodi

  Dario Argento raises the giallo genre to new heights with this darkly humorous and notoriously grisly murder mystery, widely considered one of his finest works. American mystery author Peter Neal (Ant...

• 2:02:47

  Missing

  Episode 5

  Missing

  Episode 5

  Directed by Costa-Gavras •1982 •United States
  Starring Sissy Spacek, Jack Lemmon, Melanie Mayron

  MISSING is political filmmaker extraordinaire Costa-Gavras’s compelling, controversial dramatization of the search for American filmmaker and journalist Charles Horman, who mysteriously disappeared...

• 1:30:56

  Assault on Precinct 13

  Episode 6

  Assault on Precinct 13

  Episode 6

  Directed by John Carpenter • 1976 •United States
  Starring Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer

  John Carpenter’s lean, mean second feature puts a gritty exploitation spin on Howard Hawks’s classic western RIO BRAVO, transposing the story to a soon-to-be-closed LA police station where a gr...

• 1:29:52

  Messiah of Evil

  Episode 7

  Messiah of Evil

  Episode 7

  Directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz •1973 •United States
  Starring Marianna Hill, Michael Greer, Joy Bang

  A woman (Marianna Hill) arrives in a sleepy seaside town after receiving unsettling letters from her father, only to discover that the town is under the influence of a strange cult th...

• 1:52:49

  Liquid Sky

  Episode 8

  Liquid Sky

  Episode 8

  Directed by Slava Tsukerman •1982 •United States
  Starring Anne Carlisle, Paula E. Sheppard, Susan Doukas

  One of the coolest and most outrageously stylish oddities to emanate from the 1980s indie underground is a postpunk science-fiction fantasia set in New York’s zonked-out bohemian demimonde....

• 2:01:29

  Sorcerer

  Episode 9

  Sorcerer

  Episode 9

  Directed by William Friedkin • 1977 •United States
  Starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal

  William Friedkin takes Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic palm-sweater THE WAGES OF FEAR and transforms it into a blood-and-guts opera of existential delirium. The setup is familiar: four desper...

• 2:02:02

  Manhunter

  Episode 10

  Manhunter

  Episode 10

  Directed by Michael Mann •1986 •United States
  Starring William Petersen, Kim Greist, Joan Allen

  Michael Mann’s hypnotic, hyperstylized adaptation of Thomas Harris’s novel “Red Dragon” was the first film to introduce audiences to the infamous Hannibal Lecter. Will Graham (William Petersen) is a...

• 1:10:40

  Delta Space Mission

  Episode 11

  Delta Space Mission

  Episode 11

  Directed by Mircea Toia and Călin Cazan • 1984 • Romania
  Starring Mirela Gorea, Marcel Iureș, Dan Condurache

  Set to a killer synth prog soundtrack, the first animated film from Romania is a loopy and lysergic science-fiction eyeball-twirler that plays something like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY on psyc...

• 1:38:30

  Forbidden Planet

  Episode 12

  Forbidden Planet

  Episode 12

  Directed by Fred M. Wilcox •1956 •United States
  Starring Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen

  There are many wonders on Altair-4, but none is greater or more deadly than the human mind. A landmark of fifties sci-fi loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” FORBIDDEN PLANET is th...

• 1:33:56

  The Legend of Hell House

  Episode 13

  The Legend of Hell House

  Episode 13

  Directed by John Hough •1973 •United Kingdom
  Starring Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill

  From the pen of science-fiction and horror legend Richard Matheson comes this gothic tale of things that go bump in the night. Dying millionaire Rudolph Deutsch hires a group of four people to e...

• 1:29:35

  Next of Kin

  Episode 14

  Next of Kin

  Episode 14

  Directed by Tony Williams • 1982 •Austrlia, New Zealand
  Starring Jacki Kerin, John Jarratt, Alex Scott

  When a young woman (Jacki Kerin) inherits a creaky retirement home, she finds herself plunged into a waking nightmare of murder, madness, and a legacy of evil that may be inescapable. Awash in...

• 2:47:06

  Solaris

  Episode 15

  Solaris

  Episode 15

  Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1972 • Soviet Union
  Starring Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Yuri Yarvet

  Ground control has been receiving mysterious transmissions from the three remaining residents of the Solaris space station. When cosmonaut and psychologist Kris Kelvin is dispatched to i...

• 1:21:41

  Space Is the Place

  Episode 16

  Space Is the Place

  Episode 16

  Directed by John Coney • 1974 • United States
  Starring Sun Ra, Barbara Deloney, Raymond Johnson

  Avant-jazz mystic Sun Ra brought his pioneering Afrofuturist vision to the screen with this film version of his concept album. It’s a wild, kaleidoscopic whirl of science fiction, sharp social comment...

• 2:03:25

  Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

  Episode 17

  Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

  Episode 17

  Directed by Nagisa Oshima • 1983 • Japan
  Starring David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tom Conti

  In this captivating, skewed World War II drama from Nagisa Oshima, David Bowie regally embodies Celliers, a British officer interned by the Japanese as a POW. Rock star Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also composed ...

• 1:43:14

  Scanners

  Episode 18

  Scanners

  Episode 18

  Directed by David Cronenberg • 1981 • Canada
  Starring Stephen Lack, Jennifer O’Neill, Michael Ironside

  With SCANNERS, David Cronenberg plunges us into one of his most terrifying and thrilling sci-fi worlds. After a man with extraordinary—and frighteningly destructive—telepathic abilities is nabb...

• 1:45:46

  The Last Wave

  Episode 19

  The Last Wave

  Episode 19

  Directed by Peter Weir • 1977 • Australia
  Starring Richard Chamberlain, Olivia Hamnett, Gulpilil

  Richard Chamberlain stars as Australian lawyer David Burton, who takes on the defense of a group of aborigines accused of killing one of their own. He suspects the victim has been killed for violatin...

• 2:41:51

  Stalker

  Episode 20

  Stalker

  Episode 20

  Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1979 • Russian Federation

  Andrei Tarkovsky’s final Soviet feature is a metaphys­ical journey through an enigmatic postapocalyptic landscape, and a rarefied cinematic experience like no other. A hired guide—the Stalker—leads a writer and a professor into the heart...

• 1:25:24

  Shogun Assassin

  Episode 21

  Shogun Assassin

  Episode 21

  Directed by Kenji Misumi and Robert Houston • 1980 • Japan, United States
  Starring Tomisaburo Wakayama, Kayo Matsuo, Minoru Oki

  The legendary midnight-movie sensation that firmly embedded samurai mythology within American pop-culture consciousness, this English-dubbed reedit of the first two fil...

• 1:20:04

  For All Mankind

  Episode 22

  For All Mankind

  Episode 22

  Directed by Al Reinert • 1989 • United States

  In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Al Reinert’s documentary FOR...