Although the Criterion Collection is mostly known for its championing of serious auteurs like Bergman and Kurosawa, they do occasionally try to widen the remit of film history with some less travelled byways. One supposes that’s the reason for the occasional foray into 1950s B-movie American horror. They did The Blob and Fiend Without a Face from 1958 back-to-back, and this four film boxset presents more shlocky horrors from the tail end of the 1950s, albeit most of them are actually British productions. One of them is in an American style, First Man into Space, which is paired with The Atomic Submarine, each given a sort of science-fiction edge, while the second pair of The Haunted Strangler and Corridors of Blood have a more English gothic slant.
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