Two dark and violent films that deal with anxiety, paranoia and urban alienation are available on extensively documented and detailed video releases this week. One is a startlingly original and savage work of art; the other a slavish recreation of somebody else’s masterpiece. The former would be Roman Polanski’s 1965 masterpiece Repulsion, which stars Catherine Deneuve as a London salon girl who slowly cracks up in her apartment when her sister goes away on holiday.

While some of Polanski’s techniques (like the “man in the mirror” scare shot) have been bitten countless times since the movie was released an amazing 44 years ago, it still feels fresh, even startling. It’s a horror movie where the monster is male sexuality and desire. Deneuve’s performance is utterly inward and yet it sustains the whole movie. And Polanski is the master of the unsettling, inexplicable detail (and sometimes the more obvious ones—the fact that the sister sends a postcard with, of all things, a picture of the leaning tower of Pisa is a great joke). The legendary last shot ties the whole thing together (and neatly echoes the very first frame of the film) in a way that has rarely been attempted since.

Criterion’s release, on DVD and Blu-Ray, is amply supplemented by a period French TV doc made on set, as well as a newer making-of. But the coolest thing, to me at least, is the audio commentary by Polanski and Deneuve themselves (though recorded in separate sessions).

The second film would be Watchmen, directed by Zack Snyder and based on the brilliant comic by Alan Moore (though his name is completely removed from the credits at his request). For what it’s worth, Snyder doesn’t desecrate the material—he clearly loves it and recreates it with great passion and ardour. For that, though, it feels dead; it’s a comic, not a movie and it just works better in that form. The DVD and Blu-Ray feature a longer (by 24 minutes) Director’s Cut of an already pretty long film.