Cinema has had a rather ambivalent attitude towards rabbits. For every Thumper or Roger Rabbit, there’s at least five manifestations of the creepy little buggers capable of freaking an audience out. In celebration of the Easter Holidays, here’s a list of the scariest, most intimidating and blood-thirsty rabbits in movie history.

1. Rabbits in Night of the Lepus

Giant creatures running amok is a common staple of sci-fi horror, and it tends to work best when the monster is something that people already find disgusting or terrifying. Creepy-crawlies are especially effective in these types of movies. Making something bigger doesn’t necessarily make it scarier, and if the subject is relatively benign in the first place, the effect is comical—see Tomatoes, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, or Daryl Hannah. Rabbits fall into the latter category, and Janet “I was in Psycho once” Leigh and DeForest “Spock’s Mate” Kelley face off against genetically modified, flesh-gnawing bunnies in this notorious sci-fi stinker. The makers unwisely chose to ignore the humour present in Russell Braddon’s source novel, The Night of the Angry Rabbit, playing it deliriously straight-faced.

As later films in this list will show, rabbits really can be scary. However, opening the hutch and filming a bunch of nibbly cottontails hopping around a miniature town set with ketchup on their fur just doesn’t cut it. A must see for connoisseurs of bad movies.

2. Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

A few years after the Night of the Lepus debacle, the Monty Python boys got it right with their killer rabbit, a fluffy white bunny capable of taking out an entire phalanx of errant knights.

3. March Hare in Dreamchild

The ’80s was a golden period of creativity for Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, providing memorably grotesque characters in fantasy classics like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. They also provided the sinister muppets for Dreamchild, a sensitive and little-seen tale of the elderly Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

She’s off to America to pick up an honorary degree on the centenary of Carroll’s birth, and as her journey progresses, she hallucinates about the iconic characters that have haunted her whole life.

Alice has been adapted dozens of times, but few films capture the essence of John Tenniel’s indelible illustrations as well as Dreamchild. The denizens of Wonderland are a forlorn menagerie, castaways on a literary desert island from far-flung shores as diverse as nursery rhymes (Humpty Dumpty) and heraldry (The Gryphon). The film’s most memorable scene is the Mad Hatter’s tea party, featuring a mangy, insane rendition of the March Hare. Kids should stick to Disney.

4. Jack, Suzie and Jane in Rabbits

David Lynch explores his love of ’50s kitsch in this deeply bizarre “sitcom”, featuring three anthropomorphised rabbits on a shadowy, single set. Their activities are accompanied by an incongruous tinned laugh track, as the characters flatly delivering their lines completely out of order. The most disturbing aspect of this avant garde headfuck is the otherworldly stillness of the rabbits—while many strange things occur, nothing quite matches the stifling horror of the opening scene. One rabbit silently irons clothes while another sits motionless on the sofa, looking out at the audience. Brown trousers time, for no quantifiable reason.

5. Rabbit-Man in Sexy Beast

Jonathan Glazer’s quirky, sun-drenched gangster flick is memorable for many reasons, not least Sir Ben Kingsley’s demented turn as potty-mouthed nutjob Don Logan (he drops the C-bomb 21 times in the movie, but it feels more like 200). It’s disturbing enough seeing retired bank robber Gal (Ray Winstone) in a pair of budgie-smugglers, yet even that pales in comparison to the hellish Rabbit Man that stalks his nightmares. With a bearing of infinite malice, the creature rides into frame on a donkey, wielding an uzi.

6. Frank in Donnie Darko

There are few more unsettling images in 21st century cinema than Frank, Donnie Darko’s mysterious guide in Richard Kelly’s time-addled mindbender. It’s just a guy in a mask, but there’s something about the mask and his silent demeanour that chills you to the bone. Could it be the twisted ears, the vacant eyes, or the ghoulishly grinning buck teeth? Or all of the above? The Frank mask feels so unnaturally perverse that he unnerves you every moment that he’s on the screen.

7. General Woundwort in Watership Down

One of the most traumatic experiences growing up in ’80s Britain was exposure to Watership Down. It was perhaps the most mis-certified films of all time, declared “suitable for all ages” by the usually stringent BBFC. This resulted in a whole generation scarred for life by scenes of a rabbit warren ploughed over in rivers of blood, rabbits choking to death in snares, rabbits ripped to shreds by vicious dogs, and one of cinema’s greatest bogeymen—or bogeyrabbits—General Woundwort. The graphic violence stands in stark counterpoint to the idyllic watercolour backdrops and Art Garfunkel on the soundtrack.

Woundwort is a wonderful screen villain, the despotic leader of the shadowy Efrafra warren, pursuing the heroes across the gently rolling landscape in their search for a safe haven. With his milky blind eye and growling countenance, he’s a curious mix of Churchill’s indefatigable bluster and Hitler’s insidious dogmatism. When he launches into his final showdown with a ferocious farm dog, we believe that he stands at least half a chance.

The Criterion Collection doesn’t usually go with a theme with its monthly releases (a specific Halloween selection in October a small exception), though its February 2015 slate is an accidental one. Featuring overlooked and smaller releases from some of cinema’s greatest auteurs, the month rounds out the collection of great films beautifully. Aside from new selections from Godard, Fellini, Renoir and a Blu-ray upgrade from Ozu, February will also bring a 70s British shocker and a cult animated film.

Every Man for Himself

Jean-Luc Godard – Available February 3

One of cinema’s most prolific and notorious filmmakers, Godard went a bit more mainstream with Every Man for Himself. The film follows three protagonists (a television producers, his ex-girlfriend, and a prostitute), looking into their working and sexual relationships with each other. Not previously available on DVD in the U.S., this minor work from the master filmmaker can finally be seen by Criterion fans.

Special Features:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Le scénario (1979), a short video created by director Jean-Luc Godard to secure financing for Every Man for Himself
• New video essay by critic Colin MacCabe
• New interviews with actor Isabelle Huppert and producer Marin Karmitz
• Archival interviews with actor Nathalie Baye, cinema­tographers Renato Berta and William Lubtchansky, and composer Gabriel Yared
• Two back-to-back 1980 appearances by Godard on The Dick Cavett Show
• Godard 1980, a short film by Jon Jost, Donald Ranvaud, and Peter Wollen, featuring Godard
• Trailer

A Day in the Country

Jean Renoir – Available February 10

Renoir’s A Day in the Country is a perfect short narrative film. While only 40 minutes long, it shows off the best of the French filmmaker’s ability to create interesting character dynamics and set a romantic tone. Based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, A Day in the Country doesn’t stretch its source, letting its contained, simply story breathe in the French countryside. Short features are rarely made today, but Renoir shows how this type of film can be as satisfying and complete as any 3-hour epic.

Special Features:

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Introduction by director Jean Renoir from 1962
• New interview with Renoir scholar Christopher Faulkner about the film’s production
• New video essay by Faulkner on Renoir’s methods
• Un tournage à la campagne, an 89-minute 1994 compilation of outtakes from the film
• Interview with producer Pierre Braunberger from 1979
• Screen tests
• New English subtitle translation

Don’t Look Now

Nicolas Roeg – Available February 10

Roeg’s follow-up to the odd and serene Walkabout is one of the most artful and creepy horror films ever made. Don’t Look Now is known for its crazy shock ending (if you don’t know it, watch the film without looking it up!), but the film’s gorgeous cinematography, showing off the seedier side of Venice, Italy, and great performances from Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are definitely worth noting.

Special Features:

• New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Nicolas Roeg, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between the film’s editor, Graeme Clifford, and film writer Bobbie O’Steen
• “Don’t Look Now,” Looking Back, a short 2002 documentary featuring Roeg, Clifford, and cinematographer Anthony Richmond
• Death in Venice, a 2006 interview with composer Pino Donaggio
• Something Interesting, a new documentary on the writing and making of the film, featuring interviews with Richmond, actors Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, and coscreenwriter Allan Scott
• Nicolas Roeg: The Enigma of Film, a new documentary on Roeg’s style, featuring interviews with filmmakers Danny Boyle and Steven Soderbergh
• Q&A with Roeg at London’s Ciné Lumière from 2003
• Trailer

An Autumn Afternoon

Yasujiro Ozu – Available February 17

Previously inducted to the Criterion Collection (Spine #446), Ozu’s swansong An Autumn Afternoon gets a much deserved Blu-ray upgrade. Like many of Ozu’s best films, An Autumn Afternoon takes a somber but realistic look at aging, death, and marriage. Simply beautiful, one of the few of Ozu’s films shot in color cinematography, it is a wonderful conclusion to one of Japan’s greats.

Special Features:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary featuring film scholar David Bordwell, author of Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema
• Excerpts from Yasujiro Ozu and “The Taste of Sake,” a 1978 French television program, featuring critics Michel Ciment and Georges Perec, that looks back on Ozu’s career
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation

Fellini Satyricon

Federico Fellini – Available February 24

Fellini transitioned into his third phase with 1969’s Satyricon, a lush tribute to sex and sin. Though Fellini certainly was no stranger to extravagance, Satyricon was certainly a departure from the more intellectually avant-garde work and even more certainly different from his early Italian neo-realism. This will certainly be one of the more visually striking releases in the collection, even if we’re not sure what is going on.

Special Features:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary featuring an adaptation of Eileen Lanouette Hughes’s memoir On the Set of “Fellini Satyricon”: A Behind-the-Scenes Diary
• Ciao, Federico!, Gideon Bachmann’s hour-long documentary shot on the set of Fellini Satyricon
• Archival interviews with director Federico Fellini
• New interview with cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno
• New documentary about Fellini’s adaptation of Petronius’s work, featuring interviews with classicists Luca Canali, a consultant on the film, and Joanna Paul
• New interview with photographer Mary Ellen Mark about her experiences on the set and her iconic photographs of Fellini and his film
• Felliniana, a presentation of Fellini Satyricon ephemera from the collection of Don Young
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation

Watership Down

Martin Rosen – Available February 24

Though I don’t have any nostalgic attachment to the animated adaptation of Richard Adams’ landmark children’s novel, I’m intrigued by its reputation – and having the Criterion Collection pick the film up is a surprising turn that only makes me more interested. The dystopian tale of a colony of rabbits seeking shelter after their home is destroyed, Watership Down is a stark, yet beautiful story for children. Only the second animated film in the collection (excluding their Laserdisc releases – Fantastic Mr. Fox being the other), this is an important distinction.

Special Features:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with director Martin Rosen
• New appreciation of the film by director Guillermo del Toro
• Picture-in-picture storyboard for the entire film (Blu-ray); four film-to-storyboard scene comparisons (DVD)
• Defining a Style, a 2008 featurette about the film’s aesthetic
• Trailer