Video: Cool Videos ... scare up some post-Halloween chills and thrills

One of the great horror comics of the 1950s was called "The Vault of Horror."

Collectively, that's just what DVD companies open each season, as they dip into their movie libraries to extract choice specimens to fright and delight horror fans.

Many people agree that Robert Wise's "The Haunting" (1963), adapted from the Shirley Jackson's novel, "The Haunting of Hill House," is the scariest ghost story ever filmed. The movie, about a group of psychic researchers investigating an "evil" house, recently made its DVD debut from Warner Home Video. The disc includes a commentary track with Wise and stars Julie Harris, Claire Bloom and Russ Tamblyn.

Warner also has released producer Howard Hawks's seminal sci-fi classic, "The Thing from Another World" (1951), "Wait Until Dark" (1967), in which blind Audrey Hepburn is terrorized by drug-seeking home invaders, and "House of Wax" (1953), the movie that made Vincent Price a horror star. "Wax" includes a bonus second feature, "Mystery of the Wax Museum" (1933), an experimental Technicolor film starring Lionel Atwill as the mad sculptor and scream queen Fay Wray.

Price's career is examined in detail along with those of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. and Peter Lorre on "Heroes of Horror," a two-disc set from Image Entertainment that collects five 45-minute biographies originally produced for the A&E network. The set -- which includes trailers from the "monstars" ' best films -- is a must for fans of the "Ghoulden Age" of monster movies.

Another horror icon, 81-year-old Christopher Lee, is enjoying a career renaissance in the "Lord of the Rings" and "Star Wars" series, which no doubt explains why Blue Underground, a new company that specializes in definitive DVD editions of offbeat cult films, was emboldended to release "The Christopher Lee Collection." This box set contains "Circus of Fear" (1966) and three from director Jess Franco, "The Bloody Judge" (1970), in which Lee plays the real-life witch-hunter Lord George Jeffreys, and "The Blood of Fu Manchu" (1968) and "The Castle of Fu Manchu" (1969), the final two of five films with Lee as Sax Rohmer's Far Eastern supervillain. These aren't great movies, but Blue Underground has packed them with interviews, commentaries and documentaries. All the films except "Judge" also are available separately.

As played by Lon Chaney, "The Phantom of the Opera" remains one of the key icons of horror. Now, The Milestone Collection in conjunction with Image Entertainment has released a two-disc collector's edition of "Phantom" that contains both the original 1925 cut and the superior 1929 reissue. Chaney's skull-like face still shocks, and the lavish opera sets still awe.

Do kids in school still read Stephen Vincent Benet's how-to-outsmart-Satan story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster"? If so, here's a great movie that can serve as a nice classroom aid, too: director William Dieterle's 1941 adaptation, with Walter Huston as "Mr. Scratch" (the devil, to you) and Edward Arnold as the legendary orator, Webster. The DVD is from the prestigious Criterion Collection, which means it's packed with extras.

Those who prefer modern terror won't want to miss Anchor Bay Entertainment's two-disc edition of the terrifying "The Hills Have Eyes" (1977), from director Wes Craven ("Nightmare on Elm Street," "Scream"). This is a savage horror update of an old cowboys-vs.-Indians Western.

Speaking of Westerns, those who prefer unintentional laughs to screams can't do much better (or worse) than "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" (1966), in which a sexy chip off the old gravestone tries to ensnare the notorious outlaw in her plans to create a muscle-bound monster. The camp classic is now on DVD from Elite Entertainment and Image, with commentary from B-movie maven Joe Bob Briggs.