These movies will haunt you after trick-or-treaters go home

BY GENE TRIPLETT

When the last trick-or-treaters disappear into the dark with their sweet swag in tow, it’ll be time to turn the lights down low, pop your favorite fright film in the player and subject yourselves to a couple of hours of harrowing horror, or at least some nail-biting suspense.

Of course the master of that is Alfred Hitchcock, and if you’re planning a dusk-to-dawner, “Alfred Hitchcock: The Essentials Collection Limited Edition” (Universal) is just the ticket. This box contains five of the rotund one’s very best thrillers from what was arguably the director’s best decade, including his lessons in the dark consequences of voyeurism (“Rear Window,” 1954), falling for the wrong woman (“Vertigo,” 1958), being mistaken for someone else (“North by Northwest,” 1959), pissing off our feathered friends (“The Birds,” 1963), and, last but not least, taking a shower at the Bates Motel (“Psycho,” 1960).

Extras include original documentaries on “Rear Window” and “Vertigo,” script pages and stills from a deleted scene and storyboard drawings of the unfilmed alternate ending of “The Birds,” original trailers and production photographs.

If more graphic stabbings, impalings and decapitations are desired, Paramount’s “Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Collection Limited Edition” (only 50,000 manufactured, so hurry!) holds deluxe editions of all eight installments (1980-89), an eight-page booklet, two pairs of glasses for watching “Part 3 in 3-D,” AND a replica of the infamous hockey mask, so you can watch all the gratuitous gore from a Jason’s-eye-view.

Or if it’s unintentional hilarity you’re hankering for, the original, 1958 “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” is a towering hoot, one of those great, gosh-awful Allied Artists sci-fi/horror pictures of the period starring second-string scream queen Allison Hayes as hard-drinking rich woman Nancy Archer, fresh

out of a psychiatric hospital with a philandering husband named Harry (William Hudson) keeping her constantly on edge. When an alien encounter on Route 66 causes Nancy to grow as tall as her temper, Harry and his girlfriend (Miss July 1959 Playboy Playmate Yvette Vickers) are in for a bad night. Nancy comes a-hunting, barely covered in the biggest damned sheets you’ve ever seen and crashes her giant rubber hand through the roof of the beer joint where Harry’s been making out with his gold-digging mistress, and

colossal consequences are paid. This one’s available on demand from the Warner Archive Collection.

And if you really want to experience the worst of cinema’s simple-minded slop jobs, there is “‘Manos’ The Hands of Fate” (1966), but unless you’re totally masochistic, the only way to view this travesty of ineptitude is with the accompanying snarky commentary and ad-libbed dialogue embellishments of Satellite of Love captive Joel Robinson and his robot sidekicks Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot in the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” Special Edition from Shout Factory. We have fertilizer salesman turned filmmaker Harold P. Warren to thank for this mess. Really bad pacing, poor photography and lighting and inept dubbing come together with terrible acting to make this story of a family getting lost and stumbling onto the lair of a devil worshipping cult a legendary low point in cinematic history, and perfect fodder for some of the funniest riffing the SoL crew ever conjured up during the entire run of MST3K.

But while the half-man, half-goat and the evil guy in the cape are the obvious monsters of “Manos,” the evil in the classic chiller “The Bad

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These movies will haunt you after trick-or-treaters go home

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