Frightfully Freaky Fare for Halloween

It’s unlikely that anything like Tod Browning’s 1932 “Freaks” could be made in today’s politically correct America. The traveling sideshow “freaks” who populate the macabre film undoubtedly would be called “physically challenged” and that would be the end of it.

But, just in time for your own little night of Halloween film and TV horrors, MGM/UA Home Video has released a remastered laser-disc edition of this bizarre cult classic ($35). Considered by some to be one of the premier horror films ever made and by others to simply be a curious aberration of the Irving Thalberg regime at MGM, “Freaks” was long banned in Britain and not often available in this country.

This edition presents the uncut original film and its unusual populace--who actually played in a sideshow of the time--in a crisp, newly minted print and includes the brief epilogue.

The chilling tale suggested by Tod Robbins’ “Spurs” legitimizes the audience’s fascination with these performers by posing the question of who is “normal” and who is the “freak” in the story of a band of macabre performers who take vengeance on a trapeze artist who wronged one of their number.

If “Freaks” doesn’t keep you up Halloween night, then immerse yourself in the 1967 thriller “Wait Until Dark” (Warner Home Video, $35), with Audrey Hepburn in her Oscar-nominated role as a blind woman fending off a psychopath.

This newly released, letterboxed edition, played with surround sound in a dark room, will make you jump every time Alan Arkin and cohorts Richard Crenna and Jack Weston make a move against Hepburn. The Terence Young-directed adaptation of the Frederick Knott Broadway play is a deviously clever contrivance, but while it’s on the screen, you won’t be thinking about plot or character defects. This is one scary movie.

Another new release perfect for Halloween jitters is Robert Wise’s 1963 “The Haunting,” a laser letterboxed digital transfer (MGM/UA, $35). This film is not for the faint-hearted, with intense performances from Julie Harris and Claire Bloom in a tale of the supernatural based on the Shirley Jackson novel “The Haunting of Hill House.”

If by now you’re ready for some slightly lower-key horror and think you can’t get through Halloween without a vampire story of some sort, take a bite out of the MGM/UA double bill “House of Dark Shadows” and “Night of Dark Shadows” ($45). Both Dan Curtis-directed productions, based on the popular TV serial “Dark Shadows,” offer surprisingly tense tales. “House” features Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall and Kathryn Leight Scott; “Night” features David Selby and Hall.

For serious vampire fans, there’s the very-serious Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” released in a superlative CAV edition by Criterion ($100). If you’ve sampled the lush sets, exquisite art direction, haunting cinematography and fine performances by Winona Ryder, Gary Oldman and Keanu Reeves, you can take your time with the supplemental materials.