If you don't dare leave home

This Halloween, forgo the gore, blot out the blood, eschew the entrails, and let your imagination do the work while viewing classic horror pictures from bygone eras.

There's no better place to start than British studio Hammer House - home of Christopher Lee's Dracula and Peter Cushing's Dr. Van Helsing - which pumped out some terrific films (and a few horrific duds) in the 1950s and '60s.

Icons of Horror Collection: Hammer Films

(

» READ MORE: www.sonypictures.com/homevideo

; $24.99; not rated), contains four solid entries. My favorite is

The Gorgon

, about the dread dragon lady, Medusa, starring . . . you guessed it . . . Lee and Cushing. The two-disc set also features

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb

,

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll

, and

Scream of Fear

.

Fox Horror Classics Collection, Vol. 2

, (

» READ MORE: www.foxclassics.com

; $11.49; not rated) brings together three curious, neo-Gothic tales including,

Chandu the Magician

(1931) and

Dr. Renault's Secret

(1942). The atmospheric

Dragonwyck

(1946) might borrow heavily from

Rebecca

, but it includes an interesting take on the class struggle.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

(1945) (

» READ MORE: www.warnerbros.com

; $19.97; not rated) brings Oscar Wilde's tale of beauty, youth and evil to the screen.

The two-disc edition of

Psycho

from the Universal Legacy Series (

» READ MORE: http://homevideo.universalstudios.com

; $26.98; rated R) finally returns Hitchcock's classic to its original, wide-screen aspect ratio and includes new extra features.

Rod Serling's influential TV show

Night Gallery: Season Two

(

» READ MORE: http://www.nbcuniversalstore.com

; $59.98; not rated), which features 61 tales, contains some of the best horror ever put onscreen. It features commentary by director Guillermo del Toro.

Can't survive without new productions? The Spanish creepfest

Shiver

(

» READ MORE: www.darkskyfilms.com

; $24.98; not rated), from the producer of

Pan's Labyrinth

, is about a teen boy in a secluded village who befriends a killer animal - or is it a little girl-monster?

Re-Cycle

(

» READ MORE: www.image-entertainment.com

; $27.98; rated R) by the Pang Brothers (

The Eye

) features some of the most beautiful imagery in recent cinema. It's also so terrifying, you'll have to stop the DVD every few minutes to take sanity breaks.

Artifacts

(

» READ MORE: www.lionsgate.com

; $26.98; rated R) is a remarkable English-language film from Belgium that makes up for its low budget with its inventiveness and sheer beauty. A group of lifelong friends slowly discover that their lives are made up of fake, implanted memories.

Adam Mason

's

Devil's Chair

from Sony ($24.96; not rated) is the shocking story of a convicted psycho-killer who tries to prove that a supernatural being was responsible for his fiancee's brutal murder.

Horror legend Stuart Gordon's

Stuck

from Image ($27.98; rated R) is about a young woman (Mena Suvari) who leaves a badly injured accident victim (Stephen Rea) stuck halfway through the windshield of her car for days and days.

Milo Ventimiglia (

Heroes

) stars in

Pathology

(

» READ MORE: www.mgm.com

$27.98; rated R) as a medical student who hooks up with a clique whose members pass the time by murdering random victims in new and inventive ways.