October is upon us, which means we have a glut of high quality horror and suspense titles, amongst others.

First, the genre releases:

• Betterman: Another Anime Legends Complete Collection.
• Charmed – Season Six
• The Complete Omen Collection: The original, sequels, and remake.
• Dan Doh!! The Super Shot: Complete Collection
• Final Days of Planet Earth: I can’t honestly say I’d heard of this one.
• The Fly: Boxset: This seems to have the originals and the remakes.
• Future Worlds: Nine cheap movies, with no indications of which nine they are.
• Gatchaman Collection 9: More of those gorgeous Alex Ross packages.
• Geneshaft – Anime Legends Complete Collection
• The Great Horror Family – Complete Collection
• Icons of Horror – Boris Karloff: Four classics released by Sony Pictures.
• Incredible Monsters: Much like the Future Worlds package, we know how many movies there are, but not which ones they are.
• Masters of Horror: Larry Cohen: Another in this series of releases.
• Norman McLaren: Masters Edition: McLaren was phenomenal. He’s the only animator I know of who made a film from nothing more than paints and film stock. He not only animated the images, but he actually painted the soundtrack right onto the film! I haven’t seen this set, but if you have any appreciation for the film making process, I doubt you could watch this without being truly impressed, assuming they did a half way decent job of putting the 7 DVD set together.
• The Omen: Just the rerelease for those who have the originals.
• Over the Hedge
• Predator: 2 Movie Gift Set: The original and sequel.

Now, the non-genre releases:

• Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season Two: While I admit I’ve only watched half of the first season, I’m quite impressed by what I’ve seen. My only complaint is the poor sound quality, but given the sound technology in use at the time, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Universal would be unable to improve on it without driving the price of a set up over $100 each by actually rerecording the stuff.
• AMC: Before They Were Stars 1: Marilyn Monroe, Robert Mitchum and others before they had bankable names.
• AMC: The Best of Tarzan: I’m not sure if the movies here are on the existing or upcoming Tarzan sets Warner has released.
• American Dreamz: The satire from earlier this year.
• Anytown USA: A documentary about a mayoral race.
• Behind Enemy Lines 2 pack: The original and its sequel.
• Big Black Comedy Box Set
• Big Love – Complete First Season
• Billy Wilder Speaks: A collection of available interview footage with a prolific and talented writer/director.
• The Break-Up: The romantic comedy that did much better than critics or market analysts predicted.
• CSI: NY – Complete Second Season
• Casanova (Masterpiece Theater): Starring David Tennant
• Cheaper By The Dozen 2
• Cheers and Tears
• Clean, Shaven – Criterion Collection: A Criterion release of a movie about schizophrenia.
• Cowboy Country: The Complete Story of the Wild West
• The Dam Busters
• Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen
• The Family Stone
• La Femme Nikita – The Complete Fifth Season: I think this was also the final season.
• Masters of Horror: Larry Cohen: Another in this series of releases.
• Murder, She Wrote – The Complete Fourth Season
• Reds: The 25th Anniversary Edition
• Solo Con Tu Pareja: A Criterion Collection release of a movie directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Cuaron is probably best known for directing the third Harry Potter movie, but this sounds more like his work in Y Tu Mama Tambien.
• Starsky and Hutch – The Complete Fourth Season
• That 70s Show: Season Five

Finally, the pick of the week. This week is a hard choice: The Hitchcock and McLaren sets both sound extremely promising, but I haven’t actually seen either one. I think I’m going to pass on a specific choice this week.