Karloff a fright to behold in series of horror films

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Universal Studios Home Entertainment jump-starts the Halloween season this week with a must-see set for fright-film fans, The Boris Karloff Collection (three-disc, $29.98). It's our ...

DVD pick of the week

The set's best entry, Rowland V. Lee's Tower of London (1939), casts Boris as chrome-domed, clubfooted executioner Mord, whom the talented actor succeeds in humanizing without minimizing the menace. Basil Rathbone, as Richard III, and Vincent Price, as the Duke of Clarence, lend able support in this witty, horror-tinged look at murderous court politics in 15th-century England.

Boris likewise shines as a quietly deranged opera-house doctor who harbors a dangerous obsession for diva Susanna Foster in "Phantom of the Opera," and in director George Waggner's 1944 Technicolor thriller The Climax.

Segueing to the 1950s, Mr. Karloff, as a loyal servant, takes a back seat to extravagantly perverse villain Charles Laughton in the 1951 Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation The Strange Door but reclaims his chiller chops as a resident physician/professional poisoner in the following year's The Black Castle, a gothic period piece with dark atmosphere to spare.

While Boris hits nary a false note as a sympathetic scientist shanghaied by crooks, 1937's Night Key, with its emphasis on standard crime action rather than spooky thrills, rates as the set's weakest outing. Still, the film, a newcomer to home video, helps fill in a vital gap for Karloff completists.

The latter contingent will also want to scope out Universal's Frankenstein: 75th Anniversary Edition (two-disc, $26.99), which not only showcases Mr. Karloff's signature performance but includes, among other extras, the excellent new documentary Karloff: The Gentle Monster, from TV's "Biography" series.

Tele-video

In fresh TV-on-DVD developments, BBC Video bows a quartet of cathode offerings from across the pond: Five con artists (Robert Vaughn among them) prey on gullible Londoners in the six-episode Hu$tle: Complete Season One (two-disc, $34.98). Writer/director Stephen Poliakoff masterminds a pair of miniseries, Almost Strangers and Shooting the Past (two-disc, $29.98 each), while Sean Bean toplines in the period adventure Sharpe's Challenge, set in India ($24.98).

DVD extras range from audio commentaries to bonus interviews and featurettes.