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Bram Stoker's Dracula
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Starring: Oldman, Gary Ryder, Winona Hopkins, Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Campbell, Billy Elwes, Cary Reeves, Keanu E. Grant, Richard E. Grant, Richard Waits, Tom
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Director: Coppola, Francis Ford	Rating: R	Running Time: 2 Hours 10 Minutes
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Category: Horror	User Rating: 7.1/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video With dizzying cinematic tricks and astonishing performances, Francis Coppola's 1992 version of the oft-filmed Dracula story is one of the most exuberant, extravagant films of the 1990s. Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder, as the Count and Mina Murray, are quite a pair of star-crossed lovers. She's betrothed to another man; he can't kick the habit of feeding off the living. Anthony Hopkins plays Van Helsing, the vampire slayer, with tongue firmly in cheek. Tom Waits is great fun as Renfield, the hapless slave of Dracula who craves the blood of insects and cats. Sadie Frost is a sexy Lucy Westenra. And poor Keanu Reeves, as Jonathan Harker, has the misfortune to be seduced by Dracula's three half-naked wives. There's a little bit of everything in this version of Dracula: gore, high-speed horseback chases, passion, and longing.

Exorcist: 25th Anniversary Special Edition, The
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Starring: Burstyn, Ellen Sydow, Max von Sydow, Max von Flynn, Keri McRae, Ellen Gillooly, Edna Rae Blair, Linda Von Sydow, Max Von Sydow, Max Cobb, Lee J.
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Director: Friedkin, William	Rating: R	Running Time: 3 Hours 17 Minutes
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Category: Horror	User Rating: 7.9/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial bestseller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jason Miller and Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the priests who risk their sanity and their lives to administer the rites of demonic exorcism. Ellen Burstyn plays Blair's mother, who can only stand by in horror as her daughter's body is wracked by Satanic disfiguration. One of the most frightening films ever made, The Exorcist was mysteriously plagued by trouble during production, and the years since have not diminished its capacity to disturb even the most stoic viewers. The film is presented in letterbox format on digital video disc, with a remastered soundtrack that's guaranteed to curdle your blood. The 25th-anniversary Special Edition DVD of The Exorcist is packed with bonus features, including a 74-minute documentary titled The Fear of God: The Making of The Exorcist, which includes interviews with cast and crew, audio commentary by William Friedkin and author William Peter Blatty, a special introduction by Friedkin, theatrical trailers and TV spots, and DVD-exclusive coverage of the film's storyboards and production design. --Jeff Shannon

Jaws (25th Anniversary Widescreen Collector's Edition)
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Starring: Scheider, Roy Shaw, Robert Dreyfuss, Richard Scheider, Roy Hamilton, Murray Gary, Lorraine Kramer, Jeffrey Filley, Jonathan Filley, Jonathan Fierro, Lee
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Director: Spielberg, Steven	Rating: PG	Running Time: 2 Hours 5 Minutes
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Category: Horror	User Rating: 8.2/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video In the vastly overrated 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, author Peter Biskind puts the blame for Hollywood's blockbuster mentality at least partially on Steven Spielberg's box-office success with this adaptation of Peter Benchley's bestselling novel. But you can't blame Spielberg for making a terrific movie, which Jaws definitely is. The story of a Long Island town whose summer tourist business is suddenly threatened by great-white-shark attacks on humans bypasses the potboiler trappings of Benchley's book and goes straight for the jugular with beautifully crafted, crowd-pleasing sequences of action and suspense supported by a trio of terrific performances by Roy Scheider (as the local sheriff), Richard Dreyfuss (as a shark specialist), and particularly Robert Shaw (as the old fisherman who offers to hunt the shark down). The sequences on Shaw's boat--as the three of them realize that in fact the shark is hunting them--are what entertaining moviemaking is all about. --Marshall Fine --This text refers to the VHS Tape edition.

Silence of the Lambs - Criterion Collection, The
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Starring: Foster, Jodie Hopkins, Anthony Hopkins, Sir Anthony Hopkines, Sir Anthony Glenn, Scott Levine, Ted Baker, Diane Smith, Brooke Smith, Brooke Walter, Tracey
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Director: Demme, Jonathan	Rating: R	Running Time: 118
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Category: Horror	User Rating: 8.5/10 (IMDB)	Color Dolby

Amazon.com essential video Based on Thomas Harris's novel, this terrifying film by Jonathan Demme really only contains a couple of genuinely shocking moments (one involving an autopsy, the other a prison break). The rest of the film is a splatter-free visual and psychological descent into the hell of madness, redeemed astonishingly by an unlikely connection between a monster and a haunted young woman. Anthony Hopkins is extraordinary as the cannibalistic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, virtually entombed in a subterranean prison for the criminally insane. At the behest of the FBI, agent-in-training Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) approaches Lecter, requesting his insights into the identity and methods of a serial killer named Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). In exchange, Lecter demands the right to penetrate Starling's most painful memories, creating a bizarre but palpable intimacy that liberates them both under separate but equally horrific circumstances. Demme, a filmmaker with a uniquely populist vision (Melvin and Howard, Something Wild), also spent his early years making pulp for Roger Corman (Caged Heat), and he hasn't forgotten the significance of tone, atmosphere, and the unsettling nature of a crudely effective close-up. Much of the film, in fact, consists of actors staring straight into the camera (usually from Clarice's point of view), making every bridge between one set of eyes to another seem terribly dangerous. --Tom Keogh --This text refers to the VHS Tape edition. Description From Thomas Harris' novel, director Jonathan Demme explodes and reconstructs a classic genre, laying a foundation of emotional and political commitment beneath a perfectly constructed psychological thriller. Fourteen years after her controversial role in Taxi Driver, Jodie Foster finally makes the transformation from helpless victim to rescuing hero in this dark, gender-bending fairy tale of an American obsession: serial murder. As Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, Anthony Hopkins is the archetypal antihero-cultured, quick-witted, uncontainable-a portrait of all the sharpest human faculties gone diabolically wrong. Winner of five Academy Awards�, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay Adaptation for Ted Tally.