With Halloween in sight, MGM has released a number of catalog horror films under the clever banner "Vote for Gore."

Most of them are aimed at connoisseurs of the cornball creep-out, like the extremely loose 1976 adaptation of the H.G. Wells story "The Food of the Gods," starring Marjoe Gortner, the 1970s evangelist who gave up the tricks of the trade in a documentary, and then looked to extend his 15 minutes of fame.

But hiding among these basement-Bs are two films that can be categorized as horror only in the broadest definition. The first is yet another reissue of "Manhunter," the movie that unleashed Hannibal Lecter on unsuspecting audiences in 1986. This was the original version of Thomas Harris' first novel featuring Lector (Brian Cox), stylishly directed by Michael Mann, and starring William S. Petersen as an FBI criminal profiler who — like Clarice Starling after him — turns to Lecter for help in finding a vicious killer.

Then there's a new two-disc "Special Edition" of the 1960 Cinemascope adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's adventure classic "The Lost World." It was the first of the films that would establish Irwin Allen as the successor to Cecil B. DeMille (and predecessor of Steven Spielberg) as the primary purveyor of effects-and-star-driven spectacle.

I should admit here that nostalgia prevents me from being overly critical of a movie I absolutely loved as a kid, with Michael Rennie boldly leading the expedition to an Amazon island populated by dinosaurs and, most terrifying to the 10-year-old, a giant spider.

If, on the other hand, you are new to this, you should know that the special effects are not nearly as good as those seen in the Ray Harryhausen movies of the same era. Extras include the original trailer and the 1925 silent version of the tale, starring Wallace Beery.

THINGS OLD, NEW

Those looking for something more substantial can be enthusiastically directed to something old and something new. The "new" is the excellently acted and deeply moving adaptation of the Alice Munro story "Away From Her" (Lionsgate), released theatrically earlier this year. It stars Julie Christie as a woman with Alzheimer's who insists that her loving husband, played by the fine Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, place her in an assisted-living facility. He reluctantly does so, whereupon this love story goes to some truly unexpected and poignant places.

The "old" item feels pretty timeless, considering the influence it has had on a spate of recent films aimed at disaffected twentysomethings. But as hard as it may be for some of us, this is "The 40th Anniversary Edition" of "The Graduate" (MGM), the second film directed by Mike Nichols (after "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," a pretty good start). It was also only the second film for star Dustin Hoffman.

As daring as the film was at the time, it's now respectable enough to be issued in a slipcase, and is now loaded with extras that include two new commentaries, one by Hoffman and Katherine Ross (Mrs. Robinson), another by Nichols and perceptive fan Steven Soderbergh, as well as a retrospective documentary. The second disc is a CD that includes the songs sung by Simon and Garfunkel in the film.

ALSO RELEASED

"Face/Off," directed by John Woo and originally released in 1997, gets "Special Collector's Edition" treatment in a two-disc set (Paramount). The action-thriller, starring John Travolta as a special agent who gets the face transplant of a comatose killer (Nicolas Cage) to prevent a biological weapons attack, was originally remastered for BluRay, until Paramount dropped an industry bomb two weeks ago by announcing it was defecting to the HD-DVD format. It includes a new half-hour featurette about Woo (who also provides a commentary with the film's writers) and 8 minutes of deleted scenes.

TV ON DVD

Before the miniseries version of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" (HBO) aired, there were concerns that by telling much of the story through the eyes of a white man (Aidan Quinn as the sympathetic Sen. Dawes) and a Sioux (Adam Beach) raised and educated in the white world, the American Indian point of view would be compromised. Turns out there was nothing to worry about. This well-made, if all-too-condensed, dramatic version of Dee Brown's nonfiction book, which also features August Schellenberg as the proud Sitting Bill, is an affecting and honest inspection of a shameful past.

Likewise, those worried that "Prime Suspect 7: The Final Act" (Acorn Media), which sent Police Superintendent Tennison (Helen Mirren) on her last case, would be sentimentalized, will be relieved to know the character goes out much like she came in — with her fierce dignity intact and her doubts unresolved.