It’s coming up to Halloween. Feast on this bloody mess — and have fun doing it!

Led by the Feast trilogy, Alliance Films Home Entertainment gives horror-loving Canadians something to terrify, gross-out or otherwise amuse us as we approach the night of haunting. In grey-bordered boxes — it should have been blood red! — Alliance re-packaged 11 mostly American titles in five budget-priced sets. The five single-disc releases offer only the movies, no extras, and three are flipper discs. All debuted this week.

These are movies you want playing when the house is festooned for Halloween and pagan impulses take over. Some are strong examples of the genre. Some are putrid exploitation. Our guide:

Feast Trilogy: Inspired by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Project Greenlight, filmmaker John Gulager went gonzo with his first Feast (2005). People are trapped inside a California desert bar while mangy, horny aliens chow down on victims. While low-budget, the movie is well executed, with buckets of gore. A fast, furious and funny set-up gets it going, including with on-screen intros teasing out each archetypal character. The bartender, played by Clu Gulager, is the director’s father. Diane Ayala Goldner, the lesbian biker chick, is the director’s wife. Unfortunately, Gulager’s two crappy sequels — Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (2008) and Feast III: The Happy Finish (2009) — don’t have the same impact. But they do get even more politically, socially and cinematically incorrect.

Double Feature: The Blair Witch Project/Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2: The filmmaking team of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez twisted our brains beautifully with their original, largely improvised, mock-doc The Blair Witch Project (1999). Set up as “found footage” of disappeared people who encounter horror in the woods, the film shocked, tantalized and disturbed audiences, including genre fans. Joe Berlinger’s supernatural sequel, Book of Shadows (2000), was more conventional, with more gore. But it also sucked, both as storytelling and filmmaking.

Double Feature: Cursed/Darkness Uncensored Version: With the thriller Cursed (2005), Wes Craven revives the werewolf saga. But the film had so many development problems, including producer interference with the cut, the movie itself was cursed. Christina Ricci, Joshua Jackson and Shannon Elizabeth co-star, although Freddie Prinze Jr. and Skeet Ulrich shot scenes before being excised. Spanish filmmaker Jaume Balaguero’s Darkness (2002) is much more accomplished, even if it has problems with the absurd climax involving human sacrifice. But the slow build is old-school, stylized horror. An excellent Anna Paquin tries to keep her family together in the face of her father’s madness, her mother’s indifference, her younger brother’s terror and her grandfather’s apparent dismissal. This is the unrated version.

Double Feature: Rogue Unrated/Wolf Creek Uncut Version: The horror movie Rogue (2007) is an Aussie croc — literally, because a rogue crocodile runs amok. With Radha Mitchell tromping the Outback, writer-director Greg McLean gives us an example of what is called “Ozploitation” or Australian schlock, in this case with American involvement. This cut is the gorier unrated version. In an earlier example, McLean also wrote and directed Wolf Creek (2005), in which backpackers are terrorized by a psycho in realistic fashion, making it more creepy. This is the uncensored edit.

Double Feature: Stephen King’s The Mist/1408: Both these movies come from Stephen King’s fevered brain. Frank Darabont directed The Mist (2007) with a strong cast led by Thomas Jane and Marcia Gay Harden, so it holds up well as a visceral horror story about blood-thirsty critters trapping humans in a supermarket. Mikael Hafstrom’s 1408 — the story of paranormal activity in room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel — is slightly less successful. But the screen is well populated with John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson and Mary McCormack, among other name actors.

bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca