Universal has announced a September release for The Bela Lugosi Collection, a DVD compilation of five memorable chillers from the preeminent horror film studio of Hollywood's Golden Age.  With a list price of just $26.98 this collection demonstrates the deflation of DVD pricing in the face of a marketplace crowded with new films, repackaged TV series, and the increasing exploitation of studio vaults.  With a cost of just over five dollars per feature, the consumer is the clear beneficiary with this collection, which starts off with Robert Florey's unjustly neglected Murders in the Rue Morgue, which fortunately has little to do with Edgar Allen Poe's rather mundane short story.  Master cameraman Karl Freund creates an expressionistic Paris in which the evil Dr. Mirakle (Lugosi) kidnaps prostitutes off the street in a sick quest to find a suitable mate for his giant gorilla and prove his theory of evolution (no wonder some prefer 'intelligent design').

The second film in the collection is the best, Edgar G. Ulmer's masterful The Black Cat (1934), the first pairing of terror titans Lugosi and Karloff.  Bela is the 'good guy' in this one, playing a game of cat and mouse with the demented Karloff in a bizarre Bauhaus mansion built on a former battlefield.  With its delirious camera movements, creepy Black Mass and hallways decorated with the dead bodies of women floating in giant tanks, The Black Cat is one of the most disturbing and best of all the classic Universal horror films.

The other three films, The Raven (1935), The Invisible Ray (1936) and Black Friday (1940) may not reach the level of The Black Cat, but they all feature Karloff and Lugosi and each has its own chilling moments.  Overall it's hard to imagine more entertainment on one dual-layer, double-sided DVD.