2. Dawn of the Dead: Ultimate Edition (Anchor Bay)
Even the most tight-assed DVD hound couldn’t find fault with this exhaustively annotated four-disc tribute to George Romero’s zombie gut-cruncher classic.

3. Orgy of the Dead (Rhino)
Ed Wood penned this delirious Halloween burlesque show featuring a booze-soaked Criswell (“It pleasures me!”) and a gaggle of Hollywood strippers in a cardboard graveyard.

4. The Twilight Zone, Season 1: Definitive Edition (Image Entertaimnent)
The signpost up ahead says that if you love Rod Serling’s legendary TV series, you’ll want this six-disc set, which is overflowing with extras – you even get the companion guide, fer chrissakes. Universal wouldn’t have looked like the complete pikers they are if they’d put in one-tenth of the same effort for their Night Gallery box.

5. Wild in the Streets/Gas-s-s-s! (MGM)
Two of AIP’s most unruly youthquake titles make their DVD debut courtesy MGM’s great Midnite Movies series. Wild is teenage rock-n-roll Armageddon; Gas-s-s-s! is the End of the World, hippie-style. You’ll find this at your local Best Buy.

6. I Drink Your Blood (Fangoria/MTI)
LSD plus Satanic cults multiplied by an outbreak of rabies spells gore-soaked nirvana in this notorious slaughterfest from Fango, MTI and Grindhouse Releasing. Toss out your old bootlegs – this is the original, X-rated cut.

7. Eyes Without a Face (Criterion)
This grim French fairy tale of obsessive parental love and surgical mayhem sent the arthouse crowd screaming when it was released in 1959, now you can enjoy all the flesh-peeling, forced abductions and unchecked insanity in the pleasure of your own home courtesy the classy folks at Criterion.

8. Tie: Dead Boys: Live! At CBGB’s 1977 and The Cramps at Napa State Mental Hospital (both Music Video Distributors)
MVD’s released some incredible live punk footage from the Target libraries this year, but this pair is the rancid icing on the whole leather-and-studs cake. Watch Stiv blow his nose with baloney and then eat it. See Lux duet with real lunatics. Video anarchy at its best

9. 42nd Street Forever! Volume One (Ban 1 Productions)
An exploitation trailer comp for 21st century sleaze beasts, overflowing with bikers, breasts and bad attitude, as it should. Ban 1 should be a company to watch in 2005.

10. Best of Burlesque (Something Weird/Image Entertainment)
Something Weird opens its vaults for a double-disc set of vintage va-va-voom. Seven hours of dames, broads and gals (now probably someone’s sweet granny) bumping and grinding – and in 3-D, to boot!

11. Honorable Mentions:
Retromedia’s It’s Alive/In the Year 2889, Kong Collection and Scalps; Mondo Crash’s Horror Rises from the Tomb; Blue Underground’s Deathdream, Mark of the Devil, and Sadomania.

-Paul Gaita