Fans of truly great horror schlock have good reason to rejoice this month, as The William Castle Film Collection is out, featuring eight films by the legendary showman—just in time for Halloween. In a hilarious ongoing bit of bravado, Castle appeared in the trailers and introductions to his films, offering ludicrous instructions on how to view each movie. Audiences who lined up for 13 Ghosts, for example, were told that if they believed in ghosts, they should watch crucial action sequences while looking through the red part of their cardboard and plastic glasses. If they didn’t believe in ghosts, they should watch through the blue part. The difference? Nothing, but that hardly mattered to Castle, who just seemed to enjoy hearing the sound of his own voice as he ramped up the creepy quotient.

One undoubtable highlight is Strait-Jacket (1964), in which Joan Crawford plays an axe-wielding mom who tries to return to a life of normalcy after a bloody murder conviction leads to a stint in the nuthouse. (The screenplay, notably, is by Robert Bloch, who wrote the novel Psycho was based on.) But the best sleazy knock-off that Castle would concoct would be Homicidal (1961), in which Castle attempted, with delicious results, to out-do the gender switcheroo that Hitchcock managed so well in Psycho a year earlier. The tagline for this film was “A WORD OF WARNING! Please don’t reveal the ending of this picture or your friends will kill you. If they don’t William Castle will!” If there is one lament, it’s that I Saw What You Did (1965) is not on this set. A real disappointment, as that cautionary tale about crank calling (which also featured Joan Crawford in a pivotal role) is a landmark bit of horror trash.

In other DVD news, the complete fifth season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show is out, featuring “Ted Baxter’s Famous Broadcasters’ School,” one of the best episodes of the entire series.