December is a month for giving. Whether you're celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or the Winter Solstice, odds are you'll be giving and receiving gifts, the current economic recession notwithstanding. And odds are even better that, as a horror buff, some of those gifts will be DVDs. Yet for all the thousands of horror titles available on DVD today, there are, shockingly, still quite a few good ones that aren't. My wish for this holiday season is to see some of these neglected movies get the DVD releases they deserve.

Rather than gifting us with a new, completely unnecessary, three-disc reissue of Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN remake (Zombie should instead gift us with a new album!), why can't studios reach into their sleigh bags and stuff our stockings with great but still unreleased films? How about starting with 1990's classy, understated MR. FROST, starring Jeff Goldblum as a murderous mental patient who might very well be the Devil, and Kathy Baker as the doctor locked in a very Starling/Lecter-like relationship with her patient? Or how about HBO's funny, scary 1991 Lovecraft homage CAST A DEADLY SPELL, with Fred Ward as hardboiled Detective Lovecraft, and co-starring a young soap opera actress just breaking into movies named Julianne Moore? And then there's 1971's British tale of 17th century devil worship THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW (a.k.a. SATAN'S SKIN). That one's still only available as a Region 2 DVD. What's the hold up?

Speaking of Britain, it's inexcusable that 1972's VAMPIRE CIRCUS, one of Hammer Studio's better non-Dracula vampire films, also remains unavailable in Region 1 format. At the very least, fans of DOCTOR WHO and STAR WARS would be happy to see Lalla Ward and David Prowse acting in this sinister story of the darkest of dark carnivals. Also inexcusable is the fact that Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1989 masterpiece of surreal horror SANTA SANGRE remains unreleased on DVD in the States, even after his other major films EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN got DVD releases here last year.

How about finally giving us a good, special edition DVD of Francis Ford Coppola's 1963 axe-murderer thriller DEMENTIA 13, instead of all those crappy public domain editions currently littering the bargain bins? (Come on, Criterion, snatch up those rights already!) Or a good, special edition of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi's creepy THE BLACK CAT from 1934, one that doesn't require you to buy the whole $30 BELA LUGOSI COLLECTION boxed set?

I could go on, and if I had all day I would. Instead, I'm going to spend my time readdressing this year's letter to Santa and sending it to the movie studios instead. Companies like Blue Underground and Dark Sky Films have been doing a great job acquiring the rights to older, cult horror films and releasing them in gorgeous special editions -- something Anchor Bay used to do before they started spinning their wheels with almost annual re-releases of movies we've already bought from them, like THE EVIL DEAD or the original HALLOWEEN ("It's just like the last edition we put out, but with convention footage!" Um, what?) -- but I'd love to see more companies getting in on the action. There's a plethora of great horror movies still waiting for decent DVD releases, and an eager audience waiting to snatch them up. So, before mama in her 'kerchief and I in my cap settle down for a long winter's nap, I'll be watching the skies for St. Nick and listening for those words I long to hear: "Happy horror to all, and to all a good night!"

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When he's not shamelessly cribbing from Clement Clarke Moore, Nicholas Kaufmann is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, reviewer and interviewer. For more regular doses of Kaufmannia, visit his blog at http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com or his website at http://www.nicholaskaufmann.com.