Isn't it nice when a DVD studio sets your Halloween movie marathon for you? Over the last few years, Lionsgate has released two sets of the After Dark Horrorfest, a line of eight independent horror films that produced at least two gems - the first volume's The Hamiltons and the second volume's Borderland. Most of the rest of them were deeply flawed but the thing about DTV horror fans is this - we'll sit through seven pieces of crap to find that unheralded horror indie that works.

This year it's not After Dark in theaters but Ghost House Underground on DVD that Lionsgate is trying to sell to those of us hooked on buckets of blood. From the producers of 30 Days of Night and The Grudge (two things that possibly shouldn't be proud of or advertised), Ghost House Underground features eight movies trying to get your spooky dollar.

Like After Dark and Masters of Horror, it's a mixed bag at best, so only hardcore genre-philes will likely want to buy the $100+ full eight-movie set. The rest will want to know which titles are truly worth the time and money. The good news - there's nothing as truly awful as After Dark's Lake Dead or Crazy Eights and there is some oddly inspired fare alongside one instant genre classic. For the most part, as with nearly all horror fests, the majority of Ghost House Underground isn't really worth your time but there a couple of interesting films. We watch them all so you don't have to. Ranked in order of quality...

1. DANCE OF THE DEAD

Hell, yeah! Dance of the Dead is one of the best horror films of the year, an enjoyable thrill ride that is perhaps the best venture into the treacherous waters of horror/comedy since Shaun of the Dead. With a charismatic young cast and a clever script, Dance of the Dead reminds me of The Breakfast Club meets Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty with zombies instead of aliens.

The basic conceit of Dance of the Dead is an excellent one - a small town that's far too close to a nuclear power plant undergoes a zombie infestation on the night of prom and the only kids who can save the day are the misfits who couldn't get dates for the big night. Dance of the Dead has a Raimi-esque guerilla filmmaking style that I adore but it also has a very clever script that had me laughing out loud (the dork's compliment to the cheerleader he likes - "You do good flips.") I LOVE that, at one point, the zombies drive to get where they want to go. I don't know why. I just do. And a bathroom encounter gives new meaning to the phrase "sucking face".

Perhaps most importantly, Dance of the Dead has a charismatic cast that is playing their age. Actually casting teenagers as teenagers instead of 25-year-olds has an impact that more filmmakers should recognize. I'm still not a big fan of Otis' Jared Kusnitz but The Signal's Justin Welborn has been one of the more interesting new actors of 2008. All in all, Dance of the Dead is well-paced, believable fun and a very pleasant surprise. Easily the best film of Ghost House '08.

2. THE SUBSTITUTE

Now this is some weird sh*t. Imagine a very foreign version of The Faculty and you'll have some idea about how The Substitute plays out. This practically PG-13 oddity is also reminiscent of '80s movies but this time it's more of the action-driven flicks like Monster Squad or The Goonies. In this Dutch film from Nightwatch director Ole Bornedal, an alien comes to Earth and takes the form of a substitute teacher for a class of underachievers. Most alien invasion films focus on an entire swarm of otherworldly beings but The Substitute is about one creature and the only kids who can stop her. Of course, the quietest and most troubled kid in class, Carl, is the only one who can stop her, even if none of the adults believe him.

It could be a cultural thing but The Substitute is strange, strange, strange. The effects are not really well-designed and the dialogue doesn't translate well, but there's something clever about the concept, tone, and direction of the film that you don't often see in straight-to-DVD horror movies. The Substitute is flawed but it's unique enough to overlook those flaws.

3. NO MAN'S LAND: THE RISE OF REEKER

I never laughed as hard during the entire Ghost House Underground series as I did when the writer/director of No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker claimed in the behind the scenes featurette that he made the film because he wanted to do something that he wasn't seeing in horror. I actually kind of like some of what Payne is trying in No Man's Land, but the claim that it's new is HILARIOUS. I actually stopped counting the references and rip-offs in a movie that blends elements of The Hitcher, Identity, Rob Zombie's work, and countless other films into a gore-splattered smoothie of weirdness.

No Man's Land is about a group of people stuck in between worlds, not alive and not yet dead, trying to survive the rampage of a crazed serial killer from beyond. The dialogue is horrible. The characters are weak. But there's an undefinable skewed angle to the film that I kind of liked. Payne is clearly a horror junkie himself and has filtered many of his inspirations into this strange film, one that I'll never watch again and could only barely recommend but that I don't regret seeing.

4. THE LAST HOUSE IN THE WOODS

I generally have a little problem with modern Italian attempts at the Giallo style most perfected by Dario Argento. It could be because I'm a huge Dario fan, but when other people try for his kind of insane, over-the-top, gore-tastic brand of horror, it usually comes off as false to me. Even recent Argento doesn't hold a blood-splattered candle to Suspiria, Deep Red, or Tenebre, movies I could watch over and over again.

But Last House in the Woods had me smiling from its preview, which defines cannibalism and then adds the best tagline of the year - "There are some lines that must never be crossed... beyond them all is The Last House in the Woods." Awesome line. The movie itself? Kind of a mess. It's another one of those couples who go from one bad situation - being attacked and almost raped - into a much-worse situation when it turns out that their rescuers are totally crazy and flesh-eating. The narrative is derivative, the acting is wooden, and the script is horrendous but the gore is off the hook.

5. ROOM 205

How many scary rooms have there been in movies? Add another one to the list in the moody, atmospheric, and relatively effective Room 205. The ghost story is about a girl who moves to Copenhagen to go to University and ends up in a haunted room. It's kind of like a ghostly version of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Sadly, it goes from interesting and atmospheric to standard slasher when the heroine sets free a deadly ghost. I really liked the set-up of Room 205 but when the "action" kicked in, it felt like too many movies that I've seen before and done better. For hardcore ghost movie junkies only.

6. DARK FLOORS

Was there ever a Gwar horror movie? There really should have been. Imagine Gwar running around a "scary hospital" set and you'll basically get the gist of Dark Floors, a derivative horror movie spun around the Finnish rock band Lordi. Like Gwar, Lordi is a band made up of people in heavy make-up and costumes with alter egos like Ox, Amen, Awa, Kita, and Mr. Lordi. In the film that they inspired, a group of people at a hospital end up in a stopped elevator that lets them off in an alternate universe of gore and horror. As the group encounters creatures from a dark world (who also love to rawk!), they learn that their fate may rest in the hands of a wheelchair-bound, autistic girl. Dark Floors is nothing that we haven't seen before. I was never bored but I also was never that interested and the make-up design of Lordi makes them look more silly than scary. Then again, I was never that scared of Gwar either.

7. TRACKMAN

One of the best things I can say about Trackman is that it's 80 minutes long. That makes the torture brief. Trackman is a Russian film that follows a classic structure of bad guys who escape a robbery and find themselves in a much worse situation than having to deal with cops. Even the KGB has nothing on Trackman. I do find it interesting that the Russian film market has been producing high voltage action flicks in the last few years but Trackman is too familiar and generic slasher to be of interest to too many people. Bank robbers take some hostages underground and get sliced and diced by a lunatic serial killer in the abandoned subway system. There's nothing inventive, nothing original, and the shaky camera style is more nauseating than the half-ass gore effects. Find another track.

8. BROTHERHOOD OF BLOOD

Do you want to know the scariest thing that Rob Zombie can take credit for? Unleashing Sid Haig and Ken Foree back on a public that appropriately buried them. Two of the worst actors in the history of the genre help drag down the laughably bad Brotherhood of Blood, a vampire movie so truly awful that if you saw it in a movie-within-a-movie that you would think that it wasn't believable. "They don't really make horror movies with dialogue, plots, and action that awful." Yes, they do. And Sid Haig and Ken Foree are usually in them.