Retro : Hope and Horror : MCA VIDEO RELEASES THREE BOB CLASSICS AND ADDS FOUR TO ITS HAMMER COLLECTION

MCA/Universal Home Video is serving up laughs and screams with the release Tuesday of three new titles in its popular The Bob Hope Collection and four more chilling flicks in The Hammer Horror Collection.

The three Bob Hope comedies ($15 each) feature two of the beloved comic’s earliest films as well as one of his funniest.

Hope, who recently celebrated his 92nd birthday, was a star of vaudeville and Broadway when he made his film debut in the musical comedy The Big Broadcast of 1938.

The best reason to watch the light-as-a-feather farce is for the scene where Hope and Shirley Ross introduce the Oscar-winning song “Thanks for the Memory,” which has been Hope’s signature tune ever since. Hope plays a radio announcer aboard one of two ships involved in a race across the Atlantic. W.C. Fields stars in a dual role as competing brothers; Dorothy Lamour plays Hope’s girlfriend; and Martha Raye is a young lady with the bad habit of breaking mirrors. There are plenty of offbeat musical numbers, including a bit by Metropolitan opera star Kirsten Flagstad.

The same year he made “Big Broadcast,” Hope and Martha Raye teamed up for the entertaining musical comedy Give Me a Sailor. Hope plays a sailor madly in love with beautiful Betty Grable, who plays Raye’s sister and is engaged to Hope’s brother (Jack Whiting). But Raye also loves Hope’s brother. The video includes the original theatrical trailer.

The best of the crop is 1947’s Where There’s Life, a rollicking, slapstick delight in which Hope plays a dog food-peddling disc jockey who is the long-lost heir to a small mythical European kingdom. When the king of the country is shot, Hope finds himself the target of spies, kidnapers and death plots. Signe Hasso and William Bendix also star. Good fun.

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In the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, the British-based Hammer Films company excelled in producing low-budget, stylish horror flicks that made stars of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Oliver Reed.

Reed is featured in the effective 1962 thriller Paranoiac, a complex, bizarre tale dealing with greed, dementia and deceit. Reed plays a spoiled, cruel young man set to inherit his late parents’ estate. One day a man (Alexander Davion) arrives at the house claiming to be his older brother who supposedly had committed suicide 12 years earlier. Janette Scott stars as Reed’s troubled sister who finds a reason to live when her “brother” returns. Directed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Freddie Francis (“Glory”).

Francis also directed the eerie, spine-tingling 1963 psychological thriller Nightmare. A student (Jennie Linden of “Women in Love”), having nightmares of when she saw her mother stab her father to death, is convinced she’s going insane and will end up at an asylum like her mother. She does, and her nightmares become more severe after she’s sent home. The video also includes the original trailer.

Kiss of the Vampire, released in 1962, is an entertaining spin on the vampire myth. This time around, a honeymooning couple (Jennifer Daniels and Edward DeSouza) are stranded in a remote Bavarian forest after their car runs out of gas. The two graciously accept the dinner invitation of the lord of the local castle. After the meal is over, though, the lord and his family are still very hungry.

Unfortunately, Hammer’s 1962 version of The Phantom of the Opera is weak and uninspired. Herbert Lom has his moments as the Phantom, who, in this adaptation of Gaston Laroux’s novel, haunts a London opera house. Heather Sears co-stars as Christine, the opera soprano who catches the eye of the Phantom; Edward DeSouza is the too-good-to-be-true opera producer who also falls under the spell of Christine. The video includes the original trailer.