By Peter Covino

Entertainment Editor

Sometimes my idea of fun on a Saturday night is to turn out pretty much all of the lights and watch a couple of scary-type movies.

I’ve got a high threshold when it comes to fright films, so darkened rooms, big screens and Blu-ray do add up to at least a few more chills for any film with scare potential.

The latest double-bill: Buried, a claustrophobic thriller with Ryan Reynolds and My Soul to Take, the latest film from fright master Wes Craven.

Buried (LionsGate), released late in 2010 is a definite surprise.

From the opening frame, Buried is one of the most claustrophobic films I have ever seen.

Paul Conroy (Reynolds) is a truck driving contractor in Iraq who awakes to find himself in a coffin.

And we are there with him.

For 95 minutes, Buried never leaves the confines of of that wooden box. Talk about directing and acting challenges. Even with 127 Hours, another outstanding film from 2010, at least there were some wide open spaces before James Franco got trapped under that large rock.

Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés takes on the kind of challenge that Alfred Hitchcock would have admired with this scenario.

Reynolds is the only actor in the film. He is alone in a coffin with a cell phone, a lighter, a few light sticks and a flash light. They are also the only source of illumination in this often dark film. The only other voices you hear in Buried are the people he talks to on the cell phone (a kidnapper, U.S. government officials, his family members). The only other person you see during the course of the film is a second kidnap victim, and we only see her on his cell phone.

Cortes is relentless with his camera work following desperate Paul in his desperate situation. The air supply is limited; his light sources (supplied by his kidnapper) are dwindling and sand is slowly pouring into his boxed prison.

Buried is not for anyone who does not like tight, confined places. And Cortes doesn’t play by pat formula Hollywood rules either.

Some of the bonus features on the Blu-ray (the combo pack also includes a standard DVD disc) also show this was not an easy film to make either for Reynolds and the crew. Seven different coffins were used in the shoot to convey both different looks, perspectives and feel, and none of them could have provided much comfort after a day of filming.

Buried also is not one of those have to have in Blu-ray kind of films, since there are no wide open vistas, but the HD of Reynold’s dirt and sweat streaked face is that much more realistic.

By comparison, Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take will be a disappointment.

This is your standard teen horror film, and a lessor effort from Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes, Scream).

Borrowing somewhat from the Nightmare series, My Soul to Take (Universal Studios Home Entertainment) is the story of seven teens, born on the day that the Riverton Ripper vanished. And now, one by one, they are encountering grisly deaths.

This can be fun to watch at times, but if you take your horror seriously, My Soul to Take certainly does not qualify.

I forgot this film was made in 3D for theatrical release. It certainly doesn’t look like a 3D film watching it on a home screen.

Bonuses in both Blu-ray and DVD include alternate endings and openings, deleted and extended scenes and feature commentary with Craven and three of the cast members.

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For pure mindless entertainment Universal DVD Originals has released Death Race 2 Unrated.

For fans of both the gladiator/prison/death match genre and the car racing death match genre, Death Race 2 offers stunts and crashes and death around every corner.

The scenario here is that in the very near future, prisons will all be run by corporations, and Terminal Island, the prison in Death Race 2, handles only the worst of the worst.

Even though just about everyone in Death Race 2 is a hardened criminal, it is the people not in prison that are the bad guys, the ones you will sit through the entire film waiting for them to finally die, particularly the woman who produces both the death match fights and auto races for an appreciative home television audience.

The good guys in Death Race 2 include Luke Goss (who plays a convicted cop killer forced to participate in the death races) and Danny Trejo (Machete) as one of his trusted allies. Also in the cast are Ving Rhames and Sean Bean.

Death Race 2 Unrated is available as both a Blu-ray combo pack, DVD and digital download.

Bonus features include deleted scenes, feature commentary; features that take a closer look at the stunts from the film; and a look under the hood of the autos featured in the film.