DVDs are a tempting item for that last-minute Secret Santa gift, or as a stocking stuffer when you feel like your significant other has outspent you (oh, the wily ways of capitalism!). The drawback is that they’re cheap enough that the giftee may have already gone and purchased his or her own copy. But if you must, here are some suggestions for that most easy to wrap item, categorized by recipient type. Prices quoted are suggested retail, but you can usually get them for less:

THE TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES ADDICT: Forget that new 3-disk reissue of The Wizard of Oz—if they don’t already have one of the previous versions, they probably don’t want it, no matter how much extra crap they pad it out with. Instead, give them ammunition to rail against big-budget remakes with the new King Kong set (Turner, $39.95). Make sure to get the version that includes Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young. If they like to laugh, one of the funniest movies ever made received a long-overdue video premiere this year: Howard Hawk’s Bringing Up Baby (Turner, $26.99), with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

Also avoid the recent Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. Two, (Warner, $49.98) five DVDs of ’40s and ’50s crime films that aren’t really noirs. If it’s still around, though Vol. One (Warner, $49.98) is well worth having, with The Asphalt Jungle, Gun Crazy, Murder My Sweet, Out of the Past, and The Set-Up.

Special edition releases of more recent films include Titanic (Paramount, $29.99), The Warriors (Paramount, $19.99), The Big Lebowski (MCA, $19.98), Tim Burton’s Batman (Warner, $26.98), and Neil Diamond as The Jazz Singer (Anchor Bay, $19.98). (OK, we’re just kidding about that last one—not that it hasn’t just been released, but who aside from the terminally contumelious would ever want to rewatch it?)

THE FILM STUDENT: Avant Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and ’30s (Kino, $29.98) is an indispensable set for anyone interested in the history of film art. By Brakhage: An Anthology (Criterion, $39.95) compiles 26 short films of the nearly 400 made by the artist who pioneered the art of making images directly on celluloid, scratching or painting it by hand to express his vision of the world.

CULT MOVIE BUFF: Previously available only in a pricey boxed edition sold on his Web site, David Lynch’s indelible Eraserhead (LynchFilms, $24.95) is finally available in a mass-market version, as is a collection of his short films (LynchFilms, $24.95). Lynch fans will also want to see I Don’t Know Jack, (Had To Be Made Films, $24.95) the biography of the strange life and sad death of Eraserhead star Jack Nance.

John Waters calls the late Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (RM Films, $39.95) “The greatest movie ever made.” The 1978 Italian sleaze perennial Cannibal Holocaust (aka Make Them Die Slowly), (Grindhouse Releasing, $24.95) has just been released in a restored and uncut version, which we mention only because plenty of people seem to want to see it: if you must buy it for someone, think twice about watching it with them.

THE THIRTY-SOMETHING WHO STILL DRESSES IN ALL BLACK ALL THE TIME: Mike Leigh’s Naked (Criterion, $39.95) one of the most prescient films of the 1990s, gets the Criterion treatment in this two disk package with lots of worthwhile extras.

THE ARMCHAIR POLITICAL ACTIVIST: The documentary The Corporation (Zeitgeist, $29.99) fancifully asks the question, If a corporation is accepted as a “person” in the eyes of American law, how would a psychologist evaluate it’s personality? The sobering answer: psychopathic. A must-see.

From the unrepentant muckraker who just released Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices, The Robert Greenwald Documentary Collection (The Disinformation Company, $29.95) collects three of his features (Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, and Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties) with a bonus disk.

Giulio Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (Criterion, $49.95) is the classic Italian docudrama about the Algerian war for independence from France that gained a new audience when it was reported that the Pentagon was screening it to military officers headed to Iraq. Pontecorvo’s 1970 Burn!, (MGM, $14.95) another examination of colonial repression starring Marlon Brando as William Walker, is also newly available.

THE HARRY POTTER FAN WHO ALREADY HAS EVERY HP ITEM ON THE MARKET WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THAT $200 WAND THAT YOU REFUSE TO BUY: Not all of the young leads debuted in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Rupert Grint earlier co-starred in Thunderpants, a jaw-dropping British film about a boy whose uncontrollable flatulence makes him a misfit until he learns it can be harnessed by NASA. You think I’m kidding, don’t you? It’s never been released in the US (hard to guess why), but look for it as an import.