DVDs make a great stocking-stuffer item, or something for that person at the office whose name you drew: They’re reasonably inexpensive and everyone likes movies, right? Of course, not everyone likes the same movies, and the ones that the chain stores have a zillion copies of are seldom the ones most worth having. So if you’re shopping for a movie buff, and you don’t have a $20 limit, here’s some of the best of what was released in recent months. Prices noted are suggested list prices only: With a little shopping you can usually find them for 25-30 percent less.

Twin Peaks: The Definitive Gold Box Edition ($99)—The two seasons of David Lynch’s epochal television series have been available separately over the years, though the first is long out of print. You may resist or resent buying this complete set if you purchased the second season set, which only came out earlier this year. You won’t entirely have wasted your money, though, as the earlier season two box has extras that aren’t on this set. And the Gold Box also includes both versions of the pilot episode, not previously available in the US. You can even top the package off with a canister of Lynch’s own coffee from his Web site, www.DavidLynch.com. (Warning: It ain’t cheap.)

The Three Stooges Collection Volume One: 1934-1936 ($24.95)—Back when he was still funny, Jay Leno used to observe that there was one essential difference between men and women: men love the Three Stooges, and women think they’re idiots. Be that as it may, any Stooges fan will be in heaven with this first release in a series that will present all 190 of the Stooges shorts, made between 1934 and 1958, in chronological order. This two-disk set runs nearly six hours. And they’ve all been remastered, too, something these films have been in desperate need of for years. Finally you can throw out those haphazardly collected and overpriced old releases that gave you one Curley and two Shemps. Whoo whoo whoo whoo whooooo!

The Sergio Leone Anthology: A Fistful of Dollars/For a Few Dollars More/The Good, the Bad And the Ugly/Duck, You Sucker ($89.98)—The DVD release of a restored and remastered The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was such a success that they decided to do the same for the other major Leone films: Buy this box and all you’ll be missing is Once Upon a Time in America, which you can get separately. The versions of Leone’s first two Clint Eastwood Westerns are better than the previous cheapo DVD versions, and come with a separate disk of extras. And Duck, You Sucker (a.k.a. A Fistful of Dynamite) makes its DVD premiere in an uncut version. Even if your giftee already has the G/B/U set, it’s still cheaper to buy this package than the other films separately.

Icons of Horror Collection: Sam Katzman ($24.95)—Four movies for $25 isn’t a bad deal, and any fan of cheesy 1950s sci-fi/horror will be happy to have copies of Creature with the Atom Brain, Zombies of Mora Tau and The Werewolf. But what makes this a must-have is the never-before-available-in-any-format, so-bad-it’s-good masterpiece The Giant Claw. One of an astonishing 46 movies made in eight years by the prodigiously prolific Fred F. Sears (who slowed down only when he died of a heart attack at the age of 44), Claw is a leading candidate for the most ridiculous-looking movie monster of all time. A badly manipulated marionette that looks like the progeny of Larry Fine and Marty Feldman, it was apparently constructed at the last minute when the filmmakers ran out of money—much to the dismay of the otherwise professional cast, who snuck out of the film’s premiere in embarrassment.

Ace in the Hole ($39.95)—“I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my time, but you--you’re 20 minutes!” That’s how the female lead describes the scrounging newspaperman played by Kirk Douglas in Billy Wilder’s most outrageously cynical movie—and for Wilder, that’s really saying something. Wilder made this film after his success with Sunset Boulevard, and it was his biggest flop, a film that was simply too dark and corrosive for audiences in 1951. It’s never been available on video in any format, but this two-disk Criterion edition makes up for the long wait.

Help! ($39.95)—The Beatles’ second movie is a delightfully silly affair that trades in the kitchen-sink realism of A Hard Day’s Night for absurd comedy in the same vein that produced Monty Python a few years later. The two-disk set includes a half-hour documentary made on the set of the film, and for that alone this is a must-have for Beatlemaniacs. For an extra $105 you can buy a “deluxe edition” featuring a reproduction of director Richard Lester’s annotated script, a 60-page book and a poster. Or you could save the money and buy your own copy of the movie.