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Herc’s Popular Pricing Pantry

The complete-series set for the 1970s “Battlestar Galactica,” $89.98 in 2009 and $67.49 in January, has just fallen to its lowest price ever: $23.49!!

The first five “X-Men” movies on Blu-ray, $129.99 in August and $116.99 last week, has just fallen to its lowest price ever: $44.99 (76% Off!!) $9 Per Blu Movie!! (“X-Men: First Class” sells separately for $17.69!!)

The first 10 hours of the wildly underrated Cylon saga “Caprica,” $39.49 in last year and $19.99 in April, has just fallen to its lowest price ever: $5.95 (76% Off!!)

All five seasons of “Ally McBeal,” even the ones with Robert Downey Jr. and a nearly naked Christina Ricci, have just fallen to their lowest prices ever: $12.49 or less each!!

The first two seasons of “Mr. Show” (starring Bob “Breaking Bad” Odenkirk, David “Arrested Development” Cross, Mary-Lynn “24” Rajskub, and Sarah “The Sarah Silverman Program” Silverman), $29.99 in 2008 and $14.49 last month, is now $8.75!! (65% Off!!)

The complete-series set for “Land of the Lost,” $46.99 in 2010 and $31.99 in November, is for the moment $13.75!! (66% Off!!)

New This Week

The PG-13 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part I feels enormously faithful to my memory of the 1986 Frank Miller comic series (which, truthfully, I’ve not read in decades).

What’s surprising is how much it resembles this summer’s “Dark Knight Rises,” with its physically compromised Bruce Wayne returning to crimefighting after a decade away, and the uber-muscled Mutant Leader breaking Wayne’s arm in hand-to-hand combat. (The back-breaking Bane arrived in the comics a few years after Mutant Leader.)

One also feels the influence of Miller’s tale on the old “Batman Beyond” series.

Carrie Kelley, with her decision to don a Robin costume and self-train, comes off more Kick-Ass than Hit Girl.

The new made-for-Blu movie also reminds us that it revealed the death of Jason Todd, the second Robin, two years before Todd’s death was depicted in Batman #428.

Peter Weller was an inspired choice, providing likely the best Batman vocals I’ve ever heard in a cartoon. A pair of Harvey Dent-centric episodes of “Batman: The Animated Series” are included on this set, and I’ll be danged if Kevin Conroy doesn’t sound downright wimpy in the shadow of Weller’s gravelly baritone. (I wonder if Weller’s casting was somehow precipitated by similar scenes in DKR and “RoboCop” in which the hero grabs a gun-toting bad guy by reaching through a solid wall.)

Equally inspired is the casting of “Lost” player Michael Emerson as The Joker. Emerson’s voice is only heard at the end of Part 1 but will be much more a part of Part 2. (Part 2, out this winter, will also feature Mark Valley as Clark Kent, who comes to regard Bruce Wayne as a dangerous adversary.)

EXTRAS INCLUDE:

* DARK KNIGHT RETURNS PART II SNEAK PEAK (6:53) featuring snippets of interviews with Weller, Emerson and Valley.

* HER NAME IS CARRIE, HER ROLE IS ROBIN (12:23) reveals via Grant Morrison that John Byrne suggested that Miller include a female Robin for DKR. Learn that busty future Bond girl Jill St. John disguised herself as Robin in the first two episodes of the Adam West “Batman” TV series.

* BATMAN AND ME (38:26) the excellent 2008 documentary about Batman creator Bob Kane.

* TWO EPISODES OF BATMAN (the animated series): “TWO-FACE” PARTS ONE AND TWO, originally aired exactly 20 years ago today.

“American Horror Story” is the latest from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, who created “Glee” together before Murphy went off to write and direct the equally horrible “Eat Pray Love.” I did not expect much from this series, and my expectations were met.

“Horror” follows a couple and their teen daughter after they move into a really cheap, really haunted house in Los Angeles.

Its cast includes Connie Britton (“Friday Night Lights”), Dylan McDermott (“The Practice”), Francis Conroy (“Six Feet Under”), Denis O’Hare (“True Blood”), Taissa Farmiga (kid sister of Vera) and Jessica Lange (“Tootsie”).

While the first episode, directed by Murphy, may be scary stupid, it is not scary. Recently I coincidentally caught the first two “Paranormal Activity” movies on Epix, and they are spine-chilling. My spine literally tingled as it seemed to grow cold, and more than once. “Paranormal” and its sequel gave me the willies. “Horror’s” stabs at fright elicited only the rolling of mine eyes.

The bigger sin is it’s hard to care about any of "Horror's" very bland, clichéd human characters, to the point where viewers may likely find themselves better liking the unpleasant ghosts. (I have the same complaint about Fox’s “Terra Nova,” if one substitutes ‘saurs for shades.)

I sense the creators quite enjoyed Stanley Kubrick’s (infinitely superior) big-screen version of the Stephen King thriller “The Shining.” The central couple suffers from marital discord. The ghosts of murdered twin children lurk about. There’s one ghost whose appearance switches between young and sexy to old and wrinkly. (Like the old lady in the Overlook Hotel bathtub, she goes into hottie mode to seduce the new man of the house.)

In the plus column, “Horror” could appeal to certain gay elements even more than “Glee” does. The house’s dead (but maybe still hanging about) prior owners were a saucy homosexual couple with a penchant for rubber suits and basement bondage. McDermott parades around naked a lot and even gets a steamy stand-up masturbation scene that could have been designed to show off his Playgirl-friendly physique. But the broad sexual imagery rarely compensates for the frequently terrible dialogue, or the frequently ridiculous behavior.

O’Hare’s character, a burn victim and convicted triple-murderer, is weirdly reminiscent of Chris Elliott’s deformed character from “Scary Movie 2.” (It turns out this convicted triple murderer, who when we meet him seems way too emotionally unstable for anyone’s comfort, was somehow set free upon the world because he came down with brain cancer.) It’s as if the creators, emboldened from the shocking popularity of “Glee,” submitted the “Horror” script to FX on a dare.

I’ve little doubt “Horror” will -- like Murphy’s prior FX series “Nip/Tuck” – enjoy a long run on FX, but make no mistake: the only thing likely to haunt most viewers is the memory of how ineptly this enterprise was slapped together.

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