Science fiction and horror are film genres that have stood the test of time. From the silent era to today, both genres have meant big bucks at the box office while often winning critical plaudits as well.

Two of this year’s most popular science fiction films, Pacific Rim and World War Z are now available in three home video formats: Blu-ray 3D; Blu-ray 2D and standard DVD. Which one you like better may depend on your preference for giant sea monsters vs. manned robots or fast moving zombies vs. armed representatives of the law. Then again, it may depend on whether you like your action unencumbered by a coherent story or bolstered by some semblance of relatable characters.

Neither film on the face of it appealed to me very much, but I decided to give them both a try in their 2D Blu-ray iterations. While I enjoyed the opening scenes of World War Z, I found most of the film to be nonsensical in the extreme with Brad Pitt slaying zombies left and right while others making valiant attempts to overcome them are turned into zombies themselves. Except for an extremely tense scene involving zombies on a plane, I did not find the rest of the film much to my liking.

I liked Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim more. I liked the film’s witty dialogue and the star performances of Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi as robot pilots. The action sequences, though, didn’t do much for me.

Fantastic Voyage and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea are two older science fiction that have just been given Blu-ray upgrades by Fox.

1966’s Fantastic Voyage, directed by Richard Fleischer, is quite intriguing as it follows the exploits of a group of doctors, scientists and their military escorts who are housed in a shrunken submarine that is injected into the bloodstream of a diplomat to save his life after an assassination attempt. Stephen Boyd and Raquel Welch are the romantic leads, while veteran Arthur Kennedy, Donald Pleasance, Edmond O’Brien and Arthur O’Connell round out the principal cast.

1961’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, directed by Irwin Allen, was inexplicably popular in its day leading to a 1964 TV series. What anyone ever saw in this nonsense about an atomic submarine in mortal danger at the North Pole, I have no idea. It’s ugly to look at, uninteresting and flatly acted by a cast used to better material, Walter Pidgeon, Joan Fontaine and Peter Lorre among them. It doesn’t even look good on Blu-ray.

New Blu-ray horror film releases are well represented with The Haunting; The Other and The Vincent Price Collection.

Robert Wise’s 1963 version of Shirley Jackson’s eerie haunted house novel, The Haunting provided Julie Harris with one of her best screen roles as an insecure spinster attuned to spirits. Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson and Russ Tamblyn co-star in this superior thriller.

Robert Mulligan’s 1972 film, The Other brilliantly captured the essence of actor-turned-author Tom Tryon’s best-seller about the hold of a dead twin on his still living sibling. The Twilight Time release is limited to 3,000 pressings.

Shout! Factory has released a well put together collection of Vincent Price’s best horror films from 1960’s Fall of the House of Usher to 1970’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes. In-between we get The Pit and the Pendulum; The Haunted Palace; The Masque of the Red Death and Witchfinder General AKA Conqueror Worm. The set comes with many extras including lengthy introductions to each film by Price himself. No, not from the grave, he recorded these for a PBS station in Iowa in the 1980s.

Comedy releases are represented by 2013’s The English Teacher on Blu-ray and standard DVD and the Blu-ray upgrades of Notting Hill and Slap Shot.

Julianne Moore leads an excellent cast in The English Teacher, but the story about a middle-aged spinster teacher who produces a former student’s play is wafer thin. The highly publicized subplot about the teacher and former student having sex on the teacher’s desk goes nowhere. Neither does his subsequent romance with a current student. The play’s the thing here. It’s slight, but not bad.

The improbable romance of a mega-watt American film star and a struggling London book seller in 1999’s Notting Hill is buoyed by strong writing by Richard Curtis, direction by Roger Mitchell and the star power of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant at their brightest. It’s lots of fun.

Ice hockey might not seem like an exciting backdrop for an uproarious, yet classy comedy, but that’s just what you get with George Roy Hill’s 1977 film, Slap Shot with Paul Newman in one of his best late career roles.

Finally, TCM Vault Classics has released John Ford at Columbia on standard DVD only. The set features all five films Ford made at the studio over the course of three decades from 1935-1961.

1935’s Capraesque The Whole Town’s Talking provided Edward G. Robinson with a rare comedic role as a milquetoast clerk who bears a resemblance to public enemy number one. 1955’s The Long Gray Line gives us Tyrone Power and Maureen O’Hara at their best as West Point’s long time coach Marty Maher and his wife Mary. 1958’s The Last Hurrah gives us z marvelous Spencer Tracy backed a great supporting cast including Jeffrey Hunter, Pat O’Brien, James Gleason, Donald Crisp, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, Edward Brophy and Jane Darwell in the still relevant Election Day classic. 1958’s Gideon’s Day gives us Jack Hawkins as a busy British detective. 1961’s Two Rode Together gives us James Stewart, Richard Widmark and Shirley Jones in one of the great director’s last westerns.

Only The Long Gray Line and The Last Hurrah were previously released on DVD in the U.S. Gideon’s Day is the complete Technicolor version of the film released in the U.S. in a truncated version re-titled Gideon of Scotland Yard in black-and-white prints by Columbia when released here a second feature to The Last Hurrah after it completed its first-run engagements.

This week’s new releases include Before Midnight and The Way, Way Back.