This past year, Kino has been offering boxed sets culled from its DVD catalog, arranged by theme (noir, silent horror) at prices far reduced from the top-dollar value assigned individual discs. It’s a good deal for film lovers curious about relatively obscure films, especially those presented in spotty prints with few if any extras. Yet Kino’s latest set, German Expressionism Collection, released today, stands apart. Each of the four pictures is a 1990s German restoration, but two are new to home video and have rarely been seen in America — they are manna for anyone determined to see every title discussed in the writings of Siegfried Kracauer.

Kino’s new selection seems intent on reminding us that Weimar filmmakers were as obsessed with psychotherapy as with aesthetics. Psychiatrists are central figures in two entries — Robert Wiene’s “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920) and G.W. Pabst’s “Secrets of a Soul” (1926) — and psychological horror animates all four, including Arthur Robison’s “Warning Shadows” (1923) and Wiene’s “The Hands of Orlac” (1924).

Be advised that these films do not provide serial thrills, à la Fritz Lang, or pioneering efficiency, à la F.W. Murnau, or impish elegance, à la Ernst Lubitsch. The reason they — excepting “Caligari” — are not much shown is that they represent an expressionism that is as languorous as it is shadowy and histrionic. Yet stick with them; these films have virtues that are uniquely their own: unvarnished visions that, despite their immense cinematic influence, shine with stand-alone integrity. They are postcards from a wildly inspired cultural oasis that existed chiefly in the imagination of its artists, skating on the edge of an abyss.

Consider Werner Krauss, the incredibly prolific actor who made his name as the crab-walking, maniacally glaring murderous psychiatrist-mesmerist Caligari and ended up as a favorite of Goebbels, who cast him in “Jew Suss” (1940) and gratefully declared him an Artist of the State. Krauss is the head, heart, and soul of “Secrets of a Soul,” this collection’s big find, and another unusual triumph for the often underrated Pabst. As a tubby, impotent, middle-age husband named Martin Fellman, Krauss is hardly a matinee idol, yet we can see in this role his charm and the canny touches of realism (despite the overheated emoting) that enthralled German audiences before and after Krauss took on Caligari’s primordial petulance.

“Secrets of a Soul” is the only film Freud ever came close to approving. As Kino’s on-screen essay details, the supreme dream-catcher insisted his name not be involved, but cautiously and, ultimately, regretfully allowed members of his inner circle, Hanns Sachs and Karl Abraham, to serve as advisers. They were supposed to ensure accuracy in a script that has the hero cured by the analysis of a single dream, relieving his symptoms and restoring his potency: An epilogue has Krauss’s chemist turn from a clean lake, fertile with fish, to wave to his infant son. Not surprisingly, this is one of the films that contains what Kracauer considered a characteristically Germanic expression of male fragility — a scene in which the protagonist lays his head on his mother’s lap.

Hitchcock had to have seen this film, probably more than once. The obsession with knives is directly echoed in his own “Blackmail” (1929). The repeatedly frustrated climb up a bell tower is central to “Vertigo” (1958). “Spellbound” (1945) almost qualifies as a remake; its dream sequence, designed by Salvador Dali, is no improvement on the in-camera optical tricks that Pabst created with his three cameramen. In “Secrets of a Soul,” the dream is first depicted in its entirety before being broken into component parts as the psychiatrist (played by one Pavel Pavlov, honest) solves its mysteries point by point.

At 75 minutes, “Secrets of a Soul” suffers from minimal dawdling. That cannot be said of “The Hands of Orlac,” which, at nearly two hours, is helped immensely by the x2 speed button on the remote. This famous title, which was remade by MGM as the Peter Lorre vehicle “Mad Love” (1935), is nonetheless a savory addition to the box. For one thing, it captures a sensational performance by Conrad Veidt (the somnambulant Cesar in “Caligari”) as the concert pianist, Orlac, whose hands are destroyed in a confusingly expressionistic train wreck. They are surgically replaced with a murderer’s hands, which Orlac suspects have a mind of their own.

The script builds to a neat finish, where the tempo matches the revelations that, though hardly plausible, are hellbent on psychological logic and non-supernatural criminal malfeasance. Along the way, Wiene, working with realistic sets, throws in a bread-crumb trail of Freudian symbols. Kino’s presentation is more complete than the Murnau Archive’s 35 mm restoration; producer Bret Wood added a few shots that existed only in a 16 mm print. The increased running time may go unappreciated, but Mr. Wood’s scene-by-scene comparisons, amplified by excerpts from Maurice Renard’s novel, make for a worthy DVD bonus.

Little needs be said of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” other than that it remains unique and lively 88 years, to the month, after its theatrical debut. The story-within-the-story framework, once harshly criticized, turned out to be a masterstroke, deepening the meaning over time. Even Kracauer, who explicated the scenarists’ complaint that it undermined their attack on authoritarianism by making the narrator rather than Caligari insane, conceded that it makes a larger point in establishing the madhouse as normative — a more horrific and prophetic vision. Kino’s exemplary DVD includes two musical scores that create two dramatically different viewing experiences.

If you haven’t seen Robison’s “Warning Shadows: A Nocturnal Hallucination,” released by Kino in 2006 (with, disappointingly, no extras whatsoever), here is an economical way of catching up with a masterpiece that remains, like “Caligari,” sui generis. American-born, Robison went to Germany to attend medical school and stayed to direct films. Shot without intertitles (a year before Murnau’s similarly conceived “The Last Laugh”), “Warning Shadows” rewards concentration, though even after several screenings, a few incidents remain ambiguous. Photographed by the fabled Fritz Arno Wagner, it does “Peter Pan” one better by divorcing all the characters from their shadows. Wagner had a field day coordinating the actors and their shadows in illusory poses.

“Warning Shadows” unfolds as a Goethian nightmare (it takes place in the early 1800s, during a single evening), as the “elective affinities” of a flirtatious wife, jealous husband, young suitor, three old letches, and three servants bounce off the walls, while their shadows indulge their own pastimes. A puppeteer, who serves as de facto psychologist, begs to perform and literally removes their shadows, allowing them to see where all their proclivities might lead if unchecked. The film is often very funny, as the puppeteer’s wall shadows rest on the neck of one character or come nose to nose with another. There are more Freudian jokes here than in the other three films put together, as men reach for the shadows of womanly limbs — an early instance of virtual sex.

The wife is superbly played Ruth Weyher (she also plays the less interesting wife in “Secrets of a Soul”), a distinctively beautiful woman whose career did not survive the silent era. She dances in a see-through dress, sporting a log-like hair extension that seems to grow more erect as the film unreels. In direct contrast, the most peculiar of the servants (played by the great Fritz Rasp) wears his hair split up the back and pulled forward on the sides. For all the sexual mischief, “Warning Shadows” is one of the few films that could be said to be about the art of cinematography — the artful manipulation of light to create the illusion of life. Even the natural daylight, in the last scene, is a conjuror’s trick — one that hasn’t grown old.

Mr. Giddins is the author of “Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books.”