The US is the king of the [as we call it] backcourse, that link to the archived thread was very intriguing. not having much to add other than most ILS aprch's in the US have a backcourse aprch also certified in order to increase the utility of the terminal airspace and departing traffic can also utilize a backcourse as part of a DP
I've heard of a mythical creature that combines a backcourse with g/s but I've never seen such a system operational.
We also have other varieties of LOC-only Localizer Type Directional aids (LDA) and Simplified directional facilities (SDF) ocasionally with g/s [so they say] useable backcourse and there circling minima for these aprch's are frequently published and the minima decrease in the following order loc-lda-sdf because angular offset from the rwy that may be up to 30 deg. off the aprch end of the rwy.
recently, with the introduction of simultaneous off-set parallel precision radar monitored [prm] {SOIA} approches, the localizer's utility will go even further in expanding airport capacity the FAA produces a mandatory video that details the execution of these special types of SAAR [special aircraft and aircrew req'd] approaches i'll try to find the link to the video on then FAA's web site
http://www.tc.faa.gov/acb300/330_video.asp