"Actor: Basil"

• The Dam Busters - Collectors Edition | Blu Ray | (04/06/2018) from £12.00   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A BRAND NEW RESTORATION COMMEMORATING THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ORIGINAL WWII RAID A much-loved British classic, Michael Anderson's 1955 drama captures the tension and bravery of an audacious raid on the center of Nazi Germany's industrial complex and the quintessentially English combination of inventiveness and dogged determination. Split into two distinct sections, the film deals first with the fraught, but the ultimately successful development of a new bomb, by Dr. Barnes N. Wallis (Michael Redgrave). The second deals with the mission itself during the British raid on the Ruhr Dams, and its associated costs for the enemy and for the British airmen. Adapted by R.C. Sherriff from Paul Brickhill's book Enemy Coast Ahead and featuring superlative special effects photography by Gilbert Taylor (to say nothing of Eric Coates' stirring theme tune), The Dam Busters was Britain's biggest box office the success of 1955. Collector's Edition Includes a 64-page booklet with brand new essays, and photographs, plus a rare print of an ariel photograph of the Mohne dam post raid, signed by the original 617 squadron Features: RAF poster of the Chastise Lancaster's

• Caesar And Cleopatra | DVD | (19/06/2007) from £4.35   |  Saving you £11.64 (267.59%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Vivien Leigh is the young Cleopatra and Claude Rains is Julius Caesar in the spectacular 1945 version of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. As Rome invades Egypt Julius Caesar (Rains) stumbles across the young and unrefined princess Cleopatra (Leigh) sheltering in the Sphinx. Impressed by her spirit and intelligence seduced by her charm he determines to make her Queen. Cleopatra learns about power and politics at the feet of a master but her downfall begins when she is se

• Millions Like Us | DVD | (20/07/2015) from £6.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (85.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  When shy working-class girl Celia Crowson (Roc) is called up for war service during World War Two, she dreams of a glamorous job in one of the services. But as a young unmarried woman, she is given a position in a local factory manufacturing aircraft parts. There she makes friends with other girls from very different social backgrounds, and begins a tentative relationship with a young airman, Fred Blake (Gordon Jackson).

• The Dambusters | DVD | (18/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Something of a cult item among British war movies (and brilliantly spoofed a few years back by a lager ad), The Dam Busters turns a minor World War II incident into a saga of heroic stiff-upper-lippery in the classic British style. A bombing raid is proposed on a strategically vital Ruhr dam, but its position is inaccessible. Enter eccentric inventor Dr Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave in best daffy professor mode) who comes up with a genius idea--a bomb that will bounce on water like a skimmed pebble. Naturally the top brass pooh-pooh it, but gallant Wing Commander Guy Gibson (Richard Todd) is persuaded, and between them flyer and boffin forge ahead. The touches of carefully understated emotion now verge on self-parody, but it's hard not to get caught up in the narrative sweep, especially when the bombers take off on their mission and Eric Coates' stirring march hits the soundtrack. The modelwork, state-of-the-art for its early 1950s period, still looks impressive, and the death of Gibson's beloved black Labrador (embarrassingly called Nigger) is a three-hanky moment to rival the shooting of Bambi's mum. --Philip Kemp

• When The Boat Comes In - Series 1 - Part 3 | DVD | (08/09/2003) from £11.45   |  Saving you £8.54 (74.59%)   |  RRP £19.99

  King for a Day. Sir Horatio Manners offers Jack a job which he can't afford to turn down. Meanwhile Bella is concerned about where Tom is getting his money from. Episode titles include: 'King For A Day' 'Happy New Year - Some Say' 'Heads You Win - Tails I Lose' 'Kind-hearted at With A Lifebelt'.

• The Definitive Ealing Studios Collection | DVD | (16/10/2006) from £109.99   |  Saving you £-69.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £40.00

  A box set featuring 16 of the finest efforts from the house of Ealing. 1. Champagne Charlie (Dir. Alberto Cavalcanti 1944) 2. Dead of Night (Dirs. Alberto Cavalcanti & Charles Crichton 1945) 3. Hue & Cry (Dir. Charles Crichton 1947) 4. It Always Rains on Sunday (Dir. Robert Hamer 1947) 5. Kind Hearts and Coronets (Dir. Robert Hamer 1949) 6. The Ladykillers (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick 1955) 7. The Lavender Hill Mob (Dir. Charles Crichton 1951) 8. The Maggie (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick 1954) 9. The Magnet (Dir. Charles Frend 1950) 10. The Man in The White Suit (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick 1951) 11. Nicholas Nickelby (Dir. Alberto Cavalcanti 1947) 12. Passport To Pimlico (Dir. Henry Cornelius 1949) 13. Scott of The Antarctic (Dir. Charles Frend 1948) 14. The Titfield Thunderbolt (Dir. Charles Crichton 1953) 15. Went The Day Well? (Dir. Alberto Cavalcanti 1942) 16. Whisky Galore (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick 1949)

• Return Of The Living Dead III | Blu Ray | (28/08/2017) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Return of the Living Dead III is the third go-round for a premise intended as both a sequel to and a satire of the George A Romero Living Dead films. This could just as easily have been an entry in director Brian Yuzna's Re-Animator series, and indeed the plot nugget seems derived from the last shot of Re-Animator itself, as a devoted youth (J. Trevor Edmond) revives his freshly dead girlfriend (Mindy Clarke) with trioxin, a military zombie-making gas, and learns to regret his actions. Though it has some left-field ideas--the heroine turns herself into a DIY Hellraiser Cenobite poster-girl with extreme body piercing to distract herself from the desire to eat her boyfriend's brain--and effective action, it is still confined by its low budget and thus stuck with ordinary acting, a minimal plot and too many dumb developments. The central thread is the necrophile/SM romance, which ends up in a liebestod clinch in the army base's furnace, but there's a sub-plot about a quartet of zombified gang members which serves mainly to get some violence going every few minutes. Clarke is a striking presence, studded with bits of metal like a punk porcupine, but her performance flat lines even before her death in a motorcycle crash and revival as a zombie, while the rest of the cast--with the honourable exceptions of Kent McCord as a senior officer and Basil Wallace as a mystical down-and-out--are typified by Sarah Douglas' strident militarist mad scientist, who wants to put zombies in armoured exoskeletons and deploy them as combat troops. Nevertheless, this is gruesome fun for the fans, with some imaginative zombie mutilation effects. On the DVD: It's a no-frills full-screen transfer. The only extra is a 50-second trailer.--Kim Newman

• Sherlock Holmes And The House Of Fear | DVD | (26/05/2008) from £8.85   |  Saving you £-2.86 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Sherlock Holmes ever abetted by the trusty Watson investigates a series of deaths at a castle with each foretold by the delivery of orange pips to the victims...

• The Best Of Ealing Collection | DVD | (06/10/2008) from £29.95   |  Saving you £5.04 (16.83%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Titles Comprise: Kind Hearts And Coronets: Set in the stately Edwardian era Kind Hearts And Coronets is black comedy at is best with the most articulate and literate of all Ealing screenplays. Sir Alec Guinness gives a virtuoso performance in his Ealing comedy debut playing all eight victims standing between a mass-murderer and his family fortune. Considered by some to be Ealing's most perfect achievement of all the Ealing films. The Ladykillers director Alexander Mackendrick's third Ealing farce is the final comedy produced by the famous British studio and one of its most celebrated. Like the equally applauded Kind Hearts And Coronets the film is more sophisticated and blacker in tone than typically lighthearted Ealing fare (such as Mackendrick's Whiskey Galore!). Alec Guinness stars as the superbly shifty toothily threatening Professor Marcus the leader of a crime ring planning a heist. Marcus rents rooms from a sweet eccentric old lady Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) in her crooked London house. The professor and his co-conspirators blowhard Major Courtney (Cecil Parker) creepily suave Louis (Herbert Lom) chubby Harry (Peter Sellers) and muscleman One-Round (Danny Green) pose as an unlikely string quartet using the rooms for rehearsal. Dodging Mrs. Wilberforce's constant interruptions the hoods hit upon the idea to use her in the daring daylight robbery (filmed in and around London's King's Cross station). When the old girl discovers the truth Marcus and company cannot persuade her to stay buttoned up about it and thus decide to do her in. Accompanied by a noirish cacophony of screeching trains parrots and little old ladies at afternoon tea a series of unlikely events builds to the hilarious surprising finale. The Man In The White Suit: Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) works quietly at Michael Corland's (Michael Gough) textile mill until his mysterious costly lab experiment is discovered. Fired by Corland Stratton takes a menial job at Alan Birnley's (Cecil Parker) mill in order to continue his work on the sly. When Daphne (Joan Greenwood) Corland's fianc''e and Birnley's daughter discovers his secret she threatens to expose Stratton. The desperate scientist reveals to Daphne that he has invented an indestructible cloth that never gets dirty. Close to realizing his vision Stratton celebrates by having a white suit made of the fabric (because it repels dye). The trouble however is just beginning. The lowly mill workers (who spout market economics in rough accents) fear for their jobs while the mill owners led by the decrepit Godfather-esque Sir John Kierlaw (Ernest Thesiger) worry about their profits. Passport To Pimlico: An archaic document found in a bombsite reveals that the London district of Pimlico has for centuries technically been part of France. The local residents embrace their new found continental status seeing it as a way to avoid the drabness austerity and rationing of post-war England. The authorities do not however share their enthusiasm... The Lavender Hill Mob: Mr. Holland (Alec Guinness) has supervised the bank's bullion run for years. He is fussy and unnecessarily overprotective but everyone knows he is absolutely trustworthy. And so on the day the bullion truck is robbed he is the last person to be suspected. But there is another side to Mr. Holland; he is also Dutch the leader of the Lavender Hill Mob.

• The Galloping Major (Vintage Classics) | DVD | (08/08/2022) from £10.35   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  This brand-new restoration of the 1951 British comedy The Galloping Major directed by Henry Cornelius is based on an idea by Basil Radford. After a successful day at the races, Major Arthur Hill (Basil Radford) and Harold Temple (Hugh Griffith) decide to raise a £300 syndicate to buy a certain racehorse. With excited help from their friends (Janette Scott, Jimmy Hanley, Rene Ray, Joyce Grenfell, A. E. Matthews) they get the money, but things don't go so smoothly from here. First, they accidently buy the wrong horse which proves to have more of an affinity for jumping than racing. They then decide to train it themselves as a jumper under the new name The Galloping Major . However, on the night before the Grand National, the horse mysteriously disappears... Product Features NEW Locations featurette with Historian Richard Dacre Betting On Success - Matthew Sweet On the Galloping Major Stills Gallery

• The Harder They Come | DVD | (24/08/2015) from £7.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (87.61%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Cult Jamaican classic starring reggae star Jimmy Cliff as Ivanhoe Martin a country boy who comes to Kingston to make it big in the music industry. Hampered by payola and music industry corruption Ivanhoe turns to ganjadealing to try and make ends meet. Events spiral out of his control and he soon fi nds himself on the run from the police. The celebrated soundtrack is peppered with reggae classics by the likes of Toots and the Maytals Desmond Dekker The Melodians and Cliff himself who performs among others the title track and the timeless ‘Many Rivers to Cross’.

• Bing Crosby Collection - Rhythm On The River / Rhythm On The Range | DVD | (08/05/2006) from £5.03   |  Saving you £10.96 (217.89%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Rhythm On The River (Dir. Victor Schertzinger 1940): Bing Crosby and Mary Martin play a pair of star-crossed ghostwriters he of melody and she of lyrics who discover that the man they write for is a fake but their love for each other is real. Rhythm On The Range (Dir. Norman Taurog 1936): Bing plays a singing cowboy out where the b-b-b-buffalo roam in this lighthearted musical western.

• Tales of Terror | Blu Ray | (09/03/2015) from £17.99   |  Saving you £2.00 (11.12%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Tales of Terror is a trio of Edgar Allen Poe stories, starring three of horror's greats--Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone and Peter Lorre--and produced and directed by the immortal Roger Corman. The first story, "Morella", involves a girl (Debra Paget) who returns to her isolated, spooky family home to see her estranged father (Price) for the first time in 26 years. He's let the housekeeping slide a bit--cobwebs abound and, oh, yes, his dead wife is still upstairs. Peter Lorre joins the fun for "The Black Cat", a piece with comic flavour that allows Price to show his rarely seen silly side, and then it's Basil Rathbone's turn to be creepy in "The Case of M Valdemar", the tale of a mesmerist who decides to experiment with the unknown (bad idea). The movie is well paced, and makes good use of comedy without undercutting its chills. It's a rare treat to see this many masters of the genre working together and so clearly enjoying themselves. --Ali Davis

• The Black Cat (1941) DVD UK | DVD | (18/04/2016) from £8.00   |  Saving you £7.99 (99.88%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The family of wealthy, elderly Henrietta Winslow (Cecilia Loftus) gathers for an advance reading of her will. Believing Henrietta is near death, her nephew, Montague (Basil Rathbone), has brought along realtor Gil Smith (Broderick Crawford). Dismayed that the family anticipates her demise, Henrietta reads her will and stuns everyone by adding that no one can inherit until the estate guardian, Abigail (Gale Sondergaard), dies. When Henrietta is murdered, Abigail fears her own life is in danger.

• The Dam Busters | Blu Ray | (04/06/2018) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A BRAND NEW RESTORATION COMMEMORATING THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ORIGINAL WWII RAID A much-loved British classic, Michael Anderson's 1955 drama captures the tension and bravery of an audacious raid on the center of Nazi Germany's industrial complex and the quintessentially English combination of inventiveness and dogged determination. Split into two distinct sections, the film deals first with the fraught, but the ultimately successful development of a new bomb, by Dr. Barnes N. Wallis (Michael Redgrave). The second deals with the mission itself during the British raid on the Ruhr Dams, and its associated costs for the enemy and for the British airmen. Adapted by R.C. Sherriff from Paul Brickhill's book Enemy Coast Ahead and featuring superlative special effects photography by Gilbert Taylor (to say nothing of Eric Coates' stirring theme tune), The Dam Busters was Britain's biggest box office the success of 1955

• The Galloping Major (Vintage Classics) | Blu Ray | (08/08/2022) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  This brand-new restoration of the 1951 British comedy The Galloping Major directed by Henry Cornelius is based on an idea by Basil Radford. After a successful day at the races, Major Arthur Hill (Basil Radford) and Harold Temple (Hugh Griffith) decide to raise a £300 syndicate to buy a certain racehorse. With excited help from their friends (Janette Scott, Jimmy Hanley, Rene Ray, Joyce Grenfell, A. E. Matthews) they get the money, but things don't go so smoothly from here. First, they accidently buy the wrong horse which proves to have more of an affinity for jumping than racing. They then decide to train it themselves as a jumper under the new name The Galloping Major . However, on the night before the Grand National, the horse mysteriously disappears... Product Features NEW Locations featurette with Historian Richard Dacre Betting On Success - Matthew Sweet On the Galloping Major Stills Gallery

• Hamlet | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £6.49   |  Saving you £3.50 (53.93%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In the opening scene of Hamlet, Laurence Olivier describes the play in a voice-over as "the tragedy of a man who couldn't make up his mind". But Olivier's screen adaptation is considerably more thoughtful and complex than this thesis would suggest. The contradictions and ambiguities of the title character, who prowls cavernous sets filled with vast, ancient corridors and winding staircases, emerge as if from a dream. The plethora of tracking shots--precise enough to impress Stanley Kubrick--encircle Olivier and his tightly constructed geometry of demise. Drawing on his experience playing the Prince on stage at Elsinore in 1937, the legendary thesp provides the film with the patina of greatness and shows how the constitution of the formerly cheerful Prince weakens increasingly under the burden of his own thoughts and inability to accept his mother's o'er-hasty marriage to uncle Claudius (Basil Sydney). Indeed, if emotions could possess ghosts, Olivier's Hamlet shows how they would manifest themselves. There is even a dollop of Freud, suggesting that Queen Gertrude (Eileen Herlie) has perhaps loved her offspring too closely--thus providing the fuel for Hamlet's actions. As Ophelia, Jeans Simmons captures the character's early spirit better than her gradual disintegration (Helena Bonham Carter fares better in Franco Zeffirelli's fine 1990 remake). Purists may bemoan the loss of Fortinbras, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but these choices allow Olivier to focus more squarely on Hamlet's plight. His monologues, many held in secret enclaves, glow with the dramatic markedness of a Dostoevski novel, with all of the master's irony, allusions and witticisms in place. The winner of four Oscars (Best Picture, Actor, Art Direction, and Costumes), this is a Hamlet for the ages. The rest is silence. --Kevin Mulhall

• The Harder They Come | Blu Ray | (24/08/2015) from £9.45   |  Saving you £30.54 (323.17%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Cult Jamaican classic starring reggae star Jimmy Cliff as Ivanhoe Martin a country boy who comes to Kingston to make it big in the music industry. Hampered by payola and music industry corruption Ivanhoe turns to ganjadealing to try and make ends meet. Events spiral out of his control and he soon fi nds himself on the run from the police. The celebrated soundtrack is peppered with reggae classics by the likes of Toots and the Maytals Desmond Dekker The Melodians and Cliff himself who performs among others the title track and the timeless ‘Many Rivers to Cross’.

• Ice Cold In Alex | DVD | (18/04/2005) from £6.59   |  Saving you £7.40 (112.29%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The title Ice Cold in Alex refers to the beer the heroes of this 1958 British World War Two classic plan to drink in Alexandria, once they have escaped from the Germans, negotiated minefields and survived both mechanical failure and the killing heat of the North African sands. The setting is Libya in 1942, at the height of the campaigns featured in The Desert Fox (1951) and The Desert Rats (1953), and a disparate group in a military ambulance--which include a Nazi agent to add tension of one kind and a beautiful nurse to add tension of another--must make an epic journey to safety. Staring John Mills, Sylvia Sims, Anthony Quayle and Harry Andrews the terror and poignancy comes from our certainty that not everyone will survive, such that the suspense sometimes reaches near unbearable levels. Director J Lee-Thomson was clearly inspired by the then recent French masterpiece, The Wages of Fear (1952) and handles both the character drama and set-pieces with great skill. He would go on to make another great war adventure, The Guns of Navarone (1961), also starring Anthony Quayle, who then returned to the desert for the ultimate British war classic, Lawrence of Arabia (1962). --Gary S. Dalkin

• The Angel With the Trumpet | DVD | (05/10/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A British adaptation of one of post-war Austria's most significant films, The Angel With the Trumpet is the powerful, panoramic story of a family's tribulations from the last decades of the nineteenth century through to the dark days of Nazi rule. Featuring the great dramatic actress Eileen Herlie in her first starring role, this film also stars Basil Sydney, Norman Wooland and Anthony Bushell, who also directed. It is presented here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio.When Francis Alt, the head of the famous family of Viennese piano makers, decides to marry socialite Henrietta Stein, his family object due to her Jewish heritage and known dalliance with the Crown Prince Rudolph. When the marriage goes ahead despite their objections the Prince commits suicide, leaving Henrietta a note...SPECIAL FEATURES:Image GalleryPromotional Material PDFs