"Actor: Boris"

• The Terror | DVD | (19/05/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A lieutentant in Napoleon's army (a young Jack Nicholson) traces a mysterious woman to a castle on the Baltic coast and finds himself trapped by a mad baron (Boris Karloff). This highly enjoyable atmopsheric slice of low-budget horror from the great Roger Corman was also reportedly directed at points by future talents Francis Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich.

• The Roger Corman Horror Collection | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Siren DVD's three-disc Roger Corman Collection contains The Little Shop of Horrors and The Terror, which Corman directed, as well as Dementia 13, which he produced. Though he has a reputation as one of the craftiest businessmen in Hollywood, Corman was too cheapskate in the 1960s to bother copyrighting a bunch of his films and so the same titles have been showing up on video and now DVD from many different distributors. All these films were thrown together in odd circumstances to take advantage of leftover sets, contracted performers or tied-up production funds. Little Shop of Horrors (a disguised remake of A Bucket of Blood) was famously made over a three-day weekend "because it was raining and we couldn't play tennis". The Terror exists because Boris Karloff owed a few days' work after completing The Raven and castle sets were still standing. Dementia 13 was written and directed by a young Francis Coppola in Ireland to take advantage of a European trip made for Corman's The Young Racers. All the films are interesting, in themselves and as footnotes to distinguished filmographies. Little Shop of Horrors has a lasting cult reputation for its blackly comic tale of codependency between a skid-row botanist (Jonathan Haze, relying a bit too much on a Jerry Lewis impersonation) and a blood-drinking, flesh-hungry mutant plant voiced by screenwriter Chuck Griffith ("feed meeee!"), with a creepy cameo from a young Jack Nicholson as a masochist who loves to visit the dentist. The Terror, which has Nicholson as the bewildered lead, is a wilfully incomprehensible Gothic picture made up on the spot by Corman and a handful of other directors (including Coppola and Monte Hellman), climaxing with Karloff's bogus baron and a decaying spectre woman swept away by a flood in the dungeons. Dementia 13, a saga of axe murders and mad sculptors, is brisk grand guignol with a lot of creepy imagery to do with drowned children and family rituals. On the DVD: The Roger Corman Collection limply claims the films are "digitally mastered" (note, not "remastered") as they are simply copies of low-quality video onto disc. Because these titles are public domain no one seems willing to take any care with transfers, and all three films are in terrible state. The Terror, the only colour film, looks especially atrocious (Vistascope cropped to full-frame) but the black-and-white films also suffer all manner of damage. The packaging is classy, but it's a shame more work wasn't done on the films themselves.--Kim Newman

• The Raven | DVD | (29/10/2007) from £7.96   |  Saving you £8.03 (100.88%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Bela Lugosi is the brilliant but deranged surgeon who becomes obssessed with a beautiful dancer after saving her life. He must have her but first must deal with her fiance and father and plans to take care of them in his chamber of Edgar Allen Poe-inspired torture devices. To do the dirty work he enlists the aid of a wanted criminal (Karloff) whom he disfigures with the promise of restoring his features when the job is done.

• Space Fury | DVD | (08/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Two American astronauts are involved in a collision with a Russian space station. One of them is more than he appears; a terrorist with plans to sabotage the mission...

• The Sorcerers | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The Sorcerers, the second film directed by the lost "wunderkind" of British cinema Michael Reeves, may not have the scope and visceral impact of his masterpiece, Witchfinder General (1968), but there's enough fierce originality here to show what a tragic loss it was when he died from a drugs overdose aged only 24. The film also shows the effective use he made of minimal resources, working here on a derisory budget of less than £50,000--of which £11,000 went to the film's sole "named" star, Boris Karloff. Karloff plays an elderly scientist living with his devoted wife in shabby poverty in London, dreaming of the brilliant breakthrough in hypnotic technique that will restore him to fame and fortune. Seeking a guinea-pig, he hits on Mike, a disaffected young man-about-town (Ian Ogilvy, who starred in all three of Reeves' films). But the technique has an unlooked-for side effect--not only can he and his wife make Mike do their bidding, they can vicariously experience everything that he feels. At which point, it turns out that the wife has urges and desires that her husband never suspected. Karloff, then almost at the end of his long career, brings a melancholy dignity to his role; but the revelation is the veteran actress Catherine Lacey as the seemingly sweet old lady, turning terrifyingly avid and venomous as she realises her power. The portrayal of Swinging London, with its mini-skirted dollybirds thronging nightclubs where the strongest stimulant seems to be Coke rather than coke, has an almost touching innocence, but Reeves invests it with a dream-like quality, extending it into scenes of violent death in labyrinthine dark alleys. By this stage, some ten years after it started, the British horror cycle was winding down in lazy self-parody. Reeves had the exceptional talent and vision to revive it, had he only lived. On the DVD: The Sorcerers DVD has original trailers for both this film and Witchfinder General (both woefully clumsy); filmographies for Reeves, Karloff and Ogilvy; an "image gallery" (a grab-bag of posters, stills and lobby cards); detailed written production notes by horror-movie expert Kim Newman; and an excellent 25-minute documentary on Reeves, "Blood Beast", dating from 1999. The transfer is letterboxed full-width, with acceptable sound. --Philip Kemp

• Automata | Blu Ray | (05/08/2015) from £17.86   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Pirates Of The Silver Screen Collection | DVD | (10/07/2006) from £11.71   |  Saving you £1.28 (9.90%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A bounty of five swash buckling adventures comprises this cracking boxed set. Contains: Disc 1 - The Black Pirate (1926) and Captain Kidd (1945) Disc 2 - Treasure Island (1960 TV) The Dancing Pirate (1936) and Shanghaied (1915) Disc 3 - Long John Silver's Return To Treasure Island (1954) and The Love Nest (1923) Disc 4 - The Adventures Of Long John Silver -TV series with Robert Newton:The Necklace Ship O'The Dead Sword of Vengeance Miss Purity's Birthday Dead Reckoning Th

• Black Sabbath | DVD | (25/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Experience Mario Bava's horror classic Black Sabbath A beautiful woman is terrorized by call from an ex-lover who has escaped from prison for the pleasure of killing her... A family becomes a feeding ground when their father returns home wounded after ridding the countryside of a hideous vampire... A nurse is haunted by reproaches from the Beyond after stealing a ring from the finger of a dead medium! Join Boris Karloff as he hosts (and stars in) this trilogy of terror tales

• The Fatal Hour | DVD | (12/10/2009) from £5.38   |  Saving you £-3.39 (-170.40%)   |  RRP £1.99

  The Fatal Hour

• How the Grinch Stole Christmas | Blu Ray | (20/10/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Cauldron Of Blood / Colonel March Of Scotland Yard | DVD | (03/09/2001) from £13.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (36.40%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Screen legend Boris Karloff plays a blind sculptor who uses skeletons as the basis for his unorthodox works of art. Unbeknownst to him his wife Tania (Viveca Lindfors) and her lover provide the skeletons by murdering people and dumping them in an acid bath they keep in the basement laboratory. A journalist played by Jean Pierre Aumont and his girlfriend are the straight couple who trigger the climax after their friend Helga has been given the acid treatment. 'Colonel March of Sc

• Something Weird Collection | DVD | (26/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  There's schlock-horror movie-making par excellence from producer Dick Randall in this Something Weird Collection 1 twofer. Meat Is Meat (1971) finds mad butcher Otto Lehman back in the Viennese community doing what he does best. With its Sweeney Todd overtones this is not for the faint of stomach, but those who enjoy seeing nagging wives and creepy sidekicks transformed into sausages will lap up accordingly. Victor Buono is perfect casting as Lehman, with Brad Harris stylish as the bored American journalist who rumbles his activities and Karen Field looking good as the housekeeper next door. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1973) is less OTT than the title suggests. Rossano Brazzi (earlier of South Pacific!) is a thoughtful Count Frankenstein, while Michael Dunn is seriously unlikable as necrophile dwarf Genz. As anthropologist-cum-sex kitten Krista, Christiane Royce brings a welcome sophistication to this gloss on the hoary Karloff classic, whose opening "location" sequence and standard of dubbing has to be seen to be believed. On the DVD: The Something Weird Collection 1 DVD presentation is of the no-frills variety usual with Siren releases. With decent remastering at 1.33:1 aspect ratio the lurid colour of both films comes through unadulterated. An added attraction is the poster gallery of low-budget shockers with mildly psychedelic soundtrack to boot. It's good, if not so clean fun for all the family. --Richard Whitehouse

• The Monster Legacy | DVD | (25/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £84.99

  The Dracula Legacy 1. Dracula (1931) 2. Son Of Dracula (1943) and House Of Dracula (1945) 3. Dracula (Spanish language version) (1931) and Dracula's Daughter (1936) plus bonus footage The Frankenstein Legacy 1. Frankenstein (1931) 2. The Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) 3. Son Of Frankenstein (1939) and Ghost Of Frankenstein (1942) 4. House Of Frankenstein (1944) plus bonus footage The Wolf Man Legacy 1. The Wolf Man (1941) 2. Werewolf Of London

• Treasure Island | DVD | (11/01/2010) from £5.83   |  Saving you £7.16 (55.10%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Young Jim Hawkins helps his widowed mother run the Admiral Benbow Inn. When former pirate Billy Bones is killed at the inn by other pirates seeking the map to the lost treasure of Captain Flint Jim finds the map and turns it over to his mother's friends Dr. Livesey and Squire Trelawney who organize an expedition to recover the treasure. Jim stows away aboard Livesey and Trelawney's ship which is manned by a crew largely chosen by Long John Silver a one-legged pirate posing as a cook.

• Tchaikovsky: La Roque D'Antheron/Les Pianos De La Nuit | DVD | (19/12/2008) from £18.88   |  Saving you £4.11 (17.90%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Les Pianos De La Nuit is a collection of piano recitals performed live in the heart of Provence during the International Piano festival of La Roque d'Antheron. Conceived specifically for DVD release these virtuoso performances by contemporary artists can claim authoritative status as classic 21st-century archival footage.Tracks Include:PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY - Barcarolle in G minor (June) - From The Seasons Op. 37b- Nocturne in D minor Op. 19 No. 4- Trio in A minor In memory of a great artist Op. 50- Serenade melancolique Op. 26

• The Ghoul | DVD | (25/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Boris Karloff's first British film. The story of Professor Morlant an eccentric Egyptologist who becomes obsessed with the mystical powers of the ancient Egyptian gods. On his deathbed he orders his servant to bind a sacred jewel called 'The Eternal Light' to his hand. He warns that if the jewel is stolen he will return from the grave looking for revenge. Please note: This is a NTSC disc.

• Doomed To Die | DVD | (12/10/2009) from £5.38   |  Saving you £-3.39 (N/A%)   |  RRP £1.99

  Doomed To Die

• Mr. Wong In China Town | DVD | (19/07/2004) from £16.16   |  Saving you £-6.17 (-61.80%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A mysterious Chinese lady shows up at Wong's home and is promptly murdered with a poison dart. This draws Wong and the inspector into a double ended scam involving Chinese warlords and crooked arms dealers. Meanwhile Inspector Street is having troubles with his reporter girlfriend a hyperactive blond who easily steals the show.

• Doomed To Die | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The master of crime cleans up the dirty game of murder! An action-packed detective movie about the mysterious fiery destruction of a luxury liner carrying 400 passengers and a contraband cargo of Chinese bonds. Boris Karloff plays the good guy for a change the Chinese detective James Lee Wong.

• The Ape | DVD | (12/10/2009) from £5.38   |  Saving you £-3.39 (-170.40%)   |  RRP £1.99

  The Ape