"Actor: Chapman"

• All The Real Girls | DVD | (16/02/2004) from £7.84   |  Saving you £12.15 (154.97%)   |  RRP £19.99

  From the young director of 2000's critically acclaimed "George Washington" comes a love story set in a small country town in Southern America.

• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life | DVD | (04/09/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Returning to the sketch-show format of their earlier days, Monty Python' s The Meaning of Life was always going to feel less ambitious and less coherent than their cinematic masterpiece, The Life of Brian. And inevitably given the format, some sketches are better than others. But, for a movie that has been much-maligned, The Meaning of Life actually features some of the Pythons' most memorable set-pieces: the exploding Mr Creosote has to be the most wonderfully grotesque creation of a team whose speciality was the grotesque; while the sublime "Sperm Song" mixes satire and lavish visual humour in a musical skit of breathtaking audacity. Elsewhere, Eric Idle produces another musical gem with "The Universe Song" ("Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space / 'Cause there's bugger all down here on earth!"), while the Grim Reaper's appearance at an achingly tedious dinner party is the Pythons doing what they do best: mocking their own middle-class origins. Best of all, perhaps, is Terry Gilliam's modest introductory feature, "The Crimson Permanent Assurance", a 20-minute epic tale of the little men rebelling against the corporate system, a theme and a visual style that foreshadows his own masterwork, Brazil. Admittedly too many sketches sacrifice subtlety for shock tactics (the organ donation scene in particular requires a strong stomach), but when this film works it's nothing less than vintage Python. --Mark Walker

• Early Bird, The / Press For Time | DVD | (12/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Norman Wisdom reprises his best-loved character, the comically inept Pitkin, in 1965's The Early Bird, ably supported once again by Edward Chapman in his final appearance as Mr Grimsdale. This time around Wisdom is the only milkman working for Grimsdale's Dairy, a small business threatened by a menacing large corporation in the shape of Consolidated Dairies and their electric milk floats. Grimsdale and Pitkin must evoke the Dunkirk spirit to save their family firm from the grasp of the faceless giant. Of course, the wafer-thin plot is the merest excuse for a series of calamitous set pieces in which Wisdom wreaks havoc in his trademark bumbling manner. The best bits involve a disastrous game of golf, the usual shenanigans with a fire hose and a virtuoso tour de force opening sequence as the household struggles to wake up in the morning, all set to Ron Goodwin's tongue-in-cheek music score. --Mark Walker In Press for Time Norman Wisdom offered his version of the crusading reporter movie, though by 1966 time was running out for Norman's style of big-screen comedy. Perhaps a sign of his growing frustration with the formulaic nature of his pictures was that he stretched himself to play not just his usual underdog hero, but also his own mother and his grandfather, the Prime Minister. Wisdom also cowrote the movie in which, as a reporter in a small seaside town, he causes chaos for the council, organises a beauty parade and dresses as a suffragette. Though now nearing the end of his years as a movie star, Wisdom shows himself to still be as polished as ever at his own brand of good-natured slapstick. --Gary S Dalkin

• The Best of Monty Python's Flying Circus/Live at Aspen | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  In just four series the ground-breaking anarchic surreal and hilarious Monty Python's Flying Circus - featuring Graham Chapman John Cleese Terry Gilliam Eric Idle Terry Jones and Michael Palin - changed the face of comedy. Over 30 years later their skits animation and sketches seem as fresh as ever. This compilation of the best moments from the series includes such classics as 'Dead Parrot Sketch' 'Ministry Of Silly Walks' 'Spanish Inquisition' 'Upper Class Twit of the Year' and 'Lumberjack Song'.Live At Aspen filmed in 1998 finds the team discussing the show and performing their favourite sketches. It was the first time in 18 years that all the Python members had appeared on stage together (the late Graham Chapman making his appearance in an urn).

• Juno and the Paycock (1930) | DVD | (20/09/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Derived from Sean O'Casey s acclaimed play, Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of Juno and the Paycock is one of the Master s most unjustly neglected films. Down in the Dublin slums, Captain Boyle is a shiftless layabout, scrounging off his hard-working wife Juno. When he learns he has inherited a great deal of money, their lives change forever. Starring members of the cast of the original Abbey Theatre production, this powerful drama shows there was more to Hitchcock than just suspense. His skill...

• A Liar's Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman 3D (Blu-ray 3D + Blu Ray) | Blu Ray | (18/02/2013) from £17.15   |  Saving you £2.84 (16.56%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Graham Chapman (the dead one from Monty Python) writes and stars in the movie of his own life story. Although Chapman selfishly dropped dead in 1989 he had taken the trouble to record himself reading his book and those recordings have now been used to provide Chapman's voice in the film. Fellow Pythons John Cleese, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam also turn up, along with a few surprise guest including Cameron Diaz, Stephen Fry and Lloyd Kaufman.

• The Magic Christian | DVD | (22/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In this adaptation of Terry Southern's offbeat novel an eccentric millionaire adopts a down-and-out vagrant he stumbles upon in the park as his son. The pair embark on a series of practical jokes and elaborate stunts designed to expose the wanton greed that exists in everybody - and prove that everyone has his price.

• Monty Python's Personal Best Collection | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  The best-loved Monty Python sketches chosen by the surviving Pythons themselves!

• Hellraiser | Blu Ray | (20/07/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When Frank Cotton solves the mystery of a Chinese puzzle box he enters the world of the Cenobites. A world where these cruel sadists thrive on pain. Later restored to life by the blood of his brother Larry Frank rises to feed on the life force of others. When Larry's wife agrees to provide the sacrifices he needs the spills chills and thrills are just beginning. Written and directed by the brilliant Clive Barker Hellraiser is a film that cannot be ignored.

• Brotherhood Season 2 | DVD | (24/01/2011) from £3.89   |  Saving you £21.10 (542.42%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The second season of the critically-adored and Peabody Award-winning series Brotherhood returns to DVD. This 3-disc set includes all 10 dramatic season two episodes where we reunite with the Caffee family for more explosive blue-collar drama violence and politics. In the tradition of Showtimes brilliant original programming this series continues to compellingly examine the perhaps not-so-different moral worlds of politicians and mobsters as shown through the dynamic Caffee brothers. Episodes Comprise: One Too Many Mornings 3:4-8 Down in the Flood 3:5-6 The Lonesome Death of... 4:7:8 Dear Landlord 1:3-4 True Love Tends to Forget 1:1-4 Only a Pawn... 1:7-8 Not Dark Yet 3:5-6 Shelter From the Storm 1:1-2 Call Letter Blues 1:2-6 Things Have Changed 1:7-8

• Public Eye - The Complete 1972-3 Series | DVD | (06/04/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Alfred Burke stars as down-at-heel Inquiry Agent Frank Marker in this critically acclaimed, long-running drama series. Always working the lower end of the spectrum - divorces, missing persons, bankruptcies - the public found a great affinity with Marker and the series was a huge success over its ten-year life span. This set contains all 13 episodes from the 1972/3 series - complete and uncut. The Bankrupt: How is a bankrupt riding around in a Rolls Royce? Girl in Blue: Marker is hired to find a missing daughter. Many a Slip: Can a doctors wife be a potential credit defaulter? Mrs. Podmores Cat: Markers telephone is cut off because of an unpaid bill. The Man who Said Sorry: Who is the stranger that turns up late at Markers office? Horse and Carriage: Its Christmas, but does anyone have goodwill for Marker? A Family Affair: Why was an old mans estate divided between his sons and housekeeper? The Golden Boy: Why has a young scholar disappeared without trace? The Windsor Royal: Who has stolen two bushes of roses from Lawrences Nurseries? Its a Womans Privilege: Why has Mrs. Mortimer paid Marker a visit? Home and Away: Is a football fanatic really playing away with another woman? Egg and Cress Sandwiches: Who has been writing poison pen letters to the churchwarden? The Trouble with Jenny: Why has one of Markers fellow guests tried to gas herself?

• Gone To Earth | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Hazel Woodus is a peculiar young girl living on the Welsh border at the turn of the century. Dominated by superstitions and lore which she reads from a book she is devoted to her pet fox and to all the local creatures. One of the legends she reads says she must marry the first man who proposes. This turns out to be the mild mannered minister Marston and fearing the legend she agrees to marry him. Hazel feels no true desire for her husband and cannot resist the advances of the r

• Legacy | DVD | (29/06/2015) from £3.05   |  Saving you £11.20 (625.70%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The British youth comedy of 2015 Legacy (starring Attack The Block's Franz Drameh) follows the hilarious misadventures of five school friends as they struggle against a local gangster-run rival event to throw the loudest largest wildest party in living memory. What would you do to get in?

• The Reivers | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Boon is a reiver (that's a cheat a liar a brawler and womaniser) and he has just four days to teach young Lucius the facts of life (like cheating lying brawling and womanizing)! Based on the novel by William Faulkner THE REIVERS tells the story of a young boy who leaves home and sets out on a journey with his best friend and Boon Hogganbeck (McQueen) his family's handyman. During the trip from Jefferson to Memphis the trio learns some valuable life lessons.

• Convoy | DVD | (18/05/2020) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Clive Brook and John Clements star as naval officers at odds with one other in this thrilling drama from Ealing Studios that pits duty against love during wartime. The final film from rising star Pen Tennyson, killed a year later on active service, Convoy is presented here as a brand-new transfer from original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. Returning to port after a long and tiring tour of duty, Captain Armitage receives orders to take his warship and urgently escort a fleet of merchantmen safely to Britain. Reaching the convoy, Armitage realises that one ship is missing and amongst the refugees it is carrying is his ex-wife, Lucy. SPECIAL FEATURE: Image gallery

• Brotherhood Season 1 | DVD | (26/07/2010) from £4.49   |  Saving you £20.50 (456.57%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This riveting series puts a familial spin on Angels with Dirty Faces, the 1938 James Cagney-Pat O'Brien classic in which two childhood friends take divergent paths--one becomes a priest, and the other a hoodlum. In Brotherhood, Michael Caffee (Jason Clarke) is an idealistic and respectable Rhode Island state representative dedicated to the preservation of his close-knit lower-middle-class Irish neighbourhood, the Hill. His older brother, Michael (Jason Isaacs), is a gangster who returns home after a seven-year absence (one step ahead of a hit, two steps ahead of the Feds) to pick up where he left off. The stage is set for backroom skullduggery and mean streets thuggery, as both men pursue their visions of the American dream on opposite sides of the law. At the heart of this series is the conflict between the estranged brothers. With the exception of clueless matriarch MaryRose (Fionnula Flanagan), Michael is not exactly received with open arms. "You're a tornado," Tommy tells him early on. "You suck everything in and spit it out broken." Indeed, the man is a psychopath. When a henchman of neighbourhood mob boss Freddie Cork (Kevin Chapman) threatens a woman, Michael not only repeatedly bashes his head against a car, but for the coup de grace, cuts off his ear. In one gut-wrenching scene, he compels a woman to sell him her store by inducing her mentally challenged brother to play Russian Roulette. No wonder Tommy insists, "We're not the same in any way." But don't be too sure. Michael is a good man and devoted father and husband, but he isn't above (or beneath) using Michael's inside information to blackmail a stubborn colleague who won't vote his way on a freeway project that could destroy the Hill. As the season unfolds, he will be forced to make more ethically challenged deals with the powers behind the scenes, one of whom has a mysterious connection with his mother. Brotherhood mines the clash between personal and professional lives to flesh out its characters. "The people's business" doesn't pay well, and Tommy is forced to moonlight as a real estate developer, and perform all home repairs. Eileen (Annabeth Gish), his picture-perfect politician's wife, smokes pot and is having an affair with a man she knew in high school. Declan Gigg (Ethan Embry) is a conflicted policeman who grew up with the Caffees. Comparisons with The Sopranos are inevitable, but Brotherhood quickly establishes its own unique voice, if not accent. --Donald Liebenson

• It's In The Water | DVD | (08/07/2002) from £10.78   |  Saving you £9.21 (85.44%)   |  RRP £19.99

  We're not talking about monsters of the deep here. It's In the Water is set in the imaginary town of Azalea Springs, Texas, where the community is blighted by wealth and smugness and where the greatest crime is not to fit in--and that includes being gay. When the outrageous and fearless Spencer (John Hallum, camping it up) playfully lets on that there's something in the water supply that encourages homosexuality, the temperature of local gossip rises as fast as the sales of bottled water. Kelli Herd, in her directorial debut, aims to cast scorn on such phobic behaviour by sending up the straight guys and idealising the gays. Thus we have our central character, Alex (Keri Jo Chapman), whose life consists of lunches and charitable works, and who is married to Robert, a cold Action Man lookalike (and about as plastic in his acting skills). It's enough of a scandal when she gets enthusiastic about working in the local AIDS hospice, but when she has a lesbian fling with an old school friend, Grace (Teresa Garrett), who has returned to town, freshly divorced after discovering her true leanings, then even Alex's own mother--a complete nightmare of a woman--turns against her. The movie does have occasional witticisms, but it's too cliché-ridden and too sanitised (dying of AIDS was never this pretty) to do more than raise an occasional grim smile. Yes, there's a serious message underlying the film, but it would have needed more plot, stronger dialogue and less histrionic play-acting to give it true power. On the DVD: It's In the Water has only the most basic additional features: two trailers for similarly themed movies, but no subtitles or additional languages. The picture quality is bright and sharp, sparing us no detail in the Versace-inspired interiors and relentlessly garish mode of dress favoured by Azalea Springs inmates. --Harriet Smith

• Monty Python's Flying Circus - The Best Of Monty Python's Flying Circus - Vol. 1 | DVD | (04/10/1999) from £8.00   |  Saving you £11.99 (149.88%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The coming together of the influential Python team is regarded as a milestone for modern absurdist comedy, though each of the six members had been doing similar sketch work prior to this first 1969 series, of whose highlights this video consists. The most revolutionary aspect of Python was its eschewal of punch lines, preferring as they did bizarre, surreal links and quantum leaps into the imagination of animator Terry Gilliam. Inevitably, Python has dated. Sketches such as "The Upper Class Twit of the Year" and the "Wink-wink, nudge nudge" man are worn down by familiarity. There's some clunky stereotyping and "Oo, ducky"-style gay references. That said, much of this still stands up. "Hells Grannies" and the race to find the world's funniest joke are fine, the Eric Idle-driven documentary spoofs are witty while the Batley Townswomen's Guild's re-enactment of Pearl Harbour is intelligently ridiculous. John Cleese, however, stands literally and metaphorically head and shoulders above the rest. His and Chapman's sketches, involving a mountaineering expedition leader with double vision and an arts TV interviewer who can't get past the etiquette of how to refer to his guest ("Eddie baby...") are pursued to their absurd non-conclusions with the remorseless logic of a top-drawer barrister. --David Stubbs

• The Early Bird | DVD | (12/11/2001) from £16.24   |  Saving you £-3.26 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Norman Wisdom reprises his best-loved character, the comically inept Pitkin, in 1965's The Early Bird, ably supported once again by Edward Chapman in his final appearance as Mr Grimsdale. This time around Wisdom is the only milkman working for Grimsdale's Dairy, a small business threatened by a menacing large corporation in the shape of Consolidated Dairies and their electric milk floats. Grimsdale and Pitkin must evoke the Dunkirk spirit to save their family firm from the grasp of the faceless giant. Of course, the wafer-thin plot is the merest excuse for a series of calamitous set pieces in which Wisdom wreaks havoc in his trademark bumbling manner. The best bits involve a disastrous game of golf, the usual shenanigans with a fire hose and a virtuoso tour de force opening sequence as the household struggles to wake up in the morning. Wisdom's own brand of Jerry Lewis-inspired clowning, with mugging and pratfalls aplenty, is all good clean fun with little or none of the smutty innuendo that characterised the contemporary Carry On series. He carries this film, as he does all his others, solely on the strength of his winningly naïve charm: this is innocent comedy from the days before supermarkets really did wreck all the local businesses, not to mention from the days before The Godfather gave a whole new spin on the comedy value of going to bed with your horse. On the DVD: There are no extra features on this disc at all. Given Wisdom's household-name status and the longevity of these much-loved movies, this seems like a sadly missed opportunity. The 4:3 picture has not been digitally remastered and shows its age, as does the muddy mono soundtrack. Only Ron Goodwin's wonderfully tongue-in-cheek music score comes across reasonably well. --Mark Walker

• Club Vampire | DVD | (24/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  The hot and seductive 'Club Vampire' is a place where your wildest desires are fulfilled but where your worst fears come true. Your soul is the price of admission as you enter a place where the undead roam.