"Actor: Chase Randolph"

• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation | DVD | (24/11/2003) from £7.19   |  Saving you £-3.68 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.51

  National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is the third instalment of the Griswold family saga and a significant improvement over their previous European Vacation. Disaster-prone dad (Chevy Chase) discovers just how dangerous the Christmas season really is as the Griswolds' old-fashioned holiday celebration turns out to be more "Bah! Humbug!" than Christmas cheer. Chase is right at home with the outrageous slapstick and often cheerfully tasteless humour, and John Hughes's script is stuffed full of classic Christmas movie references, but Randy Quaid practically steals the film as the unemployed relative with his malicious grin and mooching lifestyle. Not exactly a holiday classic and a bit spotty, this gag-filled comedy is just obnoxious enough for the Scrooge lurking inside everyone. And fear not, a happy ending awaits all. Watch for future star Juliette Lewis as Chase's teenage daughter. --Sean Axmaker

• The Specialist | DVD | (25/09/1998) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-6.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Just awful enough to qualify as someone's guilty pleasure, this convoluted thriller was supposed to cash in on the supposedly sexy teaming of Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone (then hot from her ample exposure in Basic Instinct), but their naked groping in a shower provides one of the film's unintentionally funny highlights. Ray Quick (Stallone) is a former CIA bomb expert whose former colleague (James Woods) is now in cahoots with a Miami drug cartel led by kingpin Joe Leon (Rod Steiger), who chews the scenery while his son Tomas (Eric Roberts) proceeds with a greedy hidden agenda. May Munro (Stone) hires Quick to kill off Roberts. The Specialist, featuring lots of explosions and redeemed by a dandy role for James Woods, is best suited for ardent Stallone and Stone fans. --Jeff Shannon

• Specialist, The / Assassins | DVD | (24/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The Specialist: Sharon Stone is May Munro a beauty with a fatal past: she's sworn death to the mobsters who murdered her parents. To do the job she recruits ex-CIA explosive experts Ray Quick (Stallone). Miami grows white-hot as May lures the killers and Ray detonates them into ashes. But a vicious mob boss (Roy Stieger) his brash son (Eric Roberts) and a psychotic hired gun (James Woods) with a lethal grudge against Quick won't go without a fight. The passion the two aven