"Actor: Edward So"

• The Sherlock Holmes Catalogue - The Eligible Bachelor | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £19.30   |  Saving you £-9.31 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A little over-extended as a two-hour movie, The Eligible Bachelor was one of several such feature-length productions made (late 1992) in Granada Television's long-running Sherlock Holmes series. Based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, this TV movie finds Holmes (the ailing Jeremy Brett, playing an increasingly darker and more neurotic detective) and Dr. Watson (Edward Hardwicke) called upon to help in a case involving the disappearance of Henrietta Doran (Paris Jefferson), fiancé of the noble Lord Robert St Simon (Simon Williams), who was last seen with a former lover of St Simon's, Flora Millar (Joanna McCallum). The unimaginative Scotland Yard instantly arrests Millar on suspicion of foul play, but it is Holmes who has to find the missing woman. Fans of the entire series might best enjoy this slightly clunky programme, though there is much of interest about Brett's performance to recommend it. --Tom Keogh

• The Catherine Cookson Collection (23 Disc Boxset) | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £159.99

  A complete collection of the filmed adaptations of Catherine Cookson novels. Includes: The Mallen Secret / The Mallen Curse / The Mallen Girls / The Mallen Streak / The Fifteen Streets / The Wingless Bird / The Round Tower / The Black Velvet Gown / The Black Candle / The Rag Nymph / The Moth / The Girl / The Tide Of Life / The Glass Virgin / The Gambling Man / The Man Who Cried / The Cinder Path / The Dwelling Place / The Colour Blind / The Tilly Trotter / The Storyteller / The Secret / Dinner Of Herbs

• Callan - Series 1 - Part 3 Of 3 - Episodes 7 - 9 | DVD | (03/09/2001) from £15.70   |  Saving you £0.29 (1.85%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Introduced in "A Magnum for Schneider", the hour-long 1967 Armchair Theatre episode written by James Mitchell about a disillusioned British secret agent Callan (Edward Woodward), went on to offer four popular (if downbeat) series, a spin-off movie remaking the original story and a some-years-later wrap-up play "Wet Job". Remembered for its very distinctive opening titles, with a swinging broken light bulb and a memorable theme tune, the series adopted a Deighton-LeCarré approach to the grim, treacherous, grubby business of Cold War espionage and made a TV star of the intense Woodward as the sweaty, sometimes conscience-stricken, sometimes robotic Callan. Even in the 21st century this still seems a strong show, its complex stories and impressive performances outweighing a low-budget mix of video and film in the production that makes it seem less "professional" than other shows of the time. In a dramatic device that has long since fallen out of fashion in television, Callan episodes tend to wind up by leaving the audience to work out all the connections of the plot while Callan himself sits gloomily and ponders the wretchedness of his squalid world. --Kim Newman

• Red Dragon | HD DVD | (04/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In this prequel to The Silence Of The Lambs Edward Norton stars as ex-FBI agent Will Graham an expert investigator who quit the Bureau after almost losing his life in the process of capturing Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). Years later after a series of particularly grisly murders Graham reluctantly agrees to come out of retirement and assist in the case. But he soon realises that the best way to catch this killer known as the Tooth Fairy is to find a way to get inside the killer's mind. And the closest thing to that would be to probe the mind of another killer who is equally brilliant and equally twisted. For Graham that means confronting his past and facing his former nemesis the now-incarcerated Lecter... Thomas Harris' novel was previously filmed by Michael Mann as Manhunter starring William L. Peterson in the Will Graham role.

• Humphrey Bogart Crime Collection | DVD | (06/11/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  THE BIG SLEEP: L.A. private eye Philip Marlowe takes on a blackmail case...and follows a trail peopled with murderers pornographers nightclub rogues the spoiled rich and more. Humphrey Bogart plays Raymond Chandler's legendary gumshoe and director Howard Hawks serves up snappy character encounters (particularly involving Lauren Bacall) a brisk pace and atmosphere galore in this certified classic. KEY LARGO: A hurricane swells outside but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) holes up and holds at gunpoint hotel owner Nora Temple (Lionel Barrymore) and ex-GI Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart). McCloud's the one man capable of standing up against the belligerent Rocco. But the postwar world's realities may have taken all the fight out of him. John Huston co-wrote and compellingly directs this film of Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play with a searing Academy Awardwinning performance by Claire Trevor as Rocco's gold-hearted boozy moll. In Huston's hands it becomes a powerful sweltering classic. THE MALTESE FALCON: A gallery of high-living lowlifes will stop at nothing to get their sweaty hands on a jewel-encrusted falcon. Detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) wants to find out why - and who's gonna take the fall. This third screen version of Dashiell Hammett's novel is a film of firsts: John Huston's directorial debut rotund 62-year-old Sydney Greenstreet's screen debut film history's first film noir and Bogart's breakthrough role after years as a Warner contract player. When George Raft refused to work with a first-time director Bogart took on the role of Spade - and launched the most acclaimed period of his career.

• Beat The Devil / Humphrey Bogart On Film | DVD | (15/05/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

• The Stranger | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  The Stranger, according to Orson Welles, "is the worst of my films. There is nothing of me in that picture. I did it to prove that I could put out a movie as well as anyone else." True, set beside Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, or even The Trial, The Stranger is as close to production-line stuff as the great Orson ever came. But even on autopilot Welles still leaves most filmmakers standing. The shadow of the Second World War hangs heavy over the plot. A war crimes investigator, played by Edward G Robinson, tracks down a senior Nazi, Franz Kindler, to a sleepy New England town where he's living in concealment as a respected college professor. The script, credited to Anthony Veiller but with uncredited input from Welles and John Huston, is riddled with implausibilities: we're asked to believe, for a start, that there'd be no extant photos of a top Nazi leader. The casting's badly skewed, too. Welles wanted Agnes Moorehead as the investigator and Robinson as Kindler, but his producer, Sam Spiegel, wouldn't wear it. So Welles himself plays the supposedly cautious and self-effacing fugitive--and if there was one thing Welles could never play, it was unobtrusive. What's more, Spiegel chopped out most of the two opening reels set in South America, in Welles' view, "the best stuff in the picture". Still, the film's far from a write-off. Welles' eye for stunning visuals rarely deserted him and, aided by Russell Metty's skewed, shadowy photography, The Stranger builds to a doomy grand guignol climax in a clock tower that Hitchcock must surely have recalled when he made Vertigo. And Robinson, dogged in pursuit, is as quietly excellent as ever. On the DVD: not much in the way of extras, except a waffly full-length commentary from Russell Cawthorne that tells us about the history of clock-making and where Edward G was buried, but precious little about the making of the film. Print and sound are acceptable, but though remastering is claimed, there's little evidence of it. --Philip Kemp

• Pecker/Hairspray (1988)/A Dirty Shame | DVD | (24/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Pecker (1998): Pecker, a sandwich shop clerk, takes photos of his rather odd family and friends and nobody thinks anything of them until one day a New York art dealer discovers his work and makes him famous. Is this what Pecker really wants? Another quirky entry from cult director John Waters. Hairspray (1987): It's 1962 and Tracy Turnblad has the largest bouffant on the block. She also has all the right moves to be on the local dance show and win the crown of Miss Auto Show, a...

• You Did What | DVD | (14/07/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  When his free-spirited brother proposes to a woman hes known less than 24 hours marriage-phobic Charlie Porter tries anything to avoid popping the question to his girlfriend of two years. Starring Jason Winston George A.J. Buckley Ed Kerr and Ian Gomez.

• Jolly Boys Last Stand | DVD | (13/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When ""El Presidente"" of the Jolly Boys Spider (Serkis) gets engaged his oldest friend confirmed bachelor and appointed best man Des (Twomey) sees the end of the legendary drinking club. Des decides to film the run up to the wedding as a gift to the betrothed - hoping the on-screen carnage will de-rail the marriage. Instead he learns about true love and friendship - but maybe too late to repair the damage he's done! His wedding video is the Jolly Boys Last Stand from proposal to

• Scarlet Street | DVD | (17/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  In a way, Scarlet Street is a remake. It's taken from a French novel, La Chienne (literally, "The Bitch") that was first filmed by Jean Renoir in 1931. Renoir brought to the sordid tale all the colour and vitality of Montmartre; Fritz Lang's version shows us a far harsher and bleaker world. The film replays the triangle set-up from Lang's previous picture, The Woman in the Window, with the same three actors. Once again, Edward G Robinson plays a respectable middle-aged citizen snared by the charms of Joan Bennett's streetwalker, with Dan Duryea as her low-life pimp. But this time around, all three characters have moved several notches down the ethical scale. Robinson, who in the earlier film played a college professor who kills by accident, here becomes a downtrodden clerk with a nagging, shrewish wife and unfilled ambitions as an artist, a man who murders in a jealous rage. Bennett is a mercenary vamp, none too bright, and Duryea brutal and heartless. The plot closes around the three of them like a steel trap. This is Lang at his most dispassionate. Scarlet Street is a tour de force of noir filmmaking, brilliant but ice-cold. When it was made the film hit censorship problems, since at the time it was unacceptable to show a murder going unpunished. Lang went out of his way to show the killer plunged into the mental hell of his own guilt, but for some authorities this still wasn't enough, and the film was banned in New York State for being "immoral, indecent and corrupt". Not that this did its box-office returns any harm at all. On the DVD: sparse pickings. There's an interactive menu that zips past too fast to be of much use. The full-length commentary by Russell Cawthorne adds the occasional insight, but it's repetitive and not always reliable. (He gets actors' names wrong, for a start.) The box claims the print's been "fully restored and digitally remastered", but you'd never guess. --Philip Kemp

• Edward G. Robinson - Scarlet Street / The Stranger | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In a way, Scarlet Street is a remake. It's taken from a French novel, La Chienne (literally, "The Bitch") that was first filmed by Jean Renoir in 1931. Renoir brought to the sordid tale all the colour and vitality of Montmartre; Fritz Lang's version shows us a far harsher and bleaker world. The film replays the triangle set-up from Lang's previous picture, The Woman in the Window, with the same three actors. Once again, Edward G Robinson plays a respectable middle-aged citizen snared by the charms of Joan Bennett's streetwalker, with Dan Duryea as her low-life pimp. The plot closes around the three of them like a steel trap. This is Lang at his most dispassionate. Scarlet Street is a tour de force of noir filmmaking, brilliant but ice-cold. The Stranger, according to Orson Welles, "is the worst of my films. There is nothing of me in that picture". But even on autopilot Welles still leaves most filmmakers standing. A war crimes investigator, played by Edward G Robinson, tracks down a senior Nazi to a sleepy New England town where he's living in concealment as a respected college professor. Welles wanted Agnes Moorehead as the investigator and Robinson as the Nazi Franz Kindler, but his producer, Sam Spiegel, wouldn't wear it. So Welles himself plays the supposedly cautious and self-effacing fugitive--and if there was one thing Welles could never play, it was unobtrusive. Still, the film's far from a write-off. Welles' eye for stunning visuals rarely deserted him and, aided by Russell Metty's skewed, shadowy photography, The Stranger builds to a doomy grand guignol climax in a clocktower that Hitchcock must surely have recalled when he made Vertigo. And Robinson, dogged in pursuit, is as quietly excellent as ever. On the DVD: sparse pickings. Both films have a full-length commentary by Russell Cawthorne which adds the occasional insight, but is repetitive and not always reliable. The box claims both print have been "fully restored and digitally remastered", but you'd never guess. --Philip Kemp

• The Tough Guys Collection - Bullets Or Ballots/San Quentin/A Slight Case Of Murder | DVD | (28/08/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £20.99

  Bullets Or Ballots: After Police Captain Dan McLaren becomes police commissioner former detective Johnny Blake knocks him down convincing rackets boss Al Kruger that Blake is sincere in his effort to join the mob. ""Buggs"" Fenner thinks Blake is a police agent. San Quentin: Do the crime do the time. But what happens during the long years spent behind the walls of San Quentin? The penitentiary's new yard captain wants to make those years a time of rehabilitation rather than punishment. But not everyone's buying it. Humphrey Bogart portrays Red continuing his climb to stardom in this brisk film that's one of a string of Depression-era works combining gangster-movie elements with a Big House setting. Studio mainstay Pat O'Brien plays Steve Jameson whose carrot-and-stick reforms begin to change Red's thinking. An inmates' strike and a scripture-quoting con who swipes a rifle are among the troubles Jameson faces- and Red is another as he reverts to his old ways and makes a violent break for freedom. A Slight Case Of Murder: A breakneck-paced comedy starring Edward G. Robinson as a tough but good-hearted bootlegger. When Prohibition is repealed Robinson faces a financial crisis: His beer tastes so awful that no one wants to drink it legally. As an additional headache Robinson is under scrutiny from the Law which is waiting to slip the cuffs on him for the slightest infraction. He arrives at his rented Saratoga mansion with his wife (Ruth Donnelly) daughter (Jane Bryan) and adopted son (Bobby Jordan) only to discover that a killer has left four corpses in his bedroom. Robinson and his stooges are forced to hide the bodies before his future son-in-law (Willard Parker) who happens to be a cop tumbles to the dilemma. Based on a stage play by Howard Lindsay and Damon Runyon.

• Dragon The Master | DVD | (25/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The legend of Bruce Lee lives on in 'Dragon The Master'. Dragon Sek steps into the Master's shoes in this martial arts extravaganza as he takes on all corners to prove that Jeet Kune Do 'The Way of the Intercepting Fist' reigns supremem above all other fighting styles. The legend of the dragon lives on forever...

• The Italian Job - DVD and Flag World Cup Edition | DVD | (15/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Michael Caine stars in this 60s classic as the leader of a team of thieves who plan to use minis to help them perform the heist of the century.

• Meet John Doe | DVD | (24/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Frank Capra started as a Mack Sennett gag writer and soon thereafter moved over to the Poverty Row studio of Columbia Pictures as a director. Capra helped lift Columbia out of the low budget ranks, up to major studio. His remarkable string of hits in the 1930's - IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, LOST HORIZON AND MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON - made him not only one of the industries most highly esteemed figures, but also a popular draw himself. He was ...

• Meet John Doe | DVD | (27/01/2003) from £17.53   |  Saving you £-0.54 (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  In protest at the corruption and hypocrisy he sees all around him an unemployed man calling himself ""John Doe"" has written to the New Bulletin newspaper pledging to throw himself from the top of City Hall on Christmas Eve. Written by a discharged journalist as a publicity stunt and as a parting shot at the paper's new editor the premise of the letter unexpectedly fires the imagination of the bulletin's readers and the wider American public. Its real author Ann Mitchell (Barbar

• Stranger, The / Orson Welles On Film | DVD | (01/11/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  The Stranger, according to Orson Welles, "is the worst of my films. There is nothing of me in that picture. I did it to prove that I could put out a movie as well as anyone else." True, set beside Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, or even The Trial, The Stranger is as close to production-line stuff as the great Orson ever came. But even on autopilot Welles still leaves most filmmakers standing. The shadow of the Second World War hangs heavy over the plot. A war crimes investigator, played by Edward G Robinson, tracks down a senior Nazi, Franz Kindler, to a sleepy New England town where he's living in concealment as a respected college professor. The script, credited to Anthony Veiller but with uncredited input from Welles and John Huston, is riddled with implausibilities: we're asked to believe, for a start, that there'd be no extant photos of a top Nazi leader. The casting's badly skewed, too. Welles wanted Agnes Moorehead as the investigator and Robinson as Kindler, but his producer, Sam Spiegel, wouldn't wear it. So Welles himself plays the supposedly cautious and self-effacing fugitive--and if there was one thing Welles could never play, it was unobtrusive. What's more, Spiegel chopped out most of the two opening reels set in South America, in Welles' view, "the best stuff in the picture". Still, the film's far from a write-off. Welles' eye for stunning visuals rarely deserted him and, aided by Russell Metty's skewed, shadowy photography, The Stranger builds to a doomy grand guignol climax in a clock tower that Hitchcock must surely have recalled when he made Vertigo. And Robinson, dogged in pursuit, is as quietly excellent as ever. On the DVD: not much in the way of extras, except a waffly full-length commentary from Russell Cawthorne that tells us about the history of clock-making and where Edward G was buried, but precious little about the making of the film. Print and sound are acceptable, but though remastering is claimed, there's little evidence of it. --Philip Kemp

• Incredible Hulk | Blu Ray | (25/06/2013) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-14.68 (-119.30%)   |  RRP £12.30

  A more accessible and less heavy-handed movie than Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk, Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk is a purely popcorn love affair with Marvel's raging, green superhero, as well as the old television series starring Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner and Lou Ferrigno as the beast within him. Edward Norton takes up where Eric Bana left off in Lee's version, playing Bruce (that's the character's original name) Banner, a haunted scientist always on the move. Trying to eliminate the effects of a military experiment that turns him into the Hulk whenever his emotions get the better of him, Banner is hiding out in Brazil at the film's beginning. Working in a bottling plant and communicating via email with an unidentified professor who thinks he can help, Banner goes postal when General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross and a small army turn up to grab him. Intent on developing whatever causes Banner's metamorphoses into a weapon, Ross brings along a quietly deranged soldier named Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), who wants Ross to turn him into a supersoldier who can take on the Hulk. The adventure spreads to the U.S., where Banner hooks up with his old lover (and Ross' daughter), Betty (Liv Tyler), and where the Hulk takes on several armed assaults, including one in a pretty unusual location: a college campus. The film's action is impressive, though the computer-generated creature is disappointingly cartoonish, and a second monster turning up late in the movie looks even cheesier. Norton is largely wasted in the film--he's essentially a bridge between sequences where he disappears and the Hulk rampages around. As good an actor as he is, Norton doesn't have the charisma here to carry those scenes in which one waits impatiently for the real show to begin. --Tom Keogh

• Arkoff - Vol. 2 | DVD | (01/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A unique collection of some of the seminal 1950's monster and sci-fi movies made by the greatest director of the time including Roger Corman Bruno VeSota and Edward L Cahn. Featuring Monsters vampires delinquent school girls and giant arachnids along with the earliest performances of some of Hollywood's greatest stars. The Day The World Ended: A rancher and his daughter are holed up in their ranch after a nuclear holocaust decimates most of the world's population. Five su