"Actor: Emlyn Williams"

• Jamaica Inn | DVD | (11/06/2007) from £4.49   |  Saving you £5.50 (122.49%)   |  RRP £9.99

  It's generally acknowledged that the Master of Suspense disliked costume dramas and Jamaica Inn--a rip-roaring melodrama drawn from a Daphne du Maurier pot-boiler, set in 1820s Cornwall--is about as costumed as they come. So what was he doing directing it? Killing time, essentially. In 1939 Hitchcock was due to leave Britain for Hollywood, but delays Stateside left him with time on his hands. Never one to sit idle, he agreed to make one picture for Mayflower Productions, a new outfit formed by actor Charles Laughton and émigré German producer Erich Pommer. An innocent young orphan (the 19-year-old Maureen O'Hara in her first starring role) arrives at her uncle's remote Cornish inn to find it a den of reprobates given to smuggling, wrecking and gross overacting. They're all out-hammed, though, by Laughton at his most corseted and outrageously self-indulgent as the local squire to whom Maureen runs for help. Since his star was also the co-producer, Hitch couldn't do much with the temperamental actor. He contented himself with adding a few characteristic touches--including a spot of bondage (always a Hitchcock favourite), and the chief villain's final spectacular plunge from a high place--and slyly sending up the melodramatic absurdities of the plot. Jamaica Inn hardly stands high in the Master's canon, but it trundles along divertingly enough. Hitchcock fanatics will have fun comparing it with his two subsequent--and far more accomplished--Du Maurier adaptations, Rebecca and The Birds. --Philip Kemp

• The L-Shaped Room (Digitally Restored) | DVD | (27/11/2017) from £7.65   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The L-Shaped Room, adapted by writer-director Bryan Forbes from Lynne Reid Banks' novel, unfolds in a dank, depressing London boarding house. Leslie Caron plays Jane Fosset, a 27-year-old French woman, down on her luck, who takes a room. There are bugs in her mattress. The taps drip. The landlady ("the lovely Doris") is a drunken, malicious busybody. Forbes doesn't paint the English in a flattering light. They're covetous, eccentric and xenophobic. "I never close my door to the nigs," Doris tells Fosset, as if to prove that she is no racist. When Fosset reveals that she's pregnant and unmarried, everybody turns against her. The one real friend Fosset makes is Toby (Tom Bell), an impoverished would-be writer who lives in the room downstairs. She starts an affair with him, but for all his protestations to the contrary, he too turns out to be moralistic and conservative--he can't accept the idea that she is having another man's baby.Forbes' dialogue sometimes grates, the film risks running into a dead end (Fosset is stuck with nowhere to go and no prospects), but this is compelling fare all the same. Cameraman Douglas Slocombe (who went on to shoot Raiders of the Lost Ark) makes the boarding house seem as gloomy and oppressive as a Gothic mansion. Forbes doesn't sentimentalise at all. The London he portrays is nothing like the swinging, hedonistic city shown in later British movies of the 60s. --Geoffrey Macnab

• The L-Shaped Room (Digitally Restored) | Blu Ray | (27/11/2017) from £10.95   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The L-Shaped Room, adapted by writer-director Bryan Forbes from Lynne Reid Banks' novel, unfolds in a dank, depressing London boarding house. Leslie Caron plays Jane Fosset, a 27-year-old French woman, down on her luck, who takes a room. There are bugs in her mattress. The taps drip. The landlady ("the lovely Doris") is a drunken, malicious busybody. Forbes doesn't paint the English in a flattering light. They're covetous, eccentric and xenophobic. "I never close my door to the nigs," Doris tells Fosset, as if to prove that she is no racist. When Fosset reveals that she's pregnant and unmarried, everybody turns against her. The one real friend Fosset makes is Toby (Tom Bell), an impoverished would-be writer who lives in the room downstairs. She starts an affair with him, but for all his protestations to the contrary, he too turns out to be moralistic and conservative--he can't accept the idea that she is having another man's baby.Forbes' dialogue sometimes grates, the film risks running into a dead end (Fosset is stuck with nowhere to go and no prospects), but this is compelling fare all the same. Cameraman Douglas Slocombe (who went on to shoot Raiders of the Lost Ark) makes the boarding house seem as gloomy and oppressive as a Gothic mansion. Forbes doesn't sentimentalise at all. The London he portrays is nothing like the swinging, hedonistic city shown in later British movies of the 60s. --Geoffrey Macnab

• Another Man's Poison | DVD | (29/11/2021) from £8.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Bette Davis stars with her then husband Gary Merrill in this British crime noir . Vivacious mystery novelist Janet Frobisher (Bette Davis) has been happily separated from her criminal husband for years. She now lives alone in a dark English country house, where she enjoys devious dalliances with her secretary's fiancé (Anthony Steel). When her husband returns out of the blue and threatens to ruin her relationship, Janet resolves to poison him.Just as she's preparing to dispose of the body, disaster strikes! Her husband's criminal cohort George (Gary Merrill) arrives looking for his pal... George wastes no time insinuating himself into Janet's home and life, and the web of tangled relationships soon develops into a macabre game of cat and mouse.

• The Stars Look Down | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Based on the novel by A.J. Cronin this moving drama tells of a group of coalminers who through the greed of their pit-owner boss are buried alive ...

• Handel: Julius Caesar -- ENO | DVD | (21/06/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Dame Janet Baker in one of her greatest roles leads a cast of some of Britain's finest interpreters of baroque opera under the baton of Sir Charles Mackerras. John Copley's acclaimed English National Opera production was restaged in studio skilfully using all the technical advantages offered to create this top quality recording.

• The Great War | DVD | (25/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £99.99

  In the early 1960s the BBC embarked on one of their most important and ambitious series ever. It was to be the definitive history of the First World War complete in twenty-six 40-minute episodes. An inspired account of the world-shattering events of 1914-1918 The Great War is narrated by Sir Michael Redgrave and employs the voice skills of many other leading actors of the day including Sir Ralph Richardson and Marius Goring. The series includes authentic archive footage and stunning photographic images gathered from 37 separate sources around the world. It also features interviews with many veterans of the war (by this time most were still only in their 60s) as well as almost 150 separate extracts from diaries letters and reports from the war. This important series is here available complete and unabridged. The Great War is here presented in a 7 disc set with the complete series on 6 discs and a full disc of extra features. This edition also includes a luxury 64-page booklet with full background notes reviews chapter points and associated articles.

• Another Man's Poison | DVD | (15/06/2015) from £14.83   |  Saving you £-1.84 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Mystery writer Janet Frobisher lives alone in a dark English country house, when she's not philandering with her secretary's fiancée. At an extremely awkward moment, she has an unwelcome visitor: George Bates, who claims to be the partner in crime of Janet's estranged husband. George insinuates himself into Janet's home and life despite her efforts to get rid of him; the tangled relationships develop into a macabre, murderous cat-and-mouse game.

• Last Days Of Dolwyn | DVD | (18/02/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The peaceful village of Dolwyn is known for its friendly folk and its simple ways. But this idyllic retreat in North Wales is about to be thrown into utter turmoil thanks to the arrival of a ruthless water company. Due to geological difficulties the only way to complete their planned reservoir is to flood the village of Dolwyn. The campaign is lead by an embittered local who has returned from the big city and is intent on destroying the place he once called home. Are the village residents capable of fighting the industrialists and saving their home? Or is this truly the last days of Dolwyn? Written and directed by Emlyn Williams (The Man Who Knew Too Much), this compelling and tragic British melodrama is known for being one of Richard Burton’s earliest roles on film.

• Darling / L-Shaped Room | DVD | (23/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Darling: (FS 4:3) Everyone calls Diana Scott (Julie Christie) 'Darling'. She is that kind of girl. As an ambitious model searching for new experiences she breathes in the sweet smell of success yet forget to exhale. Using a stream of famous and infamous men to sexaully manipulate her way to the top she becomes a prisoner of the jet-set lifestyle she herself conquered. Julie Christie won an Oscar for best Actress. Oscars also went to both Fredric Raphael for Best Original Story & Screenplay and to Julie Harris for her Costume Design The L-Shaped Room: (WS 1.66:1) In a sensitive study of social morals at the dawning of the 1960s sexual revolution a woman faces life in a shabby suburban bed-sit after being jilted and left pregnant. Sharing her desperation with an assortment of neighbours they help her to decide whether to have an abortion...

• Night Alone | DVD | (06/07/2015) from £7.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (66.78%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Charles and Barbara are a devoted couple who in seven years' marriage have never spent a night apart. When they come up to town for a family engagement an urgent business appointment obliges Charles to let Barbara go on without him. Left alone and bored in the hotel Charles agrees to accompany a man-about-town friend to a nightclub. He gets helplessly drunk among dubious company and come the morning finds that a hangover is the least of his problems..! Noted actor-dramatist Emlyn Williams is the errant husband in this highly engaging pre-war marital comedy also featuring popular leading lady Lesley Brook and Constant Nymph star Leonora Corbett. Night Alone is presented here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. Bonus Features: Image Gallery

• Jamaica Inn | DVD | (27/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Mary an orphan girl goes to live with her Uncle Joss landlord of the Jamaica Inn. Working as a barmaid at the inn Mary discovers that her uncle is the head of a gang of pirates who prey upon wrecked ships that have foundered in the heavy seas. When she then finds out that the gang lure the ships to their doom in the first place her life is put in danger...