"Actor: Francis De Wolff"

• From Russia with Love | DVD | (03/11/2003) from £5.28   |  Saving you £14.71 (278.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Directed with consummate skill by Terence Young, From Russia With Love, the second James Bond spy thriller, is considered by many fans to be the best of them all. Certainly Sean Connery was never better as the dashing Agent 007, whose mission takes him to Istanbul to retrieve a top-secret Russian decoding machine. His efforts are thwarted when he gets romantically distracted by a sexy Russian double agent (Daniela Bianchi), and is tracked by an assassin (Lotte Lenya) with switchblade shoes, and by a crazed killer (Robert Shaw), who clashes with Bond during the film's dazzling climax aboard the Orient Express. From Russia with Love is classic James Bond, before the gadgets, pyrotechnics and Roger Moore steered the movies away from the more realistic tone of the books by Ian Fleming. --Jeff ShannonOn the DVD: The "making of" documentary details the many problems that beset this production: actor Pedro Armendariz (Kerim Bey) was diagnosed with terminal cancer halfway through shooting so all his scenes had to be done before he became too ill to work (he died shortly afterwards); a helicopter carrying the director and designer crashed into a lake, but despite being narrowly rescued from drowning Young was shooting half an hour later; and Italian actress-model Daniela Bianchi's car crashed en route to location. Key scenes had to be reshot after the production had wrapped, and because of script problems and rewrites, much of the film's structure was assembled in the editing room. The audio commentary is another montage of interviews from cast and crew that is alternately absorbing and irritating (exhaustive biogs of every player too often run over key scenes that would have benefited from analysis). An appreciation of flamboyant co-producer Harry Saltzman, trailers and stills complete the package. --Mark Walker

• Treasure Island | DVD | (12/02/2001) from £5.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (166.94%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Strap on your pantaloons and prepare to travel with Jim Hawkins and Blind Pew to one of the most famous fictional islands in history, Treasure Island. Walt Disney's 1950 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's swashbuckling masterpiece has held up extremely well, with action and characterisations that feel freshly minted (although it's unlikely that the Mouse of today would sanction the high level of booze flowing throughout the picture). Great fun, with nary a wasted frame and, in the character of Robert Newton's much-imitated Long John, one of cinema's most boisterously crowd-pleasing villains ever. (Proving that you can't keep a good--er, bad man down, Newton would return with director Byron Haskins for the enjoyable sequel, Long John Silver.) Watching this classic is like having a flashback to some perfect Technicolor childhood. --Andrew Wright

• Scrooge | DVD | (23/11/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Hound Of The Baskervilles | DVD | (20/10/2003) from £20.75   |  Saving you £-7.76 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Sherlock Holmes gets the Gothic treatment in Hammer's Hound of the Baskervilles, a typical mix of mystery and supernatural horror from the famous studio. Peter Cushing is perfectly cast as the great detective, the very embodiment of science and reason (which also made him a great Van Helsing in the Dracula series) in a case wound around a legacy of aristocratic cruelty and a devilish dog wandering the swampy moors. Christopher Lee is a less satisfying fit as the last of the Baskervilles, as he waffles between fear and apathetic disregard, but Andre Morell is a fine Dr Watson and a far cry from Nigel Bruce's sweet bumbler from the Hollywood incarnation of the 1940s. Director Terence Fisher was Hammer's top stylist and the film drips with the mood of the moors, mist hanging in the air, the dying vegetation itself threatening to come to life and trap the next unwary traveller. --Sean Axmaker

• Scrooge | DVD | (10/11/2008) from £14.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Alistair Sim's Scrooge is an all-time favourite Christmas family film and a genuine classic of British cinema. Scrooge is also the definitive big screen adaptation of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' one of the world's best loved Christmas stories

• The Silent Invasion | DVD | (28/09/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  When a German garrison is stationed in the small French town of Mereux in 1940 it is not long before the local men form a resistance group and launch an attack on their new occupiers. During the attack two members of the resistance are captured tortured and subsequently publically executed. One of the dead is a young boy whose sister swears revenge on the German officer she believes is responsible for his death and offers to help the French Resistance obtain information by any means necessary.

• Carry On Cleo | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £5.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (183.64%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Ninth entry in the Carry On series. Ancient British slaves save Caesar (Kenneth Williams) from assassination in Rome 50 B.C. Meanwhile Mark Antony (Sid James) romances Egyptian Empress Cleopatra (Amanda Barrie). Revolting Britons include Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey while Warren Mitchell plays a partner in the slave-trading firm Markus & Spencius.

• Moby Dick | DVD | (10/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Consumed by an unquenchable rage Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck) has but one purpose; revenge on Moby Dick the great white whale who maimed and disfigured him. The obsessed skipper of a whaling boat Ahab uses his command as an excuse to sail the seven seas in an unrelenting search of his prey. Battling a mutinous crew tropical heat and violent storms Ahab finally catches up to his quarry and begins a confrontation that culminates in an epic struggle of non-stop fury...and inevitable

• The Smallest Show On Earth | DVD | (08/07/2002) from £20.37   |  Saving you £-7.38 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An amiable knock-off of the Ealing comedy style, The Smallest Show on Earth starts with aspiring novelist Bill Travers and his "nice gel" wife Virginia McKenna inheriting a cinema from a hitherto unknown uncle and discovering that it isn't the sumptuous modern Grand, which specialises in those "smash 'em in the face, knock 'em over the waterfront" pictures, but the decrepit Bijou, known locally as "the fleapit". The initial plan, set up by lawyer Leslie Phillips, is to sell off the cinema to the owner of the Grand so he can knock it down to make a car park, but our heroes are put off by the arrogant bullying of the rival manager (Francis De Wolff) and succumb to the inept charms of the crazed, aged staff--drunken projectionist Peter Sellers, doddery commissionaire Bernard Miles and dotty ticket lady Margaret Rutherford (who joined the team as a piano accompanist). In the 1950s, there was a run of gentle British comedies in which outmoded and broken-down local institutions (steam trains, tugboats, vintage cars) were saved by collections of committed eccentrics who despised the new-fangled bus services or soulless council bureaucracies and were willing to resort to a little larceny (in this case, arson). The Smallest Show slots in perfectly with the cycle, getting laughs from the Bijou's already outmoded programme of scratchy Westerns and desert dramas (which increase ice cream sales) and sentiment over the staff's midnight screenings of silent movies that remind them of better days. It's likeable rather than hilarious, with Sellers and Miles buried under crepe hair and fake wrinkles competing to out-dodder each other and losing the picture to the inimitable Rutherford, who doesn't have to fake her eccentricity. Pin-up, June Cunningham, is the glamorous usherette and Sid James plays her annoyed Dad. On the DVD: The Smallest Show on Earth is presented in a decent print, but with no extras. The film is also available as part of the four-disc Peter Sellers Collection. --Kim Newman

• The Black Torment | DVD | (25/07/2016) from £8.75   |  Saving you £4.24 (48.46%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Heather Sears and Patrick Troughton star in this gothic, British chiller! Sir Richard (John Turner) returns to his manor with a new bride - only to discover that a man matching his description has been slaying beautiful young women in the area; and his fi rst wife's ghost appears on the lawn and accuses Sir Richard of her murder.

• Peter Sellers - Hoffman / The Smallest Show On Earth / Carlton-Browne Of The F.O./ Two Way Stretch | DVD | (15/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Featuring the films: 'Hoffman' 'The Smallest Show On Earth' 'Carlton-Browne Of The F.O.' and 'Two Way Stretch'. Hoffman *(WS 1.85:1 Anamorphic 1970 1 hour and 47 Minutes Colour): Peter Sellers is Hoffman a middle aged misfit who blackmails his young attractive secretary into spending a week with him. Although he behaves like a creep throughout the weekend he actually emerges as a sympathetic character in the end. Two Way Stretch *(FS 1960 1 hour and 23 minutes B&W):

• Corridors Of Blood | DVD | (16/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In an effort to relieve the suffering of surgery patients Dr. Thomas Bolton painstakingly develops an opium-based anesthetic to which he gradually becomes addicted. In order to provide a continual supply of chemicals to continue his experiments and support his addiction he falls in with a den of murderers who use his signature to sell corpses to the local hospital.

• The Tomorrow People - The Slaves of Jedikiah | DVD | (01/08/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Tomorrow People was a children's science fiction adventure series launched in 1973 as ITV's answer to Doctor Who. In the opening five-part adventure "Slaves of Jedikiah" we meet Stephen (Peter Vaughan-Clarke) who is about to "break-out" to the next level of human evolution, becoming a Homo Superior, or "Tomorrow Person". Developing telepathic and telekenetic powers, as well as the ability to teleport, he becomes the target for mysterious American cult leader, Jedikiah (Francis de Wolff). Already secretly established with biological supercomputer TIM in an abandoned underground tunnel are three Tomorrow People--John (Nicholas Young), Carol (Sammie Winmill) and Kenny (Stephen Salmon)--who rescue Stephen and then find themselves on a damaged starship in a race against time to save its alien captain. Although the budget was low--the tin robot with his head on fire is particularly laughable--the story is ambitious and the utilitarian special effects are in plentiful supply. There's a trippy, post-2001: A Space Odyssey quality to some of the visuals, a great theme tune and acting of decidedly pantomime calibre. The Tomorrow People themselves come from a past in which teenagers still say "smashing!", but the fantasy of advanced, pacifist children saving the world had a lasting appeal, enough that the show ran eight seasons, then was revived for three more in the 1990s. --Gary S Dalkin

• The Silent Invasion | DVD | (12/07/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Silent Invasion

• Blackbeard's Ghost / Treasure Island | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Blackbeard's Ghost (Dir. Robert Stevenson 1968): Award-winning actor Peter Ustinov stars in this hilarious fantasy as the ghost of the legendary pirate Blackbeard. The once blackhearted scoundrel materializes in a small New England town cursed to wander in limbo until he performs a good deed. He gets his chance when he decides to help a local college track team... that hasn't a ghost of a chance of winning! Blackbeard finds himself full of team spirit and dispensing his own brand of invisible coaching... in this warmhearted comedy that will have you laughing from his first fade-in to his final fade-out! Treasure Island (Dir. Byron Haskin 1950): In this swashbuckling high-seas adventure Walt Disney has vividly brought to life Robert Louis Stevenson's thrilling tale of buccaneers and buried gold - presented for the first time in it's original uncut theatrical version! Authentic locales and musket-roaring action set the stage for the stouthearted heroics of young Jim Hawkins (Bobby Driscoll) and the skullduggery of that wily one-legged pirate Long John Silver.

• Scrooge | DVD | (10/11/2008) from £39.98   |  Saving you £-19.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Digitally re-mastered Alastair Sim's Scrooge is the all time favourite Christmas family film and a genuine classic of British cinema. Scrooge is the definitive big screen adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol one of the world's best loved Christmas stories.