"Actor: Frank Cellier"

• The 39 Steps | DVD | (19/06/2007) from £4.45   |  Saving you £11.54 (259.33%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A high point of Hitchcock's pre-Hollywood career, 1935's The Thirty-Nine Steps is the first and best of three film versions of John Buchan's rather stiff novel. Robert Donat plays Richard Hannay, who becomes embroiled in a plot to steal military secrets. He finds himself on the run; falsely accused of murder, while also pursuing the dastardly web of spies alluded to in the title. With a plot whose twists and turns match the hilly Scottish terrain in which much of the film is set, The Thirty-Nine Steps combines a breezy suavity with a palpable psychological tension. Hitchcock was already a master at conveying such tension through his cinematic methods, rather than relying just on situation or dialogue. Sometimes his ways of bringing the best out of his actors brought the worst out in himself. If the scene in which Donat is handcuffed to co-star Madeline Carroll has a certain edge, for instance, that's perhaps because the director mischievously cuffed them together in a rehearsal, then left them attached for a whole afternoon, pretending to have lost the key. The movie also introduces Hitchcock's favoured plot device, the "McGuffin" (here, the military secret), the unexplained device or "non-point" on which the movie turns. --David Stubbs

• Quiet Weekend | DVD | (17/08/2015) from £6.97   |  Saving you £3.02 (43.33%)   |  RRP £9.99

  An invitation to a country retreat unleashes hidden passions in this witty adaptation of Esther McCracken's famous wartime stage comedy. Billed The Film of the Play that beat the Blitz! , Quiet Weekend reunites Silent Dust's Derek Farr with Marjorie Fielding and Frank Cellier, reprising their roles from the 1941 hit Quiet Wedding; released in 1946, it is featured here in a brand-new digital transfer from original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. Arthur and Mildred Royd invite some friends for a quiet weekend in the country. Among the guests is a middle-aged magistrate too shy to propose to the woman he loves, and young Miranda not too shy at all to show her affections for distant cousin Denys Royd, ten years her senior. The arrival of an abrasive London sophisticate puts the cat among the pigeons, but worse is to come when Arthur and the magistrate find their fishing trip turning into a salmon-poaching spree...

• Love On The Dole | DVD | (09/02/2004) from £24.50   |  Saving you £-11.51 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A stylish British drama which studies love and life in a depressed industrial town in Northern England. Deborah Kerr stars in this vividly characterised story of a penniless family struggling through the depression years. Kerr is a mill girl in love with Evans who loses his job and refuses to marry her on ""dole money"". He is killed in a demonstration against conditions and unemployment so Kerr marries an old bookie she doesn't love in order to get jobs for her father and brother. Thi

• The Man Who Changed His Mind | DVD | (11/06/2012) from £2.65   |  Saving you £10.34 (390.19%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Directed by Robert Stevenson (Mary Poppins!) and staring Boris Karloff as Dr Laurience, this old-school British Sci-Fi/Horror film from 1936 is a hidden treasure.Laurience is a once-respectable scientist, who begins to research the origin of the mind. The science community rejects him, and he risks losing everything for which he has worked. He begins to use his discoveries to save his research and further his own causes, thereby becoming... a Mad Scientist, almost unstoppable...

• The 39 Steps | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Hitchcock's first great romantic thriller is a prime example of the "macguffin" principle in action. Robert Donat is Richard Hannay, an affable Canadian tourist in London who becomes embroiled in a deadly conspiracy when a mysterious spy winds up murdered in Hannay's rented flat--and both the police and a secret organisation wind up hot on his trail. With only a seemingly meaningless phrase ("the 39 steps"), a small Scottish town circled on a map, and a criminal mastermind identified by a missing finger as clues, quick-witted Hannay eludes police and spies alike as he works his way across the countryside to reveal the mystery and clear his name. At one point he finds himself making his escape manacled to blonde beauty Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), whose initial antagonism is smoothed by Hannay's charm. It's classic Hitchcock all the way, a seemingly effortless balance of romance and adventure set against a picturesque landscape populated by eccentrics and social-register smoothies, none of whom is what he or she appears to be. Hitchcock would play similar games of innocents plunged into deadly conspiracies, most delightfully in North by Northwest, but in this breezy 1935 classic, Hitch proves that, as in any quest, the object of the search isn't nearly as satisfying as the journey. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com