"Actor: Frazer"

• Brass Eye | DVD | (06/05/2002) from £9.17   |  Saving you £10.82 (117.99%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Chris Morris' Brass Eye is a brilliantly funny spoof on current affairs media that carries on where his previous The Day Today left off. The show ran for one single, contentious series in 1997, to be followed by an even more controversial one-off in 2001. While these episodes might cause offence to those not versed in Morris' satirical methods, and while one occasionally suspects his work is informed by a dark seam of malice and loathing rather than a desire to educate, Brass Eye remains vital satire, magnificently hilarious and, in its own way, fiercely moral viewing. Brass Eye satirises a media far too interested in generating dramatic heat and urgency for its own sake than in shedding light on serious issues. Morris mimics perfectly the house style of programmes such as Newsnight and Crimewatch, with their spurious props and love of gimmickry. Meanwhile his presenter--an uncanny composite of Jeremy Paxman, Michael Buerk and Richard Madeley among others--delivers absurd items about man-fighting weasels in the East End and Lear-esque lines such as "the twisted brain wrong of a one-off man mental" with preposterously solemn authority. Much as the media itself is wont to do, each programme works itself up into a ridiculous fever of moral panic. Most telling is the "drugs" episode, in which, as ever, real-life celebrities, including Jimmy Greaves and Sir Bernard Ingham, are persuaded to lend their name to a campaign against a new drug from Eastern Europe entitled Cake. The satirist's aim here isn't to trivialise concern about drugs but to point up the media's lack of attention to content. A response to the ill-conceived News of the World witch-hunt, in the wake of the Sarah Payne affair, the 2001 "paedophilia" special was the most supremely controversial of the series. It followed the usual formula--duping celebs such as Phil Collins into endorsing a campaign entitled "Nonce Sense", urging parents to send their children to football stadiums for the night for their own safety and mooting the possibility of "roboplegic" paedophiles--and prompted the sort of hysterical and predictable Pavlovian response from the media that Brass Eye lampoons so tellingly. On the DVD: Brass Eye on DVD includes brief outtakes, such as "David Jatt" interviewing celebrities about breeding hippos for domestic purposes, an hilarious exchange with Jeffrey Archer's PA ("He's a very wicked little man") as well as trailers for the paedophilia special.--David Stubbs

• The Doctors: The Pat Troughton Years (Multi-Region DVD) | DVD | (12/06/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  This is the definitive set of interviews with the team of actors who brought the PATRICK TROUGHTON era of DOCTOR WHO to life! Together with a special tribute to PATRICK TROUGHTON (the Second Doctor), containing messages from a host of stars and production staff from DOCTOR WHO, this DVD also features the best in-depth interviews ever undertaken with, ANNEKE WILLS (Polly), MICHAEL CRAZE (Ben), FRAZER HINES (Jamie), DEBORAH WATLING (Victoria) and WENDY PADBURY (Zoe)! Presented by voice of the Daleks NICHOLAS BRIGGS. For all DOCTOR Who fans, this 2 DISC special collector s edition is 5 hours of pure nostalgia, which will give you a whole new insight into the making of your favourite science fiction series!

• Kojak - Series 1 | DVD | (18/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Who loves ya baby? Telly Savalas stars as Lieutenant Theo Kojak in this seventies cop-drama series. He's got style street smarts and a penchant for lollipops and he's hitting the gritty streets of New York City in pursuit of some of television's toughest criminals. And now it's an open-and-shut case with all 22 Season One episodes available on DVD for the first time ever! Featuring fine scripts and terrific acting 'Kojak' became an overnight success on both sides of the

• Doctor Who: The Seeds of Death | DVD | (17/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Seeds of Death" is the second Doctor Who adventure to feature the popular Ice Warriors. Broadcast six months before the first manned moon landing, here the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury) beat Neil Armstrong and co in boarding a rocket to the moon, where they face the icy Martian invaders who have taken over Earth's T-Mat teleportation system in prelude to a full-scale invasion. The plot encompasses weather control, rising global disaster as food shortages sweep the world's cities, and--remarkably--a fungus which can remove oxygen from the atmosphere but which is destroyed by water. Writer Brian Hayles might flunk Science 101 but he still tells an entertaining yarn filled with typical Whovian moments of danger and derring-do. The effects are prehistoric, but the Ice Warrior costumes prove a triumph of ingenuity over budget, and the central premise of a world-wide teleportation network is imaginative enough. Hayles brought the Ice Warriors back in surprisingly different circumstances in the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who classic "The Curse of Peladon" (1972). On the DVD: Doctor Who: The Seeds of Death is presented as a two disc set. Disc 1 offers the six-episode serial complete, with reasonable mono sound and sharp, clear black-and-white images. That the programme was shot on film rather than video helps the picture quality enormously. Extras are on-screen trivia subtitles offering behind the scenes information, and a so-so commentary track with Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Michael Ferguson and regular series writer Terrance Dicks. Disc 2 has a new 23-minute documentary, focusing mainly on the Ice Warriors and the actors who played them. This is absorbing stuff for serious Who-fans, but may leave others cold. The Last Dalek is ten minutes of 8mm b/w footage on the making of the lost story "The Evil of the Daleks" (1967), and is again of interest to serious fans. Also included is a brief montage of material censored by New Zealand from now lost episodes, a photo gallery and Tardis Cam No.5, a very short new animation. There are optional English subtitles. --Gary S Dalkin

• The Fisher King | DVD | (27/10/2003) from £9.73   |  Saving you £3.26 (33.50%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Arthurian mythology and modern-day decay seem perfect complements to each other in Terry Gilliam's drama/comedy/fantasy The Fisher King. Shock jock Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) makes an off-handed radio remark that causes a man to go on a killing spree, leaving Lucas unhinged with guilt. His later, chance meeting with Parry (Robin Williams), a homeless man suffering from dementia, gets him involved in the unlikely quest for the Holy Grail. The rickety and patently unrealistic stand that insanity is just a wonderful place to be and that the homeless are all errant knights wears awfully thin, but, there are numerous moments of sad grace and violent beauty in this film. The screenplay by Richard LaGravenese launched his successful career and his smart wordplay helped garner Mercedes Ruehl an Oscar as Lucas' girlfriend. --Keith Simanton

• Testament of Youth | DVD | (10/05/2010) from £19.98   |  Saving you £0.01 (0.05%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Cheryl Campbell stars in this enriching and award-winning adaptation of Vera Brittain's autobiography set between 1913 and 1925. At the outbreak of the First World War a young Vera finds herself torn between her studies at Oxford and the decision she will take to enrol as a volunteer nurse caring for casualties from the Front. Little does she realise that the faces passing before her will include those closest to her. Devastating in its portrayal of the impact of war on a whole generation Testament of Youth is a passionate powerful and personal record Vera Brittain's experiences during the First World War and serves as a moving memorial to a lost generation.

• Children's Film Foundation Volume 1: London Tales (DVD) | DVD | (23/07/2012) from £10.69   |  Saving you £9.30 (87.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  For over 30 years the Children's Film Foundation dedicated itself to producing quality entertainment for young audiences, employing the cream of British filmmaking talent. Villains, gangsters and conmen are foiled by plucky London youngsters. Helmed by such celebrated directors as John Krish and Pat Jackson, the films in London Tales feature assured performances from an array of familiar faces, including a fresh faced John Moulder Brown (playing a schoolboy in trouble) and Bernard Cribbins (as a dastardly master of disguise). Newly transferred from the best available elements held in the BFI Archive, these much loved and fondly remembered family films finally make their welcome return to the screen after many years out of distribution. Includes: The Salvage Gang (1958), Seventy Deadly Pills (1966), Operation Third Form (1966) and Night Ferry (1976)

• Doctor Who - Tomb Of The Cybermen | DVD | (14/01/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Tomb of the Cybermen brought the Doctor, Patrick Troughton, into conflict with his silver cyborg nemeses for a third time, following The Tenth Planet (1966) and The Moonbase (1967). The Doctor, Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) join an archaeological expedition on the planet Telos, where they encounter deathtraps, betrayal and a waiting army of frozen Cybermen. Scripted by Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davis, who would later write Doomwatch (1970-72), many of the essentials of the plot anticipate James Cameron's blockbusting Aliens (1986): the barren planet with abandoned city, the tense wait for a rescue ship, the human traitors, the implacable, more powerful enemy. Unfortunately for a story so centred on logic the characters display a worrying lack of sense; the supposedly highly logical villains assume the Cybermen will just do what they tell them, and the Doctor locks the chief human traitor in a room without first checking it for ray guns! There's also an astonishingly crass racial stereotype with the one black character, Toberman (Roy Stewart) being a muscle-bound, slave-like henchman. Flaws aside this is a superior Doctor Who adventure and a thoroughly entertaining piece of classic television. On the DVD: as ever the BBC have done a fabulous job bringing Doctor Who to DVD, with fully restored sound and picture making Tomb Of The Cybermen the best it has ever looked. A short feature on the disc notes there have been over 16,000 repairs to the image, and includes comparison footage with the unrestored prints. The black and white 4:3 picture is as good as low-budget 1960's television is ever going to look and the mono sound is excellent. The commentary by Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling is a little stilted and takes time to get going--often they just don't know what to say--but contains some interesting trivia for serious fans. Rather more information comes from the detailed production background subtitles, and from a 28-minute convention style panel filmed in 1992 with Hines, Watling and many of the production crew. Also included is 8 mm footage from the end of the previous story, the long lost Evil of the Daleks (1967), 3 minutes of alternative main title tests, a photo gallery, a short introduction by director Morris Barry and a two-minute clip from Late Night Line-up (1967) with Joan Bakewell profiling the BBC Visual Effects department, including unique footage of the Cybermats in colour.--Gary S Dalkin

• Kojak - Vol. 2 | DVD | (01/10/2001) from £8.33   |  Saving you £1.66 (19.93%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Three episodes of the acclaimed crime series starry Telly Savalas: ""Death is Not a Passing Grade"" ""Last Rites for a Dead Priest"" and ""Deliver Us From Evil"".

• Cleopatra Jones | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  A Turkish poppy field is torched - and a U.S. drug trafficker known as ""Mommy"" is feeling pretty burned. She phones the local cops in her pocket and orders a retaliatory strike on an inner-city anti-drug headquarters. Mommy's next call should be to 911 for now she'll have to mess with Special Agent Cleopatra Jones...

• Shadow Run | DVD | (29/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Shadow Run ought to be considerably more interesting than it is--Geoffrey Reeve is an efficient director and both Michael Caine and James Fox turn in icy performances as, respectively, an almost completely ruthless thief and the renegade intelligence man who hires him for that one last big job. Caine in particular is convincing in the half-hearted attacks of compunction that never stop him killing obstacles. Many of the bit-players--Lesley Grantham, for example--do a lot with almost nonexistent parts. The film counterpoints the planning of the heist with the social embarrassments of the fat schoolboy who becomes, by a series of coincidences, too informed about it and, ultimately, Caine's secret sharer. Reeve is rather too in love with the cathedral school background of the subplot and skimps too much on the complicated technical business of getting a computerised security van into a radio blackout zone. Still, the boy is excellent, and Caine's affair with the doomed hooker Rae Baker has some much-needed moments of wit. On the DVD: Disappointingly, the DVD, whose Dolby surround sound does miracles for the scenes of schoolboy choristers, is presented in pan and scan 1.33:1, and has no extra features except for chapter selection and trailers for other films.--Roz Kaveney

• 3 Classic Bela Lugosi Films Of The Silver Screen - Invisible Ghost / Scared To Death / White Zombie | DVD | (10/01/2005) from £12.87   |  Saving you £-7.88 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Invisible Ghost: Actor Bela Lugosi born in Lugas Hungary on October 20 1882 was the screens most notorious personification of evil - at the peak of his career in the early 30's he helped usher in an era of new popularity for the horror genre. In this film a man carries out a series of grisly stranglings whilst under hypnosis by his insane and domineering wife... Scared To Death: The pieces of a puzzling murder are revealed to us one by one in this frightening story

• The House Of Eliott - Series 2 | DVD | (09/01/2006) from £16.88   |  Saving you £43.11 (255.39%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Louise Lombard and Stella Gonet return as the Eliott sisters in the second series of this wonderful BBC costume drama. The House of Eliott is now the smartest most prestigious establishment in London and the Eliott sisters have to contend with the pressures of running their empire as well as the problems in their private lives. Beatrice's devotion to the business puts a tremendous strain on her marriage while Evie embarks upon a liaison which threatens to ruin both her life and th

• Empire Of The Sun - Special Edition | DVD | (06/03/2006) from £7.49   |  Saving you £9.50 (55.90%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Roundly dismissed as one of Steven Spielberg's least successful efforts, this very underrated film poignantly follows the World War II adventures of young Jim (a brilliant Christian Bale), caught in the throes of the fall of China. What if you once had everything and lost it all in an afternoon? What if you were only 12 years old at the time? Bale's transformation, from pampered British ruling-class child to an imprisoned, desperate, nearly feral boy, is nothing short of stunning. Also stunning are exceptional sets, cinematography and music (the last courtesy of John Williams) that enhance author J.G. Ballard's and screenwriter Tom Stoppard's depiction of another, less familiar casualty of war. In a time when competitors were releasing "comedic", derivative coming-of-age films, Empire of the Sun stands out as an epic in the classic David Lean sense--despite confusion or perceived competition with the equally excellent The Last Emperor (also released in 1987, and also a coming-of-age in a similar setting). It is also a remarkable testament to, yes, the human spirit. And despite its disappointing box-office returns, Empire of the Sun helped to further establish Spielberg as more than a commercial director and set the standard, tone and look for future efforts Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. --N.F. Mendoza

• Doctor Who - The Monsters Collection: The Cybermen | DVD | (30/09/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Take a trip through time and space to meet creatures and enemies that always came back for more... Doctor Who - The Monster Collection: The Cybermen contains two exciting stories! The Cybermen were once human but chose to replace all living tissue with plastic and steel. Seeing emotions as a weakness they removed those too and now Cyber massive armies try to upgrade the universe... The Tomb of The Cybermen is a four-part story from 1967. Starring Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor it is set in eerie Cybermen tombs on Telos. The Rise of The Cybermen and The Age of Steel were first shown in 2006. The Tenth Doctor played by David Tennant falls into a parallel universe and witnesses the creation of the Cybermen.

• 3 John Wayne Classic Westerns - Vol. 1 - Blue Steel / The Trail Beyond / Winds Of The Wastelands | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £4.03   |  Saving you £0.96 (19.20%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Features three John Wayne classics 'Blue Steel' 'Winds of the Wasteland' and 'The Trail Beyond'.

• Randy Rides Alone / The Trail Beyond | DVD | (08/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  In 'Randy Rides Alone' a man enters a saloon filled with murdered patrons and he finds himself accused of being the killer. In a brave attempt to prove his innocence he sets a trap to catch the real murderer. In 'The Trail Beyond' a cowboy travels to Canada to look for missing relatives.

• Kojak | DVD | (09/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Pilot: The Marcus-Nelson Murders This film is based on a real case the Wylie-Hoffert murder. A case that led to a fundamental change in US law. Two young girls are found murdered in their apartment in East Manhattan and Theo Kojak heads up the investigation. When a young black man is arrested and confesses to the murder Kojak is suspicious. Getting a lead from a junkie Kojak goes on to prove the innocence of one man and the guilt of another. 2: Mojo Kojak poses as a chemist

• Shadow Run | DVD | (25/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Caine is a London gangster who backed up by an upper-class bad guy (Fox) plans to do a job on an armoured transport van filled with paper for the Royal Mint. This is the paper used to make twenty and fifty pound notes so a load of such paper would be worth as much as 110 million on the black market. The only problem is getting to the van...

• Penmarric | DVD | (19/03/2007) from £16.55   |  Saving you £13.44 (81.21%)   |  RRP £29.99

  An epic tale of obsessive love and grand ambition. Based on the best-selling novel by Susan Howatch Penmarric is a truly epic and sweeping story of love greed and ambition set against the rugged beauty of Cornwall. On the wild Cornish coast stands the grand estate of Penmarric its stately house lands and mines. It offers wealth and power - but it can also destroy those who seek to become its master. Mark Castallack Master of Penmarric marries the fiery Janna daughter of a lowly fisherman. But a terrible secret will tear his family apart and echo down the decades. Love obsession betrayal and tragedy will set husband against wife father against son and brother against brother in the brooding shadows of the great house. One of the BBC's best-loved drama series of all time Penmarric is a powerful and unforgettable saga that spans three generations from Victorian England to the Second World War. Available for the first time on DVD this 3 disc collection includes all twelve episodes plus a special souvenir booklet.