Anyone can make themselves unpopular - but it takes a past master like John Cleese to be really irritating. The secret he says is to let the other person believe it's all totally unintentional - and that's the first of many tricks of the trade he gives away in How To Irritate People. With the help of fellow Python cohorts Michael Palin and Graham Chapman Connie Booth from Fawlty Towers and Goodie Tim Brooke-Taylor Cleese demonstrates the uncanny ability to keep his victims just the right temperature under the collar...one degree below boiling point! Recorded live in front of a thoroughly irritated audience and including the famed 'Airline Pilot' sketch How To Irritate People is a lesser known classic of British comedy.
BBC TV's legendary 1992 Halloween special caused a storm of controversy. The programme went out as a 'live' telecast about a haunted house on a London estate with Michael Parkinson as anchor man in the studio Mike Smith presenting the phone-in Sarah Greene as the reporter in the house itself and Craig Charles as the Outside Broadcast interviewer. According to the press at least in the days following transmission it caused a wave of panic among the British viewing public similar
The crushing pressures of social conformity have always been a central concern of Terence Davies' movies, so Edith Wharton's astringent novel of innocence destroyed makes an ideal choice for him. Set in the edgy, nouveau riche ambience of 1900s New York, the story traces the downfall of the lovely but imprudent Lily Bart (Gillian Anderson) in a world where hypocrisy and predatory vice lurk behind genteel facades. Wharton (whose later novel The Age of Innocence was brilliantly filmed by Martin Scorsese) has an acute feel for the subtleties of social nuance, the way insiders and outsiders are defined, and Davies skilfully renders these hints and insidious judgments in cinematic terms. Working to a tighter budget than most period dramas, he turns his limitations to advantage. The film's never in danger of being swamped by the gorgeousness of its sets and costumes, or turned into an exercise in easy nostalgia. The northern austerity of Glasgow effectively stands in for New York. Throwing off the mantle of Scully (from The X-Files), Gillian Anderson gives a powerful and wholly convincing performance as Lily, movingly despairing as her options are closed off one by one; and there's a fine portrayal of self-satisfied brutality from Dan Aykroyd as the chief agent of her downfall. --Philip Kemp
A woman who finds herself on her honeymoon in Lisbon during an international football competition, must decide whether her new husband manipulated her and the situation, just to be there for the England game... or not....
Catherine Cookson was born Catherine McMullen in 1906. Her life began in poverty and she grew up believing her real mother was her sister. In a life that could have been taken from any of her own novels Catherine aspired to achieve more than many of her time. From poverty to wealth she left the sadness behind to start a new life in Hastings where she was to meet her husband Tom Cookson. As a form of therapy Catherine began to write and never stopped and became one of the world's be
It is 1795 England and the lovely Catherine (Stephanie Beacham) arrives at the foreboding manor where she is to marry Sir Charles Fengriffen (Witchfinder General's Ian Ogilvy ). Almost immediately upon arrival Catherine is set upon by a series of strange hallucinations and visions involving a severed hand as well as a creepy eyeless ghost. Catherine's sanity to say nothing of her life is threatened as she tries to uncover the source of the supernatural happenings and a sudden pregnancy only adds to the mystery as she slowly begins to find out what dark secrets really exist at Fengriffen! Peter Cushing stars in the blood-curdling tale. As with just about anything he is in Cushing doesn't just carry the film he steals it! As the 18th-century psychiatrist Dr. Pope he serves as a sort of Sherlock Holmes-ish character investigating the claims of ghosts and struggles in vain to find a way to cure with reason what he perceives as Catherine's delusions. Beacham and Ogilvy give solid genre performances but when Cushing is on screen it is simply his film. Veteran heavy Herbert Lom (perhaps best remembered for his recurring role in the Pink Panther series as Peter Sellers's psychotic boss) is chilling in a flashback appearance. Gravelly voiced beatle-browed Patrick Magee makes the most of an underwritten role while Ian (The Saint) Ogilvy and Stephanie Beacham carry the film superbly as the tormented bride and groom.
Before James Bond there was Dick Barton: Special Agent! Between 1946 and 1951 Dick Barton's thrilling nightly adventures on the BBC's Light Programme attracted a record-breaking 15 million listeners and enthralled an entire nation. The serial proved so popular that it spun off into three hugely successful feature films from the fledgling Hammer Films. While virtually all the original BBC radio shows have been lost these three Hammer feature films still survive and a
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy