"Actor: Gloria Castillo"

• The Night Of The Hunter | DVD | (19/03/2001) from £4.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (160.32%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In the entire history of American movies, The Night of the Hunter stands out as the rarest and most exotic of specimens. It is, to say the least, a masterpiece--and not just because it was the only movie directed by flamboyant actor Charles Laughton or the only produced solo screenplay by the legendary critic James Agee (who also co-wrote The African Queen). The truth is, nobody has ever made anything approaching its phantasmagoric, overheated style in which German expressionism, religious hysteria, fairy-tale fantasy (of the Grimm-est variety), and stalker movie are brought together in a furious boil. Like a nightmarish premonition of stalker movies to come, Night of the Hunter tells the suspenseful tale of a demented preacher (Robert Mitchum, in a performance that prefigures his memorable villain in Cape Fear), who torments a boy and his little sister--even marries their mixed-up mother (Shelley Winters)--because he's certain the kids know where their late bank-robber father hid a stash of stolen money. So dramatic, primal, and unforgettable are its images--the preacher's shadow looming over the children in their bedroom, the magical boat ride down a river whose banks teem with fantastic wildlife, those tattoos of LOVE and HATE on the unholy man's knuckles, the golden locks of a drowned woman waving in the current along with the indigenous plant life in her watery grave--that they're still haunting audiences (and filmmakers) today. --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com

• Reform School Girl | DVD | (17/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Gloria Castillo stars as mixed up teenager Donna Price. When she witnesses her boyfriend steal a car and get involved in a fatal hit and run accident he frames her for the accident to save himself and she is sent to reform school on car theft charges. Despite her innocence Donna refuses to reveal who was really driving the stolen vehicle it is only once the culprit reveals himself to be throughly nasty that Donna is able to extricate herself from her spiralling dilemma.

• Runaway Daughters | DVD | (29/11/2004) from £21.64   |  Saving you £-13.65 (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  Runaway Daughters tells the story of the misadventures of a trio of teenage girls. Audrey Barton wants something more out of life than her parents' money can buy; Dixie wants to escape the tyranny of her misogynistic father and Angela Forrest is a child of divorce left to fend for herself in a hostile world.

• Arkoff - Vol. 2 | DVD | (01/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A unique collection of some of the seminal 1950's monster and sci-fi movies made by the greatest director of the time including Roger Corman Bruno VeSota and Edward L Cahn. Featuring Monsters vampires delinquent school girls and giant arachnids along with the earliest performances of some of Hollywood's greatest stars. The Day The World Ended: A rancher and his daughter are holed up in their ranch after a nuclear holocaust decimates most of the world's population. Five su

• Brain From Planet Arous, The / Teenage Monster / Space Cadet | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  You have to credit the folks who put this double bill together. The Brain from Planet Arous, a low-budget alien invasion 1958 film, is one of those programmes that lingers in the memory as much for its title and impressively ludicrous giant-staring-transparent-brain monster as for its poverty row dramatics, in which the usually stiff John Agar grins evilly and flashes contact lenses when possessed by the creature and a good guy brain shows up to take over his dog to thwart the renegade cerebrum's plan for world domination. For this release, Brain is teamed with its original co-feature, a movie so bad you wouldn't buy it on its own but whose presence here is a pleasing extra. Whereas Brain from Planet Arous delivers exactly what its title promises, Teenage Monster is a cheat: rather than feature a mutant 1950s delinquent in a leather jacket, it's a melodramatic Western in which prospector's widow Anne Gwynne keeps her hulking caveman-like son (who seems to be well into middle-age) hidden, only for a scheming waitress to use the goon in her murder schemes. Brain is snappily directed, even when staging disasters well beyond its budget, while Teenage Monster drags and chatters and moans until its flat finale. On the DVD: The Brain from Planet Arous/Teenage Monster double bill disc is a solid showing for such marginal items, featuring not only the trailers for these attractions but a clutch of other 1950s sci-fi pictures (Phantom from Space, Invaders from Mars, etc.) and a bonus episode ("The Runaway Asteroid") from a studio-bound, live-broadcast juvenile space opera of the early 50s (Tom Corbett, Space Cadet) in which hysterical types in a capsule break off from the space programme to deliver ringing endorsements of gruesome-looking breakfast foods. --Kim Newman