"Actor: Hope Holiday"

• The Apartment | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £5.94   |  Saving you £10.05 (169.19%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Romance at its most anti-romantic--that is the Billy Wilder stamp of genius, and this Best Picture Academy Award winner from 1960 is no exception. Set in a decidedly unsavoury world of corporate climbing and philandering, the great filmmaker's trenchant, witty satire-melodrama takes the office politics of a corporation and plays them out in the apartment of lonely clerk CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon). By lending out his digs to the higher-ups for nightly extramarital flings with their secretaries, Baxter has managed to ascend the business ladder faster than even he imagined. The story turns even uglier, though, when Baxter's crush on the building's melancholy elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine) runs up against her long-standing affair with the big boss (a superbly smarmy Fred MacMurray). The situation comes to a head when she tries to commit suicide in Baxter's apartment. Not the happiest or cleanest of scenarios, and one that earned the famously caustic and cynically humoured Wilder his share of outraged responses, but looking at it now, it is a funny, startlingly clear-eyed vision of urban emptiness and is unfailingly understanding of the crazy decisions our hearts sometimes make. Lemmon and MacLaine are ideally matched and while everyone cites Wilder's Some Like It Hot closing line "Nobody's perfect" as his best, MacLaine's no-nonsense final words--"Shut up and deal"--are every bit as memorable. Wilder won three Oscars for The Apartment, for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (cowritten with long-time collaborator I A L Diamond). --Robert Abele

• Raw Force | Blu Ray | (08/02/2021) from £12.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Welcome to Warrior's Island, burial ground of disgraced martial arts masters! When the Burbank Kung Fu Club travels to this mysterious island, they quickly find themselves facing the bloodthirsty vengeance of flesh-ripping, kung fu fighting zombies, gun-toting white slave traders and a band of strange monks, who may be the only key to explaining the madness. Edward Murphy's RAW FORCE is a virtual smorgasbord of over the top sleaze; mixing zombies, cannibals, outrageous action, gore, copious amounts of nudity and starring exploitation greats, Cameron Mitchell and Vic Diaz. Special Features Commentary with film critics David Flint and Adrian Smith (NEW) Destination: Warrior's Island: The Making of Raw Force, with Director Ed Murphy and Cinematographer Frank Johnson Audio interview with Finishing Editor Jim Wynorski Original Theatrical Trailer

• Irma La Douce | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £14.18   |  Saving you £1.81 (12.76%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Irma La Douce reunited The Apartment team of Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine with director Billy Wilder in an adaptation of the stage musical of the same name which had been a hit in Paris, London and New York. The screen transfer by Wilder and his colleague--writer IAL Diamond--however, omits the show's songs, relegating them to a background score refashioned by Andre Previn with some additional themes of his own. Background here is a complimentary term, for whatever qualms one might entertain as to this move, the two sets of themes are skilfully woven together by Previn and emerge as a witty and lyrical aural delight in their own right which is given due prominence on the soundtrack. Wilder is no rush to tell prostitute Irma's story: her affair with Lemmon being the pivot of the tale as he takes on the disguise of an English Lord. Lemmon and MacLaine beautifully play their mutual attraction under Wilder's deft direction with the slapstick never allowed to get out of hand. Many will recognise Wilder's touch in his handling of the scene where Lemmon as a policeman is carted off in a van full of voracious prostitutes from the bunks-in-the-train sequence in Some Like It Hot. The handsome production, designed by Alexander Tranner--with the occasional view of the Seine thrown in for good measure--and the Panavision photography by Joseph La Shelle are further assets. On the DVD: The DVD contains a longer than usual theatrical trailer, half shot as a cartoon with characters closely resembling those Pink Panther figures who emerged at the same time from the Mirisch Brothers, a pair prominent in sustaining the unique success of United Artists, whose name was deleted, in favour of the MGM logo, in the early 1960s. It's too bad that the music on this DVD transfer sometimes strikes a coarse note particularly over the extended opening credits. --Adrian Edwards

• Ladies Man | DVD | (08/11/2004) from £9.98   |  Saving you £6.01 (60.22%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The latest movie taken from TV's Saturday Night Live is about a politically incorrect TV show host desperately tracking down a wealthy lost love.

• La Garçonnière | DVD | (04/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A