Leeson (Ewan McGregor) is rightly proud of himself: despite his humble beginnings, the Watford lad is now a trusted employee of Barings Merchant Bank, the City of London's oldest Banking House founded in 1763.
This highly popular comedy from London Weekend Television features BAFTA-nominated Fresh Fields' star Julia McKenzie in an early sitcom role as Maggie, a divorced schoolteacher living on her own in a block of flats in London. Legendary comedy battleaxe Irene Handl is her Maggie's nosy next-door neighbour Mrs P, whose constant interference means that Maggie is never really alone. Maggie lives in hope of eventually meeting Mr Right, but Mrs P's clumsy interventions are sure to nip any potential romance in the bud... This complete set comprises both series alongside the original pilot play, Poppy and Her, first broadcast in 1976.
Richard Burton stars as Henry VIII in this historical drama, with Genevieve Bujold playing his tragic wife, Anne Boleyn. Amidst the splendour of the Tudor court, Henry and Anne's tempestuous marriage mirrors the political and religious intrigues that threaten to divide the kingdom, as Henry grows ever more desperate for a male heir to continue his line.
The first ever DVD release of THE DEFINITIVE 70's sex comedy starring Mary Millington Come Play With Me follows the saucy exploits of a bunch of nubile girls who start up a health farm that unbeknownst to them is harbouring master money forgers.
Pioneering, immensely influential and often challenging, Armchair Theatre was ITV's flagship drama anthology series. Bringing high-quality drama to the viewing public, the series easily demonstrated the network's potential to rival the BBC's drama output, with diverse and powerful plays showcasing some of Britain's most gifted writers. This set comprises twelve plays featuring performances by some of the era's most celebrated and accomplished actors - including Susannah York, Colin Blakely, Ian Holm, Irene Handl, Donald Pleasence, Terry-Thomas, Patrick Macnee, Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier, among many others. This volume includes early plays by both Jack Rosenthal and David Perry, and a star-studded production of Oscar Wilde's ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’.
Released to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Mary Millington s death, this special edition Blu-ray box set (individually numbered and limited to 3,000 units) features Mary s most glamorous film roles, with new, stunning 2K restorations, including: Come Play with Me (1977), The Playbirds (1978), Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair (1979), Queen of the Blues (1979), Mary Millington s True Blue Confessions (1980) plus Respectable: The Mary Millington Story (2015), an in-depth documentary chronicling her extraordinary life. This collector s edition is a must for any Millington fan! Filled with scintillating new extras, packaged in a collectable case (displaying brand new artwork throughout) and including a huge 80-page book, with an introduction from David Sullivan and notes by biographer Simon Sheridan (author of Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema). A tantalising orgy of extras that no self-respecting lover of Mary Millington or 1970 s British sex comedies can but fail to be aroused by!
Features the all episodes from the BBC television comedy series which sees Tom and Barbara leave the rat-race in an attempt to live a self-sufficient life; with varying degrees of success! Episodes comprise: 1. Plough Your Own Furrow 2. Say Little Hen ... 3. The Weaker Sex? 4. Pig's Lib 5. The Thing In The Cellar 6. The Pagan Rite 7. Backs To The Wall 8. Just My Bill 9. The Guru Of Surbiton 10. Mr Fix-It 11. The Day Peace Broke Out 12. Mutiny 13. Home Sweet Home 14. Going To Pot? 15. The Early Birds 16. The Happy Event 17. A Tug Of The Forelock 18. I Talk To The Trees 19. The Wind-Break War 20. Whose Fleas Are These? 21. The Last Posh Frock 22. Away From It All 23. The Green Door 24. Our Speaker Today 25. The Weaver's Tale 26. Suit Yourself 27. Sweet And Sour Charity 28. Anniversary 29. When I'm 65 30. Silly But It's Fun
Quirt Evens an all round bad guy is nursed back to health and sought after by Penelope Worth a quaker girl. He eventually finds himself having to choose from his world or the world from which Penelope lives by.
Available for the first time in the UK on Blu-ray, Krzysztof Kieslowski's multi award-winning trilogy is a landmark of world cinema. Three Colours: Blue, White and Red have been acclaimed as masterpieces by critics and audiences the world over. The films, co-written by Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, with whom he wrote the epic Dekalog cycle, explore the French Revolutionary ideals of freedom, equality and brotherhood and their relevance to the contemporary world.Blue examines liberation through the eyes of a woman (Juliette Binoche) who loses her husband and son in an auto accident, and solemnly starts anew. White is an ironic comedy about a befuddled Polish husband (Zbigniew Zamachowski) who takes an odd path of revenge against his ex-wife (Julie Delpy). A Swiss model (Irne Jacob) strikes up a friendship with a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who eavesdrops on his neighbours in Red. The trilogy is a snapshot of European life at a time of reconstruction after the Cold War, reflected through Kieslowski's moralist view of human nature and illumined by each title's palate colour.
Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi star in this macabre horror classic inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Dr. Richard Vollin (Lugosi) is a brilliant but unstable surgeon with a morbid obsession for instruments of torture. He saves the life of Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware) a beautiful young socialite injured in an automobile accident and becomes increasingly attracted to her. But the girl is frightened by his advances and complains to her father Judge Thatcher (Samuel S. Hinds) who tells Vollin to leave the girl alone. When escaped killer Edmund Bateman (Karloff) approaches the surgeon for a new face Vollin agrees only after convincing Bateman to assist him in his sinister plan of revenge. The doctor ultimately becomes the victim of his own wicked schemes when Bateman realizes Vollin has no intention of remaking his disfigured countenance in this elaborately produced shocker.
It must be stressed that, despite the fact that it was produced in 1973 and stars Christopher Lee, The Wicker Man is not a Hammer Horror film. There is no blood, very little gore and the titular Wicker Man is not a monster made out of sticks that runs around killing people by weaving them into raffia work. Edward Woodward plays Sergeant Howie, a virginal, Christian policeman sent from the Scottish mainland to investigate the disappearance of a young girl on the remote island of Summerisle. The intelligent script by Anthony Schaffer, who also wrote the detective mystery Sleuth (a film with which The Wicker Man shares many traits), derives its horror from the increasing isolation, confusion and humiliation experienced by the naïve Howie as he encounters the island community's hostility and sexual pagan rituals, manifested most immediately in the enthusiastic advances of local landlord's daughter Willow (Britt Ekland). Howie's intriguing search, made all the more authentic by the film's atmospheric locations and folkish soundtrack, gradually takes us deeper and deeper into the bizarre pagan community living under the guidance of the charming Laird (Lee, minus fangs) as the film builds to a terrifying climax with a twist to rival that of The Sixth Sense or Fight Club. --Paul Philpott On the DVD: The Wicker Man can finally be seen in its glorious entirety on DVD, thanks to the restoration of some 15 minutes of previously lost material. Since the original negative long ago disappeared (apparently dumped beneath the M3 motorway) the picture quality for the added scenes is dubious, but what's much more important is the regained richness in the depiction of Summerisle's society (including a wonderful deflowering ritual set to music) and the added depth to Howie's character. Almost redundantly this excellent two-disc package provides the butchered theatrical cut as well, which comes with a good new documentary explaining both the genesis of the film and its turbulent history. Christopher Lee and director Robin Hardy pop up in an archival interview from the 1970s and are also reunited with Edward Woodward in the brand-new and first-rate commentary track for the director's cut: Lee in particular remains passionate about the movie and still angry about its shabby treatment. Both versions of the film are widescreen 1.85:1; the theatrical cut is in remastered Dolby 5.1, but the director's cut remains in mono. --Mark Walker
A host of British comedy luminaries - including veteran farceur Sir Brian Rix and, in his last film role, actor and stand-up comedian Ronald Shiner - star in this good-natured comic caper charting the misadventures of a hapless bunch of Brighton-based petty crooks dogged by disaster at every turn. The Night We Got the Bird is presented here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. It's a set-up of craft and graft. 'Chippendale Charl...
Made in 1960, Carry On Constable is one of the earliest Carry On comic romps, arriving before they'd carved out their bawdy niche in British cinema. In fact, this Gerald-Thomas-directed effort isn't dissimilar to most of the mainstream Brit-com of its era. A flu epidemic has forced a police station to take on a brace of callow recruits: Kenneth Connor, a superstitious bag of nerves; Leslie Phillips, playing his usual rapscallion self; the ludicrously effete Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Williams. The "plot" is a sequence of thoroughly creaky gags at the expense of this bumbling quartet. The staple characters hadn't settled into their "classic" personae yet. Here, Sid James is an exasperated sergeant, not the sort of crinkly rogue he played in later years, Kenneth Williams is dry, detached and supercilious, while Hattie Jacques is no matron but a sympathetic sergeant, whose every walk-on is not yet accompanied by the portly strains of tubas and bassoons. The comedy here is, frankly, dismal--banana skins are slipped upon and officers' legs urinated upon bydogs, all to a rueful soundtrack of wah-wah trumpets. The main appeal of this movie is as a period slice of damp, pre-Beatles London in glorious black and white.On the DVD: Although picture and sound are adequate (though poorly dubbed in places), there are no extras at all, a shame for the hardcore Carry On aficionados to whom this release would surely, perhaps exclusively, appeal. --David Stubbs
In the London of the swinging 60's, a reclusive professor (Jack MacGowran) becomes infatuated with beautiful model Penny Lane (Jane Birkin), the girlfriend of a Svengali like photographer (Iain Quarrier), and embarks on a noble quest to become her champion. To rescue Penny he enters the magical realm of the Wonderwall, and returns to his laboratory a transformed man. The kaleidoscope of images and George Harrison's musical soundtrack catapult the audience into a lost world of innocence, whe...
An exercise in film noir fairytale, 1955's Killer's Kiss was Stanley Kubrick's second feature film (he had the first buried forever) and shows just how powerful a filmmaker he was right out of the gate. Followers of Kubrick's career will note the appearance of themes and images that recurred (a final axe-fight in a warehouse full of disembodied mannequin parts would not be out of place in The Shining), but this is also notably unlike later Kubrick films in its use of authentic locations and its 65-minute running time. The plot is a tiny anecdote about a washed-up boxer (Jamie Smith), a dance hall dame (Irene Kane) and a slimy hood (Frank Silvera) during one crowded weekend of brutality and romance. There's a sense of a young director playing games: the boxing match (a definite influence on Raging Bull) is all low-angle close-ups and subjective shots with plenty of thump and dazzle, and the traditional Expressionist look of noir is exaggerated with many a tricky shot or doomy plot twist. The three unfamiliar leads are all excellent as small-timers struggling with big passions, and there is already a potent use of raucous source music and subtle sound design to augment the stark, haunted black and white imagery. On the DVD Killer's Kiss on disc features no extras other than a blaring trailer ("a picture as brazen as the naked lights of Broadway, as hard as the New York streets in which it was shot!"). The black and white picture is 4:3, and comes with soundtracks in English, German, Italian and Spanish; subtitles in English, German, Italian, French, Dutch and Spanish. --Kim Newman
Anyone who fought in Vietnam can tell you that the war bore little resemblance to this propagandistic action film starring and codirected by John Wayne. But Green Berets itself is not nearly as bad as its reputation would suggest; critics roasted its gung-ho politics while ignoring its merits as an exciting (if rather conventional and idealistic) war movie. Some notorious mistakes were made--in the final shot, the sun sets in the east!--and it's an awkward attempt to graft WWII heroics onto the Vietnam experience. But as the Duke's attempt to acknowledge the men who were fighting and dying overseas, it's a rousing film in which Wayne commands a regiment on a mission to kidnap a Viet Cong general. David Janssen plays a journalist who learns to understand Wayne's commitment to battling Communism, and Jim Hutton (Timothy's dad) plays an ill-fated soldier who adopts a Vietnamese orphan. --Jeff Shannon
When a young girl mysteriously disappears Police Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) travels to a remote island to investigate. But this pastoral community led by the strange Lord Summerisle (a brilliant performance by the legendary Christopher Lee) is not what it seems as the devout Christian detective soon uncovers a secret society of wanton lust and pagan blasphemy. Can Howie now stop the cult's ultimate sacrifice before he himself comes face to face with the horror of the Wicker Man?
Enrol at the wacky College of Lifemanship where a senior host of great British comedians teach a completely uproarious course on how to come out tops in any social situation! Study with Alistair Sim and learn his valuable hints on the art of comic One-upmanship. Follow his expert advice to victimised Ian Carmichael about romance fully equipped to cope with life's hilarious humiliations without really cheating. Based on the books by Stephen Potter.
Includes: 1. Black Moon 2. Milou En Mai 3. Lacombe Lucien 4. Le Souffle Au Coeur 5. Au Revoir Les Enfants
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