"Actor: James Adamson"

• The Count Of Monte Cristo | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £8.25   |  Saving you £7.74 (93.82%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In this new version of the classic tale A young man, falsely imprisoned by his jealous "friend," escapes from a terrible prison years later and uses a hidden treasure to exact his revenge.

• Fear X | DVD | (28/06/2004) from £9.30   |  Saving you £9.68 (153.41%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Security guard Harry Caine (Turturro) is desperately searching for a reason behind the murder of his wife. He spends his nights watching CCTV footage to find a face that might give him a clue. His walls are plastered with 'suspects' but when he closes in on one who might be the killer his world is turned upside down once again...

• King Kong - The Eighth Wonder Of The World | DVD | (15/01/2001) from £7.25   |  Saving you £2.74 (37.79%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Now you see it. You're amazed. You can't believe it. Your eyes open wider. It's horrible, but you can't look away. There's no chance for you. No escape. You're helpless, helpless. There's just one chance, if you can scream. Throw your arms across your eyes and scream, scream for your life!" And scream Fay Wray does most famously in this monster classic, one of the greatest adventure films of all time, which even in an era of computer-generated wizardry remains a marvel of stop-motion animation. Robert Armstrong stars as famed adventurer Carl Denham, who is leading a "crazy voyage" to a mysterious, uncharted island to photograph "something monstrous ... neither beast nor man". Also aboard is waif Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and Bruce Cabot as big lug John Driscoll, the ship's first mate. King Kong's first half-hour is steady going, with engagingly corny dialogue ("Some big, hard-boiled egg gets a look at a pretty face and bang, he cracks up and goes sappy") and ominous portent that sets the stage for the horror to come. Once our heroes reach Skull Island, the movie comes to roaring, chest-thumping, T-rex-slamming, snake-throttling, pterodactyl-tearing, native-stomping life. King Kong was ranked by the American Film Institute as among the 50 best films of the century. Kong making his last stand atop the Empire State Building is one of the film's most indelible and iconic images. --Donald Liebenson, Amazon.comOn the DVD: Although a little light on extras, this is happily the Director's Cut, restoring scenes that were censored after the film's original 1933 run, including Kong peeling off Fay Wray's clothes like a banana, and our hirsute hero using unfortunate natives as dental floss. The ratio of 4:3 is correct for a film of this age; the picture and (mono) sound are perfectly acceptable without being revelatory. The 25-minute "making of" documentary from 1992 is a 60th anniversary tribute to the film, which details all of Kong's many ground-breaking contributions to cinema, from Willis O'Brien's use of stop-motion and rear projection effects to Max Steiner's music score. There are contributions from film historians, modern admirers of the film including composer Jerry Goldsmith--who admits that Steiner created a template that Hollywood composers are still following--and a few surviving participants such as sound effects man Murray Spivak. Apparently, director Merian C. Cooper's original idea was to capture live gorillas, transport them to the island of Komodo and film them fighting the giant lizards! Thanks to Willis O'Brien's pioneering effects work good sense prevailed and a cinema classic was born. --Mark Walker

• Lighthouse | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £13.18   |  Saving you £2.81 (21.32%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Run aground during a fierce storm a group of passengers are forced to abandon ship. As the survivors (among them prisoners a prison guard and a criminal psychologist) struggle ashore they find themselves at an apparently deserted lighthouse. It's not long until they discover the headless corpses of the lighthouse keepers and they realise that the ship was also carrying a prisoner more dangerous than any of them - murderer Leo Rook (Christopher Adamson). Hunting them down one by

• Barbara Stanwyck | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  A bumper box set of classic films featuring 'The Queen' Barbara Stanwyck! Double Indemnity (Dir. Billy Wilder 1944): Director Billy Wilder and writer Raymond Chandler ('The Big Sleep') adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this wildly thrilling story of insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) who schemes the perfect murder with the beautiful dame Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck): kill Dietrichson's husband and make off with the insurance money. But of cou

• Laurel And Hardy - Way Out West | DVD | (27/12/2000) from £7.79   |  Saving you £10.20 (130.94%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Way Out West, Laurel and Hardy's sole foray into cowboy country, benefits from their rousing rendition of "The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia" (a song which made it into the British charts a few years ago) and some inspired villainy from James Finlayson, the Scottish actor who was frequently cast as Stan and Ollie's nemesis (here, he plays villainous bartender Mickey Finn). The plot is some hokum about Stan and Ollie's attempts to deliver deeds to a gold mine to the daughter of an old pal. What matters is the clowning--most of which is inspired. --Geoffrey Macnab

• The Sherlock Holmes Catalogue - The Hound Of The Baskervilles | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-10.01 (-100.20%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This near two-hour Granada Television production of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Conan Doyle's most popular Sherlock Holmes tale, stars series regular Jeremy Brett as the Baker Street detective and Edward Hardwicke as his close ally, Dr John Watson. A thrilling blend of detective yarn and Gothic horror, the tale concerns the apparent return of an old curse upon the Baskerville family in the terrifying form of a gigantic killer hound. Fans of Hardwicke get an opportunity to see his Watson on a solo mission for part of this story, though Brett--easily the best of all screen actors to play the sleuth--is never far from the narrative. The supporting cast is very good, and the beast itself, revealed in a famously terrifying finale, is indeed a spooky revelation. --Tom Keogh

• Thief Special Edition | DVD | (16/12/2016) from £17.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A