"Actor: James Kenney"

• Cosh Boy (DVD + Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (20/01/2020) from £18.75   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A gang of juvenile delinquents tear up post-war London in Lewis Gilbert's (The Spy Who Loved Me, Alfie) shocking and energetic X-rated drama. Roy (James Kenney) is a brash, chain-smoking thug who bullies his friends (including Rene, played by a young Joan Collins) into subservience. He and his gang assault and rob people on the street, but things get increasingly dangerous when their behaviour escalates to murderous consequences. Unafraid to tackle a host of taboo subjects, Cosh Boy is a penetrating portrait of 1950s Britain and its simmering social tensions. One, if not the first British film to receive an X certificate, this landmark classic is available on Blu-ray for the first time and is the 40th entry to the longstanding BFI Flipside catalogue Special features: Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition Stranger in the City (1961, 22 mins): short film by Robert Hartford-Davis **FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Fully illustrated booklet with new writing on the film and full film credits Other extras TBC

• Above Us The Waves | DVD | (19/06/2007) from £6.25   |  Saving you £0.74 (11.84%)   |  RRP £6.99

  Directed by Ralph Thomas, Above Us the Waves (1955) tells of a Royal Navy mission to sink the "invincible" German battleship Tirpitz, off the Norwegian coast. John Mills is calm and confident as the mission commander, with strong support from John Gregson and Donald Sinden--all treated by the German personnel as fellow gentlemen when captured. Despite stirring music from Arthur Benjamin, the action sequences are visually no more than adequate, and the film is only a partial success.--Richard Whitehouse

• National Lampoon's Animal House | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £4.94   |  Saving you £11.05 (223.68%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A groundbreaking screwball caper, 1978's National Lampoon's Animal House was in its own way a rite of passage for Hollywood. Set in 1962 at Faber College, it follows the riotous carryings-on of the Delta Fraternity, into which are initiated freshmen Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst. Among the established house members are Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert and the late John Belushi as Bluto, a belching, lecherous, Jack Daniels guzzling maniac. A debauched house of pranksters (culminating in the famous Deathmobile sequence), Delta stands as a fun alternative to the more strait-laced, crew-cut, unpleasantly repressive norm personified by Omega House. As cowriter the late Doug Kenney puts it, "better to be an animal than a vegetable". Animal House is deliberately set in the pre-JFK assassination, pre-Vietnam era, something not made much of here, but which would have been implicitly understood by its American audience. The film was an enormous success, a rude, liberating catharsis for the latter-day frathousers who watched it. However, decades on, a lot of the humour seems broad, predictable, boorish, oafishly sexist and less witty than Airplane!, made two years later in the same anarchic spirit. Indeed, although it launched the Hollywood careers of several of its players and makers, including Kevin Bacon, director John Landis, Harold Ramis and Tom Hulce, who went on to do fine things, it might well have been inadvertently responsible for the infantilisation of much subsequent Hollywood comedy. Still, there's an undeniable energy that gusts throughout the film and Belushi, whether eating garbage or trying to reinvoke the spirit of America "After the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour" is a joy. On the DVD: Animal House comes to disc in a good transfer, presented in 1.85:1. The main extra is a featurette in which director John Landis, writer Chris Miller and some of the actors talk about the making of the movie. Interestingly, 23 years on, most of those interviewed look better than they did back in 1978, especially Stephen "Flounder" Furst. --David Stubbs

• Animal House (Includes Blu-Ray) | Blu Ray | (17/05/2021) from £16.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Starring comedy legend John Belushi, National Lampoon's ® Animal House is the ultimate college movie filled with food fights, fraternities and toga parties! Follow the uproarious escapades of the Delta House fraternity as they take on Dean Wormer (John Vernon), the sanctimonious Omegas, and the entire female student body. Directed by John Landis (The Blues Brothers), the most popular college comedy of all-time also stars Tim Matheson, Donald Sutherland, Karen Allen, Kevin Bacon, Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst along with Otis Day and the Knights performing their show-stopping rendition of ˜Shout.' Special Features THE YEARBOOK: AN ANIMAL HOUSE REUNION WHERE ARE THEY NOW? A DELTA ALUMNI UPDATE SCENE IT? ANIMAL HOUSE GAMES and more!

• National Lampoon's Animal House (1979) | DVD | (04/02/2002) from £9.93   |  Saving you £6.06 (37.90%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A groundbreaking screwball caper, 1978's National Lampoon's Animal House was in its own way a rite of passage for Hollywood. Set in 1962 at Faber College, it follows the riotous carryings-on of the Delta Fraternity, into which are initiated freshmen Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst. Among the established house members are Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert and the late John Belushi as Bluto, a belching, lecherous, Jack Daniels guzzling maniac. A debauched house of pranksters (culminating in the famous Deathmobile sequence), Delta stands as a fun alternative to the more strait-laced, crew-cut, unpleasantly repressive norm personified by Omega House. As cowriter the late Doug Kenney puts it, "better to be an animal than a vegetable". Animal House is deliberately set in the pre-JFK assassination, pre-Vietnam era, something not made much of here, but which would have been implicitly understood by its American audience. The film was an enormous success, a rude, liberating catharsis for the latter-day frathousers who watched it. However, decades on, a lot of the humour seems broad, predictable, boorish, oafishly sexist and less witty than Airplane!, made two years later in the same anarchic spirit. Indeed, although it launched the Hollywood careers of several of its players and makers, including Kevin Bacon, director John Landis, Harold Ramis and Tom Hulce, who went on to do fine things, it might well have been inadvertently responsible for the infantilisation of much subsequent Hollywood comedy. Still, there's an undeniable energy that gusts throughout the film and Belushi, whether eating garbage or trying to reinvoke the spirit of America "After the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour" is a joy. On the DVD: Animal House comes to disc in a good transfer, presented in 1.85:1. The main extra is a featurette in which director John Landis, writer Chris Miller and some of the actors talk about the making of the movie. Interestingly, 23 years on, most of those interviewed look better than they did back in 1978, especially Stephen "Flounder" Furst. --David Stubbs

• The Gentleman Gunmen | DVD | (07/03/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Set during the Second World War two Irish brothers arrive in London to launch an IRA bombing campaign but one of them begins to have doubts about their mission. John Mills and Dirk Bogarde play the brothers.

• Doctor At Sea | DVD | (30/09/2002) from £7.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (66.78%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The second of the popular Doctor series sees doctor Simon Sparrow (Dirk Bogarde) keen to escape the boredom of medical practice ashore and the threat of matrimony. Sparrow signs up as a medical officer onboard the cargo ship SS Lotus pleased to be free of any female distractions. However Sparrow soon falls foul of the ship's skipper fearsome captain Hogg (James Robertson Justice) and worse still lands in jail after a drunken celebration on arrival in South America. Two new passeng

• The Hand/The Ambush Of Leopard Street | DVD | (11/02/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The HandHenry Cass directed this 1960 support film. Three British soldiers are captured in Burma and incarcerated in a Japanese POW; Corporal George Adams (Bryan Coleman), Private Mike Brodie (Reed De Rouen) and Captain Roberts (Derek Bond). Brodie and Adams are interrogated by the exasperated Japanese officer, who severs their right hands when they refuse to talk. The Ambush of Leopard StreetYears later in London, Inspector Munyard (Ronald Leigh-Hunt) investigates the murder of a drunk who claims to have sold his amputated hand for 500. Scotland Yard begins searching for the killer behind a series of gruesome murders. Made in 1962 this Luckwell production tells the story of an armed holdup in London. A retired thief forms a gang for one last job, heisting a diamond shipment. It's got good period locations and a British cast that make this an enjoyable British B film.