John Mills stars as the eponymous Professor in 1979s Quatermass, the fourth, final and best of the celebrated television science fiction serials. The Professors early adventures were 1950s TV productions, all made into cult Hammer films, including the excellent Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Here Quatermass, now an elderly scientist searching for his missing grand-daughter, finds himself facing a new alien nightmare in a convincingly bleak near-future Britain of urban decay, social collapse and unchecked violence. Written by Nigel Kneale, as were all the Quatermass stories, this was an intelligent extrapolation of 1970s industrial-strife-ridden Britain, a continuation of the apocalyptic British SF tradition of John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids was serialised by the BBC two years later). Thanks to a generous budget sufficient to allow for an international theatrical version, the production values are impressively large-scale, and the naturalistic performances from a cast including Simon MacCorkindale, Barbara Kellerman and Brenda Fricker add greatly to the sense of reality. Best of all, John Mills brings tremendous class to an adventure which remains a rare example of serious, ideas-based adult TV SF. Director Piers Haggard (Pennies from Heaven) packs considerable tension and not a few scares into Kneales epic canvas. On the DVD: Quatermass is presented on three DVDs with two 50-minute episodes and perfunctory production notes on each of the first two discs. The 4:3 picture is good for a 1970s TV series, though there is some minor print damage. Sound is adequate two-channel mono. Disc 3 offers the 101-minute international theatrical version, called The Quatermass Conclusion. This version contains some slightly stronger, 15-rated material, and different credits. The disc also features an oddly presented but interesting 18-minute interview with Nigel Kneale which is centred on the original three Quatermass BBC serials. A 16-page booklet is informative and the packaging is among the most attractive to grace a DVD set thus far. --Gary S Dalkin
Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas star as larger-than life heroes in this classic Western epic directed by John Sturges. Frontier lawman Wyatt Earp (Lancaster) joins his three brothers in their feud against the villainous Clanton gang, a local clan of cattle thieves in Tombstone, Arizona. When Earp defends the sickly gambler John Doc Holliday (Douglas) and puts a stop to the Clanton's lawlessness, the ruthless outlaws seek revenge and murder one of Earp's brothers. This leads the men into the most devastating showdown in Wild West history! Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is a timeless, cinematic tale of good versus evil.
Adapted from J.B. Priestley's famous novel charting the ups and downs of a struggling touring concert party, this endearing musical comedy features an outstanding array of British talent - including John Fraser, Rachel Roberts, Joyce Grenfell, Celia Johnson, Anthony Newley and Thora Hird. The Good Companions is presented here in a brand-new transfer from original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. The future looks bleak for The Dinky Doos when their manager runs off w...
Be careful who you hitch a ride with! All roads lead to terror in Hitch Hike to Hell, the delightfully sleazy cautionary tale from cult director Irvin Berwick (Malibu High, The Monster of Piedras Blancas). Howard is a mild-mannered momma's boy whose job running deliveries for a cleaning agency affords him a lot of time out on the road. It's not until he picks up young women who've run away from home that he transforms into a twitching, homicidal maniac, hellbent on meting out punishment for their transgressions. Can the cops put a stop to Howard's demented spree before he claims yet another victim? Influenced by the depraved crimes of the likes of Co-ed Killer Edmond Kemper, Hitch Hike to Hell is a bona fide American nightmare from the vaults of legendary exploitation producer Harry Novak (The Child, Toys Are Not for Children). Special Edition Contents: Brand new 2K restoration from original film elements 1.33 and 1.78 versions of the feature High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation Original uncompressed mono audio Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing Newly-filmed appreciation by Nightmare USA author Stephen Thrower Road to Nowhere: Hitchhiking Culture Goes to Hell - brand new video essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas exploring the dark side of hitch-hiking in the real world and on the screen Original theatrical trailer Original press book (BD-ROM Content) Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by The Twins of Evil FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Heather Drain
Hitchcock's most notorious work remains terrifying after all these years, digitally presented, this reissue marks this milestone work's 50th Anniversary.
Dino De Laurentiis' remake of the original hairy monster movie features remarkable special effects by Rick Baker. Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin) head of an oil drilling expedition to the remote island of Micronesia discovers a stow-away on his ship Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges) a zoologist in search of a prehistoric creature fabled to exist on the island. Off the coast of Micronesia they rescue Dwan (Jessica Lange) a beautiful woman shipwrecked in the treacherous seas. On the islan
Reprising his role from the wildly popular children's drama series Boy Dominic, Murray Dale returns as a teenager who experiences more than his fair share of adventure when he sets out to avenge the brutal murder of his parents. Set in nineteenth-century Yorkshire and co-starring Thorley Walters, John Hallam, Louise Jameson and Gordon Gostelow, Dominic is a sophisticated story with mystery and suspense at every turn. 1821: now 16, 'Nick' Bulman hopes to follow in his father's footsteps and begins his naval cadet training. Fate sets him on a very different path, however one that will see him kidnapped by smugglers, thrown into dungeons and abandoned in a lonely crypt. Nick learns quickly that in a world of intrigue and double-dealing few characters are to be trusted and no-one is ever quite what they seem...SPECIAL FEATURE:Image Gallery
Bombastic, pretentious and narcissistic, Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same is also one of the best concert films of the 1970s, capturing the greatest rock band of the decade in full flight at Madison Square Gardens in 1973. The notorious "fantasy sequences" punctuate the musical action but don't, fortunately, interrupt it. Playing true to their self-indulgent rock & roll personas, each band member has his own segment, as does legendary larger-than-life manager Peter Grant. Only John Bonham's is reasonably down-to-earth: during his mammoth drum solo ("Moby Dick") he is seen driving his custom car, his Harley chopper, and a drag racer at Santa Pod, as well as inspecting bulls and doing a bit of building work. Well, what else would a working-class lad from Birmingham do with his millions? Elsewhere, John Paul Jones is a demented Phantom of the Opera with an unfeasibly large organ ("No Quarter"); Robert Plant is a quasi-Arthurian knight errant rescuing a suitable rock-chick damsel in distress ("The Song Remains the Same/Rain Song"); while Aleister Crowley acolyte Jimmy Page goes in for sorcery and mysticism as he encounters the wizard from the cover of Led Zep IV ("Dazed & Confused"). But the real magic is the onstage footage: Page wields his Gibson Les Paul as if he is indeed enchanted (the violin bow becomes his magician's wand in "Dazed & Confused"), while Plant preens and prowls his way around the stage, the very image of the rock idol; and quite how Jones and Bonham managed to be such a behemoth of a rhythm section is still a mystery. For all its many faults, this remains an essential document of an era when rock dinosaurs still walked the earth. On the DVD: No extra features to speak of at all, which is extremely disappointing given the wealth of archive material concerning the band and this movie that must be available. The picture and sound are respectable without being exceptional. --Mark Walker
There's hilarity at Grace Brothers the High Street department store with a difference. Join in the fun as limp-wristed Mr Humphries and that blue-rinsed batle axe Mrs Slocombe lead the outrageous department store staff through a third series of outrageously funny episodes! Episodes comprise: 1. The Hand Of Fate 2. Coffee Morning 3. Up Captain Peacock 4. Cold Store 5. Wedding Bells 6. German Week 7. Shoulder To Shoulder 8. New Look 9. Christmas Crackers
Director John Carpenter presents a romantic science fiction odyssey starring Jeff Bridges in his Oscar(R)-nominated role as an innocent alien from a distant planet who learns what it means to be a man in love. When his spacecraft is shot down over Wisconsin, Starman (Bridges) arrives at the remote cabin of a distraught young widow, Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen), and clones the form of her dead husband. The alien convinces Jenny to drive him to Arizona, explaining that if he isn't picked up by his mothership in three days, he'll die. Hot on their trail are government agents, intent on capturing the alien, dead or alive. En route, Starman demonstrates the power of universal love, while Jenny rediscovers her human feelings for passion.
A space ship stops at an intergalactic fuel station. While the captain's refueling one of his idiotic companions plays with the controls and accidently starts the ship and crashes into the earth. This causes a sensation: the media celebrates the extraterrestrials the military interrogates them for eternal wisdom. However soon they recognize that the fellows are dumb as bricks - although some generals believe it's just a mask.
Grease: John Travolta solidified his position as the most versatile and magnetic screen presence of the decade in this film version of the smash hit play Grease. Recording star Olivia Newton-John made her American film debut as Sandy Travolta's naive love interest. The impressive supporting cast reads like a who's who in this quintessential musical about the fabulous '50's. Grease is not just a nostalgic look at a simpler decade - it's an energetic and exciting musical homage to the age of rock n'roll! Grease 2: It's 1961 two years after the original gang graduated from Rydell High and there's a new crop of seniors. The Pink Ladies and the T-Birds are still the epitome of cool except that over the summer something's happened to Stephanie the sorority leader. She feels she's outgrown Johnny the head T-Bird and is looking for a new love - one who's even more cool and whose bike is even hotter. Meanwhile newcomer Michael is smitten with Stephanie who won't even notice him...
When a retired hit man is forced back into action by a brutal Russian mobster, he hunts down his adversaries with the ruthlessness that made him a crime underworld legend in John Wick, a stylish tale of revenge and redemption. After the sudden death of his beloved wife, John Wick receives one last gift from her, a beagle puppy named Daisy, and a note imploring him not to forget how to love. But John's mourning is interrupted when his 1969 Boss Mustang catches the eye of sadistic thug Iosef Tarasov who breaks into his house and steals it, beating John unconscious and leaving Daisy dead. Unwittingly, they have just reawakened one of the most brutal assassins the underworld has ever seen. John's search for his stolen vehicle takes him to a side of New York City that tourists never see, a hyper-real, super-secret criminal community, where John Wick was once the baddest guy of all.
No more good news everybody--this fourth series of Futurama is the show's last. By turns frenetic and far-sighted, Matt Groening's futuristic comedy provided belly-laughs for self-confessed SF nerds, but somehow failed to connect with a broader audience, even though it was often funnier and sharper than stablemate The Simpsons. So now bid farewell to the Planet Express team--Fry, Leela, Zoidberg, Bender, Amy, Hermes, Prof Farnsworth--as well as to kindly Kif, cloned Cubert, megalomaniac Mom, mutants in the sewer, the cast of robo-sitcom All My Circuits, swashbuckling space lothario and William Shatner wannabe Zapp Brannigan, Elzar the four-armed chef, and all the other characters that made Futurama such a unique experience. This fourth and final year has all the elements that fans enjoyed so much--but also those elements that partially explain its cancellation. Recurring characters are great if you've watched the show before, as are the in-jokes; and the many parodies of classic science fiction are fine for the initiated, but risk leaving other viewers out in the cold. The show's strengths and perceived weaknesses are exemplified in the episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", in which the original cast of Star Trek play themselves: hilarious for Trekkers, but not really for anyone else. Elsewhere we find Leela discovering her real parents aren't aliens at all but in fact live in the sewers; Kif getting pregnant; Fry discovering the fossilised remains of his faithful pet dog; and Bender being converted to steam power. Despite some ups and downs, it's still the funniest animated show on TV. Those responsible for cancelling it can bite my shiny metal On the DVD: Futurama, Series 4 DVD box set includes a "Play All" function on each disc. Multifarious extras include cast and crew commentaries, deleted scenes, animatics, galleries and Easter eggs. --Mark Walker
After chasing a fugitive with an advanced alien weapon, New York cop James Edwards (Will Smith) finds himself recruited to the MiB, a top secret agency in charge of alien immigration on Earth. He is partnered with K (Tommy Lee Jones), and sent to investigate an alien prediction of the end of the world. They have to track down a hostile alien life form currently wearing the human skin of a country hick named Edgar.
It's loose...Something is killing soldiers on the Lancashire moors - something with razor sharp talons and a brutal strength. Could it be a wild animal, as the police think? Or is it be something far more vicious?Joyce and Ellie Ballantyne know what it is. They might look like innocent old ladies but they have a guilty secret. Thirty years ago, they made a fateful decision, one they have lived with ever since. But their secret cannot remain buried forever.Starring acting legends Dame Flora Robson (Wuthering Heights, Black Narcissus) and Beryl Reid (The Killing of Sister George), The Beast in the Cellar is one of the most unusual - and most effective - British horror films of the 1970's.
Academy Award winning writer/director Oliver Stone brings shock radio to the screen in this relentlessly fast-paced suspense thriller. Dallas talk radio host Barry Champlain (Eric Bogosian) discovers one weekend that his skills in pushing people's buttons have won him a chance for national syndication. But instead of celebrating he subjects his ex-wife (Ellen Greene) and co-workers to a darkly comic marathon bout of compulsive risk-taking with his unstable radio audience. Barry and
Director Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce, the follow-up to his most popular hit Poltergeist, is a film that must be seen to be believed. That's not really a compliment, though, since Lifeforce isn't much of a movie when all the sound and fury is over. But you've got to admit there's something crazily admirable about a picture that starts out as a science fiction mission to Halley's comet, turns into an alien-invasion thriller featuring a beautiful naked woman (Mathilda May) who's a vampire from space and escalates into an end-of-the-world disaster flick. Armed with a big budget and a special effects crew led by Star Wars pioneer John Dykstra, Hooper and Alien cowriter Dan O'Bannon have whipped up a concoction that's got everything anyone could ask of a horror movie--from zombies running amok in London to rotting corpses and energy bolts that signal the apocalypse to come. Keeping it all together is Steve Railsback as the Halley-mission survivor who holds the key to mankind's salvation--but what fun is saving the world when you could be seduced by a sexy naked space vampire? Check out Lifeforce to see how it all turns out. --Jeff Shannon
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