"Actor: Kim Stanley"

• Seance on a Wet Afternoon | Blu Ray | (13/01/2020) from £14.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough give outstanding performances in this classy British thriller, with Attenborough winning a BAFTA for Best British Actor and Stanley scoring an Oscar nomination. Written and directed by Bryan Forbes - who also won a Writers Guild award, an Edgar and a BAFTA nomination - Seance on a Wet Afternoon is presented here as a brand-new transfer from original film elements in its original theatrical aspect ratio. Myra Savage, a highly-strung spiritual medium, convinces her weak-willed husband to fake a child kidnapping so she can offer her services to the parents when all seems lost. Though horrified at the prospect, he reluctantly goes along with the plan - but becomes more convinced than ever that Myra is losing her grip on reality

• The Right Stuff | DVD | (21/09/1998) from £12.99   |  Saving you £1.00 (7.70%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Philip Kaufman's intimate epic about the Mercury astronauts (based on Tom Wolfe's book) was one of the most ambitious and spectacularly exciting movies of the 1980s. It surprised almost everybody by not becoming a smash hit. By all rights, the film should have been every bit the success that Apollo 13 would later become; The Right Stuff is not only just as thrilling, but it is also a bigger and better movie. Combining history (both established and revisionist), grand mythmaking (and myth puncturing), adventure, melodrama, behind-the-scenes dish, spectacular visuals, and a down-to-earth sense of humour, The Right Stuff chronicles NASA's efforts to put a man in orbit. Such an achievement would be the first step toward President Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon, and, perhaps most important of all, would win a crucial public relations/morale victory over the Soviets, who had delivered a stunning blow to American pride by launching Sputnik, the first satellite. The movie contrasts the daring feats of the unsung test pilots--one of whom, Chuck Yeager, embodied more than anyone else the skill and spirit of Wolfe's title--against the heavily publicised (and sanitised) accomplishments of the Mercury astronauts. Through no fault of their own, the spacemen became prisoners of the heroic images the government created for them in order to capture the public's imagination. The casting is inspired; the film features Sam Shepard as the legendary Yeager, Ed Harris as John Glenn, Dennis Quaid as "Gordo" Cooper, Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard, Fred Ward as Gus Grissom, Scott Wilson as Scott Crossfield, and Pamela Reed and Veronica Cartwright are superb in their thankless roles as astronauts' wives. --Jim Emerson

• Seance On A Wet Afternoon | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A woman who masquerades as a medium has her husband kidnap a girl so that she can gain celebrity by holding seances and helping the police to 'find' the victim...

• Fiend Without A Face | DVD | (24/07/2017) from £9.67   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Few 1950s creature features deliver in the way Fiend Without a Face does. The first hour is all build-up as tension grows between an Air Force research base and a small Canadian town (this is one of those British B films that pretends to be set overseas) as a series of mystery deaths are blamed by the superstitious on weird military experiments. It's not a spoiler to give away the big revelation, since every item of publicity material, including the DVD cover, blows the surprise: the initially invisible culprits turn out to be a killer swarm of disembodied brains with eyes on stalks and inchworm-like spinal cord tails. These creatures have a nasty habit of latching onto victims and sucking out their grey matter. The finale is a siege of a house by the fiends, which swarm en masse making unsettling brain-sucking sounds, and are bloodily done away with by the heroes. Using excellent stop-motion animation, this climax goes beyond silliness and manages to be genuinely nightmarish. The orgy of splattering brains stands proud among the cinema's first attempts at genuine horror-comic glee, setting a precedent for everything from The Evil Dead to Peter Jackson's Braindead. Marshall Thompson is a bland, stolid uniformed hero and most of the rest of the cast struggle with "anadian" accents, but Kynaston Reeves is fun as the decrepit lone researcher whose fault it all is. On the DVD: Fiend Without a Face on disc comes with a montage of scenes from other films in this batch of releases (The Day of the Triffids, The Stars Look Down) that plays automatically when the disc is inserted, but otherwise not even a trailer, much less the commentary track and other material found on the pricey but luxurious US Region 1 Criterion release. The print has nice contrasts but is pretty grainy. --Kim Newman

• Frances | DVD | (09/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The violent tragic but true story of a rebellious female star of the 1930s who fought the Hollywood system... and lost.

• The Right Stuff (Special Edition) | DVD | (28/07/2003) from £21.99   |  Saving you £-8.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Based on Tom Wolfe's novel of the same name, The Right Stuff is a spectacular and thrilling epic that chronicles the fledgling years of the American space programme, from breaking the sound barrier to putting the first man into orbit. Rather than focusing on the technological advances that made this possible, writer-director Philip Kaufman pays tribute to the daring and heroic air-force test-pilots, most notably Chuck Yeager, John Glenn and "Gordo" Cooper , whose competitive desire to be the fastest and the highest drives them to keep "pushing the outside of the envelope". Despite its grand historical scale, the movie is grounded in the emotional highs and lows of these men and their long-suffering wives, delicately balancing their personal achievements and failures with the invasive media frenzy surrounding NASA's attempts to better the rival Soviet space effort. The Right Stuff has a coherence and pace that belies its sprawling plot, wide array of main characters and a running time of over three hours. This is thanks to an exciting script, a superb cast, Caleb Deschanel's stunning cinematography and--given the dramatic subject matter--a surprisingly humorous edge. Parts of the gruelling astronaut selection process make complete monkeys of the pilots, NASA's unsuccessful first attempts to launch a rocket are shown in all their explosive glory, and Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer steal the show as two oddball recruitment officials. On the DVD: The Right Stuff Special Edition comes with a sizeable, if somewhat superficial, second disc of extra features. There are two separate commentary tracks pieced together from a selection of soundbites--one from the cast (including an introduction from technical advisor Yeager) and the other from the production team. Both are played out over an identical, 25-minute sequence of scenes from the film, but only refer occasionally to the action on screen and yield little insight into the film's production. There are also four separate documentaries. The largest of these is John Glenn: American Hero, a 90-minute PBS special charting the legendary astronaut's life and including some great documentary footage of his appearance on Name That Tune (recreated in the film). Realising the Right Stuff (21 mins) and T-20 Years and Counting (10 mins) are both standard selections of cast and crew interviews. The Real Men with the Right Stuff (15 mins) features documentary footage and interviews with the surviving members of the Mercury team (Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter and Walter Schirra). Deleted scenes, the theatrical trailer and an "Interactive Timeline to Space" make up the remainder. --Paul Philpott

• Dead Before Dawn | DVD | (24/02/2003) from £4.99   |  Saving you £-3.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £1.99

  Rich and successful with two lovely children Robert and Linda Edelman seem to have the perfect marriage. But beneath the surface gloss lies another story; for years Linda has suffered violent physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband. Finally she summons the courage to file for divorce. But with her marriage nearly over the real nightmares begin. Enraged Robert vows revenge on the wife who has dared to stand up to him. Determined to keep both his reputation and his children Robert plans his own 'special' divorce; he hires a hit man. But only by becoming the live bait to trap her murderous husband can Linda have any hope of staying alive. Based on a true story this suspensful terrifying story stars Cheryl Ladd as the woman whose efforts to reclaim her own life mark her for murder. A rich husband. A beautiful home. Two lovely children. It could cost her her life.

• Fiend Without A Face | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £28.97   |  Saving you £-18.98 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Few 1950s creature features deliver in the way Fiend Without a Face does. The first hour is all build-up as tension grows between an Air Force research base and a small Canadian town (this is one of those British B films that pretends to be set overseas) as a series of mystery deaths are blamed by the superstitious on weird military experiments. It's not a spoiler to give away the big revelation, since every item of publicity material, including the DVD cover, blows the surprise: the initially invisible culprits turn out to be a killer swarm of disembodied brains with eyes on stalks and inchworm-like spinal cord tails. These creatures have a nasty habit of latching onto victims and sucking out their grey matter. The finale is a siege of a house by the fiends, which swarm en masse making unsettling brain-sucking sounds, and are bloodily done away with by the heroes. Using excellent stop-motion animation, this climax goes beyond silliness and manages to be genuinely nightmarish. The orgy of splattering brains stands proud among the cinema's first attempts at genuine horror-comic glee, setting a precedent for everything from The Evil Dead to Peter Jackson's Braindead. Marshall Thompson is a bland, stolid uniformed hero and most of the rest of the cast struggle with "anadian" accents, but Kynaston Reeves is fun as the decrepit lone researcher whose fault it all is. On the DVD: Fiend Without a Face on disc comes with a montage of scenes from other films in this batch of releases (The Day of the Triffids, The Stars Look Down) that plays automatically when the disc is inserted, but otherwise not even a trailer, much less the commentary track and other material found on the pricey but luxurious US Region 1 Criterion release. The print has nice contrasts but is pretty grainy. --Kim Newman

• Seance On A Wet Afternoon | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An intensely claustrophobic nail-biter to rival prime Hitchcock, 1964's Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a classic British thriller written and directed by Bryan Forbes. Set largely in an imposing Gothic house in north London, the film stars Richard Attenborough as Bill Savage, a man struggling to maintain his marriage to his increasingly unbalanced wife, Myra, played in an Oscar-nominated performance by the little-known but brilliant Broadway actress Kim Stanley. Myra, who believes she is a medium, plans a scheme that will make her famous, involving kidnapping then "psychically" locating a little girl. Attenborough (who won a BAFTA) and Stanley are both superb in what is part riveting battle of wills, part nerve-wracking kidnap thriller with, just possibly, a touch of the supernatural. Gerry Turpin's precise b/w cinematography and John Barry's chilling score add significantly to the atmosphere of dread, and if the plot has one or two gaping holes, Forbes's direction covers them deftly. Forbes explored female delusion again in The Whispers (1967) and The Mad Woman of Chaillot (1969); the film also marked a major entry in his long-term collaboration with John Barry and with his wife, the actress Nanette Newman. Séance clearly had an influence on Attenborough's own directorial contribution to the genre, the highly unsettling Anthony Hopkins vehicle, Magic (1978). On the DVD: Séance on a Wet Afternoon is presented in an excellent 16:9 transfer, anamorphically enhanced for widescreen televisions, that effectively captures the brooding look of Gerry Tupin's BAFTA-nominated cinematography. Unfortunately the print used, though generally very good, does show some damage, including some instances that appear to run through the best part of a reel. Though noticeable and sometimes distracting, they barely mar this gripping film. The mono soundtrack is fine, though there is the very occasional touch of distortion. The disc comes with optional English subtitles, the excellent original trailer and a new and first-rate 33-minute interview with Bryan Forbes in which he engagingly explains every aspect of the making of the film. --Gary S Dalkin