"Actor: Margaret Young"

• 9.1/2 Weeks | DVD | (04/02/2002) from £8.25   |  Saving you £4.74 (57.45%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Frequently given short shrift as soft porn (which it is) and as mindless (which it isn't), director Adrian Lyne's follow-up to Flashdance (insert own joke here) is a thoughtful, smutty film about a bad sexual relationship. It follows the two-month affair between Elizabeth, an art-gallery dealer, and John, a Wall Street executive. The relationship spirals downward into raunchier sex (filmed, by the way, quite nicely) but principally is about two adults doing adult things but not acting anything like real adults. Attempts at actual human connection, about the longing to be "good", are present here and make this an above-average erotic film. Rourke is just honing his scumbag, bad-boy persona; but it doesn't overwhelm. At least there's lots and lots of Kim Basinger. --Keith Simanton, Amazon.com

• Summer With Monika | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Released in 1953, Summer with Monika, an early Ingmar Bergman-directed melodrama, did much to establish the reputation of Swedish cinema, and perhaps Swedish women in general, as leading the vanguard in sexual liberation. The film attracted the wrath of the censors and one scene of lovemaking had to be cut. While subsequent generations will look at the film and wonder whatever the fuss was about, it retains a vivid and frolicsome sensuality, before submitting to the inevitable, Bergmanesque bleakness. The film tells the story of a young couple, Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (18-year-old Harriet Andersson, with whom Bergman would fall in love) stuck in lousy jobs in Stockholm. Harry is beset by parental responsibility--his mother died young and his father is ill--while Monika is fed up with her drunken, violent father. They escape in a motorboat and to spend a blissful summer on an island in the archipelago. Once Monika gets pregnant and they're forced to steal food, however, the idyll concludes and they return to Stockholm, where the relationship disintegrates. You realise that Monika, from a large and fractious family, yearns for escapism, while Harry, who has never known true family life, longs for domestic stability. It is he who is left holding the baby. But Bergman does not quite condemn Monika, giving her one of his best scenes: in a cafe, estranged from Harry, chatting up a stranger, she stares unwaveringly and directly to camera, as if defying us to judge her. Visually ravishing, this film would have a deep impact on French New Wave cinema. On the DVD: Summer with Monika on disc offers a fine restoration of the original film, and includes notes from Phillip Strick who points out that the film is in part hymn of praise to Stockholm's beauty and was influenced by the documentary "City Symphonies" made during World War II. --David Stubbs

• The Thing from Another World | Blu Ray | (23/09/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  1950s sci-fi horror produced by Howard Hawks. After an unknown spacecraft crashes near a remote scientific outpost in the Arctic, a US Air Force crew is dispatched from Alaska to investigate. They frantically begin to recover the craft, which is encased in ice, and find a frozen body buried nearby. They take it back to their base and, while they argue over how to proceed with their discovery, the alien life form escapes and begins feeding on any living creature it can find...

• The Thing From Another World | DVD | (06/10/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Artic researchers discover a huge frozen spaceling inside a crash-landed UFO then fight for their lives after the murderous being (a pre-Gunsmoke James Arness) emerges from icy captivity. Will other creatures soon follow? The famed final words of this film are both warning and answer: ""Keep watching the skies!""

• 9.1/2 Weeks / Showgirls / Body Of Evidence | DVD | (15/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  9 1/2 Weeks: Elizabeth (Basinger) is a Soho gallery worker romantically uninvolved since a painful divorce. John (Rourke) is a wealthy commodities broker emotionally alone no matter who he's with. A chance meeting draws them into each other's worlds. Obsession takes them further into a mutual world of eroticism and emotional awakenings. Showgirls: Leave your inhibitions at the door and experience the sensation of Showgirls Las Vegas the pleasure capital of the world where stardom can be found..at a price. Fuelled by naked ambition Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) is willing to pay that price working as a stripper and lap-dancer in the seedy back room of the Cheetah Club. She is soon discovered by Cristal (Gina Gershon) the seductive star of the biggest sexiest show in Vegas who together with her lover Zack (Kyle MacLachlan) gives her the chance to fulfil her wildest dreams. Behind the glamour lies the sordid side to the nightlife full of traps set with lust and jealousy. Body Of Evidence: Seductive gallery owner Rebecca Carlson (Madonna) is accused of a unique crime - using violent sex to murder a wealthy businessman. Frank Dulaney (Willem Dafoe) is the lawyer trying to defend her helpless to resist her extraordinary brand of lovemaking...

• John Wayne In Action | DVD | (15/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  A collection of action films starring the legendary John Wayne. Films comprise: 1. The Spoilers 2. Tycoon 3. Wake of the Red Witch 4. The Conqueror 5. The Magnificent Showman 6. Hellfighters