SPITFIRE is a cinematic, epic, sweeping tale of determination, vision and courage. It is the story of an aeroplane that was forged in competition, shaped as the war clouds gathered, and refined in the white heat of combat going on to become the most famous fighter plane ever made. Credited with changing the course of world history, this is the story of the Spitfire told personally in the words of the last-surviving combat veterans. With breath-taking aerial footage from the world's top aviation photographer John Dibbs and rare digitally re-mastered, archive footage from the tumultuous days of the 1940's, when her power in the skies was unrivalled; all combined with an incredible soundscape of the famous Merlin engine, pierced with gunfire, makes this a striking and poignant film.
SPITFIRE is a cinematic, epic, sweeping tale of determination, vision and courage. It is the story of an aeroplane that was forged in competition, shaped as the war clouds gathered, and refined in the white heat of combat going on to become the most famous fighter plane ever made. Credited with changing the course of world history, this is the story of the Spitfire told personally in the words of the last-surviving combat veterans. With breath-taking aerial footage from the world's top aviation photographer John Dibbs and rare digitally re-mastered, archive footage from the tumultuous days of the 1940's, when her power in the skies was unrivalled; all combined with an incredible soundscape of the famous Merlin engine, pierced with gunfire, makes this a striking and poignant film.
One's a surfer. The other's a high diver. When these two sisters team up to find a new love for their newly single Dad it's a fun-loving eye-catching California adventure gone wild. Mary-Kate and Ashley star in this fabulously funny love-struck comedy filled with crazy schemes and cool surprises. Determined to find their Dad Max a new love the girls paint a personals ad on a giant billboard in the heart of Hollywood. After a few disastrous dates Max finally meets Brooke and it's love at first sight. There's just one hitch her unruly skateboarding son is the girls' arch rival. Now with the girls plotting every action-packed step of the way they've got to find out if love really does conquer all. Full of outrageous events mixed-up matches and lots of laughs Billboard Dad tops the charts as Mary-Kate and Ashley's coolest mischieve-making adventure ever.
California's San Fernando Valley, 1973. Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is a precocious high schooler and child star who meets - and is immediately besotted with - Alana (Alana Haim), a twenty-something photographer's assistant trying desperately to find herself. The two of them form an unlikely bond, and soon begin running around the Valley together taking part in Gary's many haphazard schemes.
Carnival Of Souls: Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) apparently survives a serious car accident. Shortly after she heads for Utah and a new job as a church organist but is pursued by a cadaverous phantom figure... The Ape Man: Mad scientist Dr. Brewster long thought dead is working away in his basement laboratory on a serum derived from gorilla spinal fluid. Experimenting on himself Dr. Brewster is dismayed to discover that the injections have given him a bushy beard a
The 1960 children's feature The Three Worlds of Gulliver brings to life the first two sections of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels in a version which, while sanitised for youngsters, retains some of the satire and intelligence of the original. It also boasts excellent-for-the-time special effects by Ray Harryhausen, though the effects wizard keeps his trademark stop-motion animation to a minimum, featuring it only when Gulliver (Kerwin Mathews from 1958's The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad), has problems with an outsized crocodile and a foraging squirrel. Instead, Harryhausen concentrates on portraying the miniature Lilliputians and the giant Brobdingnagians, and the results still impress over 40 years on. This is a colourful, witty, charming film, though it is also heavily Americanised, the dialogue anachronistic and some of the accents decidedly trans-Atlantic. Mathews is a little stiff in the role of a British doctor, but English actress June Thorburn makes a spirited and beautiful Elizabeth, Gulliver's fiancée who in this version comes along for the journey. While the 1996 TV mini-series Gulliver's Travels comes much closer to Swift's intentions Harryhausen's version will delight younger viewers and has the advantage of a beguiling score from the great Bernard Herrmann. Some viewers may be startled to learn that in the 17th century there were Spanish mountains just outside London, and that Wapping was just a minute's walk from the beach. On the DVD: The Three Worlds of Gulliver on disc has good mono sound while the picture, which is anamorphically enhanced and presented at 1.77:1, is of variable quality. There are very distracting fleck marks where the emulsion has been damaged on the print in many shots featuring Gulliver against a bright blue sky. These really should have been restored before transfer to DVD. Although the packaging refers to "The Ray Harryhausen Chronicles" featurette, this is actually the same superb 57-minute TV documentary which has appeared on other Harryhausen titles. Everyone should have it in their collection once. "This is Dynamation" is a three-minute special effects promo for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Also included is a five-minute original "making of" featurette and trailers for The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1.70:1 letterboxed), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (4:3) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1.77:1 anamorphic), as well as basic filmographies of Jack Sher, Arthur Ross, Ray Harryhausen and Kerwin Mathews. --Gary S Dalkin
Paradise Canyon: An undercover federal agent is on the trail of a gang of counterfeiters. John Wyatt (Wayne) is sent under cover to follow Doc Carter's medicine show to expose a counterfeiting gang. When the main suspect is kidnapped with his daughter by the real villain Wyatt realises he has been chasing the wrong man and switches his attentions to the notorious Curly Joe... The Dawn Rider: John Mason is hit with a bullet. Alice who nurses him turns out to be the si
It's difficult sometimes to fathom how compilers think. This Chiller Theatre threesome consists of two classic silent horror films, plus a low-budget B-movie from the early 1960s. The connection? You decide! Yet these are films that belong in any self-respecting collection, and this package is a good way of acquiring them. Of those featuring Lon Chaney, it's the original 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame that comes across best. Chaney's grotesquerie is shot-through with pathos, and Patsy Ruth Miller's Esmeralda has enduring freshness. Wallace Worsley handles crowd scenes and cathedral stunts with aplomb, and there's an atmospheric "posthumous" soundtrack, though anyone looking for accuracy in the depiction of medieval French society is in for a shock. 1925's The Phantom of the Opera is slow-moving and uneventful by comparison, with Rupert Julian's direction never escaping the narrow Gothic trappings of the novel. Chaney cranks (or is that camps?) up his range of gestures to the limit, and Mary Philbin is an eye-catching heroine, but the denouement in the Paris sewers seems endless--with looped extracts of Schubert and Brahms as a hardly appropriate soundtrack. Cut to 1962, and The Carnival of Souls--made in Kansas for under $100,000--is an undeniable cult classic. Herk Harvey sustains the increasingly surreal narrative with ease, Candace Hilligoss is striking (if a tad gauche) as the young organist caught on the cusp of this world and the next, and Gene Moore's organ soundtrack is a masterly backdrop for the motley assemblage of ghouls who pursue her around the seaside pier in a memorable closing sequence. On the DVD: Chiller Theatre is very acceptably remastered--with 1.33:1 aspect ratio and 12 chapter headings per film--and decently if minimally packaged. --Richard Whitehouse
A little over-extended as a two-hour movie, The Eligible Bachelor was one of several such feature-length productions made (late 1992) in Granada Television's long-running Sherlock Holmes series. Based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, this TV movie finds Holmes (the ailing Jeremy Brett, playing an increasingly darker and more neurotic detective) and Dr. Watson (Edward Hardwicke) called upon to help in a case involving the disappearance of Henrietta Doran (Paris Jefferson), fiancé of the noble Lord Robert St Simon (Simon Williams), who was last seen with a former lover of St Simon's, Flora Millar (Joanna McCallum). The unimaginative Scotland Yard instantly arrests Millar on suspicion of foul play, but it is Holmes who has to find the missing woman. Fans of the entire series might best enjoy this slightly clunky programme, though there is much of interest about Brett's performance to recommend it. --Tom Keogh
The Desert Trail: A rodeo star joins his gambling friend in a few adventures including being unjustly accused of robbery. They fight to prove their innocence by travelling to Poker City to uncover the truth. The Dawn Rider: John Mason is hit by a bullet. Alice who nurses him turns out to be the sister of the man Mason is looking for; the man who gunned down his father... Paradise Canyon: An undercover federal agent is on the trail of a gang of counterfeit
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