"Actor: Ned Young"

• Glory | DVD | (19/06/2000) from £7.25   |  Saving you £12.74 (175.72%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The negroes fought gallantly and were headed by as brave a Colonel as ever lived", was one Confederate soldier's eyewitness verdict on the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers immediately after 247 of their 600-man regiment had fallen in bloody swathes beneath the withering fire from Fort Wagner near Charleston, South Carolina in 1863. Glory is their story: the mustering of the first black regiment in the US Army, their battles with the Southerners as well as with the Northern military authorities, and their own moment of glory when they paid a terrible price for the opportunity to demonstrate to the world their courage. In telling this little-known story, director Ed Zwick single-handedly changed perceptions of the American Civil War: when a Grand Review of the Armies was held in Washington at the end of the war, none of the almost 180,000 coloured troops who fought for the Union were present; when that parade was restaged in 1990 a year after the movie was released, the 54th Massachusetts re-enactors were at the front of the procession. Zwick's stirring, factually accurate account is greatly enhanced by obsessive period detail and frighteningly realistic battle reconstructions (which were not to be surpassed in scale until 1993's Gettysburg). But Zwick also illuminates individual characters in the regiment with great sensitivity. As crucial as the military set-pieces are the scenes of the men together: talking in the tent or baring their souls in song. Denzel Washington, as the embittered ex-slave, gives a performance of real depth; he richly deserved his Oscar win for the heartbreaking flogging scene alone. Morgan Freeman brings great gravitas to his paternalistic role, and Matthew Broderick's idealistic Colonel Shaw is the centre around which the story revolves. With a clutch of remarkable lead performances, a sensitive and touching script, one of James Horner's finest musical scores, and a director with both the vision and heart to pull it off it's easy to agree with the backcover blurb: "Glory is one of the greatest war movies ever made". Without even a hint of hyperbole, it undoubtedly is. On the DVD: This is a superb looking (anamorphic) and sounding (Dolby 5.1) print, and the disc has some excellent additional features. Ed Zwick's commentary is insightful and extremely detailed: here's a director who obviously cares deeply about this movie. Of the three featurettes, one is a short-ish promo piece but the other two are genuinely impressive: there's a 20-minute "Making of" feature with major contributions from Zwick, Freeman and Broderick, and best of all a 45-minute "The True Story Continues" feature narrated by Freeman which tells the complete story of the 54th Massachusetts from beginning to end using footage from the movie as well as archive material and film of battle re-enactments. Also included are two deleted scenes, although a third scene which was shot for the movie but not used (the Frederick Douglass' speech) crops up in the "True Story" piece. James Horner's emotive score gets an isolated track all to itself and there are also some filmographies and trailers. All in all, this is a superb DVD. --Mark Walker

• Terror In A Texas Town | Blu Ray | (10/07/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  For his 41st and final feature film, Joseph H. Lewis was able to combine the two genres in which he had excelled. The man in the director s chair for My Name is Julia Ross, Gun Crazy and The Big Combo, Lewis was one of the all-time greats in film noir. But he was also a fine director of Westerns, having made A Lawless Street, 7th Cavalry and The Halliday Brand, all of which especially the last remain underrated. Terror in a Texas Town would bring his noir sensibilities to the American West, resulting in one of his finest works. McNeil (Sebastian Cabot, The Time Machine) is a greedy hotel owner who wants to take control of Prairie City, the Texas town of the title. Keen to drive the local farmers of their land, McNeil hires a gunman, Johnny Crale (Nedrick Young, who would pen the Oscar-winning screenplay for The Defiant Ones the same year), resulting in the death of a former whaler. The dead man s son, George Hansen (Sterling Hayden, The Killing), arrives in town to inherit the farm and set the stage for revenge armed with only his father s old harpoon... Terror in a Texas Town was written by Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten blacklisted by the film industry and forced to write under pseudonyms or to use fronts . Two years before he helped break the blacklist with on-screen credits for Otto Preminger s Exodus and Stanley Kubrick s Spartacus, his work was credited to Ben Perry, but it demonstrates a psychological depth and political dimension that is undoubtedly that of Trumbo. SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS: Brand-new 2K restoration from original film elements produced by Arrow Films exclusively for this release High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) Uncompressed Mono 1.0 PCM Audio Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing Introduction by Peter Stanfield, author of Hollywood, Westerns and the 1930s: The Lost Trail and Horse Opera: The Strange History of the Singing Cowboy Scene-select commentaries by Stanfield Theatrical trailer Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Vladimir Zimakov FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector s booklet featuring new writing by Glenn Kenny

• The Tie That Binds | DVD | (20/02/2006) from £7.12   |  Saving you £5.87 (82.44%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Daryl Hannah leads an all-star cast in The Tie That Binds - a spellbinding thriller from the producers of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle! When a childless couple adopts an abandoned little girl they discover a happiness they have never known before. But their new family is violently shattered when the girl's natural parents - a dangerous pair of outlaws - reappear to claim what's theirs! It's heart-stopping thrills as one couple is forced to fight for their lives agai

• Western Classics Collection | DVD | (22/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  A collection of 7 classic westerns! Broken Arrow: By 1870 there has been ten years of a cruel war between settlers and Cochise's Apache Indians. Tom Jeffords an ex-soldier saves the life of a young Apache boy and starts to reassess his opinions of the Indians. As an ambassador of goodwill he enters Cochise's stronghold but is peace achievable? (Dir. Delmer Daves 1950 Cert. PG) Broken Lance: Tyrannical cattle baron Matt Devereaux (Spencer Tracy) has raised his ol

• The Desperate Hours | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Director William Wyler's suspense classic marks the only time cinema giants Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March worked together. And the result is everything you'd expect: taut terrifying and terrific. Bogart plays an escaped con who has nothing to lose. March is a suburban Everyman who has everything to lose - his family is held hostage by Bogart. As The Desperate Hours tick by the two men square off in a battle of wills and cunning that tightens into an unforgettable fear-drench

• Terror In A Texas Town | DVD | (08/09/2008) from £21.02   |  Saving you £-8.03 (-61.80%)   |  RRP £12.99

  When George Hansen (Hayden) arrives in Prairies City Texas to help manage his family's fledgling farm he finds that his father has been mysteriously murdered and no one in town-not even the sheriff-plans to do anything about it! Determined to track down the killer himself Hansen learns that a ruthless oil prospector and his vicious group of hired guns have been forcing immigrant farmers to sell their mineral-rich land-or pay for it with their lives. Despite crooked lawmen brutal ambushes and terrorized townsfolk Hansen tracks down his father's killer and faces off against the enemy in a remarkable showdown reminiscent of High Noon that's one of the most original and dramatic action sequences ever filmed.

• House of Wax | Blu Ray | (23/06/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A