"Actor: Patrick David"

• Escape From Alcatraz | DVD | (07/05/2001) from £6.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (85.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  One of Clint Eastwood's two most important filmmaking mentors was Don Siegel (the other was Sergio Leone), who directed Eastwood in Dirty Harry, Coogan's Bluff, Two Mules for Sister Sara and this enigmatic, 1979 drama based on a true story about an escape from the island prison of Alcatraz. Eastwood plays a new convict who enters into a kind of mind game with the chilly warden (Patrick McGoohan) and organises a break leading into the treacherous waters off San Francisco. As jailbird movies go, this isn't just a grotty, unpleasant experience but a character-driven work with some haunting twists. --Tom Keogh

• Dying Young/Sleeping With the Enemy double pack | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £9.26   |  Saving you £5.73 (61.88%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Dying Young: A vivacious young woman begins work as a carer for a wealthy young man only to fall in love with him as his terminal condition worsens... Sleeping With The Enemy: A put-upon wife wakes up the fact that the beatings she receives from her husband are not likely to end and may very well take her life. Faking her own death she sets up home in a new town with a new name but her husband is none too keen to let her go...

• Scream DVD Trilogy | DVD | (12/10/2020) from £9.91   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Scream: After a series of mysterious deaths befalls their small town, an offbeat group of friends led by Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) become the target of a masked killer in this smash-hit clever thriller (The Washington Post) that launched the SCREAM franchise and breathed new life into the horror genre. Scream 2: Away at college, Sidney thought she'd finally put the shocking murders that shattered her life behind her until a copycat killer begins acting out a real-life sequel. Now, as history repeats itself, ambitious reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) and other SCREAM survivors find themselves trapped in a terrifyingly clever plotline where no one is safe or beyond suspicion in this delicious, diabolical and fun (Rolling Stone) sequel. Scream 3: While Sidney lives in safely guarded seclusion, bodies begin dropping around the Hollywood set of STAB 3, the latest movie based on the gruesome Woodsboro killings. The escalating terror finally brings Sidney out of hiding, drawing her and the other survivors once again into an insidious game of horror movie mayhem that's a suspenseful, clever and very entertaining (NBC-TV) installment in the wildly popular SCREAM franchise.

• The Crow : Special Edition | DVD | (27/01/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Crow set the standard for dark and violent comic-book movies (like Spawn or director Alex Proyas's superior follow-up, Dark City), but it will forever be remembered as the film during which star Brandon Lee (son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee) was accidentally killed on the set by a loaded gun. The filmmakers were able to digitally sample what they'd captured of Lee's performance and piece together enough footage to make the film releasable. Indeed, it is probably more fascinating for that post-production story than for the tale on the screen. The Crow is appropriately cloaked in ominous expressionistic shadows, oozing urban dread and occult menace from every dank, concrete crack, but it really adds up to a simple and perfunctory tale of ritual revenge. Guided by a portentous crow (standing in for Poe's raven), Lee plays a deceased rock musician who returns from the grave to systematically torture and kill the outlandishly violent gang of hoodlums who murdered him and his fiancée the year before. The film is worth watching for its compelling visuals and genuinely nightmarish, otherworldly ambience. --Jim Emerson

• Vertigo | DVD | (17/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Dreamlike and nightmarishly surreal, Vertigo is Hitchcock's most personal film because it confronts many of the convoluted psychological issues that haunted and fascinated the director. The psychological complexity and the stark truthfulness of their rampant emotions keeps these strangely obsessive characters alive on screen, and Hitchcock understood better than most their barely repressed sexual compulsions, their fascination with death and their almost overwhelming desire for transcendent love. James Stewart finds profound and disturbing new depths in his psyche as Scotty, the tortured acrophobic detective on the trail of a suicidal woman apparently possessed by the ghost of someone long dead. Kim Novak is the classical Hitchcockian blonde whose icy exterior conceals a churning, volcanic emotional core. The agonised romance of Bernard Herrmann's score accompanies the two actors as a third and vitally important character, moving the film along to its culmination in an ecstasy of Wagnerian tragedy. Of course Hitch lavished especial care on every aspect of the production, from designer Edith Head's costumes (he, like Scotty, was most insistent on the grey dress), to the specific colour scheme of each location, to the famous reverse zoom "Vertigo" effect (much imitated, never bettered). The result is Hitch's greatest work and an undisputed landmark of cinema history. On the DVD: This disc presents the superb restored print of this film in a wonderful widescreen (1.85:1) anamorphic transfer, with remastered Dolby digital soundtrack. There's a half-hour documentary made in 1996 about the painstaking two-year restoration process, plus an informative commentary from the restorers Robert Harris and James Katz, who are joined by original producer Herbert Coleman. There are also text features on the production, cast and crew, plus a trailer for the theatrical release of the restoration. This is an undeniably essential requirement for every DVD collection. --Mark Walker

• The Long Kiss Goodnight | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Geena Davis and her former husband, director Renny Harlin, attempted to pick up the pieces after the debacle of their box-office disaster, Cutthroat Island. What they came up with was The Long Kiss Goodnight, a repulsive ode to American film noir, based on a script by Shane Black (Lethal Weapon) about an amnesiac schoolteacher (Davis) who searches for her true identity and finds she is actually a secret agent immersed in a deadly plot to topple the government. Mechanistic in its violence, obnoxious in its attitude, the film makes Davis, a once-promising actress, nothing more than a special effect. She tosses one to sadists in the audience by allowing her character to be beaten, punched unconscious and tortured. --Tom Keogh

• The Crow | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £8.37   |  Saving you £7.62 (91.04%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Crow set the standard for dark and violent comic-book movies (like Spawn or director Alex Proyas's superior follow-up, Dark City), but it will forever be remembered as the film during which star Brandon Lee (son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee) was accidentally killed on the set by a loaded gun. The filmmakers were able to digitally sample what they'd captured of Lee's performance and piece together enough footage to make the film releasable. Indeed, it is probably more fascinating for that post-production story than for the tale on the screen. The Crow is appropriately cloaked in ominous expressionistic shadows, oozing urban dread and occult menace from every dank, concrete crack, but it really adds up to a simple and perfunctory tale of ritual revenge. Guided by a portentous crow (standing in for Poe's raven), Lee plays a deceased rock musician who returns from the grave to systematically torture and kill the outlandishly violent gang of hoodlums who murdered him and his fiancée the year before. The film is worth watching for its compelling visuals and genuinely nightmarish, otherworldly ambience. --Jim Emerson

• Under Siege/Under Siege 2 | Blu Ray | (11/09/2017) from £6.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Double bill of action thrillers starring Steven Seagal as ex-Navy SEAL-turned-cook Casey Ryback. In 'Under Siege' (1992) Ryback has to prevent a group of military mercenaries led by ex-CIA operative Bill Strannix and his Executive Officer Commander Krill (Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey) from hijacking the battleship USS Missouri and stealing its store of nuclear weapons. 'Under Siege 2 - Dark Territory' (1995) sees the newly-retired Ryback attempting to prevent a team of terrorists on a hijacked passenger train from using a weapons satellite to destroy Washington D.C..

• Donnie Darko - Director's Cut (Two Disc Set) | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-0.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Highschooler Donnie is plagued by visions of a giant evil rabbit who orders him to commit acts of violence and predicts the impending end of the world.

• Rules of Engagement - Season 1 | DVD | (11/04/2011) from £6.85   |  Saving you £6.14 (89.64%)   |  RRP £12.99

  It doesn't matter if you're in love out of love or somewhere in between you have to play by the RULES OF ENGAGEMENT! Join newly engaged couple Adam (Oliver Hudson) and Jennifer (Bianca Kajlich) as they stumble toward marriage with blind bliss. Their friends - haggard but happily married couple Jeff (Patrick Warburton) and Audrey (Megyn Price) and the eternally single Russell (David Spade) - help prove that no matter what your take on love you have to follow the rules to win!

• Three To Tango | DVD | (18/12/2000) from £5.98   |  Saving you £8.01 (133.95%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Matthew Perry stars as an aspiring architect given the additional job by a big client of spying on his mistress (Neve Campbell). As he begins to fall for her it becomes clear that everyone thinks he's gay, but does he really want to jeopardise his career

• Lucy Worsley Investigates | DVD | (20/06/2022) from £12.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Exterminator | DVD | (14/05/2012) from £10.98   |  Saving you £2.00 (25.03%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Scorching the streets clean... Flamethrowers ready as the alleyways of skid row are set ablaze with the brutal vengeance of one man... The Exterminator!John Eastland has been to ‘Nam and he’s seen things... Things you wouldn’t believe. Surviving torture and witnessing the brutal deaths of his friends, John returns home to a tough neighbourhood in New York and his loving family. But when some local thugs take a crippling dislike to his best friend Mike, leaving him paralysed, something snaps in John. Did he fight the Vietcong for this? Taking the law into his own hands, Eastland sets out to clean the streets of every low life, good for nothing gang banger, mobster and ghetto ghoul across the city in director James Glickenhaus’ (McBain) brutally violent vigilante classic. Special Features: Also Includes an Interview with James Glickenhaus Collector’s Booklet by Author Calum Waddell

• The Singing Detective | DVD | (08/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The late Dennis Potter was a master at mining the popular songs of the 1930s and '40s for dramatic effect, but he never did it better than in The Singing Detective. The inestimable Michael Gambon plays a mystery writer named Philip E Marlow, who is suffering a torturous bout of psoriatic arthritis in hospital, where he is a victim of both his disease and the National Health Service. Unable to move without pain, he escapes into his imagination, plotting out a murder tale in which he is both a big-band singer and a private eye. But Potter and director Jon Amiel also mix in flashbacks of Marlow's youth and his unhappy marriage to explain how the real Marlow reached this sorry pass. Flawlessly, intricately, kaleidoscopically assembled, the six one-hour episodes fly by like some fantastic fever dream. –Marshall Fine

• The Boondock Saints | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £6.40   |  Saving you £-0.41 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  With the advent of satellite broadcasting resurrecting the art of the TV movie, films like the invigorating The Boondock Saints are becoming more frequent. Made for Sky, the movie eschews big-screen production values but is still good value for money. Although the story of two Irish-American brothers who set out on a believed divine mission to wipe out the worst of the criminal element of Boston at times seems like an imitation of the superb Dogma, both films were actually made in the same year. The film is not without its faults, notably the poor performances of Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus as the two brothers--both of whom adopt ludicrous Irish accents. Far better is Willem Dafoe, who steals the show as FBI agent Smecker, and the manic David Della Rocco. Still, The Boondock Saints is highly watchable and keeps the viewer interested throughout with a strong story, frequent black humour and arresting visuals. And there aren't many places where you will come across Billy Connolly as a Mafia contract killer. --Phil Udell

• The Passengers | Blu Ray | (27/07/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £21.99

  A grief counselor working with a group of plane-crash survivors finds herself at the root of a mystery when her clients begin to disappear.

• View to a Kill | DVD | (03/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A View to a Kill, Roger Moore's last outing as James Bond, is evidence enough that it was time to pass the torch to another actor. Beset by crummy action (an out-of-control fire engine?) and featuring a fading Moore still trying to prop up his mannered idea of style, A View to a Kill is largely interesting for Christopher Walken's quirky performance as a sort-of super-villain who wants to take out California's Silicon Valley. Grace Jones has a spookily interesting presence as a lethal associate of Walken's (and who, in the best Bond tradition, has sex with 007 before trying to kill him later), and Patrick Macnee (Steed!) has a warm if brief bit. Even directed by John Glen, who brought some crackle to the Moore years in the Bond franchise, this is a very slight effort. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com On the DVD: For Roger Moore's final Bond outing the production crew faced the usual quota of difficulties and disasters, the "making-of" documentary reveals: from base jumpers off the Eiffel tower whose antics threatened to jeopardise fragile relations with the Parisian authorities, to Ridley Scott thoughtlessly burning down the 007 at Pinewood right before production was due to start. Patrick MacNee, who has a supporting role in the movie, hands over narrative duties on this one to Rosemary Ford. The commentary is one of those less-than-satisfying montages of comments from various members of cast and crew. Also included is Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill" video (sounding hopelessly dated now), the usual trailers and a brief deleted scene of comic relief inside a Parisian police station. The second documentary concerns the music of Bond--always a crucial ingredient--although it manages the neat diplomatic trick of interviewing both Monty Norman and John Barry without giving the least hint of any controversy about the famous James Bond theme. --Mark Walker

• The Hollow Crown - TV Mini Series | DVD | (01/10/2012) from £11.99   |  Saving you £18.00 (150.13%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The series re-imagines the classic tetralogy of William Shakespeare's most celebrated history plays - Richard II, Henry IV Parts One and Two, and Henry V - with unprecedented ambition, exploring themes of succession, power, corruption, and greed in a singular sweeping production.

• Donnie Darko | Blu Ray | (13/12/2021) from £29.05   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Fifteen years before Stranger Things combined science fiction, Spielbergian touches and 80s nostalgia to much acclaim, Richard Kelly set the template and the high-water mark with his debut feature, Donnie Darko. Initially beset with distribution problems, it would slowly find its audience and emerge as arguably the first cult classic of the new millennium. Donnie is a troubled high school student: in therapy, prone to sleepwalking and in possession of an imaginary friend, a six-foot rabbit named Frank, who tells him the world is going to end in 28 days, 06 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. During that time he will navigate teenage life, narrowly avoid death in the form of a falling jet engine, follow Frank's maladjusted instructions and try to maintain the space-time continuum. Described by its director as The Catcher in the Rye as told by Philip K. Dick, Donnie Darko combines an eye-catching, eclectic cast pre-stardom Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, heartthrob Patrick Swayze, former child star Drew Barrymore, Oscar nominees Mary McDonnell and Katharine Ross, and television favourite Noah Wyle and an evocative soundtrack of 80s classics by Echo and the Bunnymen, Tears for Fears and Duran Duran. This 4K restoration by Arrow Films allows a modern classic to receive the home video treatment it deserves.

• One True Thing | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £8.07   |  Saving you £-2.08 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Based on Anna Quindlen's bestselling novel, this is a mother-daughter and father-daughter story, two for the price of one. But director Carl Franklin also tries to inject a police-mystery angle that it neither needs nor will support. Renee Zellweger plays a young writer on the rise, who has finally got her break for a New York magazine. While home for a birthday party for her nearly famous writer father (William Hurt), she learns that her mother (Meryl Streep) has been diagnosed with cancer. Then her father does the unthinkable: he all but commands her to put her career on hold to take care of her mother and nurse her through her illness. Dad, a popular college professor who has never received the literary acclaim he always believed he deserved, essentially checks out--and daughter must play parent to her mother. Strong performances by Streep and Zellweger give this parent-child relationship the heart--and the anger--of the real thing, while Hurt seems slightly disembodied as the self-involved father whose needs have dominated both women. Still, the detective-story aspect (the film is told in flashback, as the cops try to discover whether someone slipped Mom a fatal dose of morphine) is a construct that could have been done without. --Marshall Fine