"Actor: Peter Copley"

• Oliver Twist | DVD | (13/02/2006) from £5.33   |  Saving you £10.66 (200.00%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Oscar-winner Roman Polanski brings the classic Charles Dickens tale to life.

• The Victim | DVD | (10/04/2006) from £7.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (62.58%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This BAFTA-nominated film starring the great Dirk Bogarde in one of his career-best performances also includes excellent support from Sylvia Syms and Denis Price. The police are after Jack Barrett (Peter McEnery). He has stolen 2 300 from the building construction firm that employs him as a wages clerk. Despite being an ordinary young man of twenty-three years of age he is scared out of his wits by the crisis that is mounting - and they are circumstances beyond his control - Barret

• King and Country (Vintage Classics) | Blu Ray | (06/11/2023) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  KING AND COUNTRY is a 1964 uncompromising WW1 drama, directed by Joseph Losey, featuring outstanding performances from Tom Courtenay (who won the 1964 Venice Film Festival Award for Best Actor) and Dirk Bogarde. During World War I, a young soldier, Hamp (Tom Courtenay) deserts his post, attempting to escape the ever-present sound of guns and walk back home. Captain Hargreaves (Dirk Bogarde) an aristocratic and British Army lawyer must defend Hamp before the army tribunal, for whom the crime of desertion carries a nasty stigma and the penalty of execution. Initially, Hargreaves approaches Hamp's case with disdain; however, upon learning that Hamp volunteered for duty on a dare, that he is the sole survivor of his unit and that his wife has been unfaithful in his absence, his efforts on Hamp's behalf become more impassioned and earnest.

• Mosquito Squadron | DVD | (05/05/2003) from £8.50   |  Saving you £4.49 (52.82%)   |  RRP £12.99

  World War II aviation buffs may quibble with the details of Mosquito Squadron, but they'll love it just the same. It's an average war movie, capably directed by Boris Sagal, who thrived in television before he was tragically killed by a helicopter rotor in 1981. At the peak of his post-Man from UNCLE success, David McCallum plays a melancholy RAF ace, leading his squadron of De Havilland "Mosquito" bombers on low-altitude strikes over Nazi strongholds in Germany and France. His ground-based dilemma involves the grieving wife of his best friend, a fellow pilot presumed dead but later discovered alive with other POWs held at a French chalet where the Nazis are developing advanced V-class bombers. The RAF employs bouncing "highballs" capable of penetrating difficult targets, and the rousing climax doubles as a rescue mission and treacherous bombing run. Explosive action compensates for predictable melodrama, and Rocky Horror fans will enjoy seeing Charles ("the Criminologist") Gray as a stuffy RAF Commodore. --Jeff Shannon

• Quatermass And The Pit | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £10.35   |  Saving you £2.64 (25.51%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Workmen unearth prehistoric skulls while carrying out excavations on the London Underground. Very soon a strange and malevolent force is unleashed.

• King and Country (Vintage Classics) | DVD | (06/11/2023) from £9.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• King And Country | DVD | (22/08/2011) from £19.05   |  Saving you £-2.06 (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Amidst the mud and blood of Passchendaele in 1917 Private Hamp (Tom Courtenay) awaits Court Martial for desertion. His crime? Simply walking away from the slaughter after three solid years at the front during which all his mates have been killed. Captain Hargreaves (Dirk Bogard) the officer detailed to defend him is initially unsympathetic. However as he learns the facts of the case he becomes increasingly determined to save Hamp from the firing squad. But his superiors are equally keen to make an example of the unfortunate Private...

• The Knack And How To Get It | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £17.95   |  Saving you £-1.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Cool and sophisticated Tolen has a monopoly on womanising - with a long line of conquests to prove it - while the naive and awkward Colin desperately wants a piece of it. But when Colin falls for an innocent country girl it's not long before the self assured Tolen moves in for the kill. Is all fair in love and war or can Colin get the knack and beat Tolen at his own game?

• Zulu Dawn | DVD | (05/01/2004) from £9.99   |  Saving you £4.00 (40.04%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Cy Endfield cowrote the epic prequel Zulu Dawn 15 years after his enormously popular Zulu. Set in 1879, this film depicts the catastrophic Battle of Isandhlwana, which remains the worst defeat of the British army by natives--the British contingent was outnumbered 16-to-1 by the Zulu tribesmen. The film's opinion of events is made immediately clear in its title sequence: ebullient African village life presided over by King Cetshwayo is contrasted with aristocratic artifice under the arrogant eye of General Lord Chelmsford (Peter O'Toole). Chelmsford is at the heart of all that goes wrong, initiating the catastrophic battle with an ultimatum made seemingly for the sake of giving his troops something to do. His detached manner leads to one mistake after another and this is wryly illustrated in a moment when neither he nor his officers can be bothered to pronounce the name of the land they're in. That it's a beautiful land none the less is made clear by the superb cinematography, which drinks in the massive open spaces that shrink the British army to a line of red ants. Splendidly stiff-upper-lipped support comes from a heroic Burt Lancaster and a fluffy, yet gruff, Bob Hoskins. Although the story is less focused and inevitably more diffuse than the concentrated events of Rorke's Drift that followed soon after, Zulu Dawn is an unflinchingly honest depiction of British Imperial diplomacy. --Paul Tonks

• Stitch In Time, A / Just My Luck | DVD | (12/05/2003) from £7.26   |  Saving you £6.99 (116.50%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Norman Wisdom reprises his famous Pitkin character for the third time in A Stitch in Time, and Edward Chapman is also back to provide Norman with the excuse to reprise his immortal catch-phrase "Mr Grimsdale!". Here he succeeds in causing chaos in a St John Ambulance unit, as well as donning drag to play a blonde nurse complete with suspender belt and silk stockings. Each Norman Wisdom movie usually sees him as the accidental Lord of Misrule in one institution or another, and this time it's the NHS: after being banned from his local hospital, Norman resorts to subterfuge to visit a little orphan girl. There's an autobiographical touch here, as Wisdom himself was raised in an orphanage and centred the plot of One Good Turn (1954) around such an establishment. --Gary S Dalkin An important step in the career of Norman Wisdom, Just My Luck is principally notable for the introduction of actor Edward Chapman, whom many would come to know as series regular Mr Grimsdale. Here he's the stuffy foil to Norman's romantic plans regarding his jewel-making job, where he'll do anything to possess some of the wealth about him. The chance comes in the form of an accumulator bet at Goodwood races thanks to a slimy Leslie Phillips. Another star cameo of note was a second appearance by Margaret Rutherford (after Trouble in Store) as an eccentric animal owner. But the real advance with the Wisdom formula was that--after a reasonably serious plot line--Norman finally gets the girl. --Paul Tonks

• Just My Luck | DVD | (12/11/2001) from £6.94   |  Saving you £3.05 (43.95%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Just My Luck was an important step in the career of Norman Wisdom for several reasons. It's principally notable for the introduction of actor Edward Chapman, whom many would come to know as series regular Mr Grimsdale. Here he's the stuffy foil to Norman's romantic plans regarding his jewel-making job, where he'll do anything to possess some of the wealth about him. The chance comes in the form of an accumulator bet at Goodwood races thanks to a slimy Leslie Phillips. Another star cameo of note was a second appearance by Margaret Rutherford (after Trouble in Store) as an eccentric animal owner. But the real advance with the Wisdom formula was that--after a reasonably serious plot line--Norman finally gets the girl. On the DVD: This is a straight transfer from video. So although the mono sound and 4:3 ratio don't improve on anything previously available, at least it won't deteriorate further.--Paul Tonks

• Quatermass And The Pit | Blu Ray | (09/05/2016) from £21.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Brand new and sealed Steelbook Edition of the Hammer Horror film based on the original BBC TV series by Nigel Kneale starring Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, James Donald, Duncan Lamont and Julian Glover

• Quatermass And The Pit | DVD | (11/10/2004) from £29.99   |  Saving you £-22.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  We have met the enemy, and it is us: when a Martian spacecraft with a terrifying link to the origins of humanity is unearthed beneath a London tube station, only the esteemed Professor Bernard Quatermass can save London's suddenly murderous population from itself. One of the most intelligently paranoid science fiction films ever produced, this pessimistic masterpiece functions as a dark flip-side to the relatively optimistic alien-induced evolution theory presented in the later 2001: A Space Odyssey. Nigel Kneale's brilliant script (which posits a surprisingly plausible, otherworldly rationale for the existence of the supernatural) was later appropriated by acknowledged fan John Carpenter for his underrated Prince of Darkness. A must-see for horror and science fiction aficionados. This film is also known as Five Million Years to Earth. --Andrew Wright

• Hornblower - The Frogs And The Lobsters | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £7.97   |  Saving you £5.01 (100.60%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Based freely on the classic novels by C.S. Forester, Hornblower is a series of TV films following the progress of a young officer through the ranks of the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The series greatest asset is the handsome and charismatic Ioan Gruffudd in the lead role, surely a major star in the making. For television films the production values are very good, though as Titanic, Waterworld and The Perfect Storm demonstrated, filming an aquatic adventure is a very expensive business, and it is clear that the Hornblower dramas simply make the best of comparatively small budgets. No more faithful to Forester's books than the 1951 Gregory Peck classic Captain Horatio Hornblower, the real inspiration seems to have come from the success of Sharpe, starring Sean Bean, which likewise featured a British hero in the Napoleonic Wars. Nevertheless, while rather more easy going than the real British navy of the time, the Hornblower saga delivers an entertaining adventure, greatly enhanced by the presence of such guest stars as Denis Lawson, Cheri Lunghi, Ronald Pickup and Anthony Sher. "The Frogs and the Lobsters" provides a tough, complex and surprisingly violent drama concerning an attempt to mount a royalist counter-offensive against Revolutionary France.--Gary S Dalkin

• Victim | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Victim is quite simply a watershed moment in cinema history. The first mainstream film to portray sympathetically and realistically homosexual society, it did so at a time when homosexuality was still a crime in Britain. Janet Green and John McCormick's screenplay makes Dirk Bogarde's Melville Farr a deeply conflicted man; married and in love with his wife, he also has relationships with men; while as a lawyer he is bound to uphold the law, even as he is compelled to break it. When Jack Barrett (a young Peter McEnery) commits suicide to avoid the consequences of blackmail, Farr sees this as murder, and decides to end the extortion even if it costs him his career. Rather more skilfully plotted than it initially appears, Victim generates considerable tension, and boasts fine performances from an ensemble cast including Sylvia Syms as Farr's wife, Norman Bird, Donald Churchill and John Barrie. Basil Dearden, who memorably featured Bogarde in an early role in The Blue Lamp (1950), directs with professional assurance. Not just a historical document--though the location footage of central London circa 1961 is fascinating in its own right--Victim was instrumental in changing attitudes, which led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality. A turning point for Bogarde too, the film marked a move from matinee idol to the more serious fare of The Servant (1963) and Darling (1965). On the DVD: Victim is presented in an anamorphically enhanced 16:9 transfer, which beautifully captures the noir-ish black-and-white cinematography of Otto Heller. There is occasional print damage, but it is minimal and doesn't distract from the film. The mono sound is very good. The disc also includes the original trailer, an annotated gallery of production photographs and a 28-minute television interview with Dirk Bogarde. This excellent feature was filmed in the actor's house just prior to the release of Victim and finds him discussing his career with particular reference to Hunted (1952), the Doctor comedies, Song Without End (1960) and his latest, "bitterly controversial" picture, which he says couldn't have been made even two years earlier. --Gary S Dalkin