One of several features pairing British screen sweetheart Anna Neagle with the ever-popular Michael Wilding, this jaunty 'upstairs-downstairs' romantic comedy could hardly have failed to triumph at the box-office, and Spring in Park Lane would indeed prove the most successful British film of 1948 - its fairytale scenes and witty reversal of social roles offering cinemagoers a welcome antidote to post-war austerity. The film, which also marked another major success for Neagle's husband, direct.
A loose adaptation of a novelette by author Peter Handke, this early effort from director Wim Wenders follows penalized goalie as he makes his way through the city after missing penalty kick and getting suspended from a game.
The quintessential movie spoof that spawned an entire genre of parody films, the original Airplane! still holds up as one of the brightest comedic gems of the 1980s, not to mention of cinema itself (it often tops polls of the funniest movies ever made). The humour may be low and obvious at times, but the jokes keep coming at a rapid-fire clip and its targets--primarily the lesser lights of 1970s cinema, from disco films to star-studded disaster epics--are more than worthy for send-up. If you've seen even one of the overblown Airport movies then you know the plot: the crew of a filled-to-capacity jetliner is wiped out and it's up to a plucky stewardess and a shell-shocked fighter pilot to land the plane. Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty are the heroes who have a history that includes a meet-cute á la Saturday Night Fever, a surf scene right out of From Here to Eternity, a Peace Corps trip to Africa to teach the natives the benefits of Tupperware and basketball, a war-ravaged recovery room with a G.I. who thinks he's Ethel Merman (a hilarious cameo)--and those are just the flashbacks! The jokes gleefully skirt the boundaries of bad taste (pilot Peter Graves to a juvenile cockpit visitor: "Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?"), with the high (low?) point being Hagerty's intimate involvement with the blow-up automatic pilot doll, but they'll have you rolling on the floor. The film launched the careers of collaborators Jim Abrahams (Big Business), David Zucker (Ruthless People) and Jerry Zucker (Ghost), as well as revitalising such B-movie actors as Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen, who built a second career on films like this. A vital part of any home film collection. --Mark Englehart, Amazon.com
In the entire history of American movies, The Night of the Hunter stands out as the rarest and most exotic of specimens. It is, to say the least, a masterpiece--and not just because it was the only movie directed by flamboyant actor Charles Laughton or the only produced solo screenplay by the legendary critic James Agee (who also co-wrote The African Queen). The truth is, nobody has ever made anything approaching its phantasmagoric, overheated style in which German expressionism, religious hysteria, fairy-tale fantasy (of the Grimm-est variety), and stalker movie are brought together in a furious boil. Like a nightmarish premonition of stalker movies to come, Night of the Hunter tells the suspenseful tale of a demented preacher (Robert Mitchum, in a performance that prefigures his memorable villain in Cape Fear), who torments a boy and his little sister--even marries their mixed-up mother (Shelley Winters)--because he's certain the kids know where their late bank-robber father hid a stash of stolen money. So dramatic, primal, and unforgettable are its images--the preacher's shadow looming over the children in their bedroom, the magical boat ride down a river whose banks teem with fantastic wildlife, those tattoos of LOVE and HATE on the unholy man's knuckles, the golden locks of a drowned woman waving in the current along with the indigenous plant life in her watery grave--that they're still haunting audiences (and filmmakers) today. --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com
Your mission, should you decide to accept it....IMF missions are based on a need-to-know basis... and you need to know that Mission: Impossible The '88 Tv Season is now available on DVD for the first time ever in the UK! The spy show that revived the classic series stars Peter Graves, in the reprisal of his role as Jim Phelps, brilliant leader of the Impossible Missions Force. This collectible 5-disc set includes all 19 thrilling episodes that put Jim and his new team on call to save the world... one pulse-pounding mission at a time. Do you accept this mission?Contains all 19 episodes of the First Season.
Black comedy and suspenseful action inside a German POW camp during World War II--a setting that was later borrowed for the American TV sitcom Hogan's Heroes. The great director Billy Wilder adapted the hit stage play, applying his own wicked sense of humour to the apparently bleak subject matter. William Holden plays an antisocial grouse amid a gang of wisecracking though indomitable American prisoners. Because of his bitter cynicism, Holden is suspected by the others of being an informer to the Germans, an accusation he must deal with in his own crafty way. Holden, who had delivered a brilliant performance for Wilder in Sunset Blvd., won the 1953 Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17. Very much his equal, however, is Otto Preminger, an accomplished director himself, who plays the strict, sneering camp commandant. --Robert Horton
Written by Sydney Boehm (The Big Heat) and directed by Hugo Fregonese (Man in the Attic), Black Tuesday is an explosive crime drama starring one of Hollywood's most beloved tough guys: Edward G. Robinson, the star of Little Caesar, The Last Gangster, I Am the Law and Key Largo. Vincent Canelli (Robinson) is a violent mobster serving time on Death Row but he has no intention of going to the electric chair. Following a plan put together by his moll, Hatti (Jean Parker, Dead Man's Eyes), Canelli orchestrates a jailbreak on the night before his execution and takes several hostages in the process. Canelli is joined by fellow Death Row inmate Peter Manning (Peter Graves, Stalag 17), and hopes to discover the location of a stash of stolen loot Manning hid away before his conviction. But is Manning willing to pay the price for freedom and look the other way as the psychopathic Canelli revels in murder and mayhem? While the Hollywood gangster movie was at the height of its success in the early 1930s, it resurged in the 1940s and into the next decade as crime pictures found a new popularity in the post-war period. Standing tall alongside Key Largo, White Heat and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, Black Tuesday is one of the finest gangster films to emerge from this later cycle as old-fashioned wiseguys met with film noir sensibilities. The Masters of Cinema series is proud to present this key crime picture of the 1950s on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from an astonishing new restoration.LIMITED EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES: Limited edition of 2000 copies | Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow | 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a 2K scan of the 35mm fine grains | Optional English subtitles | A brand new audio commentary with film noir expert Sergio Angelini, host of the Tipping My Fedora podcast | From Argentina to Hollywood a brand new interview with film historian Sheldon Hall on director Hugo Fregonese | No Escape A brand new video essay by Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City | Brand new video interview with critic and codirector of Il Cinema Ritrovato Ehsan Khoshbakht |Theatrical trailer | PLUS: A collector's booklet featuring new writing on Black Tuesday by critic Barry Forshaw and film writer Craig Ian Mann
Voted ""one of the 10 funniest movies ever made"" by the American Film Institute Airplane! is a masterpiece of off-the-wall comedy. Featuring Robert Hays as an ex-fighter pilot forced to take over the controls of an airliner when the flight crew succumbs to food poisoning; Julie Hagerty as his girlfriend/ stewardess/ co-pilot; and a cast of all-stars including Robert Stack Lloyd Bridges Peter Graves Leslie Nielsen Kareem Abdul-Jabbar...and more! Their hilarious high jinks spook a
Beware!... you could die laughing! This rarity a sequel that's better than the original... Make sure you see it. Alan Frank, Daily Star It's love at first fright when Gomez (Raul Julia) and Morticia (Anjelica Huston) welcome a new addition to the Addams household ± Pubert, their soft, cuddly, mustachioed baby boy. As Fester (Christopher Lloyd) falls hard for voluptuous nanny Debbie Jilinsky (Joan Cusack), Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) discover she's a black-widow murderess who plans to add Fester to her collection of dead husbands. The family's future grows even bleaker when the no-good nanny marries Fester and has the kids shipped o to summer camp. But Wednesday still has a thing or two up her sleeve With gags and ghouls galore, Addams Family Values is quite brilliant... (Julie Burchill, The Sunday Times)
Though most of the stars got back together for Airplane II: The Sequel, the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team passed the torch to new writer-director Ken Finkleman, who manages to reprise the style of the original quite well but is, as perhaps expected, more or less one-third as funny. The premise, alarmingly similar to the dead-straight contemporary Starflight One, is that the first commercial passenger shuttle to the moon has 2001-style computer hassles en route and finds itself headed straight through an asteroid belt into the sun. Cracked-up test pilot Robert Hays and promoted-from-stewardess technical expert Julie Hagerty have to save the day, despite panicking passengers, inept ground staff, complicated trauma flashbacks, deadpan one-liners and deliberately dodgy special effects. Leslie Nielsen is glimpsed only in footage from Airplane that sets up an extended slapping-the-hysterical-passenger gag redone (into the ground) here, but Lloyd Bridges and Stephen Stucker return as the overly-intense airport crisis controller and his happy-go-lucky gay sidekick. There are sterling cameos in the patented agonisingly serious mode from Raymond Burr (a judge), Chuck Connors (cigar-tossing fire chief), William Shatner (who gets the best sight gag) and Sonny Bono (impotent mad bomber). Back in the early 80s, it was still possible to do mild gags about paedophilia (not only Graves's chumminess with the cute kid who visits the cockpit, but also the priest looking at the centrefold of Altar Boy magazine) but aside from some incidental naked breasts, the humour is a touch cleaner than in the first film. Hays and Hagerty are better than the material, and it's all over swiftly enough--the film clocks in at 75 minutes before the slow, padded end credits--to avoid wearing out your patience. The end title promises an Airplane III, but we're still waiting. The 1.78:1 widescreen ratio of the DVD allows you to see gags in the corners of the frame that would be cropped in a full-screen transfer. --Kim Newman
The sixth series of Mission: Impossible: Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) gets his assignment Barney Collier (Greg Morris) makes the required special effects and Willy Armitage (Peter Lupus) supplies the muscle. And while Paris (Leonard Nimoy) has the makeup skills to become any character required it's the team's newest member - the gorgeous Dana Lambert (Lesley Ann Warren) - who gives this season an added boost and makes this set of Mission: Impossible the most thrilling DVD experience yet!
The Night of the Hunterincredibly, the only film the great actor CHARLES LAUGHTON ever directed is truly a standalone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, it stars a sublimely sinister ROBERT MITCHUM (Cape Fear, The Friends of Eddie Coyle) as a traveling preacher named Harry Powell (he of the tattooed knuckles), whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by SHELLEY WINTERS (A Place in the Sun, The Diary of Anne Frank) are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humour, this ethereal, expressionistic American classicalso featuring the contributions of actress LILLIAN GISH (Intolerance, Duel in the Sun) and writer JAMES AGEEis cinema's quirkiest rendering of the battle between good and evil. Special Features: New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Audio commentary featuring assistant director Terry Sanders, film critic F. X. Feeney, archivist Robert Gitt, and author Preston Neal Jones Charles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter, a two-and-a-half-hour archival treasure trove of outtakes from the film New documentary featuring interviews with producer Paul Gregory, Sanders, Jones, and author Jeffrey Couchman New video interview with Simon Callow, author of Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor Clip from The Ed Sullivan Show, in which cast members perform live a scene that was deleted from the film Fifteen-minute episode of the BBC show Moving Pictures about the film Archival interview with cinematographer Stanley Cortez Gallery of sketches by author Davis Grubb New video conversation between Gitt and film critic Leonard Maltin about Charles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter Original theatrical trailer PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics Terrence Rafferty and Michael Sragow
As the leader of the IMF, Jim Phelps (played by original 60s cast member Peter Graves) is on a mission to save the world from enemies threatening the existence of the entire population. With a new team behind him, he leads the agents through dangerous assignments, taking on the deadliest of adversaries. The entire 88- 89 TV series comes to DVD in one complete set for the very first time in the UK and includes all 35 episodes from the classic series over 9 discs.
The Salem witch hunts are given a new and nasty perspective when a vengeful teenage girl uses superstition and repression to her advantage, creating a killing machine that becomes a force unto itself. Pulsating with seductive energy, this provocative drama is as visually arresting as it is intellectually engrossing. Arthur Miller based his classic 1953 play on the actual Salem witch trials of 1692, creating what has since become a durable fixture of school drama courses. It may look like a historical drama but Miller also meant the work as a parable for the misery created by the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings of the 1950s. This searing version of his drama delves into matters of conscience with concise accuracy and emotional honesty. Three passionate cheers for Miller, director Nicholas Hytner and costars Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder. --Rochelle O'Gorman
Review for Mission Impossible Season 1:With its combination of Cold War villains and James Bond-like techno-gadgets, Mission: Impossible was an instant hit when it premiered on September 17, 1966. The series was the brainchild of creator/producer Bruce Geller, whose formula for seven successful seasons included a well-chosen ensemble cast, noteworthy guest stars, and a flexible premise that inspired clever plots twists and a constant variety of "international" locations (mostly filmed on a studio backlot). This is the only season to feature Steven Hill as Dan Briggs, leader of the top-secret counter-intelligence team known as Impossible Missions Force (IMF). As the no-nonsense Briggs, Hill (better known for his later role on Law & Order from 1990 to 2000) began each episode by sneakily retrieving the dossier and recorded instructions (voiced throughout the entire series by uncredited actor Bob Johnson) for the IMF's latest assignment. "Your mission, should you decide to accept it" and "this recording will self-destruct in five seconds" quickly became pop-cultural catch-phrases, as Briggs routinely selected his preferred teammates based on their mastery of practical skills. Your mission--and you shouldn't hesitate to accept it--is to enjoy this classic series all over again! --Jeff Shannon Review for Mission impossible Season 2: Gone was Steven Hill as Dan Briggs, and in his place the supremely confident and smooth Peter Graves as new team leader Jim Phelps, whom most viewers identify with the series. Carrying out the missions assigned from a pre-recorded voice on the self-destroying tape recorder was magician and master of disguise Rollin Hand (Martin Landau, who moved up from guest star to regular cast member with this season), top model Cinnamon Carter (Landau's real-life spouse Barbara Bain, who won three Emmys for her work on the show), electronics genius Barney Collier (Greg Morris), and all-purpose strong man Willie Armitage (body builder-turned-actor Peter Lupus). Guest stars include Anthony Zerbe, Paul Winfield, Fritz Weaver, and Sid Haig, but it's the team itself that shines the brightest, especially Landau and Bain, who exude the breezy charm of the series itself (though both would depart the show by the following season). --Paul Gaita Review for Mission: Impossible Season 3:Season 3, should you decide to accept it (and you definitely should), was Mission's most accomplished. It garnered six Emmy nominations, and an Emmy for Barbara Bain, her third consecutive win, probably for "The Exchange," one of her finest hours, in which, breaking series format, her character is captured and psychologically tortured to discover for whom she works. As always, the first five minutes of any Mission: Impossible episode are the coolest: the lit fuse signalling Lalo Schifrin's indelible theme song, the opening-credits montage teasing the action in the upcoming episode, and Jim Phelps (Peter Graves), in some nondescript location, receiving his covert mission (usually to some non-existent, but real-sounding country as Povia or Costa Mateo), on that self-destructing tape. --Donald Liebenson Review for Mission: Impossible Season 4:Foil the invasion of a democratic country? No problem. Rescue members of a royal family from their would-be usurper? Piece of cake. Replace the irreplaceable Martin Landau and thrice-Emmy-winner Barbara Bain, who departed Mission after its third season? Now thats impossible! But in this classic series fourth season, the veteran and rookie members of the Impossible Mission Force still put on a good show. --Donald Liebenson
Hollywood sweetheart Doris Day lights up the screen with her timeless sparkle in this light hearted Western. Upon the death of her husband, feisty rancher Josie is determined to make a success of her sheep farm in small town Wyoming, much to the outrage of her male counterparts. Determined to prove her equality and defend her land, she stirs up a women’s rights riot, and even a little romance along the way.
Titles Comprise: Airplane! Voted one of the 10 funniest movies ever made by the American Film Institute Airplane! is a masterpiece of off-the-wall comedy. Featuring Robert Hays as an ex-fighter pilot forced to take over the controls of an airliner when the flight crew succumbs to food poisoning; Julie Hagerty as his girlfriend/ stewardess/ co-pilot; and a cast of all-stars including Robert Stack Lloyd Bridges Peter Graves Leslie Nielsen Kareem Abdul-Jabbar...and more! Their hilarious high jinks spook airplane disaster flicks religious zealots television commercials romantic love...the list whirls by in rapid succession. And the story races from one moment of zany fun to the next! Top Secret: 'Top Secret!' pits American rock star Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer) against the dreaded East German High Command. It's a race against time as Nick teams up with Hillary Flammond (Lucy Gutteridge) to find her father before he can create the ultimate super weapon - the Polaris Mine. Along the way Top Secret! manages to do for war epics and Elvis films what Airplane! did to disaster movies! Police Squad: The satirical comedy Police Squad pits an ace detective and his captain (Leslie Nielsen & Alan North) against the criminal elements that befoul a big city. From the creators of Airplane!. Episodes Comprise: 1. A Substantial Gift (The Broken Promise) 2. Ring of Fear (A Dangerous Assignment) 3. Butler Did It the (A Bird in the Hand) 4. Revenge and Remorse (The Guilty Alibi) 5. Rendezvous at Big Gulch (Terror in the Neighborhood) 6. Testimony of Evil (Dead Men Don't Laugh) The Naked Gun: Those screw-loose Airplane! creators have done it again! Leslie Nielsen stars as Police Squad's own granite-jawed rock-brained cop Frank Drebin who bumbles across a mind-control scheme to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Priscilla Presley O.J. Simpson a stuffed beaver two baseball teams and an odd assortment of others join the wacko goings-on and blow the laugh-o-meter to smithereens. The Naked Gun 2 1/2 - The Smell Of Fear: Lt Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) loves a mystery. Why are we here? Is there life after sex? Yes Drebin tackles the big issues - and the biggest of all is how to stop devious Quentin Hapsburg's (Robert Goulet) plan to destroy the environment! Returning with Nielsen in this hilarious Naked Gun sequel are Priscilla Presley as Jane the woman who can melt a cheese sandwich from 20 paces and George Kennedy as intrepid Captain Ed Hocken. The gang's all here. And so are the laughs. Like Drebin you're gonna love it. The Naked Gun 33 1/3 - The Final Insult: Oscar night. Who will win? Who will lose? And will someone please kick that numbskull offstage? Wait! That's no ordinary numbskull. That's Lt Frank Drebin crashing the ceremonies to stop a terrorist plot that could mean curtains for him - or will a simple window shade be enough? Yes back with a hilarious three-peat and a state-of-the art advance in sequel numbering are the filmmakers you love the returning stars you adore plus others getting Naked for the first time: Fred Ward Anna Nicole Smith and more folks you'd happily give your seat to on a crowded bus. The fun begins when...oops; we don't want to give away the gags. No. You'll have to pay for them. You'll be glad you did!
Constantine (Dir. Francis Lawrence 2005): Hell wants him. Heaven won't take him. Earth needs him! Supernatural detective John Constantine (Reeves) has literally been to Hell and back. When he teams up with skeptical policewoman Angela Dodson (Weisz) to solve the mysterious suicide of her twin sister their investigation takes them through the world of demons and angels that exists just beneath the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles... V For Vendetta (Dir. James McTeigue 2005): Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain V For Vendetta tells the story of a young working-class woman named Evey who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked man known only as 'V'. Profoundly complex V is at once literary flamboyant tender and intellectual a man dedicated to freeing his fellow citizens from those who have terrorized them into compliance... The Matrix Trilogy writing/directing team of Larry & And Wachowski adapt Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel into a thought-provoking blockbuster.
It's 1951 in Korea, a time that the United States Army doesn't like to remember. The Communists, led by Chinese forces, are tearing up the battlefield and overrunning American and South Korean positions, and in the midst of it Sgt. Paul William Ryker (Lee Marvin), decorated World War II hero with medals that would be the envy of any man in uniform, has been convicted of treason for allegedly deserting, going over to the enemy and spending weeks behind enemy lines. He's scheduled to be executed, but Capt. David Young (Bradford Dillman), the prosecutor in the case, begins to worry that Ryker wasn't properly represented at trial. He believes Ryker was guilty but wants him to be convicted fairly...
Midnight Lace (Dir. David Miller 1960): The beautiful Kit Preston becomes disconcerted when she starts receiving crank calls claiming that her life is in jeopardy. Although She tells police about the messages her somewhat hysterical manner leaves them convinced that the danger is all in her imagination... or fakes in order to get attention from her neglectful husband. However two people know that the peril is very real indeed... That Touch Of Mink (Dir. Delbert Mann 1962): How much should a girl sacrifice to get the man of her dreams? That's the question facing an innocent country girl (Doris Day) who is swept into the whirlwind of the rich and famous when a Rolls Royce splashes her with mud. Profound apologies come courtesy of a romantic business tycoon (Cary Grant) who becomes enchanted with the girl's simple direct manner and open honest heart. But he's not interested in marriage...and she's never been interested in anything else. It's a delicious game of cat-and-mouse as working girl and wealthy bachelor pursue each other with hilarious results. The Ballad Of Josie (Dir. Andrew V. McLaglen 1967): Period comedy Western starring Doris Day as Josie Minick a spirited widow who after being acquitted for accidentally killing her drunken husband is forced to fend for herself in the harsh man's world of sheep and cattle farming.
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