"Actor: Porter Hall"

• Double Indemnity | Blu Ray | (25/06/2012) from £17.25   |  Saving you £4.00 (25.02%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Director Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard) and writer Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this wildly thrilling story of insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who schemes the perfect murder with the beautiful dame Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck: kill Dietrichson's husband and make off with the insurance money. But, of course, in these plots things never quite go as planned, and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) is the wily insurance investigator who must sort things out. From the opening scene you know Neff is doomed, as the story is told in flashback; yet, to the film's credit, this doesn't diminish any of the tension of the movie. This early film noir flick is wonderfully campy by today's standards, and the dialogue is snappy ("I thought you were smarter than the rest, Walter. But I was wrong. You're not smarter, just a little taller"), filled with lots of "dame"s and "baby"s. Stanwyck is the ultimate femme fatale, and MacMurray, despite a career largely defined by roles as a softy (notably in the TV series My Three Sons and the movie The Shaggy Dog), is convincingly cast against type as the hapless, love-struck sap. --Jenny Brown

• Blood On The Sun | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Newspaper editor Nick Condon (James Cagney) is the crusading chief of the Tokyo Chronicle in 1920s Japan. He has his suspicions about Japanese plans for future expansion suspicions that are confirmed when he runs an article accusing Japanese Premier Tanaka (John Emery) and Colonel Tojo (Robert Armstrong) of planning world conquest and gets a visit from the Imperial Police. Then one of his reporters Ollie Miller (Wallace Ford) and his wife Edith (Rosemary DeCamp) are murdered shortly

• Dark Command (John Wayne) | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £6.83   |  Saving you £3.16 (46.27%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A Civil War tale based on the exploits of the notorious outlaw Quantrill. The Duke plays a U.S. Marshal out to stop the cutthroat raider and his band. Based on the novel by W.R. Burnett.

• Sullivan's Travels | DVD | (18/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This masterpiece by Preston Sturges is perhaps the finest movie-about-a-movie ever made. Hollywood director Joel McCrea tired of churning out lightweight comedies decides to make O Brother Where Art Thou-a serious socially responsible film about human suffering. After his producers point out that he knows nothing of hardship he hits the road as a hobo. He finds the lovely Veronica Lake; and more trouble than he ever dreamed of!

• The Forsyte Saga - Complete Series 1-7 Box Set | DVD | (23/08/2004) from £49.93   |  Saving you £20.06 (40.18%)   |  RRP £69.99

  The Forsyte Saga is often cited as the first television miniseries; it wasn't, but there's no question that it was a singular, powerful cultural phenomenon that deservedly got under the skin of European viewers in 1967. Today the 26-episode production, based on several novels and short stories by John Galsworthy, is a more timeless enterprise than many of the protracted British TV dramas that have followed. While it would be wrong to consider The Forsyte Saga high art, it's certainly a mesmerizing and inspired mix of theater, sprawling Victorian narrative, thinking man's soap opera, and some finely tuned, 1960s black-and-white production values that (especially when shot outdoors) are strikingly handsome. Above all, Forsyte is driven by its characters--perhaps to an extreme, though the two-generation storyline makes no apologies for creating compelling people whose capacity for short-sighted blundering, bursts of grace, and slow-brewing redemption make them recognizably human. Eric Porter towers over everything as Soames Forsyte, a humorless attorney whose guiding principles of measurable value cause great heartache but slowly evolve, leaving him a graying, good father, arts patron, and sympathetic repository of memory. From the cast of 150 or so, other standouts include Susan Hampshire as Soames's troubled daughter, Nyree Dawn Porter as the wife of two very different Forsyte men, and Kenneth More as the family's artistic black sheep. --Tom Keogh

• His Girl Friday | Blu Ray | (16/01/2017) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Winner of both the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, MARCEL CAMUS' Black Orpheus (Orfeu negro) brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the twentieth-century madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its eye-popping photography and ravishing, epochal soundtrack, Black Orpheus was a cultural event, kicking off the bossa nova craze that set hi-fis across America spinning. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Optional English-dubbed soundtrack Archival interviews with director Marcel Camus and actress Marpessa Dawn New video interviews with Brazilian cinema scholar Robert Stam, jazz historian Gary Giddins, and Brazilian author Ruy Castro Looking for Black Orpheus, a French documentary about Black Orpheus's cultural and musical roots and its resonance in Brazil today Theatrical trailer PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Atkinson Click Images to Enlarge

• Arizona | DVD | (05/09/2011) from £10.99   |  Saving you £0.26 (2.67%)   |  RRP £9.99

  When Cooper became unavailable, the studio assigned the male lead to their Golden Boy sensation, William Holden. Budgeted at $2.3 million, ARIZONA was produced on a grand scale, complete with a full-sized recreation of the 1860's Tucson settlement, majestic location scenery, hundreds of extras, boisterous Apache raids and a spectacular cattle stampede. Opening on Christmas Day 1940, ARIZONA was hailed as a rip-roaring Western from a director, Wesley Ruggles, who knew how to make them (Ruggles directed the 1931 Academy Award(r)-winning Best Picture, Cimarron).

• Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) (Criterion Collection) UK Only | Blu Ray | (25/04/2022) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Make Way for Tomorrow, by LEO McCAREY (An Affair to Remember), is one of the great unsung Hollywood masterpieces, an enormously moving Depression-era depiction of the frustrations of family, aging, and the generation gap. BEULAH BONDI (It's a Wonderful Life) and VICTOR MOORE (Swing Time) headline a cast of incomparable character actors, starring as an elderly couple who must move in with their grown children after the bank takes their home, yet end up separated and subject to their offspring's selfish whims. An inspiration for Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, this is among American cinema's purest tearjerkers, all the way to its unflinching ending, which McCarey refused to change despite studio pressure. Special Features High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Tomorrow, Yesterday, and Today, an interview from 2009 featuring filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich discussing the career of director Leo McCarey and Make Way for Tomorrow Video interview from 2009 with critic Gary Giddins, in which he talks about McCarey's artistry and the political and social context of the film PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critic Tag Gallagher and filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, and an excerpt from film scholar Robin Wood's 1998 piece Leo McCarey and Family Values

• Miracle On 34th Street | DVD | (01/11/2004) from £4.44   |  Saving you £1.55 (34.91%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The original 1947 version of this Valentine Davies story follows the misadventures of Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) as he gets a job playing Santa Claus at Macy's department store in New York City. Natalie Wood is the little girl who tells him she doesn't believe in Santa, and Maureen O'Hara and John Payne are the couple who help Kris through a trial in which he must prove he's the jolly fellow from the North Pole. A sweet movie and perennial Christmas favourite, Miracle on 34th Street is one of those films that gets under your skin and must be revisited every so often. --Tom Keogh

• His Girl Friday | DVD | (09/12/2002) from £3.51   |  Saving you £10.74 (477.33%)   |  RRP £12.99

  His Girl Friday is one of the five greatest dialogue comedies ever made. Howard Hawks had his cast play it at breakneck speed, and audiences hyperventilate trying to finish with one laugh so they can do justice to the four that have accumulated in the meantime. Rosalind Russell, not Hawks' first choice to play Hildy Johnson--the ace newsperson whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting and getting married--is triumphant in the part, holding her own as "one of the guys" and creating an enduring feminist icon. Cary Grant's Walter Burns is a force of nature, giving a performance of such concentrated frenzy and diamond brilliance that you owe it to yourself to devote at least one viewing of the movie to watching him alone. But then you have to go back (lucky you) and watch it again for the sake of the press-room gang--Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, Cliff Edwards, Regis Toomey, Frank Jenks, and others--the kind of ensemble work that gets character actors onto Parnassus. --Richard T Jameson, Amazon.com

• His Girl Friday | DVD | (30/10/2006) from £6.48   |  Saving you £-2.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  His Girl Friday is one of the five greatest dialogue comedies ever made. Howard Hawks had his cast play it at breakneck speed, and audiences hyperventilate trying to finish with one laugh so they can do justice to the four that have accumulated in the meantime. Rosalind Russell, not Hawks' first choice to play Hildy Johnson--the ace newsperson whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting and getting married--is triumphant in the part, holding her own as "one of the guys" and creating an enduring feminist icon. Cary Grant's Walter Burns is a force of nature, giving a performance of such concentrated frenzy and diamond brilliance that you owe it to yourself to devote at least one viewing of the movie to watching him alone. But then you have to go back (lucky you) and watch it again for the sake of the press-room gang--Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, Cliff Edwards, Regis Toomey, Frank Jenks, and others--the kind of ensemble work that gets character actors onto Parnassus. --Richard T Jameson, Amazon.com

• The Thin Man | DVD | (28/06/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  An explosives manufacturer suspects a young man is out to kill him. He calls in Nick and Nora (with new baby) to sort things out.

• Barbara Stanwyck | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  A bumper box set of classic films featuring 'The Queen' Barbara Stanwyck! Double Indemnity (Dir. Billy Wilder 1944): Director Billy Wilder and writer Raymond Chandler ('The Big Sleep') adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this wildly thrilling story of insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) who schemes the perfect murder with the beautiful dame Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck): kill Dietrichson's husband and make off with the insurance money. But of cou

• His Girl Friday | DVD | (15/03/2004) from £9.88   |  Saving you £-4.89 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  His Girl Friday is one of the five greatest dialogue comedies ever made. Howard Hawks had his cast play it at breakneck speed, and audiences hyperventilate trying to finish with one laugh so they can do justice to the four that have accumulated in the meantime. Rosalind Russell, not Hawks' first choice to play Hildy Johnson--the ace newsperson whom demonic editor Walter Burns is trying to keep from quitting and getting married--is triumphant in the part, holding her own as "one of the guys" and creating an enduring feminist icon. Cary Grant's Walter Burns is a force of nature, giving a performance of such concentrated frenzy and diamond brilliance that you owe it to yourself to devote at least one viewing of the movie to watching him alone. But then you have to go back (lucky you) and watch it again for the sake of the press-room gang--Roscoe Karns, Porter Hall, Cliff Edwards, Regis Toomey, Frank Jenks, and others--the kind of ensemble work that gets character actors onto Parnassus. --Richard T Jameson, Amazon.com

• The Plainsman | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £8.43   |  Saving you £1.56 (18.51%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Cecile B. DeMille brings you Gary and Jean in their grandest picture...the story of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane the hardest boiled pair of lovers who ever rode the plains...a glorious romance set against the whole flaming pageant of the Old West... This stylish western skillfully interweaves classic real-life Old West legends like Wild Bill Hickok (Cooper) Calamity Jane (Arthur) Buffalo Bill Cody George Armstrong Custer and Abraham Lincoln into a stunning tale as va

• 3 Classics Of The Silver Screen - Vol. 5 - Lawless Range / Lawless Frontier / Blood On The Sun | DVD | (10/01/2005) from £2.64   |  Saving you £2.35 (89.02%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Blood On The Sun: While much of the world watched the early success of 'Mein Kampf' and the bombing of Pearl Harbour was ten years in the future few were aware of the existence of an oriental 'Hitler' ... Baron Giichi Tanaka. But the war had already started in Japan for James Condon American journalist and editor of the Japanese Chronicle whose intuition has led him to believe that major trouble was brewing. The role of Condon man of hard words and harder fists is just t

• Double Indemnity | Blu Ray | (25/06/2012) from £49.99   |  Saving you £-20.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Director Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard) and writer Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this wildly thrilling story of insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who schemes the perfect murder with the beautiful dame Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck: kill Dietrichson's husband and make off with the insurance money. But, of course, in these plots things never quite go as planned, and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) is the wily insurance investigator who must sort things out. From the opening scene you know Neff is doomed, as the story is told in flashback; yet, to the film's credit, this doesn't diminish any of the tension of the movie. This early film noir flick is wonderfully campy by today's standards, and the dialogue is snappy ("I thought you were smarter than the rest, Walter. But I was wrong. You're not smarter, just a little taller"), filled with lots of "dame"s and "baby"s. Stanwyck is the ultimate femme fatale, and MacMurray, despite a career largely defined by roles as a softy (notably in the TV series My Three Sons and the movie The Shaggy Dog), is convincingly cast against type as the hapless, love-struck sap. --Jenny Brown

• His Girl Friday | DVD | (07/02/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying.

• Double Indemnity (1944) (Criterion Collection) UK Only | Blu Ray | (30/05/2022) from £32.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Has dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously evil as BARBARA STANWYCK (The Lady Eve)? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? Working with cowriter RAYMOND CHANDLER, director BILLY WILDER (Ace in the Hole) launched himself onto the Hollywood A-list with this paragon of film-noir fatalism from JAMES M. CAIN's pulp novel. When slick salesman Walter Neff (The Caine Mutiny's FRED MACMURRAY) walks into the swank home of dissatisfied housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), he intends to sell her insurance, but he winds up becoming entangled with her in a far more sinister way. Featuring scene-stealing supporting work from EDWARD G. ROBINSON and the chiaroscuro of cinematographer JOHN F. SEITZ (Sunset Blvd.), Double Indemnity is one of the most wickedly perverse stories ever told and the cynical standard by which all noir must be measured. Product Features New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Audio commentary featuring film critic Richard Schickel New interview with film scholar Noah Isenberg, editor of Billy Wilder on Assignment New conversation between film historians Eddie Muller and Imogen Sara Smith Billy, How Did You Do It?, a 1992 film by Volker Schlöndorff and Gisela Grischow featuring interviews with director Billy Wilder Shadows of Suspense, a 2006 documentary on the making of Double Indemnity Audio excerpts from 1971 and 1972 interviews with cinematographer John F. Seitz Radio adaptations from 1945 and 1950 Trailer English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Blood On The Sun / James Cagney On Film | DVD | (01/03/2000) from £4.49   |  Saving you £-0.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  This is one of the first American martial arts movies and features some gripping action with James Cagney doing his own stunts for which he trained intensively with Ken Kuniyuki a fifth degree judo master before shooting. This is Cagney at his best.