"Actor: Richard Todd"

• Hobson's Choice / The Sound Barrier | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Hobson's Choice (1953) and The Sound Barrier (1952) is a double bill of cleverly juxtaposed films from David Lean's early canon, demonstrating that even without the landmark epics to come, British cinema would have been an infinitely poorer place without his tremendous contribution. Both films reflect his endlessly penetrating view of human behaviour and its perseverance through obstacles great and small. And both are effectively prisms that reflect all the aspects of that view, keeping the audience's sympathies constantly on the move. Hobson's Choice, based on Harold Brighouse's eternally popular 1916 comedy, boasts fine turns from Charles Laughton--at his brilliant, physical best--as the boot-shop owner with three troublesome daughters, and John Mills as the lowly boot maker, elevated and improved by the eldest daughter Maggie in a neat inversion of the Pygmalion fable. But both are kept in their place by Brenda de Banzie's portrayal of Maggie, a performance that glows with intelligence, truth and increasing warmth. The Sound Barrier is a drama about the race for a supersonic aeroplane. Superficially, its setting is quintessential post-World War II Britain: stiff upper lips, twin beds and clipped Rattigan dialogue. But it's prescient stuff. Ralph Richardson's aircraft manufacturer, sinister in his obsession, is an ominously skilful film performance. And Lean's take on the unthinkable cost of human achievement, interwoven with some spectacular cinematography, absorbs and unsettles. It's especially poignant now that the supersonic age has been summarily ended by Concorde's retirement. On the DVD: Hobson's Choice and The Sound Barrier are both black-and-white films presented in 4:3 picture format, from reasonable prints, and with a mono soundtrack of suitably robust quality for Malcolm Arnold's inventive scores. There are no extras, apart from scene indexes. --Piers Ford

• Edgar Wallace Presents: Coast of Skeletons | DVD | (11/11/2013) from £12.98   |  Saving you £-1.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Heading an international cast - including German 'krimi' veteran Heinz Drache - Dam Busters star Richard Todd reprises his role as insurance investigator Harry Sanders in this rare crime adventure based on Edgar Wallace's 1911 novel Sanders of the River. Made in 1964, Coast of Skeletons was the second Sanders adaptation produced and co-written by legendary B-movie mogul Harry Alan Towers, and is presented here in a brand-new transfer from original film elements in its as-...

• The Virgin Queen | DVD | (02/07/2012) from £4.96   |  Saving you £5.03 (101.41%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Sir Walter Raleigh overcomes court intrigue to win favor with the Queen in order to get financing for a proposed voyage to the New World.

• Digby - the Biggest Dog in the World | DVD | (25/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  ""Everybody's Favourite Shaggy Dog Story!"" Young Billy can't keep Digby the lovable sheepdog he brought home from the pound so he decides to leave him with animal expert Jeff (Jim Dale). But while Jeff's back is turned Digby accidentally drinks a top secret chemical which makes him grow... and grow... and grow! The gigantic Digby is soon being chased all over the country. The army think he dangerous and want to blow him up. Two thieves are trying to sell him to the circus! In this frantic and hilarious race against time Billy and the hapless Jeff must get to Digby with the antidote or lose him forever. With and all star cast including Spike Milligan and Victor Spinetti Digby The Biggest Dog In The World is a classic adventure story for the whole family. Available for the first time on DVD!

• Death Drums Along The River | DVD | (14/04/2014) from £7.00   |  Saving you £5.99 (85.57%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Based on an Edgar Wallace’s novel ‘Death Drums along the River’ was made on location in Africa and contains some outstanding filming of both scenery and wildlife. While investigating the murder of a fellow police officer in the British West African colony of Gambia ex-patriot Inspector Harry Sanders (Richard Todd) discovers links to a sinister diamond smuggling operation working further up the River Gambia. The evidence points to a clinic run by Dr Schneider (Walter Rilla) and his assistant director Dr Weiss (Albert Lieven). At first Inspector Sanders suspects that a local businessman Jack Pearson is behind the crimes. But when Pearson together with American journalist Jim Hunter are murdered Sanders realises he was mistaken and begins to suspect that the clinic may be the centre of a diamond smuggling ring. Can the Inspector solve both the murder and the centre of the smuggling activity before the River resonates once more to the funeral beat of the ‘Death Drums’?

• Never Let Go | DVD | (07/10/2002) from £11.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Remembered dimly as Peter Sellers' only venture into "serious" acting, Never Let Go has a lot of other things to recommend it, mostly because it manages to include a lot of the lurid elements that gained it an X certificate in 1960. It has a near-demented melodrama plot, as two desperate obsessives collide in a bizarre feud. Richard Todd, doing meek and put-upon, is a sales rep for smug Peter Jones' cosmetics firm whose life is turned upside-down when his Ford Anglia, bought on hire purchase and uninsured, is stolen by teddy boy Adam Faith. Looking like an inhabitant of Royston Vasey in The League of Gentlemen, Sellers plays a grinning, jumped-up spiv who runs a legitimate garage which is a front for the car thieves and is sugar daddy to teenage tartlet Carol White. Typical of Sellers' demonic rottenness is a scene in which he breaks down-and-out Melvyn Johns' heart by stamping on his beloved terrapin. "Peanut" Todd's crusade to get back his motor (catchphrase "what about my car?") brings trouble too: he gets repeatedly beaten up, abandoned by his wife (Elizabeth Sellars) and dragged to the edge of madness for a final punch-up in a garage. With a delightfully sleazy, jazzy John Barry score, lots of local colour in the caffs and gaffs of criminal London circa 1960 and a parade of welcome character actors (John le Mesurier, David Lodge, Noel Willman, Nigel Stock), this has its soapy spells, but it's a fascinating relic. On the DVD: Never Let Go's menu plays under Faith's theme song ("When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again--Oh Yeah Oh Yeah!"). The print is slightly letterboxed but looks a few generations away from the master with some careless transfer work that greys shadows and overexposes some scenes. --Kim Newman

• The Virgin Queen | DVD | (17/04/2006) from £3.25   |  Saving you £11.00 (552.76%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Bette Davis turns in a towering central performance as the fearsome queen who tangles with a beautiful young lady-in-waiting (Joan Collins) for the affection of intrepid Sir Walter Raleigh (Richard Todd)...

• Titanic | DVD | (07/11/2005) from £16.85   |  Saving you £-3.86 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Determined to remove her family from the superficial high society world in which her husband Richard (Clifton Webb) is engrossed Julia Sturges (Barbara Stanwyck) boards the R.M.S. Titanic in England on its maiden voyage to America along with her two children. Learning of her plans however Richard purchases a steerage ticket aboard the ship in hopes of reconciling with his family. But when fate ice and an overzealous ship captain step in the Sturges family faces an unimaginable

• Venetian Bird | DVD | (09/09/2013) from £4.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (160.32%)   |  RRP £12.99

  1950s mystery thriller adapted by Victor Canning from his novel about a detective who gets caught up in a murder plot. Private detective Edward Mercer (Richard Todd) travels to Venice on a mission to find an Italian veteran who is due to be rewarded for his efforts in the Second World War. When he arrives, however, Mercer realises he is being set up with both the police and a group of partisans hot on his trail.

• The Boys | DVD | (19/10/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Boys

• D-Day The 6th Of June | DVD | (09/05/2005) from £6.48   |  Saving you £9.50 (272.21%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The great love story of the Great War. Hollywood once again looks back at the undeniably compelling story of D-Day this time through the device of two officers facing the coming battle one American and one British recalling their love for the same woman.

• Sound Barrier | DVD | (11/08/2008) from £10.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (77.86%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Sound Barrier (1952)

• Portrait of Clare | DVD | (26/10/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The story of three successive marriages, told in flashback, Portrait of Clare features a memorably engaging central performance from Sydney-born actress Margaret Johnston, with Richard Todd, Robin Bailey and Ronald Howard as the men with whom she has shared joy, sorrow and bitterness. Directed by Lance Comfort, an under-appreciated British talent whose work is receiving a long-overdue critical reappraisal, the film is featured here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements, in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. At the age of sixty-eight, Clare is helping her son Steven, now Lord Wolverbury, arrange her granddaughter's engagement party even though Steven and Clare believe the young girl to be marrying on the rebound. Clare questions her and, finding she is not really in love, begins to tell the story of her own life and loves...SPECIAL FEATURES:Image galleryOriginal pressbook PDF

• D-Day: 6th June | DVD | (03/05/2004) from £6.95   |  Saving you £6.04 (46.50%)   |  RRP £12.99

  En route to Normandy an American and a British officer reminisce about their romances with the same woman.

• The Elstree Story | DVD | (08/07/2013) from £6.25   |  Saving you £3.74 (59.84%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Richard Todd - Oscar-nominated for his role in The Hasty Heart in 1949 and perhaps best known for his portrayal of Wing Commander Guy Gibson in The Dam Busters - introduces this fascinating and rarely seen documentary from 1952. Elstree Story is a profile of the legendary film studio; of the pictures made there, and the stars and technicians who helped make it one of Europe's greatest film production centres. Featured here in a brand-new transfer from original film elements Elstree Story is ...

• D-Day The Sixth of June | DVD | (24/09/2012) from £8.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (42.92%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The great love story of the Great War.Hollywood once again looks back at the undeniably compelling story of D-Day, this time through the device of two officers facing the coming battle, one American and one British, recalling their love for the same woman.

• Chill Factor | DVD | (01/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  August 18 Horn Island. The peace and quiet of a tiny tropical South Pacific island is shattered when a covert scientific-military research operation goes horribly wrong. The only survivors include the scientist behind the formula and the now disgraced officer in charge - the former out to protect the world from his creation and the latter out for revenge. Ten years later two young men find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time when Tim Mason (Skeet Ulrich) and Arlo (Cuba

• D-Day, The Sixth Of June/Young Lions double pack | DVD | (02/06/2003) from £16.00   |  Saving you £-1.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  A World War II double-bill comes to DVD with the pairing of The Young Lions (1958) and D-Day the Sixth of June (1956). Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions is one of the most thoughtful films about the War. Based on a novel by Irwin Shaw, it tells parallel stories of two American soldiers (Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin) and one German officer (Marlon Brando), whose war experiences we follow until they intersect outside a concentration camp. Martin plays what he calls "a likable coward", Clift is intense as a Jewish GI, and Brando experiments with the limits of his part as a Nazi re-evaluating his beliefs. Legend has it that Clift accused Brando of bleeding-heart excessiveness. Interestingly, the two Method actors share no scenes together. --Tom Keogh D-Day the Sixth of June is a misleading title for a very tame wartime romance with barely 10 minutes of combat in the last reel. What we mostly get is a year's worth of flashbacks depicting the reluctant, London-based affair of a married US staff officer (Robert Taylor) and a British Red Cross worker (Dana Wynter) whose commando suitor (Richard Todd) is fighting in Africa. To be sure, the emotional desperation and embattled decency of good people in time of war is as worthy of film treatment as any military campaign, and the script works pre-invasion Anglo-American tensions into the story. But the CinemaScope production is utterly formulaic, with leaden direction by Henry Koster. Wynter's porcelain beauty apparently didn't permit changes of expression, and Taylor looks about 15 years past his prime. --Richard T Jameson

• Midsomer Murders - Birds Of Prey | DVD | (08/08/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Nothing is as it seems behind the well-trimmed hedges of the picturesque cottages in the idyllic English county of Midsomer. Beneath the tranquil surface of sleepy village life exist dark secrets scandals and downright evil. John Nettles stars as the humorous thoughtful and methodical Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby. Troy and PC Sarah Pearce are in Midsomer Magna investigating a wildlife crime while Barnaby follows up on the discovery of the car and body of Julian Shepherd in the

• Asylum | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  One of the patients in an institution for the incurably insane was once its director, and a young psychiatrist (Robert Powell) has to figure out which one as they all tell him their stories. What better setting for a horror anthology? It's an inspired framing device, making this one of the better examples of the genre, even if screenwriter Robert Bloch at times resorts to gimmicks rather than invention. The first two stories are less than brilliant (the first is highlighted by dismembered body parts neatly wrapped in butcher paper wriggling back to life for revenge), but Charlotte Rampling and Britt Ekland are marvellous in the third tale, about a mentally unbalanced young woman and her dangerous best friend. Herbert Lom is also excellent in the final story as a scientist who carves an army of dolls he claims he can bring to life by sheer willpower. Director Roy Ward Baker (Quatermas and the Pit) builds momentum with each story until the dark and deliciously bloody climax. This Amicus Studios production looks visually dull compared to Hammer's gothic gloss, but it features a great British cast (including Patrick Magee and Hammer stalwart Peter Cushing), and ultimately Baker makes that gloomy look work for his increasingly creepy production. Amicus produced a series of horror anthologies, including the original 1972 Tales from the Crypt and The Torture Garden (also scripted by Bloch). --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com