"Actor: Sandy Beth"

• Run If You Can | DVD | (06/01/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  This is a riveting thriller involving a young girl called Kim who is staying alone in a friend's house in Los Angeles. While watching an old black and white film on television she notices that the film is being intercut by a sequence in colour of a man and woman making love. The sequence ends with the man suffocating the woman with a pillow and then bundling her into a plastic bag. Confused and shocked it is only the next day that Kim realises for certain what has happened when a friend informs her that there has been a series of murders in Los Angeles with women found in green plastic bags. As the scenes continue Kim alerts the police and word leaks out to the media of Kim's discovery and the picture is being picked up by a neighbouring scanning TV dish of videos made by the murderer for his own use. Kim's role changes from spectator to victim. As the killer's face is never seen any man becomes a nightmare as she misinterprets friendly gestures from teachers to delivery men. When we think it's all over she gets a phone call. Is the game over yet?

• Birdy | DVD | (17/04/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Based on William Wharton's transcendent novel of the same name, this film is about many things: friendship, war, and, of course, birds. The framing device is an effort by a horribly scarred combat soldier (Nicolas Cage) to break through to his best friend, Birdy (Matthew Modine), hospitalised after seemingly being driven mad by fighting in the Vietnam War. Cage then flashes back to their boyhood, where Birdy, a canary aficionado, was considered the school weirdo but managed to be a solid companion none the less. Directed by Alan Parker, it works best as a coming-of-age story, but misses the bizarre psychological transferences of the book, in which Birdy imagines himself within the world of canaries he creates in his bedroom at his parents' house. Modine is fine as an out-of-it misfit enraptured by his own little universe. --Marshall Fine

• Pranks / God Told Me To | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £8.99

  Pranks (Dir. Jeffrey Obrow 1981): When the kidding stops the killing starts! Morgan Meadows Hall has been condemned and soon will be torn down. Five college students volunteer to close the structure during Christmas holiday. What ensues are bone chilling events and narrow escapes from a murderer wielding a spiked baseball bat. Everyone is not successful in escaping from the horror of this terrifying insane killer. Just when you are convinced the reign of terror is over... you realize it has only begun... God Told Me To (Dir. Larry Cohen 1976): Was he a god? The Devil? Or something even more terrifying... A rooftop sniper guns down 14 pedestrians on the streets of New York City. A mild-mannered dad takes a shotgun and blows away his wife and children.A cop goes on a sudden shooting spree at the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Each of these unlikely killers makes the same dying confession: 'God told me to.' Now a repressed Catholic NYPD detective must uncover a netherworld of deranged faith alien insemination and his own unholy connection to a homicidal messiah with a perverse plan for the soul of mankind.

• Leonardo Da Vinci | DVD | (28/08/2006) from £10.69   |  Saving you £-3.71 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  The amazing breadth and depth of Da Vinci's unique genius and character provide wonderful proof of the power of humility.