"Actor: Sarah Jones"

• Hocus Pocus | DVD | (05/02/2001) from £8.25   |  Saving you £7.74 (93.82%)   |  RRP £15.99

  This big, fat theatrical bomb has a lot going for it. There's the three leads, Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker, playing three resurrected witches who wreak havoc on Salem, Massachusetts, 300 hundred years after they were hung. There's music, special effects, and magic. There's a surprisingly horror-filled plot. Whoops, hold up on that last one. It's probably the extremes that this film goes to (displaying a Disney label), such as the witches sucking the life out of a little girl in the first five minutes, that put the brakes on any success for Hocus Pocus. Older children, however, in the 8 and up range should get a kick out of all the weird goings-on. It's a good measure of Halloween thrills and chills. --Keith Simanton

• Agatha Christie's Poirot - The Definitive Collection (Series 1-13) | DVD | (18/11/2013) from £52.60   |  Saving you £5.39 (10.25%)   |  RRP £57.99

  David Suchet stars as Agatha Christie's enigmatic eccentric and extremely intelligent detective Hercule Poirot. From England to the Mediterranean accompanied by his elegant and trustworthy sidekicks Captain Hastings Chief Inspector Japp and Miss Lemon Poirot pits his wits against a collection of first class deceptions. Includes all 70 episodes plus many extras.

• For All Mankind Season 2 | Blu Ray | (01/05/2023) from £24.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In an alternate timeline, in 1969 a Soviet cosmonaut, Alexei Leonov, becomes the first human to land on the Moon. This outcome devastates morale at NASA, but also catalyses an American effort to catch up. With the Soviet Union emphasizing diversity by including a woman in subsequent landings, the United States is forced to match pace, training women and minorities, who were largely excluded from the initial decades of U.S. space exploration. This epic series dramatizes an alternative history depicting what would have happened if the global space race had never ended. Using fiction with actual historical figures including Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, US senator Ted Kennedy, and US presidents, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

• American Made (DVD + Digital download) | DVD | (26/12/2017) from £7.01   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A pilot lands work for the CIA and as a drug runner in the south during the 1980s. Click Images to Enlarge

• For All Mankind Season 2 | DVD | (01/05/2023) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Apple TV's epic space drama returns for a second season. Nearly a decade after the events of the Season One finale, technology and lunar exploration have taken huge strides - but a solar storm threatens the astronauts on Jamestown. This thrilling what if' take on history from Ronald D Moore (Outlander, Battlestar, Galactica) spotlights the high stakes lives of NASA astronauts and their families.

• Ryan's Daughter | DVD | (13/02/2006) from £6.97   |  Saving you £10.02 (143.76%)   |  RRP £16.99

  World War I seems far away from Ireland's Dingle peninsula when Rosy Ryan Shaughnessy goes horseback riding on the beach with the young English officer. There was a magnetic attraction between them the day he was the only customer in her father's pub and Rosy was tending bar for the first time since her marriage to the village schoolmaster. Then one stormy night some Irish revolutionaries expecting a shipment of guns arrive at Ryan's pub. Is it Rosy who betrays them to the British? Wi

• Mars Attacks | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.23   |  Saving you £7.76 (124.56%)   |  RRP £13.99

  It's enlightening to view Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! as his twisted satire of the blockbuster film Independence Day, which was released earlier the same year, although the movies were in production simultaneously. Burton's eye-popping, schlock tribute to 1950s UFO movies actually plays better on video than it did in cinemas. The idea of invading aliens ray-gunning the big-name movie stars in the cast is a cleverly subversive one, and the bulb-headed, funny-sounding animated Martians are pretty nifty, but it all seemed to be spread thin on the big screen. On video, however, the movie's kooky humour seems a bit more concentrated. The Earth actors (most of whom get zapped or kidnapped for alien science experiments) include Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rod Steiger, Michael J Fox, Lukas Haas, Jim Brown, Tom Jones and Pam Grier. --Jim Emerson

• Stargate SG-1: Season 2 | DVD | (27/01/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  The success of the first year meant that Stargate SG-1's second series could afford to spread its wings. In only the second episode, Carter is temporarily possessed by a good Goa'uld. This immediately allowed for both any amount of quick fix inside knowledge as well as story off-shoots, now that the show was bent on franchise longevity. There appeared to be information overload (splinter group Tok'ra, Earth's second Gate, Machello, endless Apophis encounters), as the finely interwoven threads of alien histories and inter-relationships were developed. But thankfully, SG-1 never lost sight of the need for great individual stories. There was a planet of Native American Indians; a planet on the edge of a Black Hole; a planet of aliens sensitive to sound. Even a planet run by Dwight Schultz! Better still, they found time to have fun with their universe, too. "1969" remains one of the best comic romps the series has enjoyed, and is a near-perfect self-contained time-travel story to boot. The team of actors had obviously bonded early on in the first year. It may be a bit of a military faux pas that there is only ever four of them leading every major explorative expedition, but the limited number of principals is actually something else the show has always had in its favour, allowing quality screen time to be spent on each of them from the outset (although Richard Dean Anderson would probably rather not have spent an entire episode impaled by a spike). --Paul Tonks

• The Three Fugitives | DVD | (15/03/2004) from £6.97   |  Saving you £8.02 (115.06%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Lucas a bank robber newly released from prison is given a lift to the bank by two local cops who are taking bets on how long they think he'll remain straight. Once inside the bank Lucas is taken hostage by an amateur thief and is forced into going on the run with the man and his six-year-old daughter...

• American Made (BD + Digital download) | Blu Ray | (26/12/2017) from £3.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A pilot lands work for the CIA and as a drug runner in the south during the 1980s. Click Images to Enlarge

• Ed Wood | DVD | (14/10/2002) from £5.49   |  Saving you £9.50 (173.04%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The significance of Ed Wood, both man and movie, on the career of Tim Burton cannot be emphasised enough. Here Burton regurgitates and pays homage to the influences of his youth, just as he would continue to do with Mars Attacks! and Sleepy Hollow. Everything is just right, from the decision to shoot in black and white, the performances of Johnny Depp (as Ed) and Martin Landau (as Bela Lugosi), the re-creation of 1950s Hollywood and the evocative score by Howard (Lord of the Rings) Shore. The plot struck a poignant familiar chord with Burton, who saw the relationship between the Ed and Lugosi mirroring his own with Vincent Price. Most importantly Burton responded to the story of the struggling, misunderstood artist. For all Burton's big-budget blockbusters (Batman, Planet of the Apes), he still somehow retains the mantle of the kooky niche director. And in the mid-90s, this film actually represented the last vestiges of his independent film production. Fans can only hope he'll soon return to those roots soon. On the DVD: Ed Wood on disc has a good group commentary in which Burton is interviewed rather than expected to hold forth on his own, making his insights alongside the screenwriters, Landau, and various production heads very worthwhile. Also worthy are the featurettes on Landau's Oscar-winning make-up, the FX and the Theremin instrument employed in the score. Best of all is an extremely exotic Music Video based on that score. This doesn't seem to be a new transfer of the film, but in black and white you're less likely to notice. --Paul Tonks

• Alcatraz - Season 1 | DVD | (15/10/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  From executive producer J.J. Abrams (Fringe, Lost, Star Trek) comes Alcatraz, a chilling new drama revolving around America's most infamous prison, the one-time home to the nation's worst murderers, rapists, kidnappers, thieves and arsonists.When San Francisco Police Department detective Rebecca Madsen is assigned to a grisly homicide case, a fingerprint leads her to a shocking suspect: Jack Sylvane, an Alcatraz inmate who died over 30 years ago. Given her family history - both her grandfather and surrogate uncle, Ray Archer, were guards at the prison - Madsen's interest is immediately piqued, and once the enigmatic, knows-everything-but-tells-nothing government agent Emerson Hauser tries to impede her investigation, she's doggedly committed. Madsen turns to Alcatraz expert and comic book enthusiast Dr. Diego Doc Soto to piece together the inexplicable sequence of events. The two discover that Sylvane is not only alive, but he's loose on the streets of San Francisco, exacting decades-old revenge and leaving bodies in his wake. And, strangely, he hasn't aged a day since 1963 when Alcatraz was ruled by the iron-fisted Warden Edwin James and the sadistic Associate Warden E.B. Tiller.Madsen and Soto reluctantly team with Hauser and his technician, Lucy Banerjee, to stop Sylvane's vengeful killing spree. By delving into Alcatraz history, government cover-ups and Madsen's own heritage, the team will ultimately discover that Sylvane is only a small part of a much larger, more sinister present-day threat. For while he may be the first to reappear from Alcatraz, it quickly becomes clear that Sylvane won't be the last.Through the course of the investigation, Madsen and Soto will learn that Hauser has been awaiting the prisoners' return for nearly 50 years. Soto will witness his life's work - the history of Alcatraz - come alive. Madsen will be forced to keep her supportive San Francisco cop fianc, Jimmy Dickens, at arm's length from the highly classified assignment as she sees everything she thought she knew about her family's past shattered, all while fighting to keep the country safe from history's most dangerous criminals.

• In America | DVD | (15/03/2004) from £4.17   |  Saving you £13.08 (449.48%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A coming-of-age story about an Irish couple and their two kids trying to find their way "In America."

• For All Mankind Season 4 | Blu Ray | (30/12/2099) from £25.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Bamboozled | DVD | (16/07/2001) from £9.43   |  Saving you £10.56 (111.98%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Spike Lee's latest is a biting comedy about a black US TV writer whose plans to get sacked by creating a TV show reviving old time minstrel shows doesn't go at all as planned!

• American Made (4KUHD + BD + Digital download) | 4K UHD | (26/12/2017) from £22.35   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A pilot lands work for the CIA and as a drug runner in the south during the 1980s. Click Images to Enlarge

• Handel: Julius Caesar -- ENO | DVD | (21/06/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Dame Janet Baker in one of her greatest roles leads a cast of some of Britain's finest interpreters of baroque opera under the baton of Sir Charles Mackerras. John Copley's acclaimed English National Opera production was restaged in studio skilfully using all the technical advantages offered to create this top quality recording.

• Space: 1999 - Vol. 1 | DVD | (30/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  For the time, there had never been a more lavishly produced science-fiction TV series than Space: 1999, which was British-made on a first-season budget of 3.25 million pounds--an astounding amount--and ran for two seasons from 1975 to 77. What keeps fans enthralled after all these years has only partly to do with the first-rate production values, the plausibly constructed spaceship models and expert special effects. The tone of the show is one of scientific dispassion, setting it apart from its TV SF predecessors such as Star Trek in which the mood is more generally convivial. Our heroes here are in dire circumstances that require cool heads as a survival trait. Those circumstances are: the moon and the 311 crew members of Moonbase Alpha experience a cataclysm that causes the moon to break away from its orbit and travel endlessly through space, making our heroes into unintentional explorers. No TV series has created a more palpable feel of hard science fiction than this. Of course the show is not without its detractors, having been soundly lambasted for its many scientific errors. No less august a figure than Isaac Asimov criticised the show for its premise in the opening episode "Breakaway", which had nuclear explosions on the "dark side of the moon" somehow propel it out of orbit and sent it flying through space without regard for any physical laws. In "Earthbound", aliens travelling to Earth state it will take them 75 years to reach their destination, making one wonder why it didn't take the moon that long to encounter the aliens. While these are serious complaints, fans tend to remember the scientific seriousness of the series and the sense of awe created by the many strange creatures and phenomena they encounter on their journey through the galaxy. --Jim Gay, Amazon.comOn this DVD: Presented in production order (not the sequence they were transmitted in), this first volume from Space: 1999's first year nonetheless begins with the all-important "Breakaway". Commander Koenig arrives at Moonbase Alpha as planet Meta is passing Earth. He's there to investigate why people are dying of what seems to be radiation poisoning and ensure the Meta Probe is launched in time. Everything is tied into what's wrong with their nuclear waste disposal. Then on September 13, 1999, the unthinkable happens, and the Moon with its 311 inhabitants is catapulted out of Earth's orbit. Some time later they pass planet Terra Nova which seems too good to be true. When Dr Russell's supposed dead husband (Richard Johnson) re-appears from the long-lost Astro 7 mission, it becomes a "Matter of Life and Death" in determining whether to settle on a Paradise populated by parrots! Another passing stellar body accidentally drags them towards a "Black Sun" in the next episode. Given three days to live, there's a graceful acceptance of fate by the team that is paid off by what seems to be some sort of guiding hand watching over them all. Finally an orange eye appears and emits a "Ring Around the Moon", a mysterious enveloping beam that exerts mind-control over various crew members. After a warning from the mythic planet Triton, Dr Russell is taken as their "conduit" (much like Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture). Three publicity stills, 15 production drawings and eight character biographies may seem a little stingy as extra features. The neat CGI-animated menus make up for that a little though: an Eagle has never looked so agile. --Paul Tonks

• The Slayer | Blu Ray | (21/08/2017) from £16.39   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  IS IT A NIGHTMARE? OR IS IT THE SLAYER? One of the most sought-after titles for slasher fans everywhere, The Slayer finally rises from the ashes of obscurity in a brand new 4K transfer courtesy of Arrow Video. Two young couples set off to a secluded island for what promises to be a restful retreat. But the peace is short-lived: as a storm batters the island, troubled artist Kay begins to sense that a malevolent presence is here with them, stalking them at every turn. Is she losing her mind, or are her childhood nightmares of a demonic assailant coming to terrifying life? Previously only available on home video in truncated or full screen versions, The Slayer whose nightmares-seeping-into-reality theme predates a certain Wes Craven classic by several years comes lovingly restored from the original negative in a stunning transfer that will be a revelation to fans both old and new. SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS: Brand new restoration from a 4K scan of the original negative High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations Original Uncompressed Mono Audio Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing Brand new interviews with cast and crew Original Theatrical Trailer Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Justin Osbourn FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Lee Gambin

• The Moth Diaries | DVD | (16/09/2013) from £3.79   |  Saving you £9.20 (242.74%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Led by British talent Lily Cole (Snow White and the Huntsman The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) Moth Diaries is a modern gothic coming of age story set in a world of obsessive teenage girl friendship. Rebecca (Sarah Bolger) a young girl haunted by her father's suicide begins a new year at an elite girls' boarding school. Before long Rebecca's close friendship with the popular Lucy (Sarah Gadon) is tested by the arrival of the dark and mysterious Ernessa (Lily Cole). Lucy quickly falls under the glamorous Ernessa's spell and becomes emotionally and physically consumed by their intense friendship. Hurt and confused Rebecca develops a crush on her English teacher Mr. Davies (Scott Speedman) who is teaching a class in Gothic fiction. As she immerses herself in their assigned reading the vampire novel Carmilla Rebecca becomes convinced that Ernessa is a vampire. Mysterious deaths begin to occur and Rebecca is convinced Ernessa is to blame but when her warnings are dismissed as the result of obsessive jealousy she decides that she must take drastic action to save herself and those around her.