"Actor: Sid James"

• Ealing Boxset | Blu Ray | (31/03/2014) from £19.99   |  Saving you £20.00 (100.05%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Ealing Studio output from the 1940s and the 1950s helped define what was arguably the golden age for British cinema. This Blu-ray collection brings together three much loved comedy classics directed by Ealing stalwarts Robert Hamer Charles Crichton and Alexander Mackendrick and starring the great Sir Alec Guinness in some of his most memorable roles.

• Carry On - Doctors And Nurses Collection - Digi Stack 2 | DVD | (14/03/2005) from £17.28   |  Saving you £17.71 (50.60%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Carry On Camping (1969): Sid (Sid James) and his reluctant mate Bernie (Bernard Bresslaw) hit on the idea of a nudist camping holiday to spice things up with their girlfriends! The arrival of Dr Soaper (Kenneth Williams) headmaster of the Chayste Place Finishing School his matron Miss Haggard (Hattie Jacques) in charge of eleven nubile girls including star pupil Babs (Barbara Windsor) set the scene for one of the funniest frolics in the Carry On repertoire. Carry On Abroad (1972): The Carry On team take a package holiday that starts disastrously and rapidly goes downhill. The paradise island of Elsbels is not all it's cracked up to be.... The hotel isn't finished the staff are abit thin on the ground - in fact Pepe (Peter Butterworth) is the staff - and the locals are far from friendly! Carry On Follow That Camel (1967): Can fresh Foreign Legion recruits 'B.O.' West (Jim Dale) and his faithful manservant Simpson (Peter Butterworth) help defeat the ruthless Sheikh Abdul Abulbul (Bernard Bresslaw)? Find out in the hysterical historical spectacular featuring a host of harem beauties a bevy of blood thirsty Bedouins and a troupe of Legionnaires getting the hump! Carry On Girls (1973): You might think that a beauty contest would be the perfect place for the Carry On team to discover new heights of hilarity and new depths of depravity - well you'd be right! Sidney Fiddler brings a beauty contest to a quiet seaside resort. His problems start with two curvaceous Hells Angels Miss Easy Rider and Miss Dawn Brakes. There's Major Bumble Bernard Bresslaw as Britain's first drag beauty queen and last but not least Mrs Angel Prodworthy who is fighting on behalf of Women's Lib. Carry on Behind (1975): Archaelogists Professors Anna Vooshka (Elke Sommer) and Roland Crump (Kenneth Williams) are desparate to begin poking round the remains of a Roman encampment. Unfortunately the local caravan site has been built over the historic site. Holiday pals Ernie Bragg (Jack Douglas) and Fred Ramsden (Windsor Davies) have their sites set on the local beauty spots - campers Sandra (Carol Hawkins) and Carol (Sherrie Hewson)! Carry On At Your Convenience (1971): The Carry On team throw caution to the wind and present an hour and a half of good clean lavatorial humour. Kenneth Williams is WC Boggs the troubled owner of a small company trying to manufacture fine toiletware. Incompetent management and a bolshy union are just about the least of Bogg's problems as you'll soon discover in this hysterical comedy that tells you everything you always wanted to know about your home's most vital convenience.

• Charlie Chan | DVD | (01/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.24

  Though the Charlie Chan film franchise has earned brickbats for its casting of Caucasian actors as the Asian sleuth, the movies have retained popularity among aficionados of '40s-era B-crime pictures, and the six-disc Charlie Chan Chanthology, all featuring Sidney Toler as Chan, should please that crowd. The Missouri-born Toler starred in 11 Chan pictures for Fox before purchasing the rights to the character from creator Earl Derr Biggers's widow and bringing it to budget studio Monogram, where he starred in 11 more Chans before his death in 1947 (Roland Winters replaced him in six more features until 1949). At Monogram, Chan became a Secret Service Agent (a move calculated to cut down on exotic locations and sets), and comedy was integrated into the plots via Mantan Moreland's chauffeur Birmingham Brown; Benson Fong also joined the cast as Number Three Son Tommy, with occasional appearances by daughter Frances (Frances Chan) and son Eddie (Edwin Luke, brother of Keye Luke, who played Number One Son Lee in the Fox Chans). Other than that, the six films collected here (the first six Chans for Monogram, and all but five directed by Phil Rosen) are largely indistinguishable from one another save for the murder victims and their demises. In The Secret Service, Chan investigates the death of a wartime inventor; a San Francisco socialite expires in The Chinese Cat; daughter Frances is involved in the murder of a psychic in Meeting at Midnight (a.k.a. Black Magic); another government scientist is killed in The Jade Mask, and death by remote control is the focus of The Scarlet Clue. Director Phil Karlson (Kansas City Confidential) adds some noirish atmosphere to The Shanghai Cobra, which has bank employees dying from apparent snakebites. Dated and controversial as they may be, the Chan films are engaging diversions for vintage mystery fans. No extras are featured in the set. --Paul Gaita

• The Lavender Hill Mob (60th Anniversary Edition) | Blu Ray | (01/08/2011) from £11.99   |  Saving you £10.99 (122.11%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Directed by Charles Crichton, who would much later direct John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda (1988), 1951's The Lavender Hill Mob is the most ruefully thrilling of the Ealing Comedies. Alec Guinness plays a bowler-hatted escort of bullion to the refineries. His seeming timidity, weak 'r's and punctiliousness mask a typically Guinness-like patient cunning. "I was aware I was widiculed but that was pwecisely the effect I was stwiving to achieve". He's actually plotting a heist. With more conventionally cockney villains Sid James and Alfie Bass in tow, as well as the respectable but ruined Stanley Holloway, Guinness' perfect criminal plan works in exquisite detail, then unravels just as exquisitely, culminating in a nail-biting police car chase in which you can't help rooting for the villains. The Lavender Hill Mob depicts a London still up to its knees in rubble from World War II, a world of new hope but continued austerity, a budding new order in which everything seems up for grabs; as such it could be regarded as a lighter hearted cinematic cousin to Carol Reed's 1949 masterpiece The Third Man. The Lavender Hill Mob also sees the first, fleeting on-screen appearance of Audrey Hepburn in the opening sequence. --David Stubbs

• Carry On Dick | DVD | (12/05/2003) from £6.74   |  Saving you £6.25 (92.73%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The 18th century, with its frills and bawds, was ideal territory for the Carry On team: Carry On Dick is one of the few of the series where one notices the quality of the art direction in intervals between terrible old Talbot Rothwell jokes and the creaking of standard farce moments. Captain Fancy (Kenneth Williams) is sent to the remote village of Upper Denture to arrest Big Dick Turpin (Sid James) and makes the mistake of confiding in the local Rector, the Reverend Flasher (who is Big Dick's secret alter ego). Dick has troubles of his own: his liaison with his housemaid and henchperson Harriet (Barbara Windsor) is perpetually interrupted by his amorous housekeeper (Hattie Jacques). Meanwhile, Joan Sims struts around the plot as the proprietor of a touring show of scantily clad young women. This is not one of the best of the series--a certain mean-spiritedness creeps in to the humour as does the self-conscious awareness that 1974 was a date a little late for some of the more sexist jokes--but any film with Kenneth Williams discussing satin coats with his tailor has something going for it. --Roz Kaveney

• The Silent Enemy (Vintage Classics) | Blu Ray | (11/04/2022) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Directed by William Fairchild, The Silent Enemy is a newly restored 1958 war film based on the real Lionel 'Buster' Crabb who vanished during a reconnaissance mission for the MI6, played by Laurence Harvey. In 1941, Britain was sustaining enormous losses fighting a war on three fronts against an ever increasing Axis power. To add to their problems, the Italians have recently created a new form of warfare - Frogmen - an intrepid band of men who travel astride small torpedo-type vessels, and attach explosive charges to the hulls of enemy ships, below their waterline. A young Naval Lieutenant, 'Buster' Crabb, an expert in mine and bomb disposal, is sent to Gibraltar to try and combat this new threat. Never having dived before, he sets to work to master the technique of underwater operations, and soon he and his team are able to locate many of the frogmen's charges and render them harmless. But with an invasion of North Africa imminent, time is not on the Allies' side. Product Features The Real Commander Crabb: Interview with author Tim Binding Commander Crabb Mystery (1956) Behind the Scenes stills gallery

• Carry On Henry | DVD | (07/07/2003) from £24.99   |  Saving you £-12.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Shot in the bright postal colours of a seaside postcard, 1971's Carry On Henry applies the usual Carry On sniggering to the married life of Henry VIII. Talbot Rothwell's script is standard bedroom farce and full of jokes about choppers, while the threat of beheading and the actuality of torture are constantly present but only as the terrible things that happen to cartoon characters who will be back next time. Sid James turns in one of his better performances as the endlessly lecherous and fickle Henry, married to Joan Sims and lusting after Barbara Windsor. There is a genuine sexual chemistry between James and Windsor, which at times almost breaks open the farce formula. The usual regulars--Kenneth Williams as Thomas Cromwell, Terry Scott as Cardinal Wolsey, Charles Hawtrey as Sir Roger--do their usual turns; Williams is more subdued than usual, while Hawtrey hugely enjoys playing the Queen's secret lover. This was not one of the high points of the series, but it has its own curious charm. --Roz Kaveney

• Carry On Cowboy | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Made in the "classic" period of the series, 1966's Carry On Cowboy is a spoof Western set in Stodge City, about to suffer the arrival of black-hatted outlaw The Rumpo Kid, played by the less-than-youthful Sid James. Kenneth Williams is the aptly named Judge Burke, who appeals to Washington for help to combat this gunslinger and his henchmen. Assistance arrives in the form of Jim Dale's Marshall P Knutt, a drainage, sanitation and garbage expert from England, with a reference from Lady Pushing for doing a "good job on her main sludge channel", whose Christian name provokes a predictable misunderstanding. Fortunately, he's accompanied by Annie Oakley. As ever, much fun is to be had cheering/groaning along to double-entendres about "big ones", but never mind the script, feel the characters. Joan Sims does a good Mae West impression; Syd James "Ha hwa-ha-ha!"s his way through his part with his usual aplomb; the underrated Peter Butterworth is excellent as an inept Doctor; while Bernard Bresslaw adds to his impressively multi-ethnic CV, playing a Native American, with Charles Hawtrey as his incorrigible firewater-loving Chief. On the DVD: No extras, sadly, other than scene selection but Alan Hume's splendidly authentic colour lensing is suitably refurbished here. --David Stubbs

• Carry On - The Ultimate Collection | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £199.99

  This box set features a veritable campsite of bawdy comedic treats from the Carry On crew! Includes: 1. Carry On Abroad (1972) 2. Carry On Again Doctor (1972) 3. Carry On Doctor (1967) 4. Carry On Don't Lose Your Head (1966) 5. Carry On England (1976) 6. Carry On Follow That Camel (1967) 7. Carry On Matron (1972) 8. Carry On at Your Convenience (1971) 9. Carry On Behind (1975) 10. Carry On Camping (1969) 11. Carry On Dick (1974) 12. Carry On Emmanuelle (1978) 13. Carry On Girls (1973) 14. Carry On Henry (1971) 15. Carry On Holiday 16. Carry On Loving (1970) 17. Carry On Up The Jungle (1970) 18. Carry On up the Khyber (1968) 19. Carry On Sergeant (1958) 20. Carry On Nurse (1959) 21. Carry On Teacher (1959) 22. Carry On Constable (1960) 23. Carry On Regardless (1961) 24. Carry On Cruising (1962) 25. Carry On Cabby (1963) 26. Carry On Jack (1963) 27. Carry On Spying (1964) 28. Carry On Cleo (1964) 29. Carry On Cowboy (1965) 30. Carry On Screaming! (1966)

• Quatermass Collection: Quatermass Experiment / Quatermass 2 / Quatermass and the Pit | DVD | (12/09/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Quatermass Experiment: A missile is launched by Professor Quatermass and his team but when it lands back in the English countryside two of the crew members have disappeared. The third, who is barely alive, undergoes a quite terrifying transformation which threatens Earth...Quatermass 2: Quatermass is intrigued by strange images on his radar. Thinking them to be meteorites he follows them to a village which, on his arrival, he finds has been completely destroyed...Quatermass and the Pit: A London subway excavation abruptly halts when construction workers unearth a cluster of prehistoric skulls and skeletons. Anthropologist Dr. Roney, his assistant Barbara Judd, and space expert Professor Quatermass are driven by curiosity and dig deeper to discover a strange 'missile' that is not of this earth...

• Carry On - Carry On History - Digi Stack 1 | DVD | (14/03/2005) from £19.19   |  Saving you £17.06 (95.15%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Carry On Don't Lose Your Head (1967): Carry On laughing until you have hysterics but...Don't Lose Your Head as the Carry On team destroy everything sacred about the classic story of the Scarlet Pimpernel set during the French Revolution. Sid James stars as the Black Fingernail always one jump ahead of Citizen Camembert and Citizen Bidet... Carry On Dick (1974): Notorious outlaw Dick Turpin (More commonly referred to as Big Dick) is running rings around King George's Bow Street runners. Can the half-witted Captain Desmond Fancey Sir Roger Daley and Sergeant Jock Strapp succeed in bringing the wily rogue to justice? Sid James and the rest of the 'Carry On' gang are having a ball and everyone is invited; merry England was never merrier! Carry On Up The Jungle (1970): The Carry On Team go ape crazy in darkest Africa as Professor Inigo Tinkle (Frankie Howerd) and his clumsy sidekick Claude (Kenneth Connor) embark on a bird fancying expedition. Primitive passions are unleashed a forgotten tribe of gorgeous man-hungry females is encountered and a loin-clothed vine-swinging jungle boy (Terry Scott) is the unlikely hero in this riotous romp. Sid James as the fearless white hunter Bill Boosey Joan Sims as the naughty Lady Bagley and Charles Hawtry as Tonka - the father of countless happily go native for this classic Carry On. Carry On Henry (1971): Carry On Henry is the (almost) true story of the love-life of that much-married British monarch Henry VIII (Sid James). A right Royal Flush is guaranteed when flirty Bettina (Barbara Windsor) becomes a favourite at court much to the displeasure of Queen Marie (Joan Sims). Discover the previously hidden details of Henry's private life such as his hatred of garlic and his love of hunting... wenches that is! Carry On England (1975): Make love not war! The Carry On team are part of an experimental mixed anti-aircraft battery during World War II. The Luftwaffe never had it so easy! Recruits ready (Jack Douglas) Willing (Judy Geeson) and Able (Patrick Mower) join forces to strike terror into the heart of the enemy and run rings round their pompous captain S. Melly (Kenneth Connor). Discover where Churchill's famous Victory sign originated from in this classic khaki caper: patriotism has never been funnier! Carry On Up The Khyber (1968): British India 1895. The Burpas are revolting but then again 'The Devils In Skirts' who guard the Khyber Pass are not too inviting either! Can Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond (Sid James) prevent the scheming Khasi of Kalabar (Kenneth Williams) from starting a full blown rebellion massacring thousands of innocent people ending British rule and making his kushy job obselete? Can he rely on the help of the wayward Brother Belcher (Peter Butterworth)? And can he prevent the secret concerning the 3rd Foot and Mouth Regiment from becoming common knowledge among the natives? All will be revealed in this masterly tale of passion greed and missing underpants!

• The Weak and the Wicked | DVD | (10/08/2015) from £7.99   |  Saving you £2.00 (25.03%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Glynis Johns Diana Dors and Sybil Thorndike star in this powerful sympathetic drama tracing the contrasting lives and often faltering progress of the inmates of a women's prison. Based on the best-selling semi-autobiographical novel by Joan Henry – a writer and former debutante who further drew upon her own prison experience for the novel and classic film Yield to the Night – The Weak and the Wicked is directed by Henry's future husband Oscar-nominated J. Lee-Thompson. The film is featured here in a brand-new transfer from original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. Jean Raymond an upper-class woman with a gambling addiction is given a twelve-month prison sentence resulting from her inability to pay her debts. At first she is overwhelmingly depressed by life in the women's prison; gradually however her misery is relieved by the many close friends she makes there. Features: Original theatrical trailers Image gallery Promotional material PDF  

• Blade Runner (The Director's Cut) | DVD | (01/11/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When Ridley Scott's cut of Blade Runner was finally released in 1993, one had to wonder why the studio hadn't done it right the first time--11 years earlier. This version is so much better, mostly because of what's been eliminated (the ludicrous and redundant voice-over narration and the phoney happy ending) rather than what's been added (a bit more character development and a brief unicorn dream). Star Harrison Ford originally recorded the narration under duress at the insistence of Warner Bros. executives who thought the story needed further "explanation"; he later confessed that he thought if he did it badly they wouldn't use it. (Moral: never overestimate the taste of movie executives.) The movie's spectacular futuristic vision of Los Angeles--a perpetually dark and rainy metropolis that's the nightmare antithesis of "Sunny Southern California"--is still its most seductive feature, another worldly atmosphere in which you can immerse yourself. The movie's shadowy visual style, along with its classic private-detective/murder-mystery plot line (with Ford on the trail of a murderous android, or "replicant"), makes Blade Runner one of the few science fiction pictures to legitimately claim a place in the film noir tradition. And, as in the best noir, the sleuth discovers a whole lot more (about himself and the people he encounters) than he anticipates. The cast also includes Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah Rutger Hauer and M Emmet Walsh. --Jim Emerson

• Buck And The Preacher | DVD | (28/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Buck (Poitier) an ex-Union Army Cavalry sergeant becomes a scout for freed slaves heading to the Colorado frontier. Tagging along with him are his wife (Ruby Dee) and a Bible-thumping con artist known as the Preacher (Belafonte). Attacked by racist bounty hunters determined to return the former slaves to a life of sharecropping in Louisiana Buck and his followers must summon all the courage they have in order to reach their destination and help settle the Wild West...

• The Best Of The A Team | DVD | (24/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today still wanted by the government they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem if no one else can help and if you can find them maybe you can hire the A-Team. Enjoy all the very best episodes from the much-loved action TV series! Episodes include: Mexican Slayride Parts O

• Carry On Collection | DVD | (27/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £99.99

  The Carry On Collection DVD box set contains the following 17 films in Special Edition versions, complete with a selection of commentaries, documentaries or other features on each disc, plus That's Carry On, a celebration of 20 years of the series hosted by Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor. The individual films are: Don't Lose Your Head; Follow That Camel; Doctor; Up the Khyber; Camping; Again Doctor; Up the Jungle; Loving; Henry; At Your Convenience; Matron; Abroad; Girls; Dick; Behind; England; Emmanuelle and That's Carry On.

• Carry On Up The Jungle | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Carry On Up the Jungle has worn less well than some of the others in the series, simply because the African exploration genre it parodies--with its cannibals, great white hunters and lost Amazon tribes--is so entirely out of fashion. Still, Frankie Howerd made so comparatively few films that one which has him as an ornithologist searching for rare birds in the company of Joan Sims and Sid James is not going to be entirely without interest; he has few great moments here, but runs through his usual repertoire of groans and horse-faced sorrowful expressions with brio. The idea of Terry Scott playing Tarzan is in itself such a good joke that it hardly matters that most of what follows is him swinging, on ropes, into obstacles. On the DVD: The DVD has no special features whatever. It is presented in 1.77:1 ratio with mono sound. --Roz Kaveney

• In The Heat Of The Night | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £6.48   |  Saving you £9.51 (146.76%)   |  RRP £15.99

  This 1967 film took home lots of Oscars for its fascinating drama about a Philadelphia detective (Sidney Poitier) who assists a redneck Southern sheriff (Rod Steiger) in solving a murder. A study in racism that ebbs a bit through the collective and shared need between a black man and a white man who don't want to be working together, In the Heat of the Night continues to strike a chord today. Steiger is a mass of snarling danger, Poitier a bundle of nerves covered in class. Norman Jewison (Moonstruck) directs with a keen feeling for the cultural and social atmosphere of the setting. --Tom Keogh

• The Lavender Hill Mob (60th Anniversary Edition) | DVD | (01/08/2011) from £7.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (100.13%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Directed by Charles Crichton, who would much later direct John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda (1988), 1951's The Lavender Hill Mob is the most ruefully thrilling of the Ealing Comedies. Alec Guinness plays a bowler-hatted escort of bullion to the refineries. His seeming timidity, weak 'r's and punctiliousness mask a typically Guinness-like patient cunning. "I was aware I was widiculed but that was pwecisely the effect I was stwiving to achieve". He's actually plotting a heist. With more conventionally cockney villains Sid James and Alfie Bass in tow, as well as the respectable but ruined Stanley Holloway, Guinness' perfect criminal plan works in exquisite detail, then unravels just as exquisitely, culminating in a nail-biting police car chase in which you can't help rooting for the villains. The Lavender Hill Mob depicts a London still up to its knees in rubble from World War II, a world of new hope but continued austerity, a budding new order in which everything seems up for grabs; as such it could be regarded as a lighter hearted cinematic cousin to Carol Reed's 1949 masterpiece The Third Man. The Lavender Hill Mob also sees the first, fleeting on-screen appearance of Audrey Hepburn in the opening sequence. --David Stubbs

• Carry On Loving | DVD | (07/07/2003) from £11.27   |  Saving you £1.72 (15.26%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Setting a Carry On film in a marriage bureau has a certain self-serving obviousness, so it's hardly surprising that Carry On Loving milks the idea for all it's worth. The Wedded Bliss Agency is of course a pretty dubious outfit, being run by Sid (James) and Sophie Bliss (Hattie Jacques), who together are the worst possible example for both marriage and their own profession: they constantly snipe at each other, they aren't actually married and their sophisticated computer matching system is in fact a complete fake. The remainder of the team are mostly cast as hapless clients, with predictable but often very funny situations arising from the various mismatches engineered by the agency, such as the inevitable misunderstanding over one client's interest in modelling. Yes, the humour is about as subtle as a flatulent elephant, but you can't help entering into the spirit of the thing. If there's an outstanding performance it has to be that of Imogen Hassall, who handles her transformation from round-shouldered frump to well-bred love goddess with considerable expertise and a genuine sense of fun. --Roger Thomas