"Actor: William Kerwin"

• Jack | DVD | (12/02/2001) from £3.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (275.69%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Jack is Francis Coppola at his most pointless noodling, looking for the film he wants to make instead of just making it. Robin Williams stars as 10-year-old Jack, a boy with an inexplicable disease that ages him at four times the normal human rate. Kept at home like a contemporary Boo Radley, Jack becomes a neighbourhood legend until his parents relent and send him to school. In time, the other kids befriend him and stay loyal as his hyperdevelopment puts a strain on his body and emotions. The idea is sound, but the execution is a bore. The best the script and Coppola can come up with are painfully long scenes in which Williams's character proves himself on the playground and in gross-out contests in a tree house. Coppola fishes around for signs of life and spontaneity in these scenes, but the film is actually best when Jack has to cope with certain feelings in his mature body (such as his attraction to a character played by Fran Drescher) that he isn't prepared for emotionally. Jack would have been a lot better if Coppola had embraced a plan from beginning to end and stuck to it. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Bomber Harris | DVD | (04/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  John Thaw stars in this critically acclaimed BBC drama based on the wartime career of Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris the Commander in chief of Bomber Command from 1942-1945.

• Blood Feast | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A shocking drive-in sensation when released in 1963, Blood Feast remains a milestone in the exploitation genre. A serial killer is on the loose; women are being killed and body parts are being stolen; the police are stumped (so to speak). Meanwhile, Egyptmania seems to be gripping this small Florida town. Fuad Ramses' "exotic catering" shop is doing a booming business and his book, Ancient Weird Religious Rituals, is being studied by the local book club. Is there a connection between Ramses and the murders? Of course! In this film by the wizard of gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, plot and suspense take a back seat to the gruesome and bloody murder scenes. The acting may not be very good, the script is weak at best and the effects don't hold up to later standards of Hollywood gore, but there is an infectious enthusiasm that comes through Lewis' desire to shock his audience. The exploitation elements may be dated but that only makes them all the more entertaining. Blood Feast was followed (in what would come to be known as Lewis' "blood trilogy") by Two Thousand Maniacs! and Color Me Blood Red. --Andy Spletzer, Amazon.com

• 2000 Maniacs | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £10.55   |  Saving you £2.44 (23.13%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Available "fully uncut" for the first time in the UK, Two Thousand Maniacs! is the second of director HG Lewis' "blood" trilogy. Though the "once-in-a-lifetime" title makes a promise no film could keep--only about 30 maniacs show up--and the level of gore is a notch or so down from Blood Feast--only four deaths--this is perhaps the director's most watchable film. The Brigadoon-derived plot nugget concerns a Deep South town (variously suggested to be in Georgia or Arkansas, but actually Florida) wiped out by Union raiders during the Civil War, which reappears once every 100 years to wreak "blood vengeance". For the centennial celebrations, Pleasant Valley lures Yankee tourists off the road and subjects them to gruesome fairground games--a cannibal BBQ, a "horse-race", a "barrel roll" and "teetering rock". The ideas are nasty, and Lewis even attempts subtlety by keeping the quartering and the spiked barrel inside mostly off screen, but the creepiest touch is the "aw-shucks" good humour with which the ghostly Confederate maniacs--led by a mayor who is the spitting image of Sergeant Bilko's Colonel Hall--treat their horrible sport. It has the usual Lewis drawbacks--mostly inept staging, acting that veers between the wooden ("Playmate" Connie Mason) and the amateurishly hammy (one of the worst child actors in film history), clumsy editing, community theatre production values--but his fans wouldn't have it any other way and the hayseed music is great! On the DVD: The full-screen image is as good as this ever will look, considering Lewis' primitive understanding of lighting cinematography, with rich scarlet blood, vividly ugly 1963 leisurewear and very few print imperfections. The features offer an imaginative "Welcome to Pleasant Valley Centennial" menu, with buttons like the target you have to hit to drop the "teetering rock" on the Yankee; lurid original trailer ("Two thousand maniacs crazed for carnage started bathing a whole town in pulsing, human blood ... brutal, evil, ghastly beyond belief"); filmographies for Lewis, Friedman and star William Kerwin (aka Thomas Wood); promotional art gallery; notes by aptly-monickered expert Billy Chainsaw, highlighting the connections with John Waters and Brigadoon; a teaser trailer for "the Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection"; a mass of trailers for other "Tartan terror" titles. The Lewis-Friedman commentary and mind-numbing outtakes reel available on the Region 1 DVD are sadly absent, but that release doesn't have this one's major bonus addition--the entire soundtrack album, with compositions by Lewis himself (including the immortal "Yee-Hah, the South's Gonna Rise Again") and Flatt and Scruggs (of Bonnie and Clyde fame). --Kim Newman

• The Master Of Gore Collection | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This 4 DVD Box Set contains 4 of Herschell Gordon Lewis' greatest films! 2000 Maniacs: To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Civil War the inhabitants of a small Southern US town organise the festival to end all festivals. With a captured audience of North Americans the townsfolk amuse themselves by playing roll-the-man-in-the-nail-lined-barrel and compete at target practice using a pretty girl and a boulder. With all this chaos erupting around them a young couple make a desperate attempt to leave the town before they too fall victim to Two Thousand Maniacs! Wizard of Gore: With his unique stage show small-time illusionist Montag the Magnificent becomes an overnight success. As crowds flock to witness his incredible and fantastical act Montag recruits pretty ladies from his audience publicly disembowels hacks tortures and otherwise mutilates their bodies only to have them return unmarked and unscathed to their seats. But not all is as it seems. When as if by magic these female participants start turning up as the victims of horrific crimes that exactly imitate his on-stage violations Montag finds it necessary to conceive of a grander illusion to keep suspicion at bay. Art imitates life imitates death in this fine slice of blood-soaked shock cinema. And it ain''t done with mirrors! Gruesome Twosome: Mrs Pringle's Little Wig Shop is a family business specialising in hairpieces crafted from human hair. Located on a college campus the shop is well served by the number of young women eager to change their style. But the laws of supply and demand are such that the Pringles are forced to make a few sacrifices... human sacrifices. Wielding his trusty electric carving knife Mrs Pringle's son Ronald helps his Mom out by scalping those unfortunate enough to enquire about the room that the old lady has to rent. This outrageous and blackly comic movie features a truly surreal opening sequence that has to be seen to be believed. You'll flip your wig! Colour Me Blood Red:When temperamental artist Adam Sorg's latest paintings fail to impress his critics he finds himself unable to change his style using the materials at his disposal. Searching in vein for the perfect pigment he discovers that it is the deep red of his girlfriends's blood that has the shade he has been looking for. However when his supply runs dry Sorg is forced to look elsewhere for the colour he needs...

• Blood Feast (Special Edition) | Blu Ray | (24/10/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A