Classic Films

• The Song Of Bernadette | DVD | (18/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In 1858 Lourdes resident Bernadette Sobrirous a poverty-stricken peasant girl witness a vision of a 'beautiful lady'. However news of the 'miracle' polarises opinion in the town: adoration suspicion and greed among the simple townspeople stubborn scepticism from the local doctor and charges of insanity from the town prosecutor... Winner of four Oscars.

• Love Is A Many Splendored Thing | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  William Holden and Jennifer Jones star in one of drama's most endearing and intelligent love stories. Nominated for eight Academy Awards this timeless classic follows the passionate affair of an American correspondent and a Eurasian doctor whose love for each other must overcome racial prejudice and the outbreak of war in Korea.

• Will Hay - Boys Will Be Boys | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Prison teacher Dr. Smart-Alec (Will Hay) steps up the career ladder to become headmaster of Narkover public school but his innate stupidity soon begins to create havoc. Will Hay dons a mortarboard on screen for the first time in the bumbling headmaster role that was to become his trademark.

• Will Hay - Where There's A Will | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £7.03   |  Saving you £2.96 (29.60%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Not quite vintage Will Hay, Where There's a Will dates from 1936--a year or two before the comic started turning out his best screen work--and casts Hay as an inept, drunken lawyer who begins the day by having the gas, phone and electricity cut off as he dryly plays off his cynical office boy (Graham Moffatt), but ends the film dressed as Santa Claus foiling a high society robbery and convincing even his stern, upper-crust brother-in-law (blustering HF Maltby) that he's earned a drink. It lacks the focus of Hay's best vehicles, with too much plot about conniving gangsters (slinky Gina Halo, sly Hartley Power) using the "Red-Headed League" ploy of hiring the lawyer to get him out of his office so they can rob the downstairs bank, while Hay's family complications revolve around a daughter (Peggy Simpson) who idolises him and doesn't know he's a failure. There are a few vaudeville-style turns, as Hay tries to blind officious landladies or potential clients with legal nonsense or gets a teetotal butler drunk, but it's mostly running-around. Imported Yank director William Beaudine, who gets a script credit with Hay (from a Sidney Gilliat/Leslie Arliss story), basically referees the show, standing back so the star can get on with it. Hammer fans should note that editor TR Fisher is Terence Fisher, future director of The Curse of Frankenstein and other classics.--Kim Newman

• A Streetcar Named Desire (2 Disc Special Edition) | DVD | (07/08/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £20.99

  Tennessee Williams based his screenplay on Oscar Saul's adaptation of Williams' own Pulitzer Prize-winning play set in a grimy New Orleans project. The story of the fragile sentimentalism of a woman who visits her sister only to be taunted mercilessly by her childish brother-in-law. This classic film garnered 12 Academy Award Nominations (including Best Picture Best Director Best Actor (Marlon Brando) and Best Screeplay) winning 4 including Best Actress (Vivien Leigh) Best Supporting Actress (Kim Hunter) and Best Supporting Actor (Karl Malden). This version features three minutes of footage that was deleted from the final 1951 release version upon demands made by the Production Code footage thought lost until its rediscovery in the early 1990s. This DVD release is the fully restored version of Elia Kazan's original cut and the documentary 'Desire And Censorship' on Disc 2 describes his struggle in getting the past the censors.

• Rebel Without A Cause (2 Disc Special Edition) | DVD | (07/08/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.99

  Jim Stark... a kid from a 'good' family - what makes him tick... like a bomb? In one of cinemas most influential and gripping roles James Dean plays Jim Stark the new kid in town whose loneliness frustration and anger mirrored those of most postwar teens - and reverberates more than 40 years later. Natalie Wood (as Jim's girlfriend Judy) and Sal Mineo (in his screen debut as Jim's tag-along pal Plato) were Academy Award nominees for their achingly true performances. Director Nicholas Ray was also an Oscar nominee for this landmark film chosen as one of the Top-100 American Films by the American Film Institute.

• The River | DVD | (31/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Director Jean Renoir's entrancing first colour film shot entirely on location in India is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the holy Bengal River around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir's subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its peoples The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.

• The Battle of Britain | DVD | (01/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This is a spectacular retelling of a true story that shows courage at its inspiring best. Few defining moments can change the outcome of war . But when the outnumbered Royal Air Force defied unsurmountable odds in engaging the German Luftwaffe they may well have altered the course of history!

• Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy: The Complete Collection, Vol. 7 | DVD | (30/05/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.16

• Chaplin Mutuals, Vol. 2 | DVD | (19/11/1997) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.16

• Will Hay - Windbag The Sailor | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This classic comedy has Will Hay as a bogus sea captain Ben Cutlet. He is tricked into taking command of an unseaworthy ship the Rob Roy which the owners intend to sink.He and two stowaways escape on a raft to an island inhabited by cannibals. The natives are frightened into friendliness by the radio set which the trio stole from the ship. Ben and the stowaways recapture the Rob Roy from the crooked crew whose efforts to sink her have proved in vain and sail home in triumph to their native town.

• Will Hay - Good Morning Boys | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £6.06   |  Saving you £5.19 (108.12%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The headmaster of St Michael's school Dr Benjamin Twist (Will Hay) finds himself in hot water after a government inspection. He is asked to resign unless he can prove that his educational methods work and so when he comes into possession of the French paper he does not need much coaxing before showing it to his students. The boys pass with honours but a congratulatory trip to Paris goes awry when they and Twist inadvertently help to steal the Mona Lisa.

• Will Hay - Convict 99 | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  One of Will Hay’s brisker comic efforts, 1936’s Convict 99 sees Dr Benjamin Twist, Hay’s clueless schoolmaster, caught in a case of mistaken identity and invited to head up a prison for especially hard-boiled criminals. Unable to believe his luck, Dr Twist celebrates his success with a few drinks, is still drunk when he arrives to take up his post and, confused with a new batch of inmates, ends up behind bars himself. There he makes the acquaintance of Moore Marriott as "Jerry the Mole", who has been digging an escape tunnel for nigh on 40 years and is only a fortnight away from his release date. When eventually reinstated as governor, Hay runs a loose ship, with inmates waited on by wardens, allowed to bet and even play the stock market. However, when a criminal on the outside attempts to defraud Twist, their indignation is naturally aroused. Convict 99 is a typical outtake from Hay’s bizarrely lawless universe, in which for all his harrumphing and bluster, he’s unable to exercise any sort of discipline whatsoever over the men in his charge. Hay plays exactly the same character from film to film, one so ill-equipped for any situation he’s equally suited for all. Whereas Twist is an incompetent who somehow muddles through, Hay the comic actor is a master of timing and double-takes who knows precisely how to create the air of a shambles. On the DVD: the original 1930s film stock has been well restored, give or take the odd crackle. But there are no extras, except scene index. --David Stubbs

• Will Hay - Old Bones Of The River | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  When Professor Benjamin Tibbets (Will Hay) travels to Africa up river to open schools for the natives he experiences several setbacks. His new pupils are less than receptive and when the commander of the local base goes down with malaria he takes on his duties as well. Aided by the crew of the boat on which he arrived (Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt) he sets about collecting taxes from the locals with hilarious results.

• Will Hay - Hey! Hey! USA! | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Dr. Benjamin Twist (Will Hay) is invited to act as tutor to the son of a millionaire in the United States of America after posing as a famous professor. Twist discovers that two gangs of villains are out to kidnap his precocious young pupil Bernie Schultz...

• Vixen | DVD | (28/03/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Is she woman ... or animal? Vixen (Erica Gavin) and her bush pilot husband Tom (Garth Pillsbury) live in the remote Canadian Northwest. A young robust woman Vixen eagerly finds ways to temper her fiery libido while Tom is off picking up passengers in his plane. Also a racist she takes pleasure in ridiculing conscientious objector Niles (Harrison Page) a black American friend of her brother's. When Tom brings Dave (Robert Aiken) and Janet (Vincene Wallace) an attractive young

• Millionairess / Trial And Error With Peter Sellers | DVD | (29/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The Millionairess (1960): Based on a play by George Bernard Shaw which studies an immensely wealthy woman who falls for the charms of a poor Indian doctor. Sophia Loren plays a spoilt heiress able to buy anything she wants. When she meets an Indian doctor (Peter Sellers) whose sole concern is to help the poor and needy she knows that this is the man for her. Although in love with her he is so terrified of being in her power that he foils all her attempts to 'buy' him. Only

• Dreams That Money Can Buy | DVD | (31/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Hans Richter was for four decades one of the most influential members of the cinematic avant-garde. In this film he made the bold attempt to introduce this work to a wider audience. Using the framing story of a man who discovers how to craft and sell dreams to a series of anxious clients Richter allotted each dream (seven in all) to artists who included Max Ernst Man Ray Marcel Duchamp and Alexander Calder. Some chose to reprise their work in cinematic form - Ernst recreates a sequence from his collage novel La Semaine de Bont and Richter uses music by composers ranging from Darius Milhaud and John Cage to Duke Ellington. Shot for just $25 000 in a Manhattan loft the film went on to win the Venice Film Festival Award for the best original contribution to the progress of cinematography.

• The Magnificent Showman (John Wayne) | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £12.89   |  Saving you £-2.90 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Hollywood's take on the big-top life as the Duke shepherds his three-ring extravaganza through a European tour while searching for the aerialist he loved and lost - the mother of his daughter. Plenty of real-life circus performers perfectly balance the performance of The Duke.

• Carry On Christmas - 1972 (DVD) | DVD | (30/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  More camp christmas capers with the Carry On crew.