Classic Films

• Gray Lady Down (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (28/08/2023) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The race is on to rescue a crew of sailors after a nuclear submarine collides with a Norwegian freighter and becomes stranded on the seabed. Skilful direction from David Greene (The People Next Door) and top-tier performances by Charlton Heston, David Carradine, Stacy Keach, Ned Beatty, Stephen McHattie, and Ronny Cox combine to make this the definitive disaster film. Product Features High Definition remaster Original mono audio Audio commentary with film historian Peter Tonguette (2021) The Guardian Interview with Charlton Heston (1985, 75 mins): archival audio recording of the great actor in conversation with Quentin Falk at the National Film Theatre, London Lady's Man (2021, 12 mins): actor Stacy Keach recalls his role as the dashing captain leading the rescue The Changing Tide (2021, 8 mins): character actor Stephen McHattie remembers working with a great team Plumbing the Depths (2021, 41 mins): film historian and former Navy officer Alan K Rode on the US Navy Submarine Rescue Program Original theatrical trailer TV spot Radio spots Image gallery: promotional and publicity material New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Nosferatu (2013 Restoration) | DVD | (18/11/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An iconic film of the German expressionist cinema and one of the most famous of all silent movies F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror continues to haunt - and indeed terrify - modern audiences with the unshakable power of its images. By teasing a host of occult atmospherics out of dilapidated set-pieces and innocuous real-world locations alike Murnau captured on celluloid the deeply-rooted elements of a waking nightmare and launched the signature Murnau-style that would change cinema history forever. In this first-ever screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula a simple real-estate transaction leads an intrepid businessman deep into the superstitious heart of Transylvania. There he encounters the otherworldly Count Orlok - portrayed by the legendary Max Schreck in a performance the very backstory of which has spawned its own mythology - who soon after embarks upon a cross-continental voyage to take up residence in a distant new land... and establish his ambiguous dominion. As to whether the count's campaign against the plague-wracked populace erupts from satanic decree erotic compulsion or the simple impulse of survival - that remains perhaps the greatest mystery of all in this film that's like a blackout... Remade by Werner Herzog in 1979 (and inspiring films as diverse as Abel Ferrara's King of New York and The Addiction and E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire) F. W. Murnau's surreal 1922 cine-fable remains the original and landmark entry in the entire global tradition of the horror film. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present newly restored on 1080p Blu-ray at long last Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror in its definitive restoration complete with original intertitles and accompanied by the score that played with the film at the time of its initial release. Special Features: Two audio commentaries: one newly recorded by film historian David Kalat; the second by historian R. Dixon Smith and critic Brad Stevens The Language of Shadows a 53-minute documentary on Murnau's early years and the filming of Nosferatu New video interview with BFI Film Classics Nosferatu author Kevin Jackson Newly translated English subtitles with original German intertitles More surprises to be revealed closer to release date! PLUS: a 56-page booklet featuring writings and rare imagery

• The Tragedy of Macbeth | Blu Ray | (18/04/2016) from £13.35   |  Saving you £14.64 (109.66%)   |  RRP £27.99

  Roman Polanski imbues his unflinchingly violent adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy of ruthless ambition and murder in medieval Scotland with grit and dramatic intensity. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis give performances charged with fury and sex appeal as a decorated warrior rising through the ranks and his driven wife, scheming together to take the throne by any means. Co-adapted by Polanski and the great theatre critic and dramaturge Kenneth Tynan, and shot against a series of stunning, stark British Isle landscapes, this version of Macbeth is among the most atmospheric and authentic of all Shakespeare films.

• The Harder They Fall (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (22/04/2024) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Humphrey Bogart (Knock on Any Door), Rod Steiger (In the Heat of the Night), and Mike Lane (The New Centurions) star in The Harder They Fall, a tough-as-nails film noir exposé of corruption in the boxing world that would be Bogart's final film. Boxing promoter Nick Benko (Steiger) employs down-on-his-luck journalist Eddie Willis (Bogart) to promote his new signing, Toro Moreno (Lane), fixing fights across the country to ensure Toro appears to be a contender. But, when tragedy strikes, Willis threatens to expose the entire racket... Adapted by Philip Yordan (Johnny Guitar) from a novel by Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront), and directed by Mark Robson (The Seventh Victim), The Harder They Fall is a classic of Hollywood cinema, and a fitting swan song to Humprey Bogart's career. Product Features 4K restoration Original mono audio Audio commentary with critics and writers Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Nehme (2022) The Final Bout (2022, 11 mins): critic and writer Christina Newland examines the making of the film, and its relationship to the original novel Bertrand Tavernier on 'The Harder They Fall' (2017, 30 mins): archival appreciation by the celebrated filmmaker and critic Max Baer Super 8s (6 mins): footage of two famous bouts from the 1930s, featuring the boxer and, later, actor fighting against Max Schmeling, then Primo Carnera That Justice Be Done (1945, 11 mins): George Stevens' short on the Nuremberg trials, made by the Office of War Information and written by Budd Schulberg Image gallery: promotional and publicity material New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• The Ladykillers | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £8.46   |  Saving you £4.53 (53.55%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Ladykillers director Alexander Mackendrick's third Ealing farce is the final comedy produced by the famous British studio and one of its most celebrated. Like the equally applauded Kind Hearts And Coronets the film is more sophisticated and blacker in tone than typically lighthearted Ealing fare (such as Mackendrick's Whiskey Galore!). Alec Guinness stars as the superbly shifty toothily threatening Professor Marcus the leader of a crime ring planning a he

• A Town Like Alice | DVD | (12/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  One of the all-time great wartime love stories shot on location in Malaya.

• 13 Rue Madeleine | DVD | (24/09/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A group of Allied agents prepare to infiltrate German intelligence in Paris to find the whereabouts of a secret rocket site during World War 2. Their task is made even more hazardous by the fact that one of them is a double agent...

• Zardoz | Blu Ray | (14/09/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Zardoz

• Geordie | DVD | (04/05/2009) from £7.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (100.13%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Tall handsome Bill Travers (Born Free The Smallest Show on Earth) plays opposite Norah Gorsen as Jean and Alastair Sim as The Laird (Folly to be Wise St Trinian's films) in this charming love story set in the beautiful highlands of Scotland and directed by Frank Launder (The Happiest Days of your Life The St Trinian's films). Geordie is a slight of frame and puny gamekeeper's son who feels that the girl he loves is ignoring him because of his size. He decides to take a correspondence course in body-building. At 21 Geordie becomes one of the tallest and strongest men in Scotland and an expert at throwing the hammer. His success story leads him to represent Britain in the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne Australia. But will the new man that he is be able to charm Jean his life-long sweetheart? Geordie is an adaptation of the enchanting novel by David Walker.

• Forbidden Planet | Blu Ray | (07/12/2020) from £14.65   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Forbidden Planet is the granddaddy of tomorrow, a pioneering work whose ideas and style would be reverse-engineered into many cinematic space voyages to come. Leslie Nielsen plays the commander who brings his space-cruiser crew to Planet Altair-4, home to Dr Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), his daughter (Anne Francis), a dutiful robot named Robby and a mysterious terror. Featuring sets of extraordinary scale and the first all-electronic musical soundscape in film history, Forbidden Planet is in a movie orbit all its own. Special Features: Deleted Scenes and Lost Footage 2 Follow-Up Vehicles Starring Robby the Robot Feature Film The Invisible Boy The Thin Man TV Series Episode Robot Client TCM Original Documentary Watch the Skies!: Science Fiction, the 1950s and Us 2 Featurettes: Amazing! Exploring the Far Reaches of Forbidden Planet, Robby the Robot: Engineering a Sci-Fi Icon Excerpts from The MGM Parade TV Series Theatrical Trailers of Forbidden Planet and The Invisible Boy

• For Those In Peril | DVD | (27/04/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Flt.Lt Murray (David Farrar) is a pilot who fails to join the RAF during WWII and decides to join the Air - Sea Rescue instead. His boat is out in all conditions picking up drowned pilots and taking them to safety. P/O Rawlings (Ralph Michael) is a new recruit who resents joining Farrar's boat and would rather be where the action is - in the air. During a mission they run into an enemy minefield and an armed trawler... For Those In Peril presents the work of the Air-Sea Rescue in documentary terms providing the public with a glimpse of an aspect of war that tends to be overlooked. It was also the closest Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob Dead of Night The Titfield Thunderbolt) got to documentary realism during his long Ealing career. The story was written by Richard Hillary a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain whose experiences inspired his book The Last Enemy.

• Witchfinder General | Blu Ray | (13/06/2011) from £16.85   |  Saving you £6.40 (41.05%)   |  RRP £21.99

  Witchfinder General is one of those cult British films that, like The Wicker Man, seemed to herald a renaissance in the fortunes of the British film industry in the late 1960s and early 70s. With only his third film, director Michael Reeves displayed an assured grasp of technique and a confident ability to mix and match genres that marked him out as a homegrown wunderkind to rival the Spielbergs and Coppolas who were just graduating from film school across the Atlantic. Sadly, this promise remained unfulfilled as Reeves died suddenly, soon after completing the film, from a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs; Witchfinder General remains his only significant work Veteran Vincent Price is wonderfully cast as the titular witchfinder, Matthew Hopkins, whose bloody and usually sexually motivated persecutions across civil war-torn East Anglia are carried out with much relish, graphic fake blood and lots of screaming. Ian Ogilvy, an old school pal of the director's, is the upright new model soldier who swears vengeance against Hopkins for the rape of his betrothed (Hilary Dwyer, who in true Hammer Horror fashion gets to take her top off and scream a lot). Lascivious depictions of burning witches and gratuitous sex aside, what draws the viewer into the film is the setting as Reeves' camera roams lovingly across the East Anglian countryside. The opening-hanging scene, for example, depends strongly on location for its effect, and Ogilvy's quest for revenge takes on a John Ford-style Western aura in the director's hands. Perhaps not quite the masterpiece some seem to think it is, Witchfinder General remains a sturdy piece of distinctively British filmmaking. On the DVD: This disc allows the viewer to select the slightly extended "Export cut" of the movie, which has a little more graphic blood than the censored UK release, although the restored sequences are of markedly inferior quality. The anamorphic picture and mono sound are decent, even if too many murky nighttime scenes and badly dubbed actors' voices betray the film's restrictively low budget. The major extra is a documentary about the life and short career of Michael Reeves, while other fill-ups include text notes from critic Kim Newman, a music video, trailer, filmographies and stills. All in all, it's a welcome restoration of a genre classic. --Mark Walker

• Carrie (UK import) | DVD | (01/01/2023) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Viridiana | DVD | (28/08/2006) from £18.59   |  Saving you £-2.60 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Banned in Spain and denounced by the Vatican Luis Bunuel's hilarious vision of life as a beggar's banquet is regarded by many as his masterpiece. In it the young novice Viridiana does her utmost to maintain her Catholic principles but her lecherous uncle and a motley assemblage of paupers force her to confront the limits of her idealism. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival this anti-clerical free-for-all is as shocking today as ever.

• Unconquered - Digitally Remastered | DVD | (18/04/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An epic tale of three sisters their loves and their lives played out by an all-star British cast They Were Sisters was voted fourth in the National Film Awards of 1946 behind The Way to the Stars. Lucy (Phyllis Calvert) Charlotte (Dulcie Gray) and Vera (Anne rawford) are three sisters who are pursued by three very different kinds of men asking for their hand in marriage. Geoffrey (James Mason) is an ambitious carousing businessman who pursues Charlotte because he believes a demure stay-at-home wife will make his career progress more rapidly and his extra-marital social activities more pleasant. William (Peter Murray-Hill) is a dependable kindly man who recognises in Lucy a kindred spirit. Vera is a social butterfly with no interest in anyone but herself so when Brian (Barry Livesey) offers to marry her she accepts as a marriage of convenience and takes lovers when she desires. As time passes the three sisters suffer joy and heartache but as the cruel sadistic behaviour of Geoffrey threatens to send Charlotte insane the sisters decide to unite together with momentous consequences...

• School for Randle | DVD | (21/07/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  School caretaker `Flatfoot Mason (Frank Randle) a former Music-Hall artiste harbours a secret. He has a daughter Betty (Terry Randall) who unbeknownst to her was adopted when his wife died. Now a teenager shes a pupil at the school and this causes complications when the staff feel that Randle is being `over attentive to Betty. Told to steer clear of her Randle reluctantly agrees but Betty thinks hes rejecting her and decides to run away to make her name in showbusiness. Randle assisted by his fellow caretakers (Mancunian Studio regulars Dan Young and Alec Pleon) trace her to a seedy carbaret club. Disguising themselves as The Three Who Flungs Chinese acrobat troupe the Mancunian trio try to persuade Betty to come home

• On The Buses - Series 1 - Episodes 4 To 7 | DVD | (15/07/2002) from £9.97   |  Saving you £3.01 (43.12%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Set around a London bus depot, On the Buses starred Reg Varney as Stan, an ageing bachelor and driver of the No.11 bus who still lives with his Mum (Cicely Courtneidge), his plain sister Olive (Anna Karen) and disgruntled brother-in-law Arthur (Michael Robbins). At work, he fraternises with the laddish and lecherous Jack (Bob Grant), with whom he pursues innumerable (and improbable) giggly, mini-skirted "clippies" (conductors) and cheeks the beady-eyed and punctilious bus inspector, Blakey (Steven Lewis) This first series was broadcast in black and white in 1969. Much of the comedy derives from gender role reversal--Stan and Arthur forced to do the household chores when Olive and Mum fall ill ("Family Flu"); "The Canteen", in which the busmen decide to run the canteen themselves; or "The Darts Match", in which Stan and Jack are bested at darts by--imagine--a pair of dollybird clippies. Despite its immense popularity, On the Buses hasn't dated well. Like the buses themselves, the jokes don't arrive very often and when they do, they're visible a long way off. The studio audience whoops cathartically at anything remotely alluding to sex, making you wonder at the repressed nature of British society in 1969. In later decades it would come to be treasured as somewhat creaky kitsch by audiences nostalgic for an age of politically incorrect innocence. On the DVD: On the Buses has no extra features here. The original black and white versions have scrubbed up reasonably well, although defects such as fading sound and poor dubbing have proven beyond amendment.--David Stubbs

• On The Buses - Series 2 - Episodes 1 To 3 | DVD | (15/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Set around a London bus depot, On the Buses starred Reg Varney as Stan, an ageing bachelor and driver of the No.11 bus who still lives with his Mum (Doris Hare), his plain sister Olive (Anna Karen) and disgruntled brother-in-law Arthur (Michael Robbins). At work, he fraternises with the laddish and lecherous Jack (Bob Grant), with whom he pursues innumerable (and improbable) giggly, mini-skirted "clippies" (conductors) and cheeks the beady-eyed and punctilious bus inspector, Blakey (Steven Lewis) Despite its immense popularity, On the Buses hasn't dated well. Like the buses themselves, the jokes don't arrive very often and when they do, they're visible a long way off. The studio audience whoops cathartically at anything remotely alluding to sex--even a bared male nipple--making you wonder at the repressed nature of British society in 1969. In later decades it would come to be treasured as somewhat creaky kitsch by audiences nostalgic for an age of politically incorrect innocence. On the DVD: On the Buses has no extra features here. The original black and white versions have scrubbed up reasonably well, although defects such as fading sound and poor dubbing have proven beyond amendment. --David Stubbs

• Goose Steps Out | DVD | (02/02/2009) from £10.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (45.50%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Goose Steps Out

• Waterloo | Blu Ray | (05/09/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A