Classic Films

• Massenet - Thais (Votti, Fenice Venice Orchestra, Mei) | DVD | (31/05/2004) from £14.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (33.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  ACT 11. Voici le pain2. Helas! enfant encore3. Vision4. Toi qui mis la pitie dans nos ames5. Esprit de lumiere et de grace6. Va mendiant chercher ailleurs ta vie!7. Viola donc la terrible cite!8. Athanael! C'est toi!9. Il est jeune!10. Garde-toi bien!11. C'est Thais. I'idole fragile12. Qui te fait si severeACT 213. Ah! je suis fatiguee a mourir!14. Etranger te voila comme tu l'avais dit!15. Je suis Athanael Moine

• Quadrophenia - Screen Outlaws Edition | Blu Ray | (08/04/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Jimmy is a teenager growing up in the first half of the 1960's; he rides through London on his scooter, pops pills, is mad about rock and roll and wears a Parka and Levis, nothing to extraordinary about that. But Jimmy's life comes to an aggressive climax during a violent Holiday weekend controntation between Mods and Rockers on Brighton beach. Special Features: Exclusive Artwork and Artcards

• Carry On Doctor | DVD | (04/05/2001) from £6.22   |  Saving you £3.77 (60.61%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Bedpan humour rules in Carry On Doctor, the vintage 1968 offering from the familiar gang, assisted by guest star Frankie Howerd as bogus faith healer Francis Bigger. Hospitals, of course, always provided the Carry On producers with plenty of material. Today, these comedies induce a twinge of serious nostalgia for the great days of the National Health Service when Matron (Hattie Jacques, naturally) ran the hospital as if it was a house of correction, medical professionals were idolised as if they were all Doctor Kildare and Accident and Emergency Departments were deserted oases of calm. But even if you aren't interested in a history lesson, Talbot Rothwell's script contains some immortal dialogue, particularly when Matron loosens her stays. "You may not realise it but I was once a weak man", says Kenneth Williams' terrified Doctor Tinkle to Hattie Jacques. "Once a week's enough for any man", she purrs back, undaunted. Other highlights include Joan Sims, excellent as Frankie Howerd's deaf, bespectacled sidekick, Charles Hawtrey suffering from a phantom pregnancy, 1960s singer Anita Harris in a rare film role, and Barbara Windsor at her most irrepressible as nurse Sandra May. This is one of the best. On the DVD: Presented in 1.77:1 format for a pseudo-widescreen effect, the picture quality is good and sharp, accompanied by a standard mono soundtrack. The same no-frills approach is taken with the packaging; a functional scene index and no extras. Yet again, a missed opportunity to use the DVD release to provide some context. At their best, the Carry On films are rightly seen as classic comedies of their type. They really deserve to be better celebrated. --Piers Ford

• The Plane Makers - Volume 2 | DVD | (01/07/2013) from £35.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The prequel to ATV's famous boardroom drama The Power Game, The Plane Makers follows the fortunes of the Scott Furlong airplane development company and its managing director, the ruthless John Wilder (Patrick Wymark). This release contains fifteen classic episodes, originally shown as part of series two. Having suffered a setback to his ambitions in failing to become Chairman, Wilder takes a wild gamble on the future of Scott Furlong, pushing through a plan to build twelve more Sovereign aircraft before the money has been recovered on the initial order. The scheme is vehemently opposed by new Chairman Sir Gordon Revidge - and it is Revidge's merchant bank that will have to finance the project. As uncertainty and unrest sweep through the factory, a game of bluff and counter-bluff takes place in the boardroom...

• 36 Hours | DVD | (11/04/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Not Wanted on Voyage | DVD | (28/01/2008) from £17.53   |  Saving you £-4.54 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A rollicking comedy adventure with Brian Rix and Ronald Shiner playing two cabin stewards bound for Tangiers aboard a cruise ship. As comedy enthusiasts would expect Rix loses his trousers as the two bumbling stewards attempt to uncover the identity of a jewel thief and recover the priceless diamonds of a wealthy passenger.

• Indiscreet | DVD | (04/04/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Anna Kalman (Ingrid Bergman) is a wealthy actress whose love affairs never last for long. When she meets businessman Philip Adams (Cary Grant) at a NATO dinner she is attracted to him. He reveals that he is married but this does not prevent them embarking on a love affair. However just as Philip prepares to depart for a job in New York Anna discovers that he has been less than honest with her...

• Laurel And Hardy - Be Big / Laughing Gravy | DVD | (24/01/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

• Family Plot | Blu Ray | (13/05/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Alfred Hitchcock's final film Family Plot is understated comic fun that mixes suspense with deft humour, thanks to a solid cast. The plot centres on the kidnapping of an heir and a diamond theft by a pair of bad guys led by Karen Black and William Devane. The cops seem befuddled, but that doesn't stop a questionable psychic (Barbara Harris) and her not overly bright boyfriend (Bruce Dern, in a rare good-guy role) from picking up the trail and actually solving the crime. Did she do it with actual psychic powers? That's part of the fun of Harris's enjoyably ditsy performance. --Marshall Fine

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

  The title of Carry On Again Doctor (1969) says it all; almost the same cast playing similar characters to their previous year's outing in Carry On Doctor. This one rejoices in the alternative title "Bowels are Ringing". But the enduring popularity of these films owes almost everything to their basic formula and if this one occasionally seems a bit cobbled together, all the old favourites are still there, working away. This time, the setting moves from the National Health Service to the private sector and even stretches as far as the "Beatific Islands" when Jim Dale is exiled to a missionary clinic for his overzealous attention to the female patients, who include Barbara Windsor of course. There, orderly Sid James rules the roost of the clinic with his harem of local women. Trivia addicts can spot Mrs Michael Caine in a brief role as a token dusky maiden. The second half of the Talbot Rothwell script picks up nicely as the characters converge on the private hospital back in England where Dale rakes in the money with a bogus weight loss treatment. Hattie Jacques is in fine form as Matron, Kenneth Williams fascinates with his usual mass of mannerisms and Joan Sims is stately as the Lady Bountiful figure financing most of the shenanigans. It's a tribute to their professionalism that we can still lose ourselves in some of the creakiest old jokes around. On the DVD: Bog standard 4:3 picture format and mono soundtrack provide an adequate viewing experience, especially as today most people will be more familiar with these films from television transmissions than from their cinema release. However, the lack of extras is a shame. Apart from the scene index, there is nothing to distinguish the DVD from its video equivalent. At the very least, a cast list or star biographies would add a little value. --Piers Ford

• The Bigamist | DVD | (22/10/2007) from £13.48   |  Saving you £-0.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Bigamist goes where no movie has gone before; it gives us a bigamist as the central character and manages to make us sympathise with his plight. Harry Graham is a salesman who longs to spend time with his wife played by Joan Fontaine but she's a workaholic businesswoman who rarely finds time in her schedule for her husband. While on a sales trip Graham befriends a waitress played by Ida Lupino and as friendship turns to love Graham calls and teases wife about meeting another woman; we see a quick flash of fear in her eyes but then she immediately changes the conversation in a fake chirpy tone and pretends nothing bothers her. The well-detailed characters bring the drama of The Bigamist to life. The waitress is a tough but compassionate character much more full of life than Fontaine's Eisenhower era wife. Significantly we also discover that the waitress is much more fertile than Fontaine - who cannot bear children. This subtle critique of '50s families and the sterility of home life when business becomes more important than family communication makes The Bigamist just as relevant today as when it was made in 1953.

• Lon Chaney: The Warner Archive Classics Collection | DVD | (23/06/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (Masters of Cinema) Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) | Blu Ray | (14/11/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Of Make Way for Tomorrow, Orson Welles told Peter Bogdanovich: “Oh my God that’s the saddest movie ever made.” Leo McCarey’s personal favourite among all his films (which included The Awful Truth and An Affair to Remember) is sad, yes, but it also stands as cathartic affirmation of the dignity of human feeling, and in the testament of such achieves a subtle complexity of characterisation on par with Renoir, Ford, and Hawks. Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi, two of the great Hollywood character actors, portray the couple whose house the bank has foreclosed upon, and who are forced subsequently to move into their children’s homes in the city. A near-musical restructuring of gratitude and debt ensues once the offspring deem the couple’s lodging an imposition: the two are separated, then reunited weeks later... as they glide inexorably into an uncertain future. Unrelentingly unsentimental, Make Way for Tomorrow exerted a powerful influence on Ozu’s Tokyo Story and several other key entries in the Japanese master’s body of work. It is a film that, to give Welles the last word, “could make a stone cry.” The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Leo McCarey’s truly great Make Way for Tomorrow for the first time on Blu-ray anywhere in the world, as part of this Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition. Dual Format Edition Including: Newly restored 1080p HD encode in the film’s original aspect ratio Peter Bogdanovich discussing McCarey and the film [20:00] Gary Giddins discussing the film’s social and political contexts [21:00] Optional English subtitles (SDH) for the deaf and hearing-impaired 36-PAGE BOOKLET featuring a new essay by writer Geoffrey O’Brien and an excerpt from Josephine Lawrence’s source novel Years Are So Long

• Angel Face | DVD | (26/05/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons team in this outstanding example of classic Noir. Directed by Otto Preminger (Laura The Man with The Golden Arm). Mitchum is at his best as Frank Jessup an ambulance driver driven and ensnared by Simmons who demonstrates her own brilliant talents in this compelling plot that leads to a taut and suspenseful climax.

• Midnight Cowboy | DVD | (18/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  This multi-Academy Award winning film masterpiece stars Jon Voight as Joe Buck a charming but hopelessly naive Texas ""cowboy "" who dreams of making his fortune servicing wealthy women in the Big Apple. Instead he's conned into partnering up with small-time hustler Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman). Living together on the tattered edges of society these two outcasts develop an unlikely bond that helps them transcend their cruel existence in this timeless cinema classic directed by the legendary John Schlesinger.

• Plan 9 From Outer Space | DVD | (07/09/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  Plan 9 From Outer Space

• 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

• The Phantom of the Opera | Blu Ray | (01/10/2012) from £13.48   |  Saving you £1.51 (11.20%)   |  RRP £14.99

  This lavish retelling of Gaston Leroux's immortal horror tale stars Claude Rains as the masked phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House. A crazed composer who schemes to make beautiful young soprano Christine DuBois (Susanna Foster) the star of the opera company, the Phantom also wreaks revenge on those he believes stole his music. Nelson Eddy, as the heroic baritone, tries to win the affections of Christine as he tracks down the murderous, horribly disfigured Phantom. Special Features: The Opera Ghost: A Phantom Unmasked Production Photographs Feature Commentary with Film Historian Scott MacQueen 100 Years of Universal: The Lot Theatrical Trailer

• Nosferatu | DVD | (16/11/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Nosferatu ... the name alone can chill the blood!". F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, released in 1922, was the first (albeit unofficial) screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Nearly 80 years on, it remains among the most potent and disturbing horror films ever made. The sight of Max Schreck's hollow-eyed, cadaverous vampire rising creakily from his coffin still has the ability to chill the blood. Nor has the film dated. Murnau's elision of sex and disease lends it a surprisingly contemporary resonance. The director and his screenwriter Henrik Gaalen are true to the source material, but where most subsequent screen Draculas (whether Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella or Gary Oldman) were portrayed as cultured and aristocratic, Nosferatu is verminous and evil. (Whenever he appears, rats follow in his wake.)The film's full title--Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror)--reveals something of Murnau's intentions. Supremely stylised, it differs from Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) or Ernst Lubitsch's films of the period in that it was not shot entirely in the studio. Murnau went out on location in his native Westphalia. As a counterpoint to the nightmarish world inhabited by Nosferatu, he used imagery of hills, clouds, trees and mountains (it is, after all, sunlight that destroys the vampire). It's not hard to spot the similarity between the gangsters in film noir hugging doorways or creeping up staircases with the image of Schreck's diabolic Nosferatu, bathed in shadow, sidling his way toward a new victim. Heavy chiaroscuro, oblique camera angles and jarring close-ups--the devices that crank up the tension in Val Lewton horror movies and edgy, urban thrillers such as Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice--were all to be found first in Murnau's chilling masterpiece. --Geoffrey Macnab

• The Boston Strangler | DVD | (18/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The unexpected casting of Tony Curtis as the presumed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, is only the first of the attractions of this hard-nosed suspense picture. Although the style of The Boston Strangler looks dated today, with its split-screen experiments and post-Bonnie and Clyde permissiveness, the film still has the clean, strong lines of a methodical policier. For the first hour, we don't focus on the Strangler, instead following the Beantown cops (led by Henry Fonda) as they track down leads; the best sequence is the near-accidental connection made between burglary suspect DeSalvo and the killings. Director Richard Fleischer had a forceful hand with true-crime material (Compulsion, 10 Rillington Place) and he takes an unblinking look into the then-taboo subject of sexual pathology. Curtis's physical transformation into a dumpy, dull-eyed brute is the best aspect of his performance; it's a role he lobbied hard for, but it did not lead to more challenging work. --Robert Horton