"Director: Burt Lancaster"

• The Kentuckian | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Burt Lancaster's one and only feature as star and director, The Kentuckian, has a bedrock American folk tale at its core, but scarcely a clue how to tell it. For all his balletic control as an actor-athlete, Lancaster shows no sense of how a film should move and breathe over an hour and a half, or how to make the characters' growth or changes of mind credible. It's the early 18th century--Monroe is president--and buckskin-clad Lancaster and his son (Donald MacDonald) are lighting out for Texas. "It ain't we don't like people--we like room more." They plan briefly to visit Lancaster's tobacco-dealer brother (John McIntire) in the river town of Humility, and then move on. But there are complications from a long-running feud, and some nasty baiting from a whip-cracking storekeeper (Walter Matthau in his film debut); the need to replace their "Texas money" after buying freedom for a bondservant (Dianne Foster); also the matter of deciding who's prettier, her or the local schoolmarm (Diana Lynn). Lancaster aims for some quaint Americana--a sing-along to the tinkling of a pianoforte, a jaw-dropping riverside production number--and there's one nifty bit of action based on how long it took to reload a flintlock rifle. But mostly this film just lies there in overlit CinemaScope. --Richard T Jameson

• MGM Western Greats - Part 1 | DVD | (06/06/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Includes the following classic 10 Westerns! 1. The Alamo (dir. John Wayne, 1960) 2. Apache (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1954) 3. The Big Country (dir. William Wyler, 1958) 4. A Fistful Of Dynamite (dir. Sergio Leone, 1971) 5. The Kentuckian (dir. Burt Lancaster, 1955) 6. Posse (dir. Mario Van Peebles, 1993) 7. Red River (dir. Howard Hawks, 1948) 8. The Scalphunters (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1968) 9. Vera Cruz (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1954) 10. Wild Bill (dir. Walter Hill, 1995)