Horror and Suspense

• Versus | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £4.89   |  Saving you £10.10 (206.54%)   |  RRP £14.99

  There are 666 portals to the other side and somewhere in Japan lies the home of the 444th. It is here that Prisoner KSC2-303 escapes from his fellow inmates to rendezvous with a group of men who will lead him to safety. After he realises that the price of his freedom is the death of a female hostage he refuses to comply with his rescuers' plans and blood is spilled. But when in the aptly named Forest of Resurrection long dead Yakuza fighters come back to life to avenge their ow

• The 39 Steps | DVD | (27/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Alfred Hitchcock considered The 39 Steps to be one of his favourite films partly because it launched his classic theme of the innocent man on the run from villains and lawmen. Robert Donat stars as Richard Hannay in this freely adapted version of John Buchan's story. Despite repeated remakes Hitchcock's riveting original remains unequalled.

• Lord Of Illusions | DVD | (19/06/2000) from £6.09   |  Saving you £9.90 (162.56%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Scott Bakula stars as detective Harry D'Amour who stumbles upon a mystery involving the world-famous magician Philip Swann and his beautiful wife Dorothea. Harry is drawn into a world full of secrets deceit and unimaginable terrors. Harry eventually comes face to face with Nix the diabolical power who gave Swann his dark magic. In the climactic final battle Harry confronts Nix and learns that illusion is trickery but magic is real. Written & directed by horror master Clive Bar

• The Howling (1 Disc Edition) | DVD | (24/04/2006) from £10.75   |  Saving you £5.24 (32.80%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Severely shaken after a near-fatal encounter with a serial killer TV newscaster Karen White (Dee Wallace-Stone) takes some much-needed time off. Hoping to conquer her inner demons she heads for the 'Colony' a secluded retreat where her new neighbors are just a tad too eager to make her feel at home. Also there seems to be a bizarre link between her would-be attacker and this supposedly safe haven. And when after nights of being tormented by savage shrieks and unearthly cries Karen ventures into the forest to find answers she makes a terrifying discovery. Now she must fight not only for her life but for her very soul!

• Re-Animator | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Re-Animator was undoubtedly one of the most notorious horror films of the 1980's. Based on a classic 'Mad Professor' tale this relentless splatterfest takes obsession suspense and terror to the very limits of your imagination. Prepare to meet Dr. Herbert West the sickest man in science... The night that medical student Dan Cain discovered his pet cat Rufus dead in his roommates fridge was just the beginning. Before long Dan and his beloved girlfriend Megan become involved in the macabre experiments of his roommate the sinister Dr. Herbert West who has created a serum that can bring both brain and body back from the dead. The immoral scientific methods of Dr. West provide the Dean of the medical school with reason to expel West and force Cain out of the hospital. Undeterred West and Cain continue with their experiments in the hospital's morgue - restoring life to an unlimited supply of fresh corpses. However a chilling side effect to West's discovery leads to a seemingly endless night of mind-bending terror and unthinkable madness.

• Wes Craven's Don't Look Down | DVD | (14/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A woman tries to get over the death of her sister by taking an Acrophobiac group but soon finds its members are being killed one by one...

• The Blu-ray Horror Collection (5 titles - Hostel/Hostel 2/Vacancy/Dracula/The Covenant) | Blu Ray | (10/12/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £99.99

  Hostel The hallowed tradition of the post-college European backpacking trip turns into an unimaginable nightmare for two unsuspecting American 20-somethings in Eli Roth's (Cabin Fever) sensational second outing. Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) have embarked upon a hedonistic tour of the continent, and somewhere along the way pick up travelling companion Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson). In Amsterdam the trio partakes of the pastimes most dear to frat boys everywhere: weed, prostitutes, and nightclubs. But when a fellow traveller tells these thrill-seekers about the decadent scene that awaits them in Bratislava, they find themselves unable to resist its lures. Enticed by the promise of a hostel full of beautiful girls who love Americans, they set out for the remote areas of Eastern Europe. There, the sex farce to which the film's first half is devoted slowly turns ominous, as the boys hook up immediately with the gorgeous Natalya (Barbara Nedeljakova) and Svetlana (Jana Kaderabkova), whose eagerness masks more sinister intentions. Soon, the disagreeable backpackers find themselves on the other side of the flesh trade, sold by the girls into an exclusive human trafficking operation that gives its customers the opportunity to torture and kill a helpless victim. Much of what follows consists of the squirm-inducing surgical horrors that characterise precursors such as Saw, with the implications regarding the capitalist system and the human soul becoming ever darker. Produced by Quentin Tarantino, the film amps up the gore factor as much as it can get away with, and, in the tradition of the best horror films, offers a satirical socially conscious commentary. Hostel Part II The inevitable sequel to one of the decade's most intriguing and well-made horror films, Hostel Part II, as the title implies, picks up pretty much where the last film left off. And it doesn't take too long for the sequel to find the same groove that earned its predecessor so much attention. The setting is once again an underground club, where people bid for the right to torture residents at the hostel of the title. Hostel Part II, however, lets us see events from the other perspective too, as we meet the wealthy businessmen who are availing themselves of the club's services. It's a logical dynamic for the movie, and it does bring a fresh perspective to a film that does eventually settle down to a cavalcade of gore and shock. As a director, Eli Roth has clearly improved since last time around, even if this time he too often succumbs to the temptation to show rather than imply, and Hostel Part II as a result feels a little less fresh and more uncomfortable than its predecessor. Yet it's most certainly an unsettling piece of cinema, and one likely to find favour with Roth's increasing fanbase. A word of warning, though: Hostel Part II isn't shy about pulling its punches, and it very much justifies its 18 certificate. It's also a cut above many of its modern day contemporaries in the genre, even though it fails to measure up to part one. --Jon Foster Vacancy A confined setting is a useful tool for thriller-makers, and Vacancy is definitely boxed in: a run-down motel way, way off the Interstate, the kind of place where unsuspecting movie characters go to get stabbed to death in the shower. If Vacancy doesn't quite live up to its Hitchcockian forebears, at least it provides 80 minutes of well-designed mayhem. You know somebody's paying attention just from the opening credits, a clever vortex with pounding music by Paul Haslinger. Then we meet unhappy couple Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale, driving along in the dark and forced to stay at the Pinewood Motel after a car breakdown. There's a night man (Frank Whaley, World Trade Center) in the tradition of Dennis Weaver's Touch of Evil gargoyle, but the real mess of trouble is waiting in room number four. Director Nimrod Antal, who scored a stylish international hit with the Hungarian thriller Kontroll, squeezes maximum juice out of the Route 66 atmosphere of the motel, although the movie doesn't get under your skin the way Kontroll did. Wilson and Beckinsale are a little too marquee-namish for this kind of heavy-breathing work, and the script doesn't give them much to play with. But hey, it's not that kind of movie. Where it really belongs is on the top half of a drive-in double bill, or maybe as a nightmare-scenario TV movie from the Seventies. Either way, it works. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com Bram Stoker's Dracula Francis Ford Coppola's take on the Dracula myth is visually stunning and overflows with passionate seduction and Gothic romance. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Coppola draws from the original source of the Dracula story to create a modern masterpiece. Gary Oldman's metamorphosis as Dracula, who grows from old to young, from man to beast, is breathtaking. Winona Ryder brings as much intensity to the character of the beautiful young woman who becomes the object of Dracula's devastating desire. Anthony Hopkins co-stars as the famed doctor who dares to believe in Dracula and then dares to confront him. Opulent and irresistible, Bram Stoker's Dracula is an unforgettable film. The Covenant Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Deep Blue Sea) directs this supernatural thriller about descendants of powerful New England families. The sons of Ipswich are legendary at Spenser Academy, the local boarding school. Handsome and popular, these four teenage friends can trace their roots to the founding families of the Ipswich Colony, settled in the late 1600s. For years these Massachusetts families have harboured the secret that they possess supernatural powers. Their descendants--Caleb (Steven Strait), Reid (Toby Hemingway), Tyler (Chace Crawford), and Pogue (Taylor Kitsch)--have inherited magical powers that first manifested themselves when the boys turned 13 years old. In a nutshell, they can do anything. As they approach their 18th birthdays, they are preparing to 'ascend', which means their powers will grow stronger. The downside? The magic is seductive and addictive, and causes premature aging with each use. Ringleader Caleb tries to keep his friends from using magic recklessly, but as the school year begins, strange events and a strong gut instinct convince Caleb that someone is using very powerful magic. Meanwhile, Caleb is exploring his newfound affection for transfer student Sarah (Laura Ramsey). To Caleb''s dismay, Sarah becomes a pawn in a power struggle with a descendant of the fifth founding family of Ipswich, a line thought to be lost during Salem''s witch trials. Is Caleb strong enough to maintain his power and keep his family and friends safe, or will he yield to this new threat and sacrifice himself? The film draws interesting parallels between the luring, addictive power of magic and the addictions real teenagers face. The sufficiently creepy setting echoes New England and sets the stage for supernatural phenomena. The Covenant also stars Sebastian Stan as Chase Collins, a wealthy newcomer to Spenser, and Jessica Lucas as Kate, Sarah's roommate and Pogue's girlfriend.

• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari | DVD | (02/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Thrills The Chills Of Witchcraft Today College student Nan Barlow is researching the history of witchcraft. Taunted by her brother and fianc who have voiced their concern over her silly notions Nan arms herself with resolve and drives into the small New England village of Whitewood. She is glad that at least she was able to count on the support of her professor. A bit anxious but consumed with curiosity she will soon embark herself on the journey of her life!

• The Haunting Of Marsten Manor | DVD | (02/08/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Haunting Of Marsten Manor

• Chemical Wedding | DVD | (08/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A supernatural, occult thriller from Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson and Monty Python director and editor, Julian Doyle, about a shy lecturer who becomes possessed by the late black magician, Aleister Crowley when an experiment goes awry.

• Collateral | Blu Ray | (14/06/2010) from £8.95   |  Saving you £11.04 (123.35%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Tom Cruise uncovers his dark side to play a contract killer who hijacks a taxi - and its driver - to take him from job to job.

• Restitution | DVD | (11/05/2015) from £13.48   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Deep | Blu Ray | (19/10/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This lavish suspense-filled film was made from Peter (Jaws) Benchley's best-selling novel. Gail Berke (Bisset) and David Sanders (Nolte) are on a romantic holiday in Bermuda when they come upon the sunken wreck of a WWII freighter. Near it they find an ampule of morphine one of tens of thousands still aboard the wrecked ship. Their discovery leads them to a Haitian drug dealer Henri Cloche (Gossett Jr.) and an old treasure hunter Romer Treece (Shaw). With Cloche in pursuit Gail David and Treece try to recover the sunken treasure...

• Paranormal Activity: Tokyo Night | DVD | (10/10/2011) from £13.48   |  Saving you £-3.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Officially sanctioned Japanese theatrical sequel to Paranormal Activity made with the involvement of the producers of the original US film.

• Dracula vs. Frankenstein | DVD | (27/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.75

  In the late 1960s and early 70s, a bizarre alliance between the Filippino movie company Hemisphere and the American exploitation outfit Independent International yielded a series of weirdly interconnected horror movies, most of which work the word Blood into the title. The Filippino items are strangely fascinating vampire and mad scientist pictures with oddball colour effects and a mix of naive serial-style thrills and extreme-for-the-era sex and gore; the American efforts, from director Al Adamson, are shoddier, thrown together from offcuts of previous pictures, and are lead-paced but nevertheless curiously appealing. Gaze in awe at mutant killer trees, slobbering hunchbacked servants, faded matinee idols, stripper-turned-actress heroines with concrete blonde hairdos, evil dwarves, John Carradine or Lon Chaney, footage cut in from completely different films, Dracula and Frankenstein meeting hippies and bikers, red filters when the vampires attack, chanting natives! Plus lots of exclamation marks! Plus lurid trailers! "The kings of horror battle to the death" in Dracula vs Frankenstein. The last of the Frankensteins (J Carrol Naish) works in a carnival horror house with his sidekick Groton the Mad Zombie (Lon Chaney Jr). A Frank Zappa-like Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) and a monster with a face like a big mushroom slug it out. The film also features Russ Tamblyn as a beach biker and a Vegas showgirl heroine on LSD. This Region 2 DVD is sadly bereft of the extras found on the US Troma Region 1 disc. --Kim Newman

• Nosferatu The Vampyre | DVD | (23/10/2006) from £11.05   |  Saving you £-5.06 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  It is 1850 in the beautiful perfectly-kept town of Wismar. Jonathan Harker is about to leave on a long journey over the Carpathian Mountains to finalize real estate arrangements with a wealthy nobleman. His Wife Lucy begs him not to go and is troubled by a strong premonition of danger. Despite her warnings Jonathan arrives four weeks later at a large gloomy castle. Out of the mist appears a pale Wraith-like figure with a shaven head and deep-sunken eyes who identifies himself as Count Dracula. The events that transpire slowly convince Harker that he is in the midst of a vampyre. What he doesn't know however is the magnitude of danger he his wife and his town are about to experience as victims of the Nosferatu.

• Dead Of Night | DVD | (16/05/2016) from £21.58   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Blair Witch Project | DVD | (23/10/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £18.99

  Anyone who has even the slightest trouble with insomnia after seeing a horror movie should stay away from The Blair Witch Project--this film will creep under your skin and stay there for days. Credit for the effectiveness of this mock documentary goes to filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who armed three actors (Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Josh Leonard) with video equipment, camping supplies, and rough plot outlines. They then let the trio loose into the Maryland woods to improvise and shoot the entire film themselves as the filmmakers attempted to scare the crap out of them. Gimmicky, yes, but it worked--to the wildly successful tune of $130 million at the US box office upon its initial release (the budget was a mere $40,000). For those of you who were under a rock when it first hit the cinemas, The Blair Witch Project tracks the doomed quest of three film students shooting a documentary on the legend of the Blair Witch from Burkittsville, Maryland. After filming some local yokels (and providing only scant background on the witch herself), the three, led by Heather (something of a witch herself), head into the woods for some on-location shooting. They're never seen again. What we see is a reconstruction of their "found" footage, edited to make a barely coherent narrative. After losing their way in the forest, whining soon gives way to real terror as the three find themselves stalked by unknown forces that leave piles of rocks outside their campsite and stick-figure art projects in the woods. (As Michael succinctly puts it, "No redneck is this clever!") The masterstroke of the film is that you never actually see what's menacing them; everything is implied, and there's no terror worse than that of the unknown. If you can wade through the tedious arguing--and the shaky, motion-sickness-inducing camerawork--you'll be rewarded with an oppressively sinister atmosphere and one of the most frightening denouements in horror-film history. Even after you take away the monstrous hype, The Blair Witch Project remains a genuine, effective original. --Mark Englehart, Amazon.com

• Crying With Laughter | DVD | (24/01/2011) from £5.96   |  Saving you £12.29 (261.49%)   |  RRP £16.99

  After a number of popular DVD titles, BritFilms Distribution Company will be distributing their first theatrical release, the BAFTA Scotland winning Crying with Laughter, a black comedy about a stand-up comedian who's life has just stopped being funny.

• The Nightmare On Elm Street Collection (Five Disc Box Set) | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £53.99

  The flagship horror film series of the second half of the 1980s was the Elm Street cycle, inaugurated in 1984 by Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street. A low-budget, high-imagination effort, the film revived the moribund teenage slasher genre by adding a fantastical premise (just as Craven's Scream would do 10 years later) playing post-modern games. A ghost story about a murdered murderer who can haunt the night terrors of the children of the mob who burned him to death, A Nightmare on Elm Street is the ultimate instance of horror taking its tone from a bad dream. The fact that the monster's powers are irrational is the film's greatest strength rather than a script weakness. Freddy Krueger, who was just plain Fred to start with, is the 80s monster par excellence, a razor-fingered, scarfaced pervert in a hideous jumper and battered hat, lurking in the shadows of the unconscious from which he emerged rather too often in the follow-ups. Craven made him scary, but the directors who followed treated him as the star and he gradually became a ridiculous, comic creation, more tiresome than terrifying. The sequels are what they are: none aspire to the status of the original, though A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is a rip-roaring fantasy adventure that always pleases, and even the weakest entries (2 and 5) have their moments. From 3 onwards, the dreams become showpieces for the effects men, which makes for sequences at once startling and silly, but sadly bereft of the power to chill. As the 80s recede into the stuff of nostalgia television, other aspects of the series seem more prominent: like a parade of the ghastliest haircuts ever worn by human teenagers (Johnny Depp's cockatoo pompadour or the roach-girl's fluffy perm in 4 as the worst offenders) and several soundtrack album's worth of bland MTV tie-in pop music that never manages to be as memorable as the simple, nursery rhyme theme carried over movies.-- Kim Newman DVD extras. The most desirable add-on feature is a lively, informative commentary track on the original film, with contributions from Wes Craven Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon and cinematographer Jacques Haitkin; this was recorded for a US laserdisc release, and it's a shame that we don't get the outtakes and deleted scenes present on that version. Otherwise, it's the usual trailers, animated menus (all very imaginative) and cast and crew bios (with odd omissions - Nick Corri rates a write-up, but not Johnny Depp), and music videos keyed into sequels three to five, with clips from the films inter-cut with lousy rock and/or rap. A nice gimmick on all the discs is a "jump straight to a nightmare" feature, allowing instant access to the gruesome effects set-piece of your choice. All the discs are good-looking widescreen transfers, with rich sound and optional English sub-titles. Among the most notably absent extras, of course, are the sixth and seventh films, Rachel Talalay's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare and, most importantly, Wes Craven's New Nightmare. -- Kim Newman