"Actor: Alice Arno"

• Pandora's Box | DVD | (24/06/2002) from £17.68   |  Saving you £2.31 (13.07%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made at the very end of the silent era, Pandora's Box is one of the last flowerings of German cinema's greatest decade. It also marked the highpoint of two careers: Austrian director GW Pabst and American actress Louise Brooks. A merge of two linked plays by the decadent German playwright Frank Wedekind, it's the story of Lulu, the archetypal femme fatale (the same plays served as source for Alban Berg's masterly 1935 opera). At once sensual and innocent, a force of uninhibited sexuality, Lulu brings ruin on all her lovers both male and female, and ultimately upon herself. Hollywood never knew what to do with Brooks who, with her fierce intelligence and her open delight in sex, refused to play the coy flappers then in fashion. In Pabst, whose genius, she wrote, "lay in getting to the heart of a person", she found the director she needed, and he brought out her a screen persona with a depth of eroticism that's still breathtaking to see. The film features some of the finest German acting talent of the period--Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer--but it's Brooks' luminous performance that rivets the eye and makes her a great screen icon. Though the action is nominally set in the late-19th century--Lulu ends up in a shadowy London where she encounters Jack the Ripper--Pandora's Box breathes the gamey air of the Weimar Republic, vividly captured by Günther Krampf's pungent photography. This release runs well over two hours and includes, for the first time in decades, over 30 minutes of cut footage, restoring the film to something very close to Pabst's original masterpiece. On the DVD: Pandora's Box on DVD is a clean, crisp transfer in the classic 4:3 ratio, and the mono soundtrack brings out all the detail of Peer Rubens' Kurt Weill-inflected score, stylishly performed by the Kontraste Ensemble. Dialogue intertitles can be read in either English or German. We also get an outstanding 60-minute documentary, Looking for Lulu, about Brooks' life and career: warmly narrated by Shirley MacLaine, it features excerpts from an interview with Brooks from 1976. --Philip Kemp

• Female Vampire | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Eurotrash sex/horror auteur Jesus Franco's Female Vampire delivers nudity, drinking of human body fluids, plentiful zoom shots, languorous music, a vestigial storyline and the odd moment of surrealism (a flapping bat car ornament). It opens with a soulful-eyed brunette (Lina Romay) striding through misty woods wearing only thigh-boots, a leather belt and a black cloak, then chancing across a breeder of tropical birds upon whom she performs an act of oral sex that winds up painfully and fatally for the poor chump. One of Franco's better films, this still has an extremely leisurely pace which means that the story drifts dreamlike (or tediously, depending on your point of view) between protracted but unappealing sexual encounters as a smitten fellow with the requisite 70s porno moustache (Jack Taylor), a vampire-hating doctor (director Franco) and a blind coroner pursue the gloomy Countess for their own reasons. The vampire is mute but has an Anne Rice-style whining voice-over, and the dubbing means that everyone else seems equally dissociated from the words that fail to approximate their lip movements. Fans of Lina's frustrated naked writhings get to see her do the thing on top of several men and women, a bed, a tree and in a bath of blood. To Franco-philes, it's a masterpiece; to everyone else, wearisome tat. On the DVD: Female Vampire on disc comes with a nice widescreen transfer of a print that goes on longer than any previous UK release (though it runs 94 mins, not the 101 listed on the cover); an alternate opening sequence (with the title The Bare Breasted Countess); a fairly complete list of Franco credits; a French trailer (for La Comtesse aux Seins Nus); and four brief alternate scenes from a version of the film with less explicit sex but more blood (i.e., necks are bitten but not private parts). --Kim Newman

• Bare Breasted Countess | DVD | (06/03/2017) from £8.75   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A family of vampires from distant Bohemia quenches thirst for the living forces given forth by human bodies during the act of love. Irina, the beautiful last descendant, meets an Austrian writer, Rathony. And Irina's gluttonous lips devour the living forces of her lover who surrenders to her his body and soul!

• Virgin Among The Living Dead | DVD | (23/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  London dweller Christina is called to a castle in a small village for the reading of her father's will. Soon after meeting her peculiar family her nights are filled with strange apparitions and supernatural happenings.

• Eugenie De Sade | DVD | (06/10/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Based on another of the notorious novels by the Marquis De Sade, the story is of Eugenie Radeck, who lives with her widowed stepfather, a renowned writer in Berlin. One day she accidentally discovers her fathers true sadistic, perverse character. Instead of being shocked, she becomes his accomplice and they plan to commit the perfect crime together. They decide to kill an unknown photo model just for the thrill of it. Their perverse, deadly relationship thrives until Eugenie meets a young mus...

• Justine De Sade | DVD | (06/10/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Adapted from the notorious novel by the Marquis De Sade, the story is that of a poor 18th century orphan girl who is 'familiar with every nuance of misfortune'. Rescued from certain death at the executioner's hand by a wealthy couple, Therese (Alice Arno) is persuaded to tell them her story of depravity as she struggles to maintain her virtue in a world of sin. Her kindly trusting nature continually gets her into trouble as her experiences range from being abused by her boss while working as ...