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• National Lampoon's Animal House (1979) | DVD | (04/02/2002) from £9.93   |  Saving you £6.06 (37.90%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A groundbreaking screwball caper, 1978's National Lampoon's Animal House was in its own way a rite of passage for Hollywood. Set in 1962 at Faber College, it follows the riotous carryings-on of the Delta Fraternity, into which are initiated freshmen Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst. Among the established house members are Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert and the late John Belushi as Bluto, a belching, lecherous, Jack Daniels guzzling maniac. A debauched house of pranksters (culminating in the famous Deathmobile sequence), Delta stands as a fun alternative to the more strait-laced, crew-cut, unpleasantly repressive norm personified by Omega House. As cowriter the late Doug Kenney puts it, "better to be an animal than a vegetable". Animal House is deliberately set in the pre-JFK assassination, pre-Vietnam era, something not made much of here, but which would have been implicitly understood by its American audience. The film was an enormous success, a rude, liberating catharsis for the latter-day frathousers who watched it. However, decades on, a lot of the humour seems broad, predictable, boorish, oafishly sexist and less witty than Airplane!, made two years later in the same anarchic spirit. Indeed, although it launched the Hollywood careers of several of its players and makers, including Kevin Bacon, director John Landis, Harold Ramis and Tom Hulce, who went on to do fine things, it might well have been inadvertently responsible for the infantilisation of much subsequent Hollywood comedy. Still, there's an undeniable energy that gusts throughout the film and Belushi, whether eating garbage or trying to reinvoke the spirit of America "After the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour" is a joy. On the DVD: Animal House comes to disc in a good transfer, presented in 1.85:1. The main extra is a featurette in which director John Landis, writer Chris Miller and some of the actors talk about the making of the movie. Interestingly, 23 years on, most of those interviewed look better than they did back in 1978, especially Stephen "Flounder" Furst. --David Stubbs

• Sleeping Beauty : Deluxe Collector's Edition | DVD | (13/01/2003) from £17.97   |  Saving you £10.01 (66.82%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Disney's 1959 Sleeping Beauty was the studio's most ambitious effort to date, a lavish spectacle boasting a gorgeous waltz-filled score adapted from the music of Tchaikovsky. In the 14th century, the malevolent Maleficent (not dissimilar to the wicked queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) taunts a king that his infant Aurora will fatally prick her finger on a spinning wheel before sundown on her sixteenth birthday. This, of course, would deny her a happily-ever-after with her true love. Fortunately, some bubbly, bumbling fairies named Flora, Fauna and Merryweather are on hand to assist. It's not really all that much about the title character--how interesting can someone in the middle of a long nap be, anyway? Instead, those fairies carry the day, as well as, of course, good Prince Phillip, whose battle with the malevolent Maleficent in the guise of a dragon has been co-opted by any number of animated films since. See it in its original glory here, alongside Malificent's castle, which, filled with warthogs and demonic imps in a macabre dance celebrating their evil ways, manages a certain creepy grandeur. --David Kronke, Amazon.com

• Yes | DVD | (09/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An American woman and a Middle-Eastern man embark on an affair in this quality drama.

• The Cunning Little Vixen - Janacek | DVD | (15/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen is a real charmer of an opera, a tale that shows the natural world the composer had loved from childhood in its true colours: miraculous, beautiful, mysterious but also cruel. The inspiration came from a series of illustrated stories published in a Czech newspaper. The Vixen of the title is captured by a forester and taken home as a plaything for his children. She is soon thrown out of the house and has to make her own way in the world, encountering lust, stupidity, pride, love and ultimately death. This 1995 performance was taken from the Chatelet Theatre in Paris. Visually, Nicholas Hytner's production is a triumph, the animals wonderfully wittily wrought (the mosquito with its syringe for a nose, the mangey old dog, distasteful in baggy Y-fronts, the hideous, goggle-eyed frog). And it's also brilliantly cast: Eva Jenis's Vixen is funny, sexy, endearing and youthful enough in voice and figure to convince. Thomas Allen is a veteran of the role of the Forester, a huge presence and singing in impeccable Czech. In fact, there's not a weak performance here, and that goes for the dancers and instrumentalists as well as the singers. And at the helm, who better than Sir Charles Mackerras, arguably the greatest living interpreter of Janacek's music? This is in essence a grown-up fairy tale, ravishingly done and extremely highly recommended. On the DVD: The Cunning Little Vixen is presented on disc in vividly remastered PCM stereo, with 16:9 picture format that does full justice to the alluringly colourful designs. The disc is encoded for regions 2 and 5, and the menu and subtitle languages are English, German, French and Spanish. The useful booklet gives coherent background information and synopsis as well as full casting details. There's also a substantial (23-minute) trailer of other offerings from Arthaus Musik. --Harriet Smith

• Comic Strip - Complete | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Features the complete thirty-nine episodes from the ground-breaking comedy series.

• The Sunshine Boys | DVD | (04/01/2016) from £5.89   |  Saving you £9.10 (154.50%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Neil Simon's THE SUNSHINE BOYS is recognised as one of the great comedy plays of modern times. Now Simon himself has updated the script with new lines and jokes and has rewritten the characters of Lewis and Clark to suit the superb comic styles of Peter Falk and Woody Allen. Vaudeville comedy duo Lewis and Clark were the comic heroes of the 1950's. Now long forgotten, Warner Brothers attempts to bring them back together for cameos in a movie that's funnier than Home Alone. Offered $75,000 a-piece and a chance to resurrect their careers, it's an offer they can't refuse...If only they could stand the sight of each other.

• Stalking Laura | DVD | (01/04/2002) from £6.22   |  Saving you £-0.23 (-3.80%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Laura has her degree her job in Silicon Valley and it's time to leave home. Everything is fine until she meets Richard Farley who will not leave her alone...

• Trigger Happy TV - Best Of Series 1 | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £5.99   |  Saving you £4.00 (66.78%)   |  RRP £9.99

  First shown by Channel 4 at the beginning of 2000, Trigger Happy TV is one of those hidden-camera shows that plays pranks on the unsuspecting public. The brainchild of writer-performer Dom Jolly and his co-director Sam Cadman, it's a beguiling selection of endearingly daft scenes triggered by the admirably straight-faced Jolly (an inappropriate name if ever there was one). His characters include, among many others, a traffic warden who ticks off street cleaners for parking their carts on double-yellow lines; a business man who produces a three-foot-long mobile phone and bellows loudly into the handset; and an incompetent secret-service agent who sidles up to people on park benches, slipping them cryptic messages. Unlike the elaborate ruses of other hidden-camera shows, the best gags here are decidedly low-tech and simple: Jolly's attempt to interact with a stuffed dog he's taken for a "walk" in the park, much to bemusement of passing joggers, is fairly typical of the programme's mix of deadpan humour and surreal visuals--less Beadle's About, more absurdist street theatre. And instead of relying on a laugh track to set the mood, the show has a surprisingly eclectic, even at times strangely mellow and introspective, soundtrack from such acts as The Happy Mondays, Elastica and the Stereophonics. While some of the recurring gags were beginning to flag by the end of the series, the beauty of this compilation is that it features only the strongest material. However, we won't get a chance to see the prank Jolly played on Bill Wyman, who objected when it was first screened on television. Wyman might not get Jolly's impish brand of humour. But this fresh and entertaining compilation gives the rest of us a chance to sample it for ourselves. --Edward Lawrenson

• Game of Thrones Complete Collector's Edition  | Blu Ray | (02/12/2019) from £59.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Based on the best-selling novel series by George R.R. Martin, HBO's drama series Game of Thrones holds the record as the most awarded series in television history. This limited-edition, custom-designed complete collector's set includes all 73 episodes of this epic eight season series. Also included is 15 hours of bonus content and never-before-seen footage.

• China Moon | DVD | (23/06/2003) from £4.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (61.60%)   |  RRP £12.99

  China Moon (1991) is a pleasing entertainment that assembles the dependable elements of film noir in the tradition of Body Heat (1981), The Last Seduction (1994) and, of course, the mother of all such films, Double Indemnity (1944). There's a femme fatale (the beautiful and talented Madeleine Stowe) and an honest cop (reliable Ed Harris) who soon becomes smitten. Her husband (Charles Dance) is a brute who beats her, so she murders him and inveigles Harris into helping her dispose of the body. That's when the complications begin, and Harris starts to sweat when his fellow cop keeps asking awkward questions. The acting is uniformly good, with Harris' partner played by Benicio Del Toro (Traffic) offering an excellent performance. Harris and Stowe strike sparks off each other, to the point where you almost believe he is being sucked into her schemes. On the DVD: The disc contains a theatrical trailer and several TV ads, with scroll-down filmographies of the major talents involved which are incomplete for some unknown reason. There's a brief and unenlightening five-minute documentary, with the principal cast plus the director, John Bailey, commenting on the film. Both image and sound are excellent quality, sound in Dolby Digital, picture in anamorphic widescreen ratio of 2.35:1 --Ed Buscombe

• Looking For Richard | DVD | (03/01/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Directed by and starring Al Pacino this quasi-documentary is Pacino's passion in his quest to make Shakespeare more accessible to modern day America. Shakespeare's most performed play 'Richard The Third' is the vehicle he uses to bridge the gap between Victorian soap opera and twentieth century culture. As well as hearing the views of the man on the street we also meet Pacino's friends and fellow actors in his film version of 'Richard The Third'. These include Kevin Spacey Winona

• Inspector Morse - Series 7 | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £14.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (66.71%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This box set features the entire seventh series of the classic British Television drama Inspector Morse. Episodes comprise: 1. Deadly Slumber: Avril Steppings was left with permanent brain damage after an operation went wrong. Morse is called in when the doctor who runs the clinic where the operation was performed is found murdered... 2. Day Of The Devil: Morse is involved in a man hunt when a dangerous mental patient escapes from a high security hospital...

• The 4400 - The Complete First Season | DVD | (10/01/2005) from £15.98   |  Saving you £11.00 (78.63%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The 4400, which began as a five-week mini-series, is built around a deceptively simple, dramatically rich premise. What if all the people, who had ever been abducted by aliens, were suddenly returned to Earth? What would happen? Although they look exactly as they did when they left, they have no knowledge of where they were or why they were taken. Now some even have special powers, like clairvoyance. As with ABC's Lost, which centres on the survivors of a plane crash, The 4400 features a large cast of characters and a host of mysteries to be solved. If the special effects, which are kept to a minimum, can be a little cheesy at times, the concept--and the skillful execution of the concept--easily makes up for it. Produced by Francis Ford Coppolla's American Zoetrope and created by Scott Peters (The Outer Limits), The 4400 is set in Seattle, where the 4400 are returned. The principal characters include Dennis Ryland (Peter Coyote of E.T.), the local supervisor of Homeland Security. He's joined by agents Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch of Taken), whose nephew was one of the returnees, and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie of Romper Stomper), who takes in one of the youngest returnees. Guest stars include Michael Moriarty (Law and Order) in "Pilot" and Lee Tergeson (Oz) in "Becoming." Billy Campbell (Once and Again) also appears in several episodes as Jordan Collier, a real-estate magnate and returnee who becomes an advocate for others like himself, many of whom are having problems adjusting to a changed world. Like Lost, one of the biggest success stories of 2004, The 4400 debuted to strong ratings and was renewed for a full season. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

• Camp | DVD | (26/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  After a series of Broadway flops, songwriter Bert Hanley goes to work at a musical camp for young performers. Inspired by the kids, he finds an opportunity to regain success by staging an altogether new production.

• Trigger Happy TV - Series 2 | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £7.40   |  Saving you £2.59 (35.00%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Prankster Dom Joly adds a marvellously surreal edge to the hidden camera show in this, his second collection of highlights from Trigger Happy TV, all of which are once again set to a great soundtrack of downbeat anthems. Joly not only waylays unsuspecting members of the public and minor celebrities, he subjects them to any number of odd or downright bizarre scenarios. Among many other gems here we have the millionth customer at the sex shop, the MI6 recruiting officer whose potential recruitee is frighteningly willing to become an assassin, the infuriating traffic warden ("You can't park here"), the workmen who eat and sleep in the middle of the street, the cultured punk, the obvious burglar, the park warden who eats all the birds, and the ice cream man who is incapable of serving anything. Best of all, perhaps, are the creature features: the snail literally crawling across the zebra crossing, the vain gorilla-gram, not to mention sundry sadistic squirrels, dangerous dogs and randy rabbits. Oh yes, and there's still that guy with the huge mobile phone, though it must be increasingly hard for Joly to find anyone who doesn't know this character by now. Trigger Happy TV gamely exploits the British public's unwillingness to confront strangers, but it also hearteningly demonstrates their innate politeness when placed in awkward situations. In how many other countries could he approach people in the street to insult and bemuse them without running a serious risk of assault? On the DVD: The disc has an excellent, irreverent commentary from Joly and producer Sam Cadman, who talk about the difficulties of filming, chat to people on their mobile phones and munch snacks from the Abbey Road studio canteen. There's also the excruciating stand-up routine Joly did pseudonymously at The Comedy Store, which if nothing else proves he's got no shame at all. --Mark Walker

• The Crucible | DVD | (19/04/2004) from £9.78   |  Saving you £3.21 (32.82%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Salem witch hunts are given a new and nasty perspective when a vengeful teenage girl uses superstition and repression to her advantage, creating a killing machine that becomes a force unto itself. Pulsating with seductive energy, this provocative drama is as visually arresting as it is intellectually engrossing. Arthur Miller based his classic 1953 play on the actual Salem witch trials of 1692, creating what has since become a durable fixture of school drama courses. It may look like a historical drama but Miller also meant the work as a parable for the misery created by the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings of the 1950s. This searing version of his drama delves into matters of conscience with concise accuracy and emotional honesty. Three passionate cheers for Miller, director Nicholas Hytner and costars Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder. --Rochelle O'Gorman

• Bulletproof | DVD | (03/08/2009) from £4.98   |  Saving you £11.01 (221.08%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Two of Hollywood's hottest comic actors have just become the wildest partners–in–crime to ever hit the streets of L.A.! Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler star in this hilarious saga of a cop a crook and a beautiful friendship gone sour. Once inseparable pals Archie Moses (Sandler) and Rock Keats (Wayans) find themselves on opposite sides of the law each feeling betrayed by the other. In fact the only person who hates them more than they hate each other is ruthless drug kingpin Frank Colton (James Caan) who wants to put them both six feet under! Now through a strange twist of fate Moses and Keats are on the run – together. With a little luck the bungling boys just might get out of this one alive... if they don't kill each other first! Co–starring Kristen Wilson and featuring an awesome soundtrack Bulletproof is a fierce fast action comedy that'll blow you away!

• House Of Games | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  David Mamet's 1987 directorial debut House of Games is mesmerising study of control and seduction between two kinds of detached observers: a gambler who is also a con artist and a psychotherapist who is also an emerging pop-psych guru in the book market. The latter (played by Lindsay Crouse) meets the former (Joe Mantegna) when one of her clients is driven to despair from his debts to the card shark. Mantegna's character agrees to drop the IOUs in exchange for Crouse's attention at the seedy House of Games in Seattle, a mecca for conmen to talk shop and hustle unsuspecting customers. The shrink gets so caught up in the arcane rules and world view of her guide over subsequent days that she observes--with no false rapture--various stings in progress inside and outside the club. Mamet's story finally becomes a fascinating study of two people protecting and extending their respective cosmologies the way rival predators fight for the same piece of turf. The psychological challenge is compelling; so is the stylised dialogue, with its pattern of pauses and hiccups and humming meter. Mostly shooting at night, Mamet also gave Seattle a different look from previous filmmakers, turning its familiar puddles into concentrations of liquid neon and poisonous noir. --Tom Keogh

• La Cha Cha | DVD | (13/12/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Twilight Zone - Series 2 | DVD | (12/12/2005) from £8.80   |  Saving you £31.19 (354.43%)   |  RRP £39.99

  A collection of the colour episodes from season 2 of The Twilight Zone.