"Actor: Ann D"

• The Passionate Friends | DVD | (15/09/2008) from £5.95   |  Saving you £7.04 (118.32%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Through her marriage to a wealthy financier Mary Justin has the freedom and comfort she has always yearned for but her life is one that lacks emotional fulfilment. On a visit to Switzerland she runs into an old friend Steven Stratton with whom she once had a passionate love affair many years before her marriage. Her meeting with Steven rekindles old memories of a friendship of the most beautiful kind. If only they could begin again...

• The Scarlet Pimpernel | DVD | (18/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  It's tough trying to beat the 1934 version of the popular adventure-romance story, starring Leslie Howard as the 18th-century British hero who poses as a fop in London society but runs a secret mission to rescue the doomed in Robespierre's Paris. But this 1982 television version, starring Anthony Andrews (Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited) as the Pimpernel and Jane Seymour as his beloved but estranged wife, is quite a treat. Andrews and Seymour expertly capture the essence of a relationship suffering from misunderstandings and elusive passion, and there is plenty of crackle to the action sequences. Clive Donner (What's New, Pussycat?) brings some strong cinematic qualities to this television presentation. --Tom Keogh

• Apt Pupil | DVD | (05/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Bryan Singer's follow-up to his post-modern caper-thriller The Usual Suspects trades in the flamboyant narrative flourish of that film for a moody meditation on the allure of evil. Based on the Stephen King novella (featured in the collection Different Seasons), Apt Pupil follows the disturbing downward spiral of a bright young schoolboy, Todd (Brad Renfro), who discovers a wanted Nazi war criminal is living in his town and then blackmails him into telling stories ("everything they're afraid to show us in school") of the horrors of the Holocaust. The old man, Dussander (a terrifying performance by Ian McKellen), comes alive while telling his tales and is soon reliving his past glories in a SS Halloween ordered byTodd. It's not long before Dussander's homicidal streak is unleashed and he is pulling Todd along with him. Although set against a backdrop of Holocaust history, the issues raised in the stories are ignored in favour of shocks and suspense and the film ultimately sacrifices the opportunity to be a fascinating psychological thriller about the seductive power of evil for a trip into Stephen King territory. Despite such limitations, Singer delivers a stylish and sometimes unsettling horror picture, which is largely due to McKellen's chilling portrait of a slumbering sadist awakened. --Sean Axmaker

• Friday Night Dinner - Series 1 - 5 | DVD | (16/07/2018) from £24.79   |  Saving you £15.20 (61.32%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Tuck into five glorious helpings of award-winning madness with the Goodmans as they get together for a Friday night dinner of food, family and major-league bickering. Of course every family has its eccentricities, it's just the Goodman family have made an art form of theirs. Friday Night Dinner is an original series about growing up but not growing away. It marries the groundbreaking with the familiar and, best of all, it's really, really funny.

• A Passage to India | DVD | (06/05/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  From the acclaimed director of Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and The Bridge on the River Kwai, A Passage To India was Sir David Lean's last ever feature film and a winner of two Oscars®.

• Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased): The Complete Series | Blu Ray | (02/10/2017) from £56.12   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The twist of private-eye show Randall & Hopkirk Deceased is that in the first episode, gumshoe Marty Hopkirk (Kenneth Cope) is killed off by the villains, only to pop up in an immaculate white suit as a ghost visible only to his hardboiled partner Jeff Randall (Mike Pratt). In theory, the supernatural streak--which meant a complex set of rules about Marty's appearances and effects on the physical world--should lead the show into wilder territory, but most episodes squander the team's unique abilities on ordinary cases about blackmail and murder-for-profit. A persistent subplot has the living Jeff getting cosy with the dead Marty's widow Jean (Annette Andre) to the discomfort of her late husband. The elementary effects and the nice underplaying of the leads have a certain period charm, and the show could afford a high calibre of special guest villains and dolly birds. A 1990s remake with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer hasn't obliterated memories of the original. --Kim Newman

• Tommy (Special Edition) | DVD | (14/06/2004) from £13.73   |  Saving you £-0.75 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Even by the standards of a genre not characterised by restraint, the 1974 rock opera Tommy is endearingly barmy, a bizarre combination of Pete Townshend's disturbed inspiration and director Ken Russell's wildly eccentric vision. Even if you gamely try and read allegorical meaning into it, the story is frankly odd: a child becomes psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind after witnessing the murder of his father by his stepdad and goes on to become rich and famous as the world pinball champion (since when was pinball a world-class competitor sport?), before setting himself up as a latter-day messiah. It's about the travails of the post-war generation, the disaffection of youth, the trauma of childhood abuse, the sham nature of new-age cults, and many other things besides. At least, that's what Townshend and Russell would have you believe. But what's really important is the many wonderful, utterly bonkers set-pieces--effectively a string of pop videos--that occur along the way, performed by great guest stars: Tina Turner as the Acid Queen, Eric Clapton as the Preacher, Keith Moon as Uncle Ernie, Elton John's mighty rendition of "Pinball Wizard", even Jack Nicholson doing a turn as a suave specialist. Roger Daltrey is iconic in his signature role, and Oliver Reed makes up for a complete inability to sing with a bravura performance as his sleazy stepdad, but best of all is Ann-Margret as Tommy's mother Nora: her charismatic presence holds the loose narrative together and she richly deserved her Academy Award nomination; the sight of her in a nylon cat suit being drenched in baked beans and chocolate from an exploding TV set is worth the price of admission alone. On the DVD: Tommy comes to DVD in a two-disc set, with the feature on disc one accompanied by three audio tracks: Dolby Stereo or 5.1 surround, as well as the original "Quintaphonic" surround mix--a unique experience with effectively two pairs of stereo tracks plus a centre track for the vocals. The anamorphic picture adequately recreates the original theatrical ratio. The second disc has a series of lengthy and illuminating new interviews with the main (surviving) players: Townshend, Russell, Daltrey and Ann-Margret, in which we learn among other things, that Daltrey wasn't Townshend's first choice for the role, that Stevie Wonder was the original preference for the Pinball Wizard, and that Ken Russell had never heard of any of these rock stars before agreeing to helm the movie. There's also a feature on the original sound mix and its restoration for DVD. All in all, a satisfying package for fans of one of the daftest chapters in the annals of rock music. --Mark Walker

• Candyman | DVD | (14/07/2000) from £5.86   |  Saving you £10.13 (172.87%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Based on a story by Clive Barker and skilfully written and directed by Bernard Rose, Candyman rises above most horror films by eerily suggesting that some urban legends--in this case a particularly frightening one--have a spooky basis in reality. The legend of the Candyman is a potent one around the high-rise tenements of Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing complex, where the residents speak of a dark, ominous figure who appears when his victims say his name five times in front of a mirror, then mercilessly slashes them to death. Upon learning that the Candyman is rumoured to live in one of the vacant tenements, a University of Illinois researcher (Virginia Madsen) investigates a recent murder at Cabrini-Green. She learns that the Candyman (played by Tony Todd) is both unreal and chillingly real--a supernatural force of evil empowered by those who believe in his legend. He is a killer made flesh by the belief of others, and the young researcher's investigation is a threat to his existence. What happens next? We wouldn't dare spoil the chills, but rest assured that writer-director Rose has tapped into a wellspring of urban angst and fear, and Candyman serves up its gruesome frights with a refreshing dose of intelligence. --Jeff Shannon

• Scarface | DVD | (05/12/2005) from £9.34   |  Saving you £0.65 (6.96%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Generally regarded to be the best - and most brutal - of the classic gangster films Scarface tells the story of orginised crime's pinch on the city of Chicago during prohibition. Paul Muni plays Tony Carmonte an ambitious hood with a Napoleonic urge to fight his way to number one gang boss. When the last of the old-style crime bosses is brutally slain down the finger is pointed at Tony and Johnny Loro a rival gangster. However Tony's desire to move up the ladder i

• The Railway Children (1968) | DVD | (31/10/2016) from £11.10   |  Saving you £8.89 (80.09%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Complete 7-part BBC adaptation starring Jenny Agutter. The big screen version of The Railway Children was still two years in the future when Jenny Agutter starred in this handsome production that serves as a companion piece to a film classic. The comfortable lives of three Edwardian children are shattered when their father is arrested on suspicion of betraying state secrets. The children and their mother are forced to move to a modest cottage in the Yorkshire countryside, where their new lives centre around the local steam railway line.

• The Cassandra Crossing | DVD | (28/02/2000) from £4.87   |  Saving you £2.12 (43.53%)   |  RRP £6.99

  The Cassandra Crossing is an all-star disaster spectacular telling of the terrifying odyssey of 1000 doomed passengers trapped aboard a plague infested train. A terrorist infected with a deadly virus boards the Stockholm to Geneva Express and exposes all aboard to the disease. Colonel MacKenzie (Burt Lancaster) is called into handle the situation and finds Dr. Chamberlain (Richard Harris) who is on board the train. Mackenzie decides to re-route the train to the Cassandra Crossi

• Taste of Fear (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (19/07/2021) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  During the early sixties, alongside its more famous Gothic horrors, Hammer also produced series of suspense thrillers inspired by the success (and plotlines) of Henri -Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. The first of these was the classic Taste of Fear, written and produced by the prolific Jimmy Sangster. Set on the French Riviera, it concerns a wheelchair-bound heiress plagued by visions of her dead father, and stars American actress Susan Strasberg alongside (by now) Hammer regulars Christopher Lee and Ronald Lewis. The film proved to be a huge success for Hammer, its twisted plot with a tortured heroine becoming a template for their thrillers which followed into the 1970s. Special Features High Definition remaster Original mono audio Two feature presentations: Taste of Fear, with the rarely seen original UK title sequence, and Scream of Fear, with the alternative US titles Audio commentary with Kevin Lyons, editor of The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television Body Horror: Inside ˜Taste of Fear' (2019, 20 mins): Alan Barnes, Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby explore aspects of the film's production Hammer's Women: Ann Todd (2019, 12 mins): profile of the Taste of Fear actor by Melanie Williams, author of Female Stars of British Cinema: The Women in Question The BFI Southbank Interview with Jimmy Sangster (2008, 68 mins): archival audio recording of the celebrated filmmaker and screenwriter in conversation with Marcus Hearn at London's National Film Theatre The BEHP Video interview with Jimmy Sangster (2008, 117 mins): archival video recording, made as part of the British Entertainment History Project, featuring Sangster in conversation with Jonathan Rigby The BEHP Interview with Douglas Slocombe, Part Two: From Hammer to Spielberg (1988, 82 mins): archival audio recording featuring the renowned cinematographer in conversation with Sidney Cole Fear Makers (2019, 9 mins): camera operator Desmond Davis and assistant sound editor John Crome recall the making of the film Anxiety and Terror (2019, 25 mins): appreciation of Clifton Parker's score by David Huckvale, author of Hammer Films' Psychological Thrillers, 19501972 Super 8 version of Scream of Fear (20 mins): original cut-down home cinema presentation Original US Scream of Fear theatrical trailer Sam Hamm trailer commentary (2013, 2 mins): short critical appreciation Image gallery: promotional and publicity materials New and improved subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing

• The Relic | Blu Ray | (15/06/2015) from £7.53   |  Saving you £7.46 (99.07%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The Relic is the story of a monster that runs amok in a Chicago museum on the very day the institution is holding a glitzy reception. Naturally, the museum bosses want to go ahead with their public relations even as the creature is decapitating victims. Penelope Ann Miller plays a scientist on the run from the critter (which is at times computer generated and reminiscent of the raptors in Jurassic Park), and Tom Sizemore is a cop looking for his cold-blooded (in every sense) killer. Peter Hyams (Timecop) directs, and as always he excels at managing the plastic action at the cost of real feeling and logic. (Much of the story is pretty laughable.) --Tom Keogh

• Apollo 13 | DVD | (11/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  ""Houston we have a problem"". Stranded 205 000 miles from Earth in a crippled spacecraft astronauts Jim Lovell (Hanks) Fred Haise (Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Bacon) fight a desperate battle to survive. Meanwhile at Mission Control astronaut Ken Mattingly (Sinise) flight director Gene Kranz (Harris) and a heroic ground crew race against time and the odds to bring them home. It's a breathtaking adventure that tells a story of courage faith and ingenuity that is all the more re

• The Secret of My Success | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £9.72   |  Saving you £-3.73 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Can a kid from Kansas come to New York to conquer the business world and maneuver his way from the mailroom to the boardroom in a matter of weeks? Michael J. Fox proves it can be done in this very funny lampoon of corporate business life. Fresh out of college he's determined to climb New York's corporate ladder in record time by masquerading as an up-and-coming executive even though he's really the new mail boy. However Fox's plans begin to go awry when the boss's wife falls in love with him and he falls in love with a junior executive who also happens to be the boss's mistress...

• Zombie Apocalypse | DVD | (04/06/2012) from £2.89   |  Saving you £7.10 (71.10%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Months after a zombie plague has wiped out 90 per cent of the American population, a small group of survivors fight their way cross-country to a rumoured refuge on the island of Catalina.

• The Protectors: The Complete ABC Series | DVD | (16/06/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  'The criminals and us - we're all in the same business. The difference is our clients pay us to keep one jump ahead of the criminal mind. Diagnosis? Call the police. Prognosis? Call Welbeck 3269.' Meet The Protectors: Ian Souter Robert Shoesmith and their Girl Friday Heather Keys. Their motto: 'We Sell Security'. Their object: to prevent crime. Operating from a smart Marylebone office they form a high-powered private investigation team dedicated to fighting crooks and forestalling crimes of all kinds in the twilight borderland between the underworld and the policeman's beat. This classic ABC adventure series stars former RSC player Andrew Faulds as the fiercely moral Souter a Black Watch officer turned private detective; Michael Atkinson is fellow troubleshooter Shoesmith an ex-policeman with an unnervingly acute understanding of the mind and methods of the criminal; and Ann Morrish is secretary and confidante Heather a former auctioneers' assistant with a sharp eye for art fakes and forgeries. Originally screened in 1964 - predating its ITC namesake by eight years - the complete series is made available here for the first time in any format.

• Magic | Blu Ray | (23/03/2020) from £14.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A ventriloquist is at the mercy of his vicious dummy while he tries to renew a romance with his high school sweetheart. Features Screenwriting for Dummies: William Goldman interview Archive Anthony Hopkins interview Victor Kemper: Cinematographer Ann-Margret make-up test Fats and Friends: a history of ventriloquism with the film's consultant Anthony Hopkins archive radio interview Trailer, TV Spots, Radio Spots

• Scarface | DVD | (22/10/2007) from £9.48   |  Saving you £5.50 (73.43%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Scarface (Dir. Howard Hawks 1932): Generally regarded to be the best - and most brutal - of the classic gangster films the original Scarface tells the story of orginised crime's pinch on the city of Chicago during prohibition. Paul Muni plays Tony Carmonte an ambitious hood with a Napoleonic urge to fight his way to number one gang boss. When the last of the old-style crime bosses is brutally slain down the finger is pointed at Tony and Johnny Loro a rival gangster. However Tony's desire to move up the ladder is about to put him in the firing line of his peers and the police. Produced and directed by the mercurial Howard Hawks Scarface is the movie which established both Paul Muri and his coin flipping aide George Raft as major Hollywood stars. Scarface (Dir. Brian De Palma 1983): Al Pacino gives an unforgettable performance as Tony Montana one of the most ruthless gangsters ever depicted on film in this gripping cult crime epic inspired by the 1932 classic of the same title. Scarface follows the violent career of a small-time Cuban refugee hoodlum who guns his way to the top of Miami's cocaine empire and makes some ruthless friends and enemies on the way to oblivion...

• Biloxi Blues | DVD | (08/03/2004) from £3.00   |  Saving you £2.99 (49.90%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In this semi-autobiographical screenplay Neil Simon's private memoirs in the US Army are made public. Set in 1943 at an army base in Biloxi Mississippi a lowly recruit (Broderick) comes under the command of a very weird drill sergeant (Walken)...