"Actor: Ann Howard"

• Ilsa The Wicked Warden | DVD | (26/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Greta del Pino is the sadistic warden of a female concentration camp thinly disguised as an asylum somewhere in South America. This terrible place is the last destination of the undesirable elements in an obviously fascist state. Protected by the government Greta is unassailable and has absolute power over the lives of her prisoners. A girl almost manages to escape but at the last moment her pursuers catch her on the porch of the humanitarian Dr. Arcos who is disturbed by the obvi

• Rabid | DVD | (07/08/2017) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  One of David Cronenberg's most successful early films, Rabid features porn star Marilyn Chambers as a woman who becomes infected with a virus after an operation. As result she grows a kind of phallus with which she penetrates her victims as she sucks their blood and thus the disease spreads rapidly. The film displays all Cronenberg's usual horrified fascination with the human body and its sexual function. Looking back, it can be read as a kind of parable about AIDS, but it works perfectly well as an effective low-budget shocker. On the DVD: the widescreen image on the DVD is acceptable quality, as is the sound. The fairly routine extras consist of excerpts from a TV interview with Cronenberg, lasting about 10 minutes; a collection of stills from the film; some written notes by horror expert Kim Newman that give useful background, though in part reproduce what is said in the interview; full filmographies for Cronenberg and the three principal performers, including a long list of Chambers' porn credits. --Ed Buscombe

• Midsomer Murders - Bantling Boy | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £5.96   |  Saving you £11.03 (185.07%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Barnaby and Scott enter the world of horseracing when the trainer of thoroughbred Bantling Boy is battered to death. Bruce Hartley was an alcoholic who had vowed to expose the reason why his father bequeathed the horse to four Midsomer villagers. The other members of the syndicate come under suspicion but the killing continues - then Bantling Boy falls ill. The detectives must unravel secrets hidden at the aristocratic Bantling Hall to find the killer.

• Horrors Of The Black Museum | DVD | (19/07/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A murder writer gains a valuable insight into his craft by practising for real!

• Blake 7 Series 3 - Limited Collector's Edition | DVD | (20/06/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Intergalactic adventure with an interplanetary resistance group battling for survival against a totalitarian super-power. Roaming a universe of boundless space and restrictive discipline freedom-fighter Blake with the crew of spaceship Liberator is locked in combat with the all-powerful forces of the Federation. Episodes comprise: 1. Aftermath 2. Powerplay 3. Volcano 4. Dawn of the Gods 5. The Harvest of Kairos 6. City at the Edge of the World 7. Children of Auron 8. Rumou

• John Wayne: Complete Collection (34 Films) | DVD | (22/11/2004) from £399.99   |  Saving you £-250.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £149.99

  The ultimate collection (56 hours!) of John Wayne movies many of which have been previously unavailable on DVD! 1. Stagecoach (1939) 2. The Long Voyage Home (1940) 3. Fort Apache (1948) 4. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) 5. Rio Grande (1951) 6. The Quiet Man (1952) 7. Sands of Iwo Jima 8. The Fighting Seabees 9. The Flying Tigers 10. Back to Bataan 11. Jet Pilot 12. The Flying Leathernecks 13. Dark Command 14. Tall in the Saddle 15. Angel and the Bad Man 16. The Fighting Kentuckian 17. The War Wagon 18. Rooster Cogburn 19. The Spoilers 20. Tycoon 21. Wake of the Red Witch 22. The Conqueror 23. The Magnificent Showman 24. Hellfighters 25. Seven Sinners 26. Three Faces West 27. Lady from Louisiana 28. The Shepherd of the Hills 29. In Old California 30. Pittsburgh 31. Reap the Wild Wind 32. War of the Wildcats 33. Dakota 34. Flame of Barbary Coast

• Whatever Happened To Aunt Alice? | DVD | (02/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? sees a change of direction for Robert Aldrich's unofficial trilogy which all involve "ageing actresses" in macabre thrillers (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte). The busy Aldrich only produced What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, calling in TV director Lee H Katzin (a Mission: Impossible regular) to handle the megaphone. Aldrich also opted to shoot the film in pastel colours appropriate to the unusual Arizona desert setting rather than the gothic black and white of the earlier films. The film cast the less iconic Geraldine Page as the genteelly unpleasant Mrs Clare Marrable. Left apparently penniless by her departed husband, Mrs M opts to keep up appearances by hiring a succession of timid elderly housekeepers, bossing them around with well-spoken nastiness, duping them out of their life savings and, on the pretence of getting help with a midnight tree-planting program, lures them into their own graves, batters them to death and plants lovely pines over them. Page gets her own way with the meek likes of Mildred Dunnock, until the feistier, red-wigged R!uth Gordon applies for the job and gets down to amateur sleuthing. While Bette Davis and her partners went wildly over the top in previous films, Page and Gordon play more subtly, finding odd pathetic moments in between the monstrous, irony-laced horror stuff. The supporting cast of pretty or handsome young things, mostly putty in the hands of the manipulative Page, contribute striking little cameos (Rosemary Forsyth sports a pleasing 1969 hairdo as the kindly but intimidated neighbour), but the film belongs to its leading ladies, delivering a fine line in twist-packed cat-and-mouse theatrics. The video is handsomely letterboxed, as befits a film made before widescreen films were shot with all the action in the middle of the frame to facilitate television sales. --Kim Newman

• Dracula's Daughter | DVD | (23/06/2014) from £4.49   |  Saving you £8.50 (65.40%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A series of murders take place in a remote European village which the locals believe to be the work of vampires and which the police dismiss as nonsense. The murders coincide with the arrival of the beautiful Luisa Karlstein (Britt Nichols) who has been summoned by the imminent death of her mother Baroness Karlstein who tells her daughter the family secret that they are all vampires! Loosely based on the classic Sheridan le Fenu short story Carmilla Franco's tale of lesbianism and vampirism is it must be said a disjointed and hotch-potch affair filmed almost back-toback with the Erotic Rites of Frankenstein. Yet despite its flaws it maintains enough of Franco's classic languid and dreamlike otherworldliness to include it among Franco's classic titles.

• The Bogey Man - Uncut | DVD | (22/09/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Bogey Man had been banned since 1982. The Bogey Man is the chilling story of concentrated evil and its gruesome effect on a small American farming community. The evil is so great that even exorcism cannot stop the blood-bath. As a young girl Lucy witnessed her brother murder her mother's lover. In an attempt to recover her psychological turmoil she later visits the house and finds the demons have not left.

• BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND (1949) | Blu Ray | (01/11/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Augustus : The First Emperor | DVD | (20/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Augustus is equal parts history lesson and soap opera, and thoroughly engaging at all levels. Peter O'Toole plays Octavius/Augustus, heir to his doomed uncle Julius Caesar's command of the far-flung Roman empire. Surviving an assassination attempt and struck by news of the death of his old friend and ally, Agrippa (Ken Duken), in the same day, Octavius waxes nostalgic about his youthful exploits in Caesar's army (Benjamin Sadler plays the young Augustus in flashbacks) and his unprepared immersion in the deadly politics of the Mark Antony (Massimo Ghini) era. More immediate are Octavius' problems trying to stave off conspiracies by his wife Livia (Charlotte Rampling) to set up the emperor's stepson, Tiberius (Michele Bevilacqua), as heir, and talk his dutiful daughter Julia (Vittoria Belvedere) into a marriage she doesn't want. Roger Young directs this highly watchable costume drama, and O'Toole's golden presence makes the ancient intrigues tragically human. --Tom Keogh

• Rusalka - Dvorak | DVD | (30/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  David Pountney's landmark English National Opera staging of Dvorak's haunting fairy tale opera left critics and audiences spellbound. The production is set in a Victorian nursery where an adolescent girl on the brink of sensual awakening dreams of first love. Her story is that of Rusalka the wood nymph who like Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid sacrifices all for love destined to be betrayed. High above the stage Rusalka dreamily swings as the picturesque gives way to the surreal.

• Dreamer | UMD | (13/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

• Splash | DVD | (26/03/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Tom Hanks was a relatively unknown TV actor with a sitcom as his biggest credit when relatively unknown director Ron Howard (best known for his own sitcom acting) cast him in this surprise hit. It made stars of Hanks, Daryl Hannah and John Candy and an A-list director out of Howard. Hannah is a mermaid who comes to Manhattan in search of Hanks, the guy she has twice saved from drowning. Hanks runs a business with his loveable, blowhard brother (Candy), whose goal in life is to have a letter published in Penthouse. When this perfect woman shows up, Hanks can't believe his luck and plunges into a dizzyingly romantic relationship, unaware of her sea-water secret. But the mermaid needs to soak and unfurl her tail from time to time, which leads to complications, including her capture by the government for scientific study (what else?). Hanks is winningly charming and Hannah is a perfect match in this enjoyably high-spirited comedy, though the biggest laughs belong to Candy. --Marshall Fine

• The Lost World | DVD | (03/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Something has survived... Directed by Steven Spielberg the film picks up four years after the disaster at Jurassic Park. On a nearby island dinosaurs have secretly survived and been allowed to roam free but now there is a more ominous threat - a plan to capture and bring the dinosaurs to the mainland. John Hammond who has lost control of his InGen company sees a chance to redeem himself for his past mistakes and sends an expedition led by Ian Malcolm to reach the island before the mercenary team gets there. The two groups confront each other in the face of extreme danger and must team up for their own survival in a race against time. With more dinosaurs more action and more visual effects than the first record-breaking film The Lost World based on the thrilling bestseller by Michael Crichton with a screenplay by David Koepp also stars Julianne Moore Pete Postlethwaite Arliss Howard Vince Vaughn and Vanessa Lee Chester.

• Hollywood Musicals | DVD | (31/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This 3 DVD box set celebrates the golden era of Hollywood musicals in the 1940s 1950s and 1960s. Using movie trailers and interviews with stars such as Ann Miller and Shirley Jones these programmes pay tribute to the heyday of song and dance on celluloid. Hollywood Musicals Of The 1940's:In the 1940s America was just emerging from The Great Depression. War engulfed half the world and the future looked uncertain. The Hollywood musical had the recipe to make things better. With the Hollywood musical people still believed that dreams really do come true. Glamour spread across the screen. In glorious colour and even in black and white the screen glittered. Join the biggest stars as we celebrate the great musicals of the 1940s when Hollywood put its best feet forward - dancing feet. In the 1940's from nostalgia to contemporary jazz the Hollywood musical had it all. Hollywood Musicals Of The 1950's:Relive the excitement of Opening Night as the curtain is raised on the Hollywood Musicals of the 1950s. All the music dancing the exotic locales the comedy and the drama are included in a salute to the greatest musicals ever to grace the motion picture screen. From the artistry of the ballet in An American In Paris to the Arabian Nights fantasy of Kismet there are stars shining in all their glory. Gene Kelly Howard Keel Fred Astaire Donald O'Connor and Cyd Charisse are but a few of the luminaries included. Enjoy again the depiction of the early days of talking pictures in Singin' In The Rain. Clap your hands to the songs and dances aboard the Show Boat. Watch as Shakespeare comes alive again in the musical comedy Kiss Me Kate. Thrill once more to the enchantment of Seven Brides For Seven Brothers The Band Wagon and Damn Yankees. Fall in love again with the romance of Royal Wedding Oklahoma! and Silk Stockings. Hollywood Musicals Of The 1960's:The 60's were the last great decade for the American movie musical but it was also probably its best. With blockbusters like The Sound of Music West Side Story My fair Lady Mary Poppins Oliver! and Funny girl the artform reached its peak. Join us on a singing and dancing tour from the Austrian Alps to the vauderville halls of Brooklyn... from dancing in the streets of Spanish Harlem to the shores of River City... from the chimneys of Old London to the sound stages of Hollywood. These are the best and biggest extravaganzas ever!

• Odette | DVD | (01/10/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This is the story of a brave woman who volunteered to join SOE (Special Operations Executive) during WWII.

• Matilda | DVD | (30/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Danny DeVito's adaptation of the Roald Dahl book for children is mostly just fine, helped along quite a bit by the charming performance of Mara Wilson (Mrs Doubtfire) as the eponymous young Matilda, a brilliant girl neglected by her stupid, self-involved parents (DeVito and Rhea Perlman). Ignored at home, Matilda escapes into a world of reading, exercising her mind so much she develops telekinetic powers. Good thing, too: sent off to a school headed by a cruel principal, Matilda needs all the help she can get. DeVito takes a highly stylized approach that is sometimes reminiscent of Barry Sonnenfeld (director of Get Shorty, a DeVito production), and his judgement is not the best in some matters, such as letting the comic-scary sequences involving the principal go on too long. But much of the film is delightful and funny.--Tom Keogh