"Actor: Barbara White"

• Frenzy | DVD | (17/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  By the time Alfred Hitchcock's second-to-last picture came out in 1972, the censorship restrictions under which he had laboured during his long career had eased up. Now he could give full sway to his lurid fantasies, and that may explain why Frenzy is the director's most violent movie by far--outstripping even Psycho for sheer brutality. Adapted by playwright Anthony Shaffer, the story concerns a series of rape-murders committed by suave fruit-merchant Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), who gets his kicks from throttling women with a necktie. This being a Hitchcock thriller, suspicion naturally falls on the wrong man--ill-tempered publican Richard Blaney (Jon Finch). Enter Inspector Oxford from New Scotland Yard (Alex McCowan), who thrashes out the finer points of the case with his wife (Vivian Merchant), whose tireless enthusiasm for indigestible delicacies like quail with grapes supplies a classic running gag.Frenzy was the first film Hitchcock had shot entirely in his native Britain since Jamaica Inn (1939), and many contemporary critics used that fact to account for what seemed to them a glorious return to form after a string of Hollywood duds (Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz). Hitchcock specialists are often less wild about it, judging the detective plot mechanical and the oh-so-English tone insufferable. But at least three sequences rank among the most skin-crawling the maestro ever put on celluloid. There is an astonishing moment when the camera backs away from a room in which a murder is occurring, down the stairs, through the front door and then across the street to join the crowd milling indifferently on the pavement. There is also the killer's nerve-wracking attempt to retrieve his tiepin from a corpse stuffed into a sack of potatoes. Finally, there is one act of strangulation so prolonged and gruesome it verges on the pornographic. Was the veteran film-maker a rampant misogynist as feminist observers have frequently charged? Sit through this appalling scene if you dare and decide for yourself. --Peter Matthews

• Quiet Weekend | DVD | (17/08/2015) from £6.97   |  Saving you £3.02 (43.33%)   |  RRP £9.99

  An invitation to a country retreat unleashes hidden passions in this witty adaptation of Esther McCracken's famous wartime stage comedy. Billed The Film of the Play that beat the Blitz! , Quiet Weekend reunites Silent Dust's Derek Farr with Marjorie Fielding and Frank Cellier, reprising their roles from the 1941 hit Quiet Wedding; released in 1946, it is featured here in a brand-new digital transfer from original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. Arthur and Mildred Royd invite some friends for a quiet weekend in the country. Among the guests is a middle-aged magistrate too shy to propose to the woman he loves, and young Miranda not too shy at all to show her affections for distant cousin Denys Royd, ten years her senior. The arrival of an abrasive London sophisticate puts the cat among the pigeons, but worse is to come when Arthur and the magistrate find their fishing trip turning into a salmon-poaching spree...

• For The Love of Ada - The Complete Second Series | DVD | (04/07/2011) from £8.98   |  Saving you £6.00 (85.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Irene Handl and Wilfred Pickles star as two senior citizens who fall in love in this gentle sitcom written by Vince Powell and Harry Driver (Nearest and Dearest Never Mind the Quality Feel the Width). Produced by Ronnie Baxter and boasting theme music by Ron Grainer this release contains the complete second series originally transmitted in 1970. Londoner Ada Cresswell and Yorkshireman Walter Bingley - the gravedigger who buried Ada's husband - return as a newly engaged couple. But saving enough to get married on an old-age pension isn't easy particularly when Walter gets his cards and Ada has to give up her new part-time job. And when Ada gregariously invites all 48 members of the Over Sixties' Club it looks as though the happy day will have to be indefinitely postponed...

• Omen, The / The Entity / The Blair Witch Project | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Omen He was born at 6am on the 6th day of the 6th month. The coming of Armageddon the site of the final confrontation between the forces of good and evil as foretold in the Book of Revelations will begin with the birth of the son of Satan - in human form. Unable to tell his wife Katherine the tragic news of their still-born son American diplomat Robert Thorn accepts a new-born orphan as his son. Details of the child's birth remain a secret but as the boy Damien grows older it becomes apparent that he is no ordinary child. As mysterious deaths and strange warnings occur Robert Thorn slowly becomes aware of the hideous evil behind the child's innocent face and the significance of the numbers 666 which bring about the most terrifying of revelations. The Entity Something is after Carla Moran. It wants her soul. It wants her body. There's no stopping it. There's nowhere she can run. Yet The Entity won't kill Carla because it has far more terrifying other things in store for her... The Blair Witch Project Now prepare for a motion picture experience unlike anything you've ever seen heard or feared before. The Blair Witch Project follows a trio of filmmakers on what should have been a simple walk in the woods but quickly becomes an excursion into heart-stopping terror. As the three become inexplicably lost morale deteriorates hunger sets in accusations fly. By night unseen evil stirs beyond their campfire's light. By day chilling ritualistic figures are discovered nearby. As the end of their journey approaches they realise that what they are filming now is not a legend but their own descent into unimaginable horror.

• Friday The 13th: Part 4 - The Final Chapter | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The body count continues in this vivid thriller the fourth but not final story in the widely successful 'Friday The 13th' series. Jason Crystal Lake's least popular citizen returns to wreak further havoc in 'Friday The 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter'. After his revival in a hospital morgue the hockey-masked murderer fixes his vengeful attention on the Jarvis family and a group of hitherto carefree teenagers. Young Tommy Jarvis is an aficionado of horror films with special talent f

• Friday The 13th - Part 4 - The Final Chapter | DVD | (09/02/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  The body count continues in this vivid thriller the fourth but not final story in the widely successful 'Friday The 13th' series. Jason Crystal Lake's least popular citizen returns to wreak further havoc in 'Friday The 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter'. After his revival in a hospital morgue the hockey-masked murderer fixes his vengeful attention on the Jarvis family and a group of hitherto carefree teenagers. Young Tommy Jarvis is an aficionado of horror films with special talent for masks and make-up. Has the diabolical Jason finally met his match?

• The Execution | DVD | (18/12/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  A Group of holocaust survivors recognise a local restaurant owner as the Nazi doctor who tortured them as girls. To their horror he has already been tried for his crimes and served only a few years. They therefore decide to perform their own execution.

• Poison/Dottie Gets Spanked | DVD | (14/05/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Poison (1991): The compelling and imaginative debut feature from Oscar nominated writer/director Todd Haynes and winner of Grand Jury Prize at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival Poison intricately interweaves three provocative and very distinct stories. In 'Hero' a young boy goes missing after killing his abusive father and then flying out of the window of his suburban home. The 'Horror' segment takes the form of a 50's B Horror Movie. Scientist Dr. Graves has managed to isolate and distill the essence of the human sex drive into a serum. After drinking it he transforms into a lethally infectious grotesque mutant. 'Homo' portrays the cruel obsessive love felt by an imprisoned thief for an inmate he first met as a child at reform school. Dottie Gets Spanked (1993): A brilliant assured short film from Haynes Dottie Gets Spanked offers an innovative glimpse of a future-talent unfolding. The story follows six-year old Stephen and his fixation with campy television comedienne Dottie. During his visit on set Stephen finds the scenes being filmed to reflect his deepest secrets and dreams.