"Actor: Carol Allen"

• The Pembrokeshire Murders | DVD | (18/01/2021) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Two unsolved double murders from the 1980s cast a shadow over the work of the Dyfed Powys police force.br/In 2006, newly promoted Detective Superintendent Steve Wilkins decided to reopen both cases. Employing pioneering forensic methods, Wilkins and his handpicked team found microscopic DNA and fibres that potentially linked the murders to a string of burglaries committed in the 80s and 90s. The perpetrator of those robberies was nearing the end of his prison sentence, but if Steve Wilkins was right, he was also a serial killer... Could Steve and his team find enough forensic evidence to charge their suspect before he was released to potentially kill again?

• The Last Detail | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-7.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Last Detail nearly didn't get a release. Columbia, for whom it was made, was alarmed by the movie's barrage of profanity and resented the unorthodox working style of its director, Hal Ashby, who loathed producers and made no secret of it. Only when the film picked up a Best Actor Award for Jack Nicholson at Cannes did the studio reluctantly grant it a release--with minimal promotion--to widespread critical acclaim. Nicholson, in one of his best roles, plays "Bad-ass" Buddusky, a naval petty officer detailed, along with his black colleague "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young), to escort an offender from Virginia to the harsh naval prison at Portsmouth, NH. The miscreant is a naïve youngster, Meadows (Randy Quaid), who's been given eight years for stealing $40 from his CO's wife's favourite charity. The escorts, at first cynically detached, soon start feeling sorry for Meadows and decide to show him a good time in his last few days of freedom. Ashby, a true son of 60s counterculture, avidly abets the anti-authoritarian tone of Robert Towne's script. Meadows is a sad victim of the system--but so too are Buddusky and Mulhall, as they gradually come to realise. A lot of the film is very funny. Nicholson gets to do one of his classic psychotic outbursts--"I am the fucking shore patrol!"--and there are some pungent scenes of male bonding pushed to the verge of desperation. But the overall tone is melancholy, pointed up by the jaunty military marches on the soundtrack. Shot amid bleak, wintry landscapes, in buses and trains and grey urban streets, The Last Detail is a film of constant, compulsive movement going nowhere--a powerful, finely acted study of institutional claustrophobia. On the DVD: The Last Detail disc doesn't have much in the way of extras. There are abbreviated filmographies for Ashby, Nicholson and Quaid (though not for Young) and a trailer for A Few Good Men (1992). The mono sound comes up well in Dolby Digital, and the transfer preserves DoP Michael Chapman's subtle, subfusc palette and the 1.85:1 ratio of the original. --Philip Kemp

• Down Among The Z Men | DVD | (24/06/2002) from £7.29   |  Saving you £8.70 (119.34%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Although they made their name in the medium of radio, the legendary Goons also made brief forays into the world of television and, with Down Among the Z Men, film. It captures the team at a very early stage in their career, with Michael Bentine still in the fold, and with their unique, anarchic brand of humour still in its infancy. Sadly, the style and feel of the film does little to suit their comedy style. While radio offered an opportunity for their imaginations to run riot, here the four find themselves tied to a few stock characters, most of whom would make a more animated appearances later in their career. The plot--with its tale of eccentric professors and evil spies--sees a series of musical numbers and a variety performance crow barred into the proceedings. Those who wish to add to an already existing Goons collection may want to consider this, but anyone wondering what all the fuss is about should head straight for the many radio collections available and hear the sound of true genius at work. On The DVD: Down Among the Z Men offers little to recommend, with the DVD lacking in any extras whatsoever. Being taken from an original fifties print, the black and white picture is of reasonable quality yet cannot help but look extremely dated. At best it is the sort of curio that would pass time on a Sunday afternoon but it is hard to consider this a particularly essential DVD release. –-Phil Udell

• The Flamingo Kid | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £14.98   |  Saving you £-8.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  As The Flamingo Kid amply demonstrates, there's always room for one more rites of passage film if it's made with care and affection. Garry Marshall's 1984 study of a young Brooklyn poker player who thinks the grass is greener at a Long Island beach club, nails the bad guy, realises he got it wrong and returns to the bosom of his "humble" family certainly satisfies on both counts. It also has a strong cast: Matt Dillon as Jeffrey, whose niggling aspirations create the inevitable barrier between himself and his parents; Richard Crenna as his prospective role model who turns out to have feet of clay; and Hector Elizondo as his bemused father. But Jessica Walter (Clint Eastwood's stalker from hell in Play Misty for Me) almost steals the show as an acid-tongued beach-club wife. If the whole thing lacks the depth and warmth of, say, Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, it succeeds on its own merits as an homage to a more innocent time when a young man didn't need to stray far from his own tenement block in order to find himself, with the help of a suitably nostalgic early-1960s soundtrack of course. On the DVD: As far as extras go, this is a budget offering. There are detailed actor biographies but precious little on the film itself, apart from the snippet that Richard Crenna earned a Golden Globe award nomination. There is an adequate scene index and, for those who want to study Dillon in detail, a reasonable stills gallery. The picture is presented in standard format, and hardly distinguishable from ordinary VHS or telecast quality, but the stereo audio certainly helps pump out the period soundtrack. --Piers Ford

• Crossroads - Part 2 | DVD | (29/08/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Here in all its glory is the second volume of Crossroads including episodes released on DVD for the very first time. Meg and Sandy Richardson Benny Hawkins Adam Chance Shughie McFee - the names still strike a chord in the memories with a generation of people who sat entranched watching the latest escapades of the staff and customers of Crossroads motel. Unrepeated for many years the general perception of Crossroads is coloured by that of Acorn Antiques

• Broken Trail | DVD | (18/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Set in 1898 Print Ritter (Robert Duvall) and his estranged nephew Tom Harte (Thomas Haden Church) become the reluctant guardians of five abused and abandoned Chinese girls (introducing Caroline Chan Olivia Cheng Jadyn Wong Valerie Tian and Gwendoline Yeo). Ritter and Harte's attempts to care for the girls are complicated by their responsibility to deliver a herd of horses while avoiding a group of bitter rivals intent on kidnapping the girls for their own purposes.

• Fame - Series 1 And 2 | DVD | (18/01/2010) from £20.00   |  Saving you £29.99 (149.95%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Fame: Season 1 & 2 Box Set