"Actor: Charles Lamb"

• The Fury | DVD | (09/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An elaborate game of mind control begins when the son of government agent Peter (Douglas) is kidnapped for his psychokinetic powers. Desperate to find him the father hires a girl (Irving) with similar psychic abilities. She soon reveals that his son is a prisoner at a secret U.S. agency where he's being used for dangerous mind experiments - and programmed for elimination...

• Vera Cruz | DVD | (11/06/2001) from £12.94   |  Saving you £3.04 (30.55%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Vera Cruz was only director Robert Aldrich's second Western (his first, made a few months earlier, was the revisionist, pro-Native-American Apache), but it's such an assured, stylish affair that he might have been roaming the sagebrush for decades. In the aftermath of the American Civil War two lone adventurers make their way south of the border, where Mexico is fighting a civil war of its own to rid the country of the French-imposed Emperor Maximilian. Neither the dour Benjamin Trane (Gary Cooper) nor the grinning, devil-may-care Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) has much in the way of idealism, but Trane still retains a thin bitter edge of integrity, a quality quite alien to the cheerfully amoral Erin. In uneasy alliance, constantly looking to outwit or double-cross each other, the two find themselves escorting a beautiful French countess (Denise Darcel) and a shipment of gold across country. Cooper and Lancaster create a superb double-act, using their contrasted screen personas to point up the humour and the cynicism of the two mercenaries' relationship. Darcel makes less than she might of the femme fatale role, but there are relishable cameos from Cesar Romero as a suavely duplicitous aristo and Ernest Borgnine as another gringo with an exceptionally vicious streak. The script, according to Aldrich, was written on the run, "always finished about five minutes before we shot it", but you wouldn't guess it from the laconic wit of the dialogue. It looks great, too--Ernest Laszlo's widescreen photography makes the most of the handsome Mexican locations. With its irreverent take on the accepted moral conventions of the genre, Vera Cruz ushered in a new kind of Western, and its central love-hate relationship would be replayed in Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) and Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). On the DVD: Not much in the way of extras but the mono sound has been expertly remastered to the benefit of Hugo Friedhofer's spirited score. Above all, the film's presented in its full Superscope ratio (16:9), a blessed relief after all those years when it showed up panned-and-scanned on BBC1. If ever a movie needed widescreen, it's this one--if only to fit in all Burt's teeth. You can see why they called him "Crockery Joe". --Philip Kemp

• Lucky Jim | DVD | (09/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Jim has managed to get a job in one of the top universities but all he has to do to cement a future is survive a terrible weekend at his fellow professors deliver a lecture on 'Merry England' and resist the temptations of Christine...

• Dracula, Prince Of Darkness | DVD | (23/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Ignoring a strange warning a young party travelling to the Carpathian Mountains are abandoned by their coachman. Their luck changes however when another mysterious coach appears and delivers them to the hospitality of Count Dracula...

• Dracula Prince Of Darkness | DVD | (29/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  As the third in what became a series of eight, Prince of Darkness was distinguished among the Hammer Dracula movies for several reasons. It was the third and last directed by Terence Fisher and his familiarity with the mythos and studio practices meant the rushed production still came out looking spectacular in places. Moving into the tail end of the 1960s, Hammer looked for ways of cost cutting: the film's dramatic finale on a frozen river takes place on a two-for-one set being used simultaneously for another shoot. This was also the series entry that included a substitute for the Renfield character missing from the first movie. Thorley Walters as Ludwig is a colourful cameo and that's also all that can be said of Christopher Lee. Despite top billing, the mute monster occupies but a fraction of the overall on-screen time. The real frights come from gaunt butler Klove who scares the life (literally) out of hapless travellers Alan, Charles, Helen and Diana. Surely their fate would ensure no-one else took the mountain pass to Carlsbad? But only two years later, audiences discovered Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. On the DVD: apart from scene access there's nothing making use of the DVD format here. The 2.55:1 presentation is certainly welcome, and the mono audio somehow feels appropriate. --Paul Tonks

• Otello - Verdi | DVD | (12/04/2004) from £15.85   |  Saving you £1.14 (7.19%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Filmed at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1995 this rendition of Verdi's 'Otello' is beautifully crafted by leading stars Placido Domingo and Renee Fleming. This was the first major success for Fleming at the Met and as this release illustrates she tackled the character of Desdemona wonderfully.

• Backs To The Land - Series 1 - Complete | DVD | (28/06/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Backs To The Land: The Complete First Series

• Machine Gun Kelly | DVD | (28/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Based on the unique real life story Charles Bronson stars as Machine Gun Kelly a cold blooded sadist whose 1930's rampage earned him the title of Public Enemy Number One by the FBI. His homicidal tendencies are linked to his personal sensitivity of his height. Together with his ever loving partner Flo Kelly decides to crown his criminal achievements with a high profile kidnapping. Unfortunately Kelly takes too great a gamble and his intended farewell to the criminal world results in his own bloody downfall.

• On The Game | DVD | (22/06/2009) from £17.99   |  Saving you £-5.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Narrated by Charles Gray (Diamonds Are Forever) On the Game is a riotous look at the history of the oldest profession from the ancient Hebrews who decreed all women must prostitute themselves once to the Roman Emperor Claudius' wife who was the most famous part time hooker to the Victorians who were austere on the surface but not when their clothes were off! Starring some beautiful girls with lashings of nudity and some true British greats such as Carmen Silvera (Allo Allo) and David Brierley (Voice of K9 in Doctor Who) On the Game is a vintage slice of Slap & Tickle.