"Actor: Charles"

• Tootsie/To Wong Foo - Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar/Connie And Carla | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Tootsie: Sydney Pollack directs this touching gender-bending farce in which Dustin Hoffman plays actor Michael Dorsey. Dorsey who is fine actor but an irreproachable perfectionist can hardly make ends meet; the best he can do for his wallet is take on a couple of jobs as a part-time drama coach and a part-time waiter. But when with the help of a few accessories (including rouge and a padded bra) he transforms himself into Dorothy Michaels everything changes. Dorothy lands a hot job on a soap opera monopolizes the covers of glossy magazines and wins thousands of adoring fans. But when he falls head-over-heels for his co-star Julie (Jessica Lange) he's got a real problem: How can he tell Julie he loves her when she thinks he's a she? Michael desperate to relinquish his disguise proceeds as a she and endures a battle with his agent played by Pollack who refuses to end his contract with the soap; a fight with his best friend who is a woman; unwanted sexual advances from a fellow soap actor; and sweet affections from Julie's father. (Dir. Sydney Pollack 1982) Too Wong Foo Thanks For Everything Julia Newmar: En route from New York City to Hollywood for a drag queen beauty pagent Noxeema Vida and Chi Chi are forced to take an unwelcome detour when their 1967 Cadillac convertible breaks down. Stranded in the tiny midwestern town of Snydersville the three try to make the best of their unfortunate circumstance. And when their glitz and glamour wake up the sleepy local citizens the stage is set for an outrageously funny weekend... (Dir. Beeban Kidron 1995) Connie And Carla: Struggling Chicago dinner theater performers Connie (Vardalos) and Carla (Collette) accidentally witness a mafia hit...and who subsequently hit the road running for their lives. Assuming the killers will never look for them in a place devoid of culture the pair head to Los Angeles where they assume new identities and find their middling talent at song and dance perfectly suited to new careers; as drag queens! Much to their surprise they inadvertently become the toast of the cabaret circuit. As their ruse becomes increasingly difficult to maintain they discover that it is indeed lonely at the top especially after Connie meets Jeff (Duchovny) a guy she'd really like to be a real girl with... With the mafia zeroing in and the line separating their onstage/offstage personas blurring beyond the point of recognition Connie and Carla soon discover the power of not compromising to pursue your dreams fighting the good fight and never ever underestimating the transformative power of cosmetics. (Dir. Michael Lembeck 2004)

• Ripping Yarns | DVD | (21/04/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  After Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-74), and well before going Around the World in 80 Days (1989), Pole to Pole (1992) or even Full Circle (1997), Michael Palin starred in Ripping Yarns, co-written with Terry Jones. As the title suggests, these were spoofs, affectionate pastiche-come-homage Boy's Own-type adventures. Each was an individual short film, less bizarre than the Flying Circus, not so consistently hilarious as fellow ex-Python John Cleese's Fawlty Towers, but inventively surreal with a daffy, gloriously English eccentricity. "Tomkinson's Schooldays" was the 45-minute pilot (originally shown as a one-off programme in 1976) and the funniest of the three tales here. A parody of Tom Brown's Schooldays, the humour comes from the violence, cruelty and insane rules of Graybridge public school in which the unfortunate Tomkinson is incarcerated. Ian Ogilvy is a fine School Bully, terrifying even Terry Jones' useless headmaster. "Escape from Stalag Luft 112B" is a P.O.W. movie send-up (from the first series), and "Golden Gordon" (from Series 2) celebrates the man who won't give-up on an underdog northern football team. In 1983 Palin made The Missionary, essentially a feature-film Ripping Yarn. --Gary S. Dalkin

• Carry On Vol.3 | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This Carry On collection includes the following films: Carry On Loving: Sid James and Hattie Jacques run The Wedding Bliss computer dating agency and guess what? Chaos follows! Carry On At Your Convenience: Kenneth Williams is WC Boggs the troubled owner of a small company trying to manufacture fine toiletware. Incompetent management and a bolshy union are just about the least of Bogg's problems as you'll soon discover in this hysterical comedy that tells you everything you always wanted to know about your home's most vital convenience. Carry On Matron: Carry On Matron finds the team in top form in Finisham Maternity Hospital. Sid James leads a team of less than professional crooks intent on stealing a huge hoard of birth control pills. If your funny bone is in need of tickling this is the prescription you need! Carry On Abroad: The Carry On team take a package holiday that starts disastrously and rapidly goes downhill. The paradise island of Elsbels is not all it's cracked up to be.... The hotel isn't finished the staff are abit thin on the ground - in fact Pepe (Peter Butterworth) is the staff - and the locals are far from friendly! It's the holiday of a laughtime as Sid James Barbara Windsor Charles Hawtrey Joan Sims and the gang go on the razzle in the Med!

• The Final Curtain | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £3.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (300.75%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Established TV host J.J. Curtis and up and coming TV star Dave Turner are embroiled in a race to discredit each other to win ratings...

• The One Step Beyond Collection | DVD | (24/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Before The Twilight Zone there was One Step Beyond. Here are twenty eerie episodes on five devilish DVDs showcasing the very best of this landmark look at the paranormal; featuring such up and coming stars as Charles Bronson Robert Blake and Suzanne Pleshette. Classic cult TV and a must for all sci-fi fans.

• Red Wagon | DVD | (30/09/2013) from £7.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (66.78%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Directed by Austrian �migr� Paul L. Stein, Red Wagon features the screen debut of the sixteen-year-old Jimmy Hanley, the Rank Organisation star who would become British cinemagoers' favourite 'boy next door', with American character actor Charles Bickford, silent-era star Greta Nissen, and Hanley's future Huggetts co-star Amy Veness. Adapted from Lady Eleanor Smith's novel, this 1934 feature tells the story of Joe Prince, an orphan child of circus people who, after many struggles, achieves h...

• The Great Escape - Limited Edition Steelbook | Blu Ray | (03/06/2013) from £21.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In 1943, the Germans opened Stalag Luft III, a maximum-security prisoner-of-war camp designed to hold even the craftiest escape artists. In doing so, however, the Nazis unwittingly assembled the finest escape team in military history - brilliantly portrayed here by Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson and James Coburn - who worked on what became the largest prison breakout ever attempted. One of the most ingenious and suspenseful adventure films of all time, The Great Escape is a masterful collaboration between director John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven), screenwriters James Clavell (Shogun) and W.R. Burnett (Little Caesar), and composer Elmer Bernstein. Based on a true story, The Great Escape is epic entertainment that captivates, thrills and stirs (Variety).

• The Grudge / Gothika / Boogeyman | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Grudge (Dir. Takashi Shimizu 2004): American nurse Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar) living and working in Tokyo is drawn to an odd house and exposed to a mysterious supernatural curse one that locks a person in a powerful rage before claiming their life and spreading to another victim... Produced by Sam Raimi The Grudge sees Sarah Michelle Gellar changing tack from her 'Buffy' guise in this superior chiller directed by Takashi Shimizu adapted from his

• 3 Classic Musicals Of The Silver Screen - Vol. 1 - Second Chorus / The Duke Is Tops / Private Buckaroo | DVD | (07/03/2005) from £4.03   |  Saving you £0.96 (19.20%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Second Chorus: Trumpet players Danny (Fred Astaire) and Hank (Burgess Meredith) have been avoiding graduation for seven years so that they can continue playing with their college band. They hire pretty Ellen Miller (Paulette Goddard) as the band's agent and as she quickly increases their earning power the boys find themselves with flourishing musical careers. Ellen is one day hired as Artie Shaw's band manager and makes plans for Danny and Hank to audition for Shaw. Both ho

• Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: Piano Blues | DVD | (29/03/2004) from £20.23   |  Saving you £-10.24 (-102.50%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Director and piano player Clint Eastwood explores his life long passion for piano blues using a treasure trove of rare historical footage in addition to interviews and performances by living legends.

• The Dick Cavett Show - Ray Charles Collection | DVD | (08/02/2019) from £10.45   |  Saving you £7.54 (72.15%)   |  RRP £17.99

  'Genius' is a word that is often used too casually. That's certainly not the case with Ray Charles. The word was so appropriate in his case that it became his nickname. 'The Genius' was a guest on The Dick Cavett Show three times including one where he was Cavett's only guest. As a performer and conversationalist his magnetism is in full force. Ray speaks candidly about his life and career and performs 14 songs over 3 episodes.

• X Files Season 4 Boxset | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £89.99

  In Season 4 of The X-Files, Scully is a bit upset by her on-off terminal cancer and Mulder is supposed to shoot himself in the season finale (did anyone believe that?), but in episode after episode the characters still plod dutifully around atrocity sites tossing off wry witticisms in that bland investigative demeanour out of fashion among TV cops since Dragnet. Perhaps the best achievement of this season is "Home", the most unpleasant horror story ever presented on prime-time US TV. It's not a comfortable show--confronted with this ghastly parade of incest, inbreeding, infanticide and mutilation, you'd think M & S would drop the jokes for once--but shows a willingness to expand the envelope. By contrast, ventures into golem, reincarnation, witchcraft and Invisible Man territory throw up run-of-the-mill body counts, spotlighting another recurrent problem. For heroes, M & S rarely do anything positive: they work out what is happening after all the killer's intended victims have been snuffed ("Kaddish"), let the monster get away ("Sanguinarium") and cause tragedies ("The Field Where I Died"). No wonder they're stuck in the FBI basement where they can do the least damage. The series has settled enough to play variations on earlier hits: following the liver vampire, we have a melanin vampire ("Teliko") and a cancer vampire ("Leonard Betts"), and return engagements for the oily contact lens aliens and the weasely ex-Agent Krycek ("Tunguska"/"Terma"). Occasional detours into send-up or post-modernism are indulged, yielding both the season's best episode ("Small Potatoes") and its most disappointing ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man"). "Small Potatoes", with the mimic mutant who tries out Mulder's life and realises what a loser he is (how many other pin-up series heroes get answerphone messages from their favourite phone-sex lines?), works as a genuine sci-fi mystery--for once featuring a mutant who doesn't have to kill people to live--and as character insight. --Kim Newman

• Carry On - The Ultimate Carry On | DVD | (08/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £109.99

  Twelve classic titles in one box set

• Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (Silent Classics) | DVD | (01/02/2010) from £8.98   |  Saving you £3.00 (42.92%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Classic silent adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous novel about a doctor who conducts experiments that are intended to reveal the dark hidden nature of man and unwittingly ends up developing a murderous alter ego.

• Baryshnikov's The Nutcracker | DVD | (09/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The Nutcracker is Mikhail Baryshnikov's breathtaking and critically acclaimed Emmy-nominated production. Baryshnikov was at the height of his career as a classical dancer in 1977 when he staged this beloved holiday classic for the American Ballet Theatre. Gelsey Kirkland had left the New York City Ballet to dance with the Russian superstar and their partnership was magical. In this Soviet-influenced version Baryshnikov casts himself as the hero who is transformed from a wooden figure to a soaring prince and Kirkland plays an adolescent girl of delicacy and vulnerability. Alexander Minz portrays Drosselmeyer a mysterious wizard who not only conjures the fantasy but aslo dances with the romantic couple. Kenneth Schermerhorn conducts the National Philharmonic in a fast-paced performance of Tchaikovsky's music. Celebrated by critics and public alike Baryshnikov's The Nutcracker delivers a brilliant and sparkling adaptation of the famous E.T.A. Hoffmann tale along with Tchaikovsky's classic score.

• Robert De Niro - Triple - Raging Bull / Ronin / True Confessions | DVD | (06/06/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This is a box set featuring three of Robert De Niro's most renowned films from the MGM stable. Raging Bull: Based on the life and career of boxer Jake LaMotta Raging Bull focuses on Jake's rage and violence that makes him virtually unstoppable in the ring. The same anger also drives Jake to beat his wife and his brother Joey and sends Jake down a self-destructive spiral of paranoia and rage. Ronin: A woman assembles a team of professional killers from all over the world to get a hold on a certain case with some mysterious content. The case is in the hands of some ex-KGB spies and there are many people and organizations that will do anything to get their hands on it. True Confessions: De Niro (a Catholic Priest) and Duvall (a homicide Detective) play brothers drawn together after many years apart in the aftermath of the brutal murder of a young prostitute.

• La Tete Contre Les Murs | DVD | (21/09/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An intense study of the clash between medical ideals the first full-length work from Georges Franju (Les yeux sans visage Judex) is a gripping examination of postwar psychiatric care boasting a memorable cast including Pierre Brasseur Anouk Aim''e Charles Aznavour Paul Meurisse and Jean-Pierre Mocky. Mocky plays Fran''ois G''rane an aimless young man whose delinquent tendencies cause his father to have him committed to a psychiatric ward. There under the cold command of Dr. Varmont (Brasseur) he finds himself fighting for his dignity sanity and freedom barely holding on through the new-found love of his girlfriend Stephanie (Aim''e) and the promise of rival Dr. Emery's (Meurisse) more humane techniques. Compassionate yet unflinching La T''te contre les murs is a bold precursor to the likes of Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor and Milos Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest revealing Franju's poetic gift for creating images both concrete and evocative and an ominous hint of the clinical horrors yet to come in Les yeux sans visage. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the debut feature of a late-flowering great filmmaker.

• To Serve Them All My Days - Part 3 | DVD | (10/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  John Duttine stars as David Powlett-Jones who has been invalided out of the army during the First World War and is sent to work in a large public school in Devon....

• Pot O' Gold | DVD | (10/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  A rare musical/comedy outing for James Stewart then at the peak of his career. Stewart plays James Hamilton Haskell a former music store worker who joins his uncle's health food business and befriends a band along the way. His uncle hates music his hatred not being helped by the fact that the band practice next door to his factory. Based on a popular radio show of the time (also called POT O' GOLD) the film gave both James Stewart and Paulette Goddard the opportunity of displayi

• Will Hay - Ask A Policeman | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Ask a Policeman is arguably Will Hay's all-round best film, not so much for the qualities of his familiar star performance but for the mix of laughs and thrills in the manner of The Ghost Train or The Cat and the Canary. Hay plays Sgt Doubtfoot, commander of the police station in the coastal hamlet of Turnbotham Round, who hasn't made an arrest in 10 years. This is not because of the area's low crime rate, but because most of the poaching, pilfering and swindling in the village is the responsibility of his own constables, the geriatric Harbottle (Moore Marriott) and literal wide-boy Albert (Graham Moffatt). When the Chief Constable threatens to close the station, the bumbling coppers set out to investigate some crimes and go after a smuggling squire who has been using a local legend as a cover story (and planting his signal light on top of the police station itself). Director Marcel Varnel, working from a script by Sidney Gilliatt and Val Guest, manage some fine semi-horror business with "the 'earse of the 'headless 'orseman", a flaming carriage which dashes about the landscape, and a risky venture into Devil's Cave to find the old smuggler's route that turns out to lead to the cellar of Harbottle's general stores. Hay and his sidekicks are in top form, squabbling surreally over every possible filched coin from the police outing fund box or trying to sort out the plot, and there's a sublime scene as they try to get a clue out of the impossibly ancient Harbottle's even more elderly Dad (also Marriott). --Kim Newman