"Actor: Charles"

• Scarlet Street | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £14.98   |  Saving you £1.01 (6.74%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In a way, Scarlet Street is a remake. It's taken from a French novel, La Chienne (literally, "The Bitch") that was first filmed by Jean Renoir in 1931. Renoir brought to the sordid tale all the colour and vitality of Montmartre; Fritz Lang's version shows us a far harsher and bleaker world. The film replays the triangle set-up from Lang's previous picture, The Woman in the Window, with the same three actors. Once again, Edward G Robinson plays a respectable middle-aged citizen snared by the charms of Joan Bennett's streetwalker, with Dan Duryea as her low-life pimp. But this time around, all three characters have moved several notches down the ethical scale. Robinson, who in the earlier film played a college professor who kills by accident, here becomes a downtrodden clerk with a nagging, shrewish wife and unfilled ambitions as an artist, a man who murders in a jealous rage. Bennett is a mercenary vamp, none too bright, and Duryea brutal and heartless. The plot closes around the three of them like a steel trap. This is Lang at his most dispassionate. Scarlet Street is a tour de force of noir filmmaking, brilliant but ice-cold. When it was made the film hit censorship problems, since at the time it was unacceptable to show a murder going unpunished. Lang went out of his way to show the killer plunged into the mental hell of his own guilt, but for some authorities this still wasn't enough, and the film was banned in New York State for being "immoral, indecent and corrupt". Not that this did its box-office returns any harm at all. On the DVD: sparse pickings. There's an interactive menu that zips past too fast to be of much use. The full-length commentary by Russell Cawthorne adds the occasional insight, but it's repetitive and not always reliable. (He gets actors' names wrong, for a start.) The box claims the print's been "fully restored and digitally remastered", but you'd never guess. --Philip Kemp

• Painted Desert, The / Clark Gable On Film | DVD | (01/11/2000) from £4.99   |  Saving you £-1.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  The Painted Desert: Filmed at the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona The Painted Desert follows the lives of two feuding cowboys J. Farrell MacDonald and William Farnum who clash over who will raise an orphaned boy they find at a deserted waterhole. Farnum takes the boy whom he names Bill but several years later the feud continues this time over water their adjacent ranches share. Tension escalates until the grown Bill played by William Boyd must choose between h

• Suddenly | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £7.98   |  Saving you £-1.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Nothing ever happens in Suddenly. It's a just small town with small concerns. That is until the President decides to show up... In this intelligent 1954 film noir thriller Frank Sinatra delivers an electrifying lead performance as psychotic undercover assassin John Baron. Alleged to have been viewed by Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 only days prior to the shooting of President Kennedy 'Suddenly' was subsequently withdrawn from circulation by United Artists at Sinatra's personal request. Chillingly prophetic in it's subject matter 'Suddenly' is a killer addition to any noir collection.

• Jane Austen In Manhattan | DVD | (27/10/2003) from £20.96   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Two teachers vie for the right to stage a play written by Jane Austen when she was twelve years old...

• La Gazzetta | DVD | (29/05/2006) from £34.55   |  Saving you £-4.56 (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Rossini: La Gazzetta (Barbacini) (2 Discs)

• The Magnificent Seven | DVD | (20/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Yul Brynner stars as one of seven master gunmen who aid the helpless farmers of an isolated village pitted against an army of marauding bandits in this rousing action tale based on Akira Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai. Released in 1960 John Sturges' masterpiece garnered an Oscar nomination for Elmer Bernstein (for Best Score) and launched the film careers of Steve McQueen Charles Bronson Robert Vaughn and James Coburn.

• Great Mysteries and Myths of the Twentieth Century - Ww2 | DVD | (10/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.99

  Mysteries And Myths - Mysteries Of World War II

• L'Amour Des Trois Oranges - Prokofiev | DVD | (01/10/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Prokofiev: L' Amour des trois Oranges.

• Exquisite Tenderness | DVD | (25/08/2003) from £9.26   |  Saving you £-3.27 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A brilliant surgeon goes berserk and begins using his patients as unwilling test subjects in twisted experiments on their brains!

• The Importance Of Being Earnest | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Boudu Saved From Drowning - Blu-ray | Blu Ray | (04/04/2011) from £18.88   |  Saving you £1.11 (5.88%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A Parisian bookseller Lestingois fishes Boudu a vagrant out of the river Seine. He befriends the tramp and puts him up at home where Boudu causes nothing but trouble. However events take a different turn when Boudu wins the lottery... Starring Michel Simon and Charles Granval renowned director Jean Renoir's 1932 classic farce Boudu Saved From Drowning (Boudu sauv des eaux) has been beautifully restored in high definition and features a previously missing scene which was by chance conserved in the original negative.

• The Lost World | DVD | (23/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The granddaddy of giant monster movies, The Lost World was one of the most expensive movies ever made in 1925, costing more than a million dollars, and has remained one of the most influential. Every larger-than-life creature feature since--from King Kong to Godzilla and Jurassic Park--owes a debt to this original adventure fantasy based on Arthur Conan Doyle's novel. It's the story of a maverick scientist (Wallace Beery under a bushy beard) who finds a land that time forgot on a plateau deep within the South American jungles and comes back to London with a captured brontosaurus to prove it. His expedition includes Bessie Love, the daughter of an explorer who disappeared on the previous expedition, and big game hunter Lewis Stone. The ostensible stars of the picture are all upstaged by Willis O'Brien's dinosaurs, simple models brought to life with primitive stop-motion animation (the technique was soon to be perfected by O'Brien for King Kong). Hardly realistic by any measure, these pioneering special effects are still a sight to behold, especially the lumbering brontosaurus which receives the most care from O'Brien, both foraging in his jungle and rampaging through the streets of London. With the coming of talkies, The Lost World became obsolete: all known American prints were destroyed in favour of a sound remake (which became King Kong) and the film only survived in a severely truncated form (even the original negative was lost). For this release David Shepard meticulously "rebuilt" the film using material from eight different surviving prints from all over the world, cleaning and restoring along the way. The result is 50% longer than previously extant prints, still not complete but closer than any version since its 1925 debut. The difference is not merely in restored scenes but in a rediscovered sense of grace in scenes filled out to their original detail and pace. The film moves and breathes once again like a silent film. On the DVD: From the attractive solid slipcase to the wonderful "period" menu interface, this is a delightful DVD package. The film itself looks surprisingly good--a real tribute to the restoration team's efforts--with careful tinting in the style of the period (blues for evening, reds for dawn etc.). The disc features the choice of either an original score by The Alloy Orchestra or a classical orchestral score compiled and conducted by Robert Israel (both enjoyable and effective), 13 minutes of O'Brien's animation outtakes (including a couple of isolated frames that capture O'Brien manipulating his models) and a well-meaning but basic commentary by Arthur Conan Doyle historian Roy Pilot. There's also a text biography of Conan Doyle and a display of original postcards, posters and other promotional items. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• John Lennon - Rare And Unseen | DVD | (22/02/2010) from £16.05   |  Saving you £-0.06 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  John Lennon: Rare And Unseen

• Caboblanco | DVD | (08/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Offshore near Caboblanco Peru an explorer of sea wrecks is murdered. However local authorities decide that the official cause of death is ""accidental drowning."" Among the skeptical is Giff Hoyt (Charles Bronson) an expatriate American longtime Caboblanco resident and popular innkeeper. Giff's interest is further piqued when Marie (Dominique Sanda) arrives in town. Her passport is confiscated by the corrupt authority (Fernando Rey) and Giff protests. Furthermore a Nazi named Beckdorff (Jason Robards) lives in a well-fortified compound near town and he might be responsible for the explorer's death. Beckdorff himself seeks sunken treasure in the area as well as protection from local interference. Can Giff Hoyt stifle the evil Beckdorff save the lovely Marie and possibly even locate sunken treasure?

• Lady In A Cage | DVD | (27/06/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A suspenseful shocker Lady in a Cage tells of ten terrifying hours in the life of a beautiful widow (Olivia de Havilland) who is accidentally trapped in her home elevator during a power failure. Her well-oriented world is destroyed as the elevator nine feet from the floor becomes a torture chamber - a cage. Unable to escape her situation becomes desperate when the emergency alarm attracts a drunken derelict and his boozy prostitute friend both bent on robbery. James Caan (

• The Face Behind The Mask Bu-Ray (Imprint Collection # 44) | Blu Ray | (21/05/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• House of Wax | Blu Ray | (23/06/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Great Composers - Vol. 2 - Beethoven / Wagner | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The second volume of the BBC's excellent Great Composers series consists of two hour-long episodes devoted to Beethoven and Wagner respectively. The format in both cases is that of a standard "life and works" biography, but what makes these episodes so attractive is the high quality of the visual material and the engrossing nature of the insights offered from the contributors. For example, it's fascinating to hear the lead violin of the Lindsay Quartet discuss the personal significance of a certain Beethoven phrase just after Charles Rosen has drawn a parallel with the composer's use of form and the speeches of Robespierre. If this makes the whole project sound as wholesome and dull as dry muesli, everyone also seems alive to the human idiosyncrasies of the subjects: we learn, among other things, that the utterly humourless Cosima Wagner used to keep her husband's eyelashes and carry them around with her in a bag. The musical excerpts are both performed--by the Berlin State Opera Orchestra and other groups--and filmed with panache. Kenneth Branagh narrates. All in all, a good introduction to both composers.--Warwick Thompson

• Roots of Evil (1992) | DVD | (11/09/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• My Favourite Brunette | DVD | (11/08/2003) from £5.99   |  Saving you £-1.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Bumbling baby photographer Ronnie Jackson gets mistaken for a private detective and hired to find the missing Baron by Baroness Carlotta Montay. This is not a straight forward assignment however and Jackson soon finds himself involved in a murder and pursued by gangsters....