"Actor: Clare Greet"

• Jamaica Inn | DVD | (11/06/2007) from £4.49   |  Saving you £5.50 (122.49%)   |  RRP £9.99

  It's generally acknowledged that the Master of Suspense disliked costume dramas and Jamaica Inn--a rip-roaring melodrama drawn from a Daphne du Maurier pot-boiler, set in 1820s Cornwall--is about as costumed as they come. So what was he doing directing it? Killing time, essentially. In 1939 Hitchcock was due to leave Britain for Hollywood, but delays Stateside left him with time on his hands. Never one to sit idle, he agreed to make one picture for Mayflower Productions, a new outfit formed by actor Charles Laughton and émigré German producer Erich Pommer. An innocent young orphan (the 19-year-old Maureen O'Hara in her first starring role) arrives at her uncle's remote Cornish inn to find it a den of reprobates given to smuggling, wrecking and gross overacting. They're all out-hammed, though, by Laughton at his most corseted and outrageously self-indulgent as the local squire to whom Maureen runs for help. Since his star was also the co-producer, Hitch couldn't do much with the temperamental actor. He contented himself with adding a few characteristic touches--including a spot of bondage (always a Hitchcock favourite), and the chief villain's final spectacular plunge from a high place--and slyly sending up the melodramatic absurdities of the plot. Jamaica Inn hardly stands high in the Master's canon, but it trundles along divertingly enough. Hitchcock fanatics will have fun comparing it with his two subsequent--and far more accomplished--Du Maurier adaptations, Rebecca and The Birds. --Philip Kemp

• Maria Marten - Murder At The Red Barn | DVD | (23/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Tod Slaughter plays Squire William Corder in this adaptation of the popular stage melodrama.

• The Man Who Knew Too Much | DVD | (24/05/2004) from £8.38   |  Saving you £-2.39 (-39.90%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Alfred Hitchcock himself called this 1934 British edition of his famous kidnapping story "the work of a talented amateur", while his 1956 Hollywood remake was the consummate act of a professional director. Be that as it may, this earlier movie still has its intense admirers who prefer it over the Jimmy Stewart--Doris Day version, and for some sound reasons. Tighter, wittier, more visually outrageous (back-screen projections of Swiss mountains, a whirly-facsimile of a fainting spell), the film even has a female protagonist (Edna Best in the mom part) unafraid to go after the bad guys herself with a gun. (Did Doris Day do that that? Uh-uh.) While the 1956 film has an intriguing undercurrent of unspoken tensions in nuclear family politics, the 1934 original has a crisp air of British optimism glummed up a bit when a married couple (Best and Leslie Banks) witness the murder of a spy and discover their daughter stolen away by the culprits. The chase leads to London and ultimately to the site of one of Hitch's most extraordinary pieces of suspense (though on this count, it must be said, the later version is superior). Take away distracting comparisons to the remake, and this Man Who Knew Too Much is a milestone in Hitchcock's early career. Peter Lorre makes his British debut as a scarred, scary villain. --Tom Keogh