"Actor: Claude Farrel"

• Legionnaire | DVD | (03/05/2010) from £11.35   |  Saving you £-5.36 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Exiled to a video-only release when its distributor balked after the flop of Jean-Claude Van Damme's previous film Knock Off, this lavish adventure deserved a chance at theatrical success. Action icon Van Damme recasts himself as a tragic romantic hero in this entertaining old-fashioned adventure with a modern sensibility. "The Muscles from Brussels" is no Brando, but he acquits himself nicely as a cocky boxer who double-crosses a Marseilles mobster and joins the French Foreign Legion when his half-baked plan backfires with tragic consequences. Surrounded by a better than usual cast (including Steven Berkoff as a Teutonic drill sergeant, Jim Carter as the ruthless ganglord, and Nicholas Farrell as a gentleman soldier with a taste for gambling and a dark past), Van Damme's dour performance sometimes gets lost in the colourful characters around him. But that's okay--there's adventure enough to go around and he's willing to share it. The Marseilles scenes evoke a quaint movie past with their smoky bars and shadowy streets, but the film is reborn as an ambitious, stoic platoon drama in the sands of French Morocco. Legionnaire alludes to classic films from Beau Geste to Casablanca to Lawrence of Arabia, but ultimately marches its own macho course, revelling in testosterone-driven heroics and bonding-under-fire while acknowledging the irony of its colonial mission ("We're the intruders", realises one soldier). It's a calculated risk for Van Damme (who also co-wrote and co-produced), but if Legionnaire never quite grasps the epic scope it's reaching for, it remains one of his best films, an handsome, exciting and surprisingly grim desert adventure. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• The Woman's Angle | DVD | (10/11/2014) from £7.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (66.78%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This romantic drama co-written and directed by former Gainsborough Pictures kingpin Leslie Arliss stars Edward Underdown as a man under uncomfortable scrutiny from the three women who know him best; the film also features a brief early appearance by Joan Collins and a nightclub number from singer Teddy Johnson. The Woman’s Angle is featured here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. In the divorce hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice the judge is summing up the case of Mansell v. Mansell and van Rhyne. As she listens Enid Mansell lets her thoughts roam back to the time when she first met her husband and to the events which led to the break-up of their marriage... Special Features: Image Gallery

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

  Prison teacher Dr. Smart-Alec (Will Hay) steps up the career ladder to become headmaster of Narkover public school but his innate stupidity soon begins to create havoc. Will Hay dons a mortarboard on screen for the first time in the bumbling headmaster role that was to become his trademark.