"Actor: Cliff de Young"

• The X Files: Providence | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £7.86   |  Saving you £8.13 (103.44%)   |  RRP £15.99

  As with earlier releases, The X-Files: Providence splices together two episodes, "Provenance" and "Providence", into a pseudo-movie. Again, the results fall way below the series average as the long-dead alien conspiracy business is flogged, with a lot of running around and ominous rumbling still not adding up to anything like an actual story. FBI agent Neal McDonaugh (of Minority Report) inexplicably survives a flaming motorcycle crash, leaving behind brass rubbings taken from an alien spaceship, then shows up and tries to murder Scully's psychokinetic baby, who is promptly kidnapped by a UFO cult. In Part 2, Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Reyes (Annabeth Gish) fend off enemies and friends within the bureau as they track down the cultists, who are having trouble with a spaceship they've dug up, and a typical pointless climax has things happen without the characters doing anything to contribute. Even at this late, post-Duchovny stage in the game, The X-Files has turned out some fine stand-alone episodes, but these dreary wallowings go a long way towards explaining why only diehards are still watching. After the child says "I made this" at the end of the credits, it's becoming very hard not to shout "well, clean it up then". On the DVD: The X-Files: Providence, as with Nothing Important Happened Today, arrives in a great-looking anamorphic widescreen transfer. There are two slight promotional "featurettes"--three-minute clips/talking heads promos focusing on the episode "Providence" and actor Cary Elwes' character. --Kim Newman

• Meltdown / The King Of Kickboxers / American Haolin | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Meltdown (1995): He redefines revenge! After failing to save his wife from 'The Doctor' Kit Li is working as a bodyguard and secret stunt double for the cowardly martial arts film star Frankie Lane. Frankie attends an exhibition of the crown jewels of Russia at a Hong Kong hotel and when the Doctor's gang take over the building in attempt to steal the jewels Kit is the only thing standing in their way. Will Frankie regain his courage? Will romance blossom between Kit and the nosy reporter? Who has the best Kung Fu? The King Of The Kickboxers (1991): The murder of his brother has left Jake moody and frustrated. The killer was a martial arts champion who is now asking for volunteers to star in his new kickboxing movie. Jake decides to take him up on his invitation.... American Shaolin (1991): Humiliated in front of a national audience American martial artist Drew Carson travels to China's mythical Shaolin temple seeking enlightenment. Only after exhaustive training can he return to his homeland as a true master and attempt to settle the score...

• Blue Collar | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Whatever became of the American dream? In Blue Collar Paul Schrader's strong directorial debut three assembly-line auto workers (Richard Pryor in one of his only serious dramatic roles Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto) are equally angry and disenchanted at factory management and their own union. They are also as the film reveals in long detailed vignettes struggling just to make ends meet. As they ruminate together on their dead-end jobs and the fears of a de

• Secret Admirer | Blu Ray | (07/03/2023) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The X Files: Season 6 | DVD | (17/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  The sixth series of The X-Files picks up after the events of the big-screen movie. So it is that "The Beginning" attempts to fit the film into the TV chronology before moving on to tackle plot points left dangling from series five's "The End" (note the guard asleep at the nuclear power plant console is named Homer!). Between story arc threads are several pleasing one-off excursions: time travel to a Bermuda Triangle boatload of Nazis ("Triangle"); further temporal escapades akin to Groundhog Day ("Monday"); a demonic baby case featuring genre stalwart Bruce Campbell ("Terms of Endearment"); and "The Dreamland, Parts 1 and 2", in which David Duchovny gets to play someone else via personality switching. Back in the conspiracy scheme of things, Mulder chases "S.R. 819", a Senate resolution tying conspiracies together; "Two Fathers" and "One Son" indicates that the abductee experiments are intended to cure the black oil disease; and the year finishes with "BioGenesis", in which a beach-buried UFO has Scully and the audience wondering if we are from Mars. --Paul Tonks

• 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

• Code Name: Dancer | DVD | (05/07/2005) from £10.96   |  Saving you £-6.97 (-174.70%)   |  RRP £3.99

  A dreaded phone call takes Anne Goodwin back to her past. Dancer who risked his life for her is now jailed on the island. Will she decide to save the man she really loves...?

• 2012 Doomsday | DVD | (30/01/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In this epic disaster four strangers on a journey of faith are drawn to an ancient temple in the heart of Mexico on December 21 2012. For the Mayans it is the last recorded day. For NASA scientists it is a cataclysmic polar shift. For the rest of us it is Doomsday.

• 2012: Doomsday | Blu Ray | (11/04/2011) from £10.79   |  Saving you £5.20 (48.19%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The end is nigh in this apocalyptic disaster film that mixes Christian values, Mayan mythology, and scientific theories about polar shifts. When four strangers journey into Mexico in 2012, they are drawn into ancient mysteries that foretell the coming of the End Times.

• Rocky Horror Picture Show, The / Shock Treatment Lip Box | DVD | (22/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £69.99

  The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975): Relive Richard O'Brien's sinfully twisted salute to horror sci-fi B-movies and rock music - a ""sensual daydream to treasure forever"" - starring Tim Curry (in his classic gender-bending performance) Barry Bostwick and Oscar winner Susan Sarandon. Do the ""Time Warp"" and sing ""Hot Patootie"" with Meatloaf again...and again...and again...at home or in a movie theater where it will probably be playing for another 25 years! Shock Treatmen

• FX - Murder By Illusion | DVD | (10/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Dare to be duped! The world of movie make-believe meets the gritty New York crime scene in this clever suspense movie. Bryan Brown and Brian Dennehy command the heart-pounding action in the first-class crackling excitement of F/X. Rollie Tyler (Brown) is the best special effects artist in showbiz. But this time it's not the studios seeking him out it's the Justice Department. His assignment: to stage the assassination of an important underworld witness. And after he pulls the illusion off - making the informant disappear - Rollie is dumbfounded to learn that he's being pinned for the murder! Double-crossed and now hunted by those who hired him Rollie quickly learns that he can trust no one and that the only thing left that can save his life is his unequaled mastery of illusion...

• Flight of The Navigator / Gulliver's Travels / Merlin | DVD | (29/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Gulliver's Travels: See the world with Gulliver... Flight Of The Navigator: A 12 year-old boy is mysteriously abducted by an alien space craft and returns to Earth eight years later still only 12. He now has great navigational powers which enable him to fly his spaceship anywhere he desires. Merlin: In a time long past when magic was fading from the world the wicked sorceress Mab the Queen of Darkness summoned forth a mighty wizard to keep the power of the Old Ways alive. The wizard's name was Merlin. When his heart is touched by love of the beautiful Nimue Merlin turns away from Mab's dark enchantments. In anger Mab allows Merlin to be captured by Lord Vortigern and imprisoned with Nimue.

• The Hunt | DVD | (26/03/2007) from £8.98   |  Saving you £4.01 (30.90%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Bow hunting enthusiast Jack Hamberg his eight-year old stepson Clint and former news cameraman Atticus Monroe are on a mission to make a deer hunting video. All that is needed to complete the video is a ""kill"". Jack and Atticus reluctantly decide to trespass onto a nearby property where there may be more abundant prey. Once inside the restricted area they come upon some frightening realizations. The hunters have become the hunted. Only one comes out alive with the tapes that captured the horrific events that transpired on The Hunt.

• Fear | DVD | (03/09/2001) from £5.99   |  Saving you £-3.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Convicts escape from a prison bus and take the Haden family hostage. Don Haden an ex Vietnam soldier must resurrect his military expertise to save his family from death.