"Actor: David Buck"

• Will Hay - Good Morning Boys / Hey! Hey! USA | DVD | (11/08/2003) from £6.54   |  Saving you £6.45 (49.70%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In 1937's Good Morning Boys Will Hay plays the pompous but ill-qualified headmaster of St Michael's, Dr Benjamin Twist, who befuddles his class with meaningless mathematical equations while they set their wits to constructing booby traps for him. However, when his boys pass an inter-schools examination, having seen the French paper in advance, they're invited by the French educational authorities to Paris and become involved in a plot to steal the Mona Lisa. Although it is at times too silly plot-wise even for those with a high endurance for farce, Good Morning, Boys is another fine showcase for Hay to display his well-honed repertoire of tics, double-takes and blathering half-sense. In Hey! Hey! USA!, a 1938 comedy intended to boost Hay's stock in America, he again plays Dr Twist who becomes tutor to millionaire's son Bernie Schulz aboard an Atlantic liner. Predictably the boy knows more about all aspects of history than Hay, having to remind him that Britain lost in the War of Independence against America. "Yes, but we sent our second eleven," Hay reminds him, "And we were playing away." Further capers ensue when two rival gangs attempt to capture the precocious lad, with his parents dispatching Hay to pass on the ransom money. Hey! Hey! USA!has its moments, but despite the presence of old Laurel and Hardy sidekicks Edgar Kennedy (as a dim-witted gangster) and Charlie Hall, this was too leaky a comedic vessel to transport Hay's peculiarly British UK success across the Atlantic. On the DVD: Good Morning Boys and Hey! Hey! USA! are presented on disc well restored from their original 1930s film stock, give or take the odd crackle. There are no extras except scene index. --David Stubbs

• The Lord of the Rings -- Limited Edition Box Set | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is a bold, colourful, ambitious failure. Severely truncated, this two-hour version tackles only about half the story, climaxing with the battle of Helm's Deep and leaving poor Frodo and Sam still stuck on the borders of Mordor with Gollum. Allegedly, the director ran out of money and was unable to complete the project. As far as the film does go, however, it is a generally successful attempt at rendering Tolkien's landscapes of the imagination. Bakshi's animation uses a blend of conventional drawing and rotoscoped (traced) animated movements from live-action footage. The latter is at least in part a money-saving device, but it does succeed in lending some depth and a sense of otherworldly menace to the Black Riders and hordes of Orcs: Frodo's encounter at the ford of Rivendell, for example, is one of the film's best scenes thanks to this mixture of animation techniques. Backdrops are detailed and well conceived, and all the main characters are strongly drawn. Among a good cast, John Hurt (Aragorn) and C3PO himself, Anthony Daniels (Legolas), provide sterling voice characterisation, while Peter Woodthorpe gives what is surely the definitive Gollum (he revived his portrayal a couple of years later for BBC Radio's exhaustive 13-hour dramatisation). The film's other outstanding virtue is avant-garde composer Leonard Rosenman's magnificent score in which chaotic musical fragments gradually coalesce to produce the triumphant march theme that closes the picture. None of which makes up for the incompleteness of the movie, nor the severe abridging of the story actually filmed. Add to that some oddities--such as intermittently referring to Saruman as "Aruman"--and the final verdict must be that this is a brave yet ultimately unsatisfying work, noteworthy as the first attempt at transferring Tolkien to the big screen but one whose virtues are overshadowed by incompleteness. --Mark Walker

• Straight Into Darkness | DVD | (01/12/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  When two young American GIs desert their platoon in the final days of World War II they will find themselves struggling against all odds to stay alive. Their strange and violent journey will bring them together with a band of orphans who are expertly trained killing machines in an attempt to defeat a Nazi battalion. With the perfect combination of horror and action Straight Into Darkness is a haunting and powerful war film that is unforgettable.

• Waxwork | DVD | (17/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In Waxwork a waxwork museum appears overnight in an American small town and sinister showman David Warner invites a group of typical teens to a midnight party. However, as expected, the place is home to nasty secrets, and the blundering kids find themselves transported via the exhibits into the presence of "the 18 most evil men in history". What this means is that the film gets to trot out gory vignettes featuring such horror staples as Count Dracula (played inaptly with designer stubble and a Clint croak by ex-Tarzan Miles O'Keefe), the Marquis de Sade, an anonymous werewolf with floppy bunny ears (John Rhys-Davies in human form) and the Mummy. Nerdy hero Zach Galligan appeals to wheelchair-bound monster fighter Patrick MacNee for help. Waxwork is strictly a film buff's movie--with Warner and MacNee turning in knowingly camp performances, and references to everything from Crimes of Passion to Little Shop of Horrors cluttering up its very straggly story line. It's not without ragged charms, though the tone veers between comic and sick (the de Sade scene, although inexplicit, features some lurid dialogue) more or less at random. The effects are likewise variable, and in any case rather fudged by direction, which frequently fails to point up the gags properly. It winds up with a scrappy Blazing Saddles-style fight between the forces of Good and a whole pack of monsters, and the budget runs out before the climactic burning-down-the-waxworks scene. The episodic approach echoes the old Amicus omnibus horrors (Dr Terror's House of Horrors, The House that Dripped Blood etc.), and various cameos allow director Anthony Hickox to parody/emulate the styles of Hammer films, Night of the Living Dead and Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. On the DVD: It's a nice-looking and sounding print, but fullscreen format. The only extras are filmographies taken from the IMDB and the trailer.--Kim Newman

• A Taste of Excitement | DVD | (24/01/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A man has been killed on the Dover/Boulogne car ferry. What is the connection between him and the attempts being made to kill Jane Kerrell (Eve Renzi) a young girl in her early twenties? As she speeds through the French countryside to the South of France several attempts are made on her life as she is deliberately forced off the road by another car. But when she reports these attempts the local Cap Ferrat Police Inspector and the sinister psychiatrist Dr. Forla (George Pravda) believe these attempts are in her imagination and Dr Forla concludes that Jane is mentally disturbed. At her wits end Jane finds an ally in the young English painter Paul Hedley (David Buck) who finally believes her life is in danger following an attempt to murder him. When Inspector Malling of Scotland Yard (Peter Vaughan) and Mr. Breese (Francis Matthews) arrive in Cap Ferrat trying to uncover the connection between Jane and the murdered man on the ferry this thrilling puzzle of international intrigue begins to unravel against the backdrop of the French Riviera

• They Live | Blu Ray | (22/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  They Live Blu-Ray Obey. Submit. Consume. Watch TV. Do not question authority. Money is your god. No independent thought. No Imagination. They live. We sleep.Professional WWF wrestler ?Rowdy? Roddy Powder plays John Nada, a homeless, unemployed construction worker who discovers a pair of sunglasses that when worn suddenly reveal a world run by upwardly mobile, capitalist, yuppie aliens intent on keeping the human race sedate and brainwashed with subliminal messages fed through advertising and the media. Luckily for us all John Nada wants to do now is chew gum and kick ass, and he?s all out of gum.They Live is one of John Carpenters most accomplished films. An action packed, satirical, sci-fi adventure and socio-cultural critique on the decline of spiritual values and the rise of consumerism within modern society. It also include one of the longest fist fights in the history of cinema.

• Moskito-Bomber greifen an | DVD | (26/08/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Abbott And Costello - Laugh-A-Thon | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Abbott & Costello Classic Comedies three-disc collector's set consists of oddments from the latter days of their career that have fallen into public domain; which means you don't get their best routines or classiest productions, and indeed find the double act doing fairly tired schtick as Costello is chubbily chicken-hearted and Abbott grumpily money-grubbing. Africa Screams is a 1949 safari parody, with Costello running away yelping from sundry alligators, gorillas (including a Kong-sized giant), cannibals ("Chief have sweet tooth for little fat man") and lions amid backlot jungles as Abbott competes with stock villains for a fortune in diamonds. Jack and the Beanstalk, from 1952, finds the duo attempting to sell themselves as children's entertainers in a Wizard of Oz-influenced fairytale book-ended by sepia modern-day segments. The magical story unfolds in wonderfully gruesome cheap colour with some of the worst musical numbers ever committed to film ("he's perpendicular-la-la") as Jack the Clod (Costello) and Mr Dinkelpuss the Butcher (Abbott) climb the beanstalk and plod around the Giant's lair until the story runs out. Possibly the most interesting item is the third disc, which offers an episode of the Colgate Comedy Hour (aka The Abbott and Costello Show) from the 1950s. It shows the pair doing live routines closer to their original vaudeville act than their film roles (including an amazingly cruel bit in which Abbott slaps Costello every time he says the word "tin"). A loose plot about Latin American intrigue, with Lou hired to stand in for an assassination target "El Presidente", makes room for speciality guest stars ranging from child xylophonist Baby Mistin to four starlets (including Jane Russell and Rhonda Fleming) harmonising on a "Happy Easter" medley. Best of all, and now funnier than the comedy, are original hard-sell ads for household products like "Ajax, the foaming action cleanser" and "Halo, the shampoo that glorifies your hair". --Kim Newman

• SEAL Team: Season 3 | DVD | (16/11/2020) from £14.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Bravo is back and the whole team is reunited! Season Three of SEAL TEAM begins with Jason Hayes (David Boreanaz) leading the team on a mission in Serbia, but they question Clay's (Max Thieriot) readiness after his injuries last year. Also, Davis (Toni Trucks) will struggle with the pressure of her new job as the team's Intel Officer. SPECIAL FEATURES WELCOME TO SERBIA SHIFTING GEARS LIGHTS, CAMERA, EXECUTE WORLDS APART