"Actor: David Spenser"

• The Prince And The Showgirl | DVD | (07/05/2001) from £6.33   |  Saving you £7.66 (121.01%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) was Marilyn Monroe's only British-made film and scores highly for curiosity value. There's something rather outrageous about this iconic American star playing a second-rate hoofer living in a theatrical boarding house in Brixton. Monroe herself is predictably good and touching as Elsie Marina, plucked from the chorus to entertain the Regent of Carpathia for the evening and ultimately smoothing his rough edges. There is, however, a rather uphill feeling all the way. The making of the movie was by all accounts a troubled experience for everybody concerned. Monroe, increasingly unreliable and exasperating, had an unsympathetic director in Laurence Olivier, also playing the Regent Charles, who hardly had the patience for a star of her mercurial talents with her own ideas of professional behaviour. His own performance as the Balkan royal is hammy and mannered and there isn't even a damp squib of sexual chemistry between them. Terence Rattigan's script, based on his successful play, is far too wordy and stage-bound. But somehow Monroe effervesces through all this adversity, aided considerably by British character actor Richard Wattis and the great Sybil Thorndyke, who became her ally during the difficult filming. Not vintage Marilyn but fascinating all the same, and she looks fantastic. On the DVD: The Prince and the Showgirl is presented in 4:3 with an occasionally muffled, apparently mono, soundtrack, giving this DVD a rather dusty quality which is in keeping with the vintage British 1950s production values. Extras include a cast list, original trailer and newsreel footage of the announcement that Marilyn was to make the film with Olivier, referred to at that stage as The Sleeping Prince. --Piers Ford

• The Earth Dies Screaming | Blu Ray | (26/03/2018) from £9.73   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Their target: Humanity. Their mission: Total Annihilation! The world has just been decimated by an unstoppable, merciless army of killer robots, and millions of innocent souls have been wiped out! Only a handful of survivors have managed to escape the deadly alien apocalypse, and they must endure a non-stop struggle to save themselves from destruction, and somehow find a way to defeat the marauding death machines... before the entire human race becomes extinct! Legendary Hammer director Terence Fisher (Horror of Dracula) directed this Sci-Fi thriller written by Harry Spalding (Chosen Survivors) under the pseudonym Henry Cross and starring Willard Parker, Virginia Field, Dennis Price and Thorley Walters.