"Actor: Diana Browne"

• Theatre Of Blood | DVD | (21/10/2002) from £14.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A brilliant, bizarre 1973 comedy-horror, Theatre of Blood pitches somewhere between a Hammer horror and the Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. Vincent Price stars as the hammy, self-important and thoroughly psychotic Edward Lionheart, a veteran thespian who refuses to play anything other than Shakespeare. Piqued by a circle of critics, whom he feels were disrespectful in their notices and denied him his rightful Best Actor of the Year Award, he decides to murder them one by one in parodies of some of Shakespeare's grislier scenes. He's aided by his daughter Edwina (played by Diana Rigg, often in fake moustache and male drag) and a ghoulish company of dosshouse zombies. Some of the murders are quite extraordinarily gruesome, despite their camp, comedic overtones. Arthur Lowe's henpecked critic has his head sawn off while asleep (in a parody of Cymbeline) and Robert Morley's plumply effete dandy is force-fed a pie made from his beloved poodles, choking him to death (cf Titus Andronicus). Jack Hawkins and Michael Horden also meet unpleasant ends. Theatre of Blood is a genuine and underrated oddity in the annals of British cinema and especially uncomfortable for those who happen to be in the reviewing trade. On the DVD: Theatre of Blood on disc is not a triumph of digital enhancement, with sound blemishes unamended and hazy, faded visuals in places. The only extra is the original trailer. --David Stubbs

• Basket Case | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  Duane Bradley’s brother is very small very twisted very mad and he lives in a basket… until night comes! After a difficult birth which their mother didn’t survive Duane was born with a monstrously deformed conjoined twin Belial attached to his side. Embittered by the death of his wife and unable to accept his hideous son the boys’ father orders the twins to be separated surgically. Surviving the operation but deeply resentful of his enforced removal from his brother’s side Belial plans to get even with his father and the doctors responsible. Duane normal-looking but sympathetic to his brother’s plight moves to New York carrying with him a large basket in which his grotesque twin hides. Together they seek the surgeons responsible for their violent separation and Belial wreaks his gruesomely bloody revenge…

• Psycho Collection 1-3 | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Psycho: The classic Hitchcock thriller involving a series of murders at a lonely motel where the deaths are attributed to the mother of the young owner. (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock 1960) (Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono - English Spanish French) Psycho 2: Norman Bates is coming home after spending 22 years in a mental institution. He plans to renovate the old Bates Motel the place where his first murders occurred... (Dir. Richard Franklin 1983) (Dolby Digital 5.1 - English French German ; Dolby Digital 2.0 - Italian Spanish) Psycho 3: The Bates Motel is again the site of some nasty doings as the rehabilitated Norman who has installed a new ice machine attempts to put his life back together. But old habits die hard... (Dir. Anthony Perkins 1986) (Dolby Digital 5.1 - English French Italian ; Dolby Digital 2.0 - German Spanish)