"Actor: Frederick Piper"

• Jamaica Inn | DVD | (11/06/2007) from £4.49   |  Saving you £5.50 (122.49%)   |  RRP £9.99

  It's generally acknowledged that the Master of Suspense disliked costume dramas and Jamaica Inn--a rip-roaring melodrama drawn from a Daphne du Maurier pot-boiler, set in 1820s Cornwall--is about as costumed as they come. So what was he doing directing it? Killing time, essentially. In 1939 Hitchcock was due to leave Britain for Hollywood, but delays Stateside left him with time on his hands. Never one to sit idle, he agreed to make one picture for Mayflower Productions, a new outfit formed by actor Charles Laughton and émigré German producer Erich Pommer. An innocent young orphan (the 19-year-old Maureen O'Hara in her first starring role) arrives at her uncle's remote Cornish inn to find it a den of reprobates given to smuggling, wrecking and gross overacting. They're all out-hammed, though, by Laughton at his most corseted and outrageously self-indulgent as the local squire to whom Maureen runs for help. Since his star was also the co-producer, Hitch couldn't do much with the temperamental actor. He contented himself with adding a few characteristic touches--including a spot of bondage (always a Hitchcock favourite), and the chief villain's final spectacular plunge from a high place--and slyly sending up the melodramatic absurdities of the plot. Jamaica Inn hardly stands high in the Master's canon, but it trundles along divertingly enough. Hitchcock fanatics will have fun comparing it with his two subsequent--and far more accomplished--Du Maurier adaptations, Rebecca and The Birds. --Philip Kemp

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

  Though he gets solo above-the-title billing, Will Hay was no more a solo comedian than Groucho Marx--and Oh, Mr Porter!, one of his finest vehicles, finds him congenially teamed with sidekicks Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt in one of the British cinema's greatest comedy gangs. Hay's William Porter, an inept railway worker, is shunted off to the dead-end job of stationmaster in Buggleskelly, Northern Ireland, arriving as the latest in a long line of doomed souls who have left their presentation clocks on the mantelpiece of the dilapidated office. The delight of the film is in the interplay between Hay and Marriott, the single-toothed dotty old-timer, and Moffatt, the chubby smart kid, as they fail the most basic requirements of their jobs but come up trumps when investigating the ghost of One-Eyed Joe and his haunted mill, discovering a branch line being used by cross-border gun-smugglers who are defeated in a spirited final chase. There's some slapstick with an escape from the mill in a high wind and the last ride of the venerable locomotive Gladstone, but Hay works best with character comedy, pompously reprimanding his subordinates for dodges he proceeds to pull himself, reacting to every ominous line with a perfect double-take and blithely surviving the chaos his character causes wherever he goes. --Kim Newman

• Barnacle Bill | DVD | (02/02/2009) from £10.35   |  Saving you £5.64 (54.49%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Barnacle Bill

• Escape Route | DVD | (10/02/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Cat-and-mouse spy thriller from 1952 that unites FBI man George Raft with MI5 woman Sally Gray on the trail of an international kidnapping ring. Top nuclear scientists around the world have been mysteriously disappearing. When aircraft engineer Steve Rossi (George Raft) vanishes at the airport shortly after landing in London, Scotland Yard are alerted. In fact Rossi has disappeared intentionally. He's an undercover FBI agent assigned to track down the brains behind an international kidnappi...

• Hue And Cry (Ealing) *Digitally Restored | DVD | (29/06/2015) from £7.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (125.16%)   |  RRP £17.99

  HUE AND CRY is rightly acknowledged as something of a milestone in British cinema – being considered the first of the Ealing comedies – a pulsating and exuberant piece of filmmaking and one of the most authentic film portrayals of youthful adventure and comic book fantasy.

• Ealing Comedy DVD Collection - Hue and Cry/Passport to Pimlico/The Titfield Thunderbolt | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £21.36   |  Saving you £13.63 (63.81%)   |  RRP £34.99

  This second collection of Ealing Comedy, while not quite as important a reissue as the first box, is nonetheless essential viewing for all aficionados of classic English film. In Passport to Pimlico a group of Londoners demonstrate, paradoxically, their Englishness by eccentrically choosing the Burgundian citizenship granted them by a rediscovered medieval charter. Similarly, in The Titfield Thunderbolt neighbours outraged by the closing of their local branch line steal an antique locomotive from the museum and run their own railway. A similar sense of taking charge of your own life fills Hue and Cry as a group of boys, infuriated that crooks have been using their favourite comic to send messages, summon scores of others by radio to help them track down and capture the gang. There are shared themes here, a shared sense of the importance of eccentricity and imagination to a healthy society as well as excellent ensemble acting from casts that include Stanley Holloway, Margaret Rutherford and Sid James. The box is filled out with a television documentary about the history of Ealing Studios. It covers its early silent days, the golden age that produced the classic comedies and such important films as The Cruel Sea, its time as a BBC studio and its possible renaissance under new management. On the DVD: Ealing Comedy presents the three films and the documentary in 1.33:1 (i.e., 4:3), and has excellent mono sound that does full justice to both dialogue and scores. The extra features include introductions to the four films in the first box set by such luminaries as Terry Gilliam and Martin Scorsese as well as DVD-ROM files of the original brochures for all seven films. --Roz Kaveney

• The Blue Lamp | DVD | (21/08/2006) from £12.97   |  Saving you £0.02 (0.15%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The unending battle of the city streets. When PC George Dixon is shot whilst on duty the Paddington Green police investigate the West London underworld to bring the culprit to justice...

• Hue And Cry (Ealing) *Digitally Restored | Blu Ray | (29/06/2015) from £10.93   |  Saving you £12.06 (110.34%)   |  RRP £22.99

  HUE AND CRY is rightly acknowledged as something of a milestone in British cinema – being considered the first of the Ealing comedies – a pulsating and exuberant piece of filmmaking and one of the most authentic film portrayals of youthful adventure and comic book fantasy.

• Nine Men | DVD | (11/01/2010) from £10.79   |  Saving you £5.20 (48.19%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The North Africa campaign. When their lorry is destroyed by enemy aircraft nine soldiers are forced to make a stand in an abandoned desert hut against almost overwhelming Italian forces.

• Hue And Cry | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £20.98   |  Saving you £-7.99 (-61.50%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A group of criminals use a boy's paper as a means of messages and information. This ploy is discovered by a group of East End boys who take exception to the crooks use of their favourite read! This film the first ""Ealing Comedy"" features a strong cast and a memorable climax with the criminals being chased by thousands of young boys through the London Docklands.

• Brandy For The Parson | DVD | (07/04/2008) from £13.48   |  Saving you £-3.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Long Lost Comedy Classics is a collection of films from a golden age of British Cinema remembered for timeless stars and some unique movies that have stood the test of time. So why not take a trip down memory lane and see how cinema used to be? Bill Harper (James Donald) and Petronilla Brand (Jean Lodge) a young couple on a yachting holiday together become involved with Tony Rackham (Kenneth More) who is smuggling brandy from France to a respectable London wine merchants. Through various mishaps Bill and Petronilla find themselves personally responsible for transporting the brandy kegs to London whilst being pursued by Customs officials...

• Ealing Studios Boxset 2 | DVD | (16/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  A superb box set featuring 4 golden Ealing classics. Includes: 1. The Lavender Hill Mob (Dir. Charles Crichton 1951) 2. Titfield Thunderbolt (Dir. Charles Crichton 1953) 3. Hue & Cry (Dir. Charles Crichton 1947) 4. Dead of Night (Dirs. Alberto Cavalcanti & Charles Crichton 1945)

• Hue And Cry | DVD | (21/06/2004) from £20.87   |  Saving you £-0.88 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A group of criminals use a boy's paper as a means of messages and information. This ploy is discovered by a group of East End boys who take exception to the crooks use of their favourite read! This film the first Ealing Comedy features a strong cast and a memorable climax with the criminals being chased by thousands of young boys through the London Docklands.

• Hunted | DVD | (17/01/2011) from £21.58   |  Saving you £-5.59 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When orphan Robbie (John Whitely) accidentally starts a small fire at his adoptive parents house, fearing he will get in trouble he runs away into the city of London where he stumbles upon a derelict bombed-out building. While taking shelter at the building he bumps into a man, Chris Lloyd (Dick Bogarde), who is hiding the body of a dead man, who he has just murdered for having an affair with his wife. Now the boy is the only witness to this crime so Chris takes the boy as his hostage and flees from the law. The two continue to flee from the law and from Robbie’s parents and build a close bond in the meantime.

• The Man Who Knew Too Much | DVD | (24/05/2004) from £8.38   |  Saving you £-2.39 (-39.90%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Alfred Hitchcock himself called this 1934 British edition of his famous kidnapping story "the work of a talented amateur", while his 1956 Hollywood remake was the consummate act of a professional director. Be that as it may, this earlier movie still has its intense admirers who prefer it over the Jimmy Stewart--Doris Day version, and for some sound reasons. Tighter, wittier, more visually outrageous (back-screen projections of Swiss mountains, a whirly-facsimile of a fainting spell), the film even has a female protagonist (Edna Best in the mom part) unafraid to go after the bad guys herself with a gun. (Did Doris Day do that that? Uh-uh.) While the 1956 film has an intriguing undercurrent of unspoken tensions in nuclear family politics, the 1934 original has a crisp air of British optimism glummed up a bit when a married couple (Best and Leslie Banks) witness the murder of a spy and discover their daughter stolen away by the culprits. The chase leads to London and ultimately to the site of one of Hitch's most extraordinary pieces of suspense (though on this count, it must be said, the later version is superior). Take away distracting comparisons to the remake, and this Man Who Knew Too Much is a milestone in Hitchcock's early career. Peter Lorre makes his British debut as a scarred, scary villain. --Tom Keogh