"Actor: Hal Baylor"

• Robert Mitchum - Enemy Below / Longest Day / River Of No Return | DVD | (10/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The Laconic tough guy finally gets the box set treatment featuring three of his finest celluloid performances. The Enemy Below (1957): Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens star in this gripping World War II drama about an American destroyer and a German U-boat stalking each other at sea. As both men try to out-think and out-manouevre each other the chase becomes a deadly chess game in which any mistake can bring instant defeat and death. Winner of the 1957 Academy Award for Be

• The Grissom Gang | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The Grissom Gang is director Robert Aldrich's take on British author James Hadley Chase's once-notorious novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish, which was itself a synthesis of the plot of William Faulkner's Sanctuary with the lurid exposes of the criminal rampage of Arizona Clark "Ma" Barker and her alleged criminal brood. Aldrich sticks surprisingly close to Chase's plot, although he considerably deepens all the characterisations and cuts through the prurient sex sensation to create a surprisingly moving and complicated relationship between kidnapped heiress Barbara Blandish (Kim Darby) and the homicidally psychopathic but also childish Slim Grissom (Scott Wilson), the most feared member of the gang headed by the grotesquely horrible Ma (Irene Dailey). Barbara is abducted after a jewel heist gone wrong by a trio of inept small-timers, who are swiftly rubbed out by the more organised Grissom mob, and though Ma insists that after the girl's father has come across with the million-dollar ransom she will be mercilessly put down, Slim becomes enchanted with the girl, who eventually becomes his lover. In the book, the girl was drugged and raped, but here we get a delicate, creepy shifting of power to the point when Miss Blandish can browbeat her fearsome captor into mixing her a perfect martini, and the new attachment between crook and captive creates a rift with the rest of the gang that inevitably pays off in various hails of machine gunfire as the plan falls apart and the authorities close in. Aldrich manages the kind of claustrophobic black comedy games of terror and flirtation he perfected in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but attacks the rat-tat-tat tommy gun scenes with action skills honed on The Dirty Dozen. Most of these films trusted costumes, cars and music to evoke the 1920s, but screenwriter Leon Griffiths takes care with period slang and the supporting cast have a real Depression era Warner Brothers feel, with Connie Stevens as a dumb but ferocious blonde showgirl, Tony Musante as the slick-haired official ladykiller in the gang and Robert Lansing as an impeccably down-at-heel but compassionate private detective. On the DVD: The advertised extras--notes, trivia and photo gallery--are disappointingly thin, but the 16:9 letterboxed print is almost flawless, with lovely pastels for the clothes and sets and bright scarlet for the many bursts of blood. --Kim Newman

• River Of No Return | DVD | (22/05/2006) from £18.72   |  Saving you £-5.73 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Recently widowed Matt Calder (Robert Mitchum) and his young son begin a new life in the breathtaking rugged Northwest wilderness where Matt is robbed and beaten by ruthless gambler Harry Weston (Rory Calhoun). When Weston's beautiful fiance (Marilyn Monroe) then decides to nurse Calder back to health the insanely jealous Weston risks all their lives by taking them on a ride down a treacherous river...

• A Boy And His Dog | DVD | (07/02/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The award winning true story of a popular young girl in a small German town who entered a school essay during the 1970's writing on what her town did during World War II. What she finds to her surprise and dismay is that the Catholic clergy and businessmen who she was raised to respect and admire and who she fervently believed defied the Nazi's did just the opposite. And after deciding to write the book on the subject the more she digs the more she is thwarted and actually threatened physically by rock throwing and bombs... Winner of a 1990 BAFTA award for Best Film In A Foreign Language available for the first time on DVD!

• The Burning Hills | DVD | (14/09/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A