"Actor: Harry Locke"

• The Dirty Harry Collection -- five-disc box set | DVD | (21/01/2002) from £40.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (12.20%)   |  RRP £45.99

  Dirty" Harry Callahan was one of the first screen characters to embody contemporary fears about crime--and the uncompromising response to it that much of the audience would liked to have seen. Clint Eastwood's laconic rogue cop became an instant screen icon; his catchphrases ("Do you feel lucky?", "Make my day") were and still are endlessly quoted, and he even inspired a futuristic comic-strip counterpart in the person of Judge Dredd. Made at the time when the real "Zodiac" serial killer was terrorising San Francisco, the original Dirty Harry struck a frighteningly realistic note in 1971: aside from Eastwood, director Don Siegel's taught, pacey direction, Lalo Schifrin's nervy jazz score and Andrew Robinson's cackling psycopath "Scorpio" all make a strong impact. Such was the film's success that it gave rise to no less than four sequels, none of which are its equal but all of which get by on the charisma of Eastwood's anti-hero, even when he's increasingly trapped by the character's one-dimensional persona. This five-disc box set contains all the "Harry" movies: Dirty Harry (1971); Magnum Force (1973, with David Soul as a vigilante bike cop); The Enforcer (1976, with Tyne "Lacey" Daly as Harry's new and reluctant partner); Sudden Impact (1983, the weakest of the lot costarring Eastwood's then-partner Sondra Locke) and The Dead Pool (1988, a surprisingly upbeat end to the series). --Mark Walker

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

  Barnacle Bill

• The L-Shaped Room (Digitally Restored) | DVD | (27/11/2017) from £7.65   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The L-Shaped Room, adapted by writer-director Bryan Forbes from Lynne Reid Banks' novel, unfolds in a dank, depressing London boarding house. Leslie Caron plays Jane Fosset, a 27-year-old French woman, down on her luck, who takes a room. There are bugs in her mattress. The taps drip. The landlady ("the lovely Doris") is a drunken, malicious busybody. Forbes doesn't paint the English in a flattering light. They're covetous, eccentric and xenophobic. "I never close my door to the nigs," Doris tells Fosset, as if to prove that she is no racist. When Fosset reveals that she's pregnant and unmarried, everybody turns against her. The one real friend Fosset makes is Toby (Tom Bell), an impoverished would-be writer who lives in the room downstairs. She starts an affair with him, but for all his protestations to the contrary, he too turns out to be moralistic and conservative--he can't accept the idea that she is having another man's baby.Forbes' dialogue sometimes grates, the film risks running into a dead end (Fosset is stuck with nowhere to go and no prospects), but this is compelling fare all the same. Cameraman Douglas Slocombe (who went on to shoot Raiders of the Lost Ark) makes the boarding house seem as gloomy and oppressive as a Gothic mansion. Forbes doesn't sentimentalise at all. The London he portrays is nothing like the swinging, hedonistic city shown in later British movies of the 60s. --Geoffrey Macnab

• The L-Shaped Room (Digitally Restored) | Blu Ray | (27/11/2017) from £10.95   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The L-Shaped Room, adapted by writer-director Bryan Forbes from Lynne Reid Banks' novel, unfolds in a dank, depressing London boarding house. Leslie Caron plays Jane Fosset, a 27-year-old French woman, down on her luck, who takes a room. There are bugs in her mattress. The taps drip. The landlady ("the lovely Doris") is a drunken, malicious busybody. Forbes doesn't paint the English in a flattering light. They're covetous, eccentric and xenophobic. "I never close my door to the nigs," Doris tells Fosset, as if to prove that she is no racist. When Fosset reveals that she's pregnant and unmarried, everybody turns against her. The one real friend Fosset makes is Toby (Tom Bell), an impoverished would-be writer who lives in the room downstairs. She starts an affair with him, but for all his protestations to the contrary, he too turns out to be moralistic and conservative--he can't accept the idea that she is having another man's baby.Forbes' dialogue sometimes grates, the film risks running into a dead end (Fosset is stuck with nowhere to go and no prospects), but this is compelling fare all the same. Cameraman Douglas Slocombe (who went on to shoot Raiders of the Lost Ark) makes the boarding house seem as gloomy and oppressive as a Gothic mansion. Forbes doesn't sentimentalise at all. The London he portrays is nothing like the swinging, hedonistic city shown in later British movies of the 60s. --Geoffrey Macnab

• Arabesque | DVD | (05/05/2008) from £12.65   |  Saving you £-2.66 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Gregory Peck stars as hieroglyphics expert Professor David Pollock in this hugely enjoyable tongue-in-cheek espionage-thriller. Sophia Loren stars alongside as the beautiful but suspect Yasmin Asir the lover of Pollock's employer. David Pollock's routine is turned upside down when he's hired to translate an ancient message written in an obscure mysterious text. Soon everyone from a wealthy oil magnate to a foreign government pursue Pollock for his knowledge desperate to uncover the meaning behind the message. Featuring a score by Henri Mancini and a stylish colourful interpretation of London and the culture of the time Arabesque is never less than a hugely enjoyable witty thriller.

• Darling / L-Shaped Room | DVD | (23/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Darling: (FS 4:3) Everyone calls Diana Scott (Julie Christie) 'Darling'. She is that kind of girl. As an ambitious model searching for new experiences she breathes in the sweet smell of success yet forget to exhale. Using a stream of famous and infamous men to sexaully manipulate her way to the top she becomes a prisoner of the jet-set lifestyle she herself conquered. Julie Christie won an Oscar for best Actress. Oscars also went to both Fredric Raphael for Best Original Story & Screenplay and to Julie Harris for her Costume Design The L-Shaped Room: (WS 1.66:1) In a sensitive study of social morals at the dawning of the 1960s sexual revolution a woman faces life in a shabby suburban bed-sit after being jilted and left pregnant. Sharing her desperation with an assortment of neighbours they help her to decide whether to have an abortion...

• Nachts, wenn das Skelett erwacht | DVD | (13/02/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A