Awakening: Peter Davison (1984) The Tardis has brought the Doctor Tegan and Turlough to the English country village of Little Hodcombe in 1984 where an alien war machine the Malus is affecting its inhabitants. A re-enactment of a civil war battle becomes dangerously real as the Malus gather sufficient psychic energy to re-awake. The Gunfighters: Starring William Hartnell (1966) The Tardis arrives in the town of Tombstone in the Wild West and the Doctor having hurt a touch on one of Cyril's sweets decides he must visit a dentist. The local dentist is Doc Holliday currently engaged in a feud with the Clanton family. Lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson are meanwhile doing their best to keep the peace.
Originally intended as a training film this war story (based on a screenplay by Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov) tells of the light-hearted tomfoolery which soon gives way to the grim realities of life on the most dangerous battlegrounds of the Second World War...
Joe 'Tom' Yateley is an ex-convict. Trying to leave his past behind he decides to starts working for the Hawlett Trucking company which transports gravel. It's an aggressive company where speed is everything. Doing too few runs in a day? You're out. Red is the most experienced trucker he can do 18 runs in a day. Tom soon makes friends with Lucy the secretary and Gino a driver. But the record of Red intrigues him and he wants to break it. Gino advises against it but he helps Tom when he wants to go through with it. Soon trouble begins when Red and the other drivers form an united front against Tom. Just when Tom has enough and decides to pack his bags Lucy tells him Gino had a terrible accident. She also tells about the corruption of Hawlett Trucking...
The Holly And The Ivy
Titles Comprise: 1. Carry On Sergeant: Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey are the prankish misfits who become the hilarious bane of Army Officers existence when he makes a bet he will turn them into 'Star Squad' Award soldiers - or bust! 2. Carry On Teacher: When a well-loved headmaster decides to retire his scheming pupils have other ideas. The cunning boys unleash a campaign of practical jokes armed with gin itching power and bombs! No one is safe from the classroom havoc in this Carry On starring all the regulars including the immortal Kenneth Williams Charles Hawtrey Hattie Jacques Kenneth Connor and Joan Sims. 3. Carry On Nurse: The Carry On team have picked up their stethoscopes and bed pans for a strong dose of hospital humour. Hattie Jacques is the infamous matron doing battle with the patients in the second of the world famous Carry On series. 4. Carry On Constable: Police Sergeant Wilkins (Sid James in his Carry On debut) has a new batch of inept recruits on his hands whose idea of covert surveillance involves dressing up in drag.
The Army Game was a sitcom giant of its time and one of ITV's most popular shows. Created by Sid Colin it pre-dated the more famous Dad's Army by a number of years. A group of men serving out time as conscripts in the army are determined to dodge duty and derive maximum fun out of a situation they'd rather not be in. Because WWII was only 12 years passed and national service was very much a reality many viewers found they could identify with the characters and the situation th
Will Any Gentleman
The Doctor (William Hartnell) stars alongside his travel companions Vicki (Maureen O'Brien) and Steven (Peter Purves) which sees the TARDIS landing on a planet on the verge of total annihilation as it drifts too close to the three suns which its orbits. Trapped on the planet with them are the Drahvins, a race of warrior women, and the reptilian Rills. The Drahvins want to steal the Rill spaceship to escape the planet's death throes, and enlist the Doctor's help, which he is forced to give when Maaga, the cunning Drahvin leader, keeps first Vicki and then later Steven as her hostage. Even though the Doctor is determined to broker a peace deal between the two sides in this conflict and help everyone escape safely, Maaga doesn't trust him, or the Rills... The two disc release gives fans the opportunity to enjoy the four new animated episodes of Galaxy 4, in either colour or black and white. The release will also include: Remastered Surviving Original Episode 3 Remastered Surviving Clip from Episode 1 Telesnap Reconstructions of Episodes 1, 2 and 4. Audio Commentaries Making Of Documentary Finding Galaxy 4 Documentary Photo Gallery Production Subtitles
With a remarkable cast headlined by Ian Carmichael, Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price and Terry Thomas, WWII army comedy Private's Progress was one of the major British hits of 1956. Carmichael is Stanley Windrush, a naïve young soldier who during training falls in with the streetwise Private Cox (Attenborough). Windrush's uncle is the even more ambitiously corrupt Colonel Tracepurcel (Price), who plans to divert the war effort to liberate art treasures already looted by the Germans. The first half of the film is quite pedestrian, though the pace picks up considerably once the heist gets underway, and the cheery tone masks a really rather dark and cynical heart. Carmichael's innocent abroad quickly wears thin, but Attenborough and Price steal the film, as well as the paintings, with typically excellent turns. With a nod in the direction of Ealing's The Ladykillers (1955) the film also anticipates the attitudes of both The League of Gentlemen (1959) and Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22 (1961), though lacks the latter's greater sophistication. The cast also contains such British stalwarts as William Hartnell, Peter Jones, Ian Bannen, John Le Mesurier, Christopher Lee and David Lodge, and was sufficiently popular to reunite all the major players for the superior sequel, I'm Alright Jack (1959). On the DVD: Private's Progress is presented in black and white at 4:3 Academy ratio, though the film appears to have been shot full frame and then unmasked for home viewing so there is more top and bottom to the images than at the cinema. The print used shows constant minor damage and is quite grainy, though no more than expected for a low-budget film of the time. The mono sound is average and unremarkable, and there are no special features. --Gary S Dalkin
Hard to imagine now but long before Richard Attenborough became Lord Dickie, benevolent patriarch of British moviedom, he specialised in playing weaselly little thugs and punks. Brighton Rock, adapted from Graham Greene's classic novel, offered him one of his best early roles as Pinkie, juvenile leader of a seedy gang of racetrack crooks in the Sussex seaside town. When it seems an innocent young waitress may know too much about one of their killings, Pinkie decides to keep her quiet by marrying her. But in Greene's world of guilt-ridden Catholicism and inexorable doom, it was never going to be that easy. Is the famous twist ending a cop-out? That depends just how much irony you read into it. But the Brighton atmosphere, all tawdry gaiety shot through with a crackling undercurrent of fear, is so vivid you can smell it. Made with a cool, dispassionate eye by the Boulting Brothers (before they turned jokey with the likes of I'm Alright Jack, for instance) and superbly shot by Harry Waxman, this is one of Britain's few great contributions to the noir thriller cycle. Young Dickie, twitchy, vicious and terrified, is a revelation--and don't miss William Hartnell, the original Dr Who, as his cynical sidekick. --Philip Kemp
Roy Boulton directs this adaptation of Graham Greene's novel. 16-year-old gangster Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough) uses young waitress Rose Brown (Carol Marsh) as an alibi after commiting a murder at the race track. Worried that she will give him away Pinkie marries Rose. However his subsequent attempts to drive her to the point of suicide do not go according to plan.
Glynis Johns heads an impeccable cast in this sparkling comedy feature of 1955. Charting the romantic complications of a kind-hearted young woman who simply cannot resist an underdog Josephine and Men is adapted by BAFTA-Award winning screenwriter and author Nigel Balchin from his own story and presented here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. Josephine Luton is about to be married to her fiancé wealthy businessman Alan Hartley. All this looks set to change however when she falls for Alan's friend struggling playwright David Hewer; the trouble is that Josephine's ever-loving and over-sympathetic nature leads her to switch from needful men to even more needful men - and David most clearly falls into the latter category. But for just how long is he like to remain the underdog? Special Features: Full-frame version of main feature Original Theatrical Trailer Image Gallery Original Promotional PDF
The elegant and respectable facade of Brighton hides a sinister underworld ruled by intimidation and terror. Richard Attenborough stars as Pinkie a ruthless and sadistic young criminal whose trail of killings and double crossings lead to his eventual downfall when savage justice is finally meted out in a thrilling and memorable climax...
This Boxset Contains The Following Films: The Ship That Died of ShameShip 1087 and her crew are proud to make a sterling contribution to the coastal defences during the war but post-war austerity brings lean years for all. Illicit cross-channel smuggling seems like an attractive and lucrative prospect. But from the apparently harmless ferrying of duty-free wine the crew gradually descend into altogether deeper waters culminating in the carriage of a mysterious fugitive who turns out to be a convicted child-killer. Brighton Rock The elegant and respectable facade of Brighton hides a sinister underworld ruled by intimidation and terror. Richard Attenborough stars as Pinkie a ruthless and sadistic young criminal whose trail of killings and double crossings lead to his eventual downfall when savage justice is finally meted out in a thrilling and memorable climax. Dunkirk An easygoing British Corporal (John Mills) in France finds himself responsible for the lives of his men when their officer is killed. He has to get them back to Britain somehow. Meanwhile British civilians are being dragged into the war with Operation Dynamo the scheme to get the French and British forces back from the Dunkirk beaches. Some come forward to help others are less willing. The Man UpstairsThe mental breakdown of a guilt-ridden man provides the drama in this fascinating psychological profile that stars Richard Attenborough as a scientist who can't live with himself after he accidentally kills the brother of his fiancee. In order to escape the pain he changes his name and begins living in a ramshackle Victorian boarding house where he slowly begins losing his mind. The Angry Silence Guy Green's film represented the beginning of a lack of solidarity in unions as Tom Curtis (Richard Attenborough) with wife Anna (Pier Angeli) expecting a child refuses to join an unofficial strike in his machine shop and becomes the victim of assaults both mental and physical. Acclaimed as one of the most moving and powerful films ever made in Britain The Angry Silence won unprecedented acclaim. Within a week of its opening it had become the most talked-about film in the country and even today is still deemed controversial for its cynical depiction of organised labour as a thuggish mindless collective.
Prolific British filmmaker Lindsay Anderson weaves this small, evocative tale of young life at the crossroads in early 1960s Northern England. A rough, sullen young man (Richard Harris) working in the local coal mines begins to make a name for himself as a star rugby player, but even as he begins to fall in love he cannot escape the harsh realities of the bleak life around him. The rugby sequences in the film are striking, but no more so than the depiction of downtrodden people living in the shadow of industry and corruption that too often crushes their spirit. Harris in one of his first roles, is remarkably effective as an unlikeable but sympathetic figure trying against hope to savour the small joys life has to offer, and the film also features the debut of renowned actress Glenda Jackson. One of a series of working-class, character-driven British imports, This Sporting Life is one of the best on the field. --Robert Lane
A peaceful seaside village is shocked by a sudden and vicious double murder. The murdered men are a petty thief and a taxi driver. A beautiful young actress informs the police that she saw the dead man's taxi and the man who stood beside it. The newspaper reports that she is potentially able to identify the killer and although the police provide her with protection, the 'Dark Man' strikes and leaves her for dead. The police decide to transfer her to a secret location but is it secret enough to protect her from him?
Hell Drivers sees James Bond (Sean Connery), Doctor Who (William Hartnell), one of the men from UNCLE (David McCallum), the Prisoner (Patrick McGoohan) and a Professional (Gordon Jackson), all supporting Stanley Baker in this hard-as-nails British action picture realistically set in a bleak late-1950s England. Baker plays Tom Yately, an ex-con who takes the only job he can get--truck driving at breakneck speeds for a corrupt manager (Hartnell) and brutal foreman (McGoohan). The constant short runs and competition between the drivers makes for an intense atmosphere which inevitably explodes into violence. Baker's only friend is an Italian ex-POW played sensitively by Herbert Lom, while Peggy Cummings is a remarkably free-spirited heroine for a British film of the time. Baker himself is superb, quietly tough, and broodingly charismatic, McGoohan is compellingly malevolent and Hartnell simply chilling. The film is consistently engrossing and often exciting, even when the plot spirals into melodrama towards the finale. One has to wonder where the police are during all this mayhem, but the fact that the screenplay, by John Kruse and Cy Endfield, received a BAFTA nomination suggests the scenario was at least reasonably realistic. Endfield also directed this, the second of six films he would helm for Baker, the most famous of which would be the all-time classic, Zulu (1964). On the DVD: Hell Drivers is presented in an anamorphically enhanced ratio of 1.77:1. This means a little of the original 1.96:1 VistaVision (70mm) image is cropped at the sides, which is just noticeable in a few shots. The print used is excellent, with only very minor damage, and the mono sound is fine. The disc also includes Look in on Hell Drivers, a 1957 TV programme that offers interviews with Stanley Baker, Cy Endfield and Alfie Bass, as well as comments from genuine truck drivers confirming the realism of the story, and a contemporary 15-minute television interview with Baker, which focuses on Hell Drivers, Sea Fury(1958) (also directed by Cy Endfield) and Violent Playground (1958). The original trailer rounds out an excellent package. --Gary S Dalkin
Made to mark the series' tenth anniversary, Doctor Who: The Three Doctors finds Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor teaming-up with the Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell incarnations to battle a universe-threatening foe. Omega (played by an excellent Stephen Thorne) is the Timelord who gave his race the power necessary for time travel. Long presumed dead he is actually trapped in an anti-matter universe inside a black hole, and is scheming an epic revenge. Set in UNIT HQ, Omega's domain and a chalk pit, Bob Baker and David Martin's yarn is both nonsensical and more wildly ambitious than the BBC effects unit could possibly visualise. This is so much the case that the best moments come with the metaphysically chilling scene in which Omega is unmasked, and in the bickering rivalry between Pertwee and Troughton. Sadly Hartnell was seriously ill with arteriosclerosis, so his brief scenes were all taped in a day and played on a monitor in the TARDIS, the reason given that the First Doctor is trapped in a "time eddy". If hardly a classic this is still a meatier tale than The Two Doctors (1985), which starred Troughton and Colin Baker, and it features ever-dependable support from Katy Manning as Jo Grant and Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier. On the DVD: Doctor Who: The Three Doctors is presented in the original 4:3 ratio with good mono sound. The introductory 16-mm film footage is very grainy and lined, but later exteriors are good and the interior video-shot material in fine. The commentary by Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtney and producer Barry Letts is informative and funny. Extras include excerpts from a highly entertaining 1973 Pebble Mill at One with Patrick Troughton and BBC props designer Bernard Wilkie (20 min) and a 1973 retrospective on the show from Blue Peter featuring Pertwee with the then new Whomobile, all presented by ex-Who companion Peter Purves. There are highlights from a BSkyB Doctor Who weekend from 1990, with brief interviews with Courtney, David Martin, Bob Baker, Pertwee, producer John Nathan Turner and writer Terrance Dicks (10 min). Rather more exciting is the appearances of the warm and witty Pertwee, Manning, and a very late Courtney at the 1993 Panopticon SF convention (29 min). There are also two trailers, info text and a scored photo gallery. --Gary S Dalkin
The Army Game was a sitcom giant of its time and one of ITV's most popular shows. Created by Sid Colin it pre-dated the more famous Dad's Army by a number of years. A group of men serving out time as conscripts in the army are determined to dodge duty and derive maximum fun out of a situation they'd rather not be in. Because WWII was only 12 years passed and national service was very much a reality many viewers found they could identify with the characters and the situation they found themselves in.
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy