"Actor: Heather Menzies Urich"

• The Sound Of Music | DVD | (08/03/2004) from £5.36   |  Saving you £10.63 (198.32%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The most widely seen movie produced by a Hollywood studio, The Sound of Music grows fresher with each viewing. Though it was planned meticulously in pre-production (save for the scene where Maria and the children take a dipping in an Austrian lake that nearly cost a life), on each viewing one is struck anew by the spontaneous almost improvisatory air of the acting, notably of Julie Andrews under Robert Wise's direction. There are also the little human touches he brings to, for instance, the scene where Maria leads the children to the hills, over bridges and along tow paths where the smallest boy trips up and momentarily gets left behind: it creates a feeling that most of us have encountered. From the opening pre-credit sequence of muted excitement as the camera roves over the Austrian Alps (photographed in magnificent colour), where little phrases from the wind instruments on the soundtrack are flung as if on the breeze, foreshadowing the title song to follow, the production never puts a foot wrong. On the DVD: On the first disc the film itself has never looked or sounded better since its original presentation in Todd AO (prints of which are said to have disappeared forever). The disc also contains a separate audio guide that takes the viewer through the film sequence by sequence, with director Robert Wise commenting on the weather, the production design by Boris Leven, the sequences filmed on location and in Hollywood (like the interiors of the Von Trapp villa), and the naming of other actors who were eager for the lead roles, notably Doris Day and Yul Brynner. On the second disc there are the documentaries. "Salzburg Sight and Sound" was Charmian Carr's own record of her time on location in the summer of 1964, playing Liesl, the eldest Von Trapp daughter. "From Fact to Fiction", running two hours, begins with the birth of Maria in 1905 who inspired the film, charts her subsequent marriage to Captain Von Trapp, their escape from Nazi Germany not across the Alps but via a train across the Italian boarder, their home in Vermont and thence to the German film of the family that was brought to the attention of Rodgers and Hammerstein as an ideal vehicle for a stage musical. A second group of documentaries covers previews, television and radio commercials and a 1973 interview with Wise and Andrews. Overall, this is a marathon package but in its way is as compelling as the film itself. --Adrian Edwards

• The Sound Of Music - 2 disc Special Edition | DVD | (09/04/2001) from £12.82   |  Saving you £7.17 (55.93%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The most widely seen movie produced by a Hollywood studio, The Sound of Music grows fresher with each viewing. Though it was planned meticulously in pre-production (save for the scene where Maria and the children take a dipping in an Austrian lake that nearly cost a life), on each viewing one is struck anew by the spontaneous almost improvisatory air of the acting, notably of Julie Andrews under Robert Wise's direction. There are also the little human touches he brings to, for instance, the scene where Maria leads the children to the hills, over bridges and along tow paths where the smallest boy trips up and momentarily gets left behind: it creates a feeling that most of us have encountered. From the opening pre-credit sequence of muted excitement as the camera roves over the Austrian Alps (photographed in magnificent colour), where little phrases from the wind instruments on the soundtrack are flung as if on the breeze, foreshadowing the title song to follow, the production never puts a foot wrong. On the DVD: On the first disc the film itself has never looked or sounded better since its original presentation in Todd AO (prints of which are said to have disappeared forever). The disc also contains a separate audio guide that takes the viewer through the film sequence by sequence, with director Robert Wise commenting on the weather, the production design by Boris Leven, the sequences filmed on location and in Hollywood (like the interiors of the Von Trapp villa), and the naming of other actors who were eager for the lead roles, notably Doris Day and Yul Brynner. On the second disc there are the documentaries. "Salzburg Sight and Sound" was Charmian Carr's own record of her time on location in the summer of 1964, playing Liesl, the eldest Von Trapp daughter. "From Fact to Fiction", running two hours, begins with the birth of Maria in 1905 who inspired the film, charts her subsequent marriage to Captain Von Trapp, their escape from Nazi Germany not across the Alps but via a train across the Italian boarder, their home in Vermont and thence to the German film of the family that was brought to the attention of Rodgers and Hammerstein as an ideal vehicle for a stage musical. A second group of documentaries covers previews, television and radio commercials and a 1973 interview with Wise and Andrews. Overall, this is a marathon package but in its way is as compelling as the film itself. --Adrian Edwards

• Piranha | Blu Ray | (21/11/2022) from £13.79   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Man has meddled again with mother nature and the result is not only deadly...it's voracious! With a clever screenplay written by John Sayles (Apollo 13) from a story by Richard Robinson, director Joe Dante (Gremlins) creates an eerie and devilishly fun tale of mutant piranha terrorizing a local swimming hole. On an inviting tranquil evening, two venturesome teenagers take a moonlit skinny-dip in the inviting waters of Lost River Lake...little did they know they would quickly become fish food for a hungry school of man-eating piranha!Their deaths prompt an investigation that reveals a governmental cover-up of a top secret experiment called Operation Razorteeth. And it only gets worse. These insatiable, gilled monsters are heading downstream where a newly opened swimming resort will give them a smorgasbord of tasty vacationers, unless a brave outdoorsman (Bradford Dillman) and a sharp, beautiful investigator (Heather Menzies) can stop their deadly spawn...for good.

• Piranha | DVD | (21/11/2022) from £6.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Man has meddled again with mother nature and the result is not only deadly...it's voracious! With a clever screenplay written by John Sayles (Apollo 13) from a story by Richard Robinson, director Joe Dante (Gremlins) creates an eerie and devilishly fun tale of mutant piranha terrorizing a local swimming hole. On an inviting tranquil evening, two venturesome teenagers take a moonlit skinny-dip in the inviting waters of Lost River Lake...little did they know they would quickly become fish food for a hungry school of man-eating piranha!Their deaths prompt an investigation that reveals a governmental cover-up of a top secret experiment called Operation Razorteeth. And it only gets worse. These insatiable, gilled monsters are heading downstream where a newly opened swimming resort will give them a smorgasbord of tasty vacationers, unless a brave outdoorsman (Bradford Dillman) and a sharp, beautiful investigator (Heather Menzies) can stop their deadly spawn...for good.

• Piranha | DVD | (21/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  As a producer, Roger Corman has always loved to make low-budget rip-offs of hit movies, and Piranha is his typically cheeky take on Jaws--and, as so often with Corman, in many ways it's funnier and more entertaining than the original. Directed with gusto by schlock-horror specialist Joe Dante and sharply scripted by John Sayles, it replaces one huge underwater toothy monster with dozens of little ones and ups the body count by a factor of 10 or so. Two hapless teenagers, hiking in a remote mountain region, stumble on a secret US military research lab. They don't last long, but their intrusion leads to the release into the local river system of a huge shoal of super-intelligent piranha, originally specially bred for use in Vietnam. Downstream from the virulent little munchers lie a kiddies' holiday camp and a tacky new waterfront theme park. Lunch time, fellas! Sayles, with his staunch left-wing credentials, slips in some mordant political satire at the expense of the military-industrial complex, and authority figures of any kind come off pretty badly, but the satire never gets in the way of the gleeful black humour. The two leads, Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies, are fairly pallid, but there are ripe cameos from such cult horror-movie icons as Kevin McCarthy, Dick Miller and Barbara Steele. Pino Donaggio's score impudently borrows aspects of John Williams' famous Jaws theme while never quite infringing copyright. The movie was successful enough to spawn a much-inferior sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), which marked the inauspicious directing debut of one James Cameron. On the DVD: Piranha on disc comes with just the theatrical trailer as an extra. The transfer is a respectable job, reproducing the original's full-screen ratio. --Philip Kemp