"Actor: Heinz Schubert"

• Tales from Europe: The Singing Ringing Tree and The Tinderbox | DVD | (12/12/2011) from £11.98   |  Saving you £10.00 (100.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Singing Ringing Tree: To win the love of beautiful but conceited princess, a prince sets out to search for the Singing Ringing Tree which she deeply craves. He finds it in an enchanted garden which is ruled by an evil dwarf. The dwarf gives him the tree, subject to one condition - the prince must win the princess' love before nightfall. If he should fail, he will be transformed into a bear... and this comes to pass.The Tinderbox: Based on the fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen, The Tinderbox tells the story of a poor soldier who meets a witch on his return from battle. The witch promises him gold if he recovers an old tinderbox from a hollow tree. After a quarrel he makes off with the gold without handing over the tinderbox and sets himself up in a neighbouring town. His generosity enables the town to flourish but when his fortune dwindles he is left only with the friendship of the poor and the tinderbox...

• Funeral In Berlin | DVD | (05/01/2004) from £5.50   |  Saving you £10.49 (190.73%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Funeral in Berlin (1967) is the sequel to 1965's The Ipcress File, again featuring Michael Caine as reluctant spy Harry Palmer. It was clearly the filmmakers' intention to make Palmer a harder-nosed James Bond, and director Guy Hamilton was brought to this project in between Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever for that purpose. There's espionage intrigue, easy women (Eva Renzi as Samantha Steel), and gunplay. But without the gadgetry, one-liners, or even the John Barry score of the first movie, the Bond comparison runs dry. Against the backdrop of a bombed-out industrial wasteland that was Berlin in the mid-Sixties, Palmer is sent to facilitate the defection of Col. Stock (Oscar Homolka). Numerous sub-plots weave together involving indifferent chief Ross (Guy Doleman from IPCRESS), mission aide Johnnie Volkon (Paul Hubschmid), and the untrustworthy Kreutzman (Günter Meisner, who was more memorable as Slugworth in Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory). It all comes down to revealing who's working for whom and who's really defecting in the set-piece funeral of the title. The main reason the series continued (Ken Russell's OTT Billion Dollar Brain came next) was the commanding presence of Caine. It's fun to hear him try German, and he manages a few subtle comic gems, such as when a waiter asks "Bitte mein heir?" and he replies, "No. Lager please", but the best moment of characterisation recalling the womanising Palmer of Len Deighton's novels is the put down guaranteed to win any woman: "You're useless in the kitchen. Why don't you go back to bed?" --Paul Tonks