"Actor: Henry Victor"

• Carry On Emmannuelle | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £9.66   |  Saving you £0.33 (3.42%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Made in 1978, Carry On Emmannuelle was really the last gasp of the most fondly regarded series of British comedy films. In most respects, it hardly does justice to the many truly funny and brilliantly played previous scripts. But it does feature a curiously vulnerable, even touching, performance from Kenneth Williams as a French diplomat with a wife of insatiable physical appetites. In theory, of course, it aims to be a pastiche of the hugely popular Emmanuelle, which had marked the transition of soft-core erotic cinema into the art house. But it's too crudely scripted and lacking in the belly laugh inducing innuendo of the best Carry On films to succeed on that level. "Are you hungry, Loins?" Emmannuelle asks the chauffeur. "I think I could manage a little nibble," he replies. You get the idea. In the title role, Suzanne Danielle, who would go on to be the best of the Princess Diana impersonators, isn't a good enough comic actress to raise such lines above the ordinary. And the few stalwarts who returned for this outing--Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor and Peter Butterworth--just about emerge with their dignity intact. This was a Carry On too far. But fans will want it for their collection because it shows Kenneth Williams at his most professionally committed--his diaries reveal his real thoughts on the matter--and to remind themselves of the high quality of so much of the work which had gone before.On the DVD: presented in 4:3 format and with a standard mono soundtrack, this release of Carry On Emmannuelle starts off with a print of such ropey quality that you seem to be watching through a dust storm. The sound quality is little better, although on both counts things improve as the film progresses. The lack of extras is disappointing, adding to the rather sad, low-budget feel of the film itself. --Piers Ford

• The Last Samurai | DVD | (16/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  On the pretence of a business trip Japanese multi-millionaire Yasujiro Endo journeys to the African nation of Imtazi. In reality Endo is on a personal mission - a quest to find the truth about a Samurai ancestor who disappeared in Africa two centuries ago and perhaps the true spirit of the Samurai he feels lies deep within himself. Endo's search takes him on Safari deep into the wilds of Africa led by the mercenary Johhny Congo and his girlfriend Caro. As the journey continues so it

• Gangster: The Yards, Brother, Ghost Dog | DVD | (30/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The Yards:'The Yards' is a tense thriller set in the vast New York City subway yards. After serving time in prison for taking the fall for a group of friends Leo Handler (Mark Wahlberg) just wants to get his life back on track. So he goes to the one place he thinks he'll be safe: home. There he takes a job with his highly connected and influential uncle Frank (James Caan) and is reunited with his long-time friend Willie Gutierez (Joaquin Phoenix) and Willie's girlfriend Erica (Charlize Theron). But in the yards where his uncle now pulls the strings safe is not how they do business. Unwittingly he's drawn into a world of sabotage high stakes payoffs and murder. And the secret he discovers will make him the target of the most ruthless family in the city: his own. Now in the name of justice he'll have to do everything in his power to bring them down. Brother:In Japan the sworn brotherhood of the Yakuza is described as being 'thicker than the blood of kindred brothers'. With his life under threat disgraced Yakuza hard man Yamamoto escapes to Los Angeles in search of his half-brother Ken a small-time drug dealer. Unable to speak the language and confused by his surrounding Yamamoto teams up with Ken and his friend and fellow gang-member Denny. Soon Yamamoto finds himself back in the old routine. His ruthless efficiency in terrorising and killing rival gang members shocks even the blood hardened Americans and before long Yamamoto's gang is strong enough to join forces with a rival Japanese crime lord called Shirase. Ghost Dog:Ghost Dog lives above the world alongside a flock of birds in a homemade shack on the roof of an abandoned building. Guided by the words of an ancient Samurai text Ghost Dog is a professional killer able to dissolve into the night and move throughout the city unnoticed. When Ghost Dog's code is dangerously betrayed by the dysfunctional mafia family that occasionally employs him he must find a way to defend himself without breaking the code of the samurai.

• Freaks | DVD | (20/10/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  One of the most famous, most shocking and, for much of its existence, most elusive of cult films, Tod Browning's Freaks remains worthy of its dubious top billing by literary critic Leslie Fiedler as the greatest of all Freak movies. At the centre of the story are two circus midgets, Hans and Frieda (already well known in the 1930s through film and advertising appearances as Harry and Daisy Earles), whose marriage plans are blasted when Hans becomes the target of the aerialist Cleopatra's plot to marry him then kill him off for his money. During what is certainly one of the most notorious scenes in cult film history, the wedding party of freaks ritually embrace Cleopatra as one of us. Through her undisguised horror at this and her gruesome punishment by the freaks, the film bluntly confronts viewers about our awkwardness about different bodies while simultaneously stirring up fear and alarm in familiar horror-movie style. Better known for the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula (1931), Brownings showmanship was equally a product of the circus (he was himself an adolescent contortionist in a travelling show). His meshing of circus and cinema--two dangerous entertainments--produces Freaks' uniquely disquieting effect.Startled and indignant preview audiences forced the producers to add an explanatory foreword to the film but even this crackles with sensationalism as it veers between sideshow-style sympathy and fright warning. None the less, protests and local censorship ensued and the film never reached the mass audience for which it was made. Still, some of the real stars of the midway Ten-in-One shows of the 1920s and 30s (Johnny Eck, Daisy and Violet Hilton the Siamese twins, Prince Randian, the Hindu Living Torso) are showcased here as themselves and it is their undeniably real presence in what is otherwise familiar fictional terrain which is still so provocative. --Helen Stoddart

• Beloved Rogue | DVD | (01/12/2014) from £9.43   |  Saving you £-2.44 (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.99

• Sherlock Holmes - Adventures / The Secret Weapon | DVD | (12/03/2007) from £4.83   |  Saving you £9.42 (263.87%)   |  RRP £12.99