"Actor: J Carrol Naish"

• Sahara (Limited Edition) | Blu Ray | (20/01/2025) from £14.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Humphrey Bogart (The Harder They Fall), Bruce Bennett (Undertow) and J Carrol Naish (The Lives of a Bengal Lancer) star in Sahara, a thrilling tale of World War II heroism from director Zoltán Korda (A Woman's Vengeance). Separated from his unit following the fall of Tobruk, Master Sergeant Joe Gunn (Bogart) and his crew flee in a tank across the Sahara, picking up a variety of stragglers and prisoners along the way. With their survival entirely dependent on the water from a depleted well, the group must defend it against a whole German battalion. Produced by Harry Joe Brown (Buchanan Rides Alone) and shot under harsh conditions in the unforgiving landscape of the Colorado Desert, the production of Sahara utilised an entire US Army division as extras, adding to the film's gritty sense of realism.

• Annie Get Your Gun | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The story of the great sharpshooter, Annie Oakley, who rises to fame while dealing with her love/professional rival, Frank Butler.

• Bulldog Drummond Comes Back | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

• The Charge of the Light Brigade | DVD | (18/07/2017) from £18.20   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Gung Ho | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £6.36   |  Saving you £-1.37 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Marine raiders in a new outfit train for invasion in this gripping World War II action film. The bloodthirsty misfits of the 'Gung Ho' squadron become fierce fighting machines....

• Dracula vs Frankenstein | DVD | (14/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In the late 1960s and early 70s, a bizarre alliance between the Filippino movie company Hemisphere and the American exploitation outfit Independent International yielded a series of weirdly interconnected horror movies, most of which work the word Blood into the title. The Filippino items are strangely fascinating vampire and mad scientist pictures with oddball colour effects and a mix of naive serial-style thrills and extreme-for-the-era sex and gore; the American efforts, from director Al Adamson, are shoddier, thrown together from offcuts of previous pictures, and are lead-paced but nevertheless curiously appealing. Gaze in awe at mutant killer trees, slobbering hunchbacked servants, faded matinee idols, stripper-turned-actress heroines with concrete blonde hairdos, evil dwarves, John Carradine or Lon Chaney, footage cut in from completely different films, Dracula and Frankenstein meeting hippies and bikers, red filters when the vampires attack, chanting natives! Plus lots of exclamation marks! Plus lurid trailers! "The kings of horror battle to the death" in Dracula vs Frankenstein. The last of the Frankensteins (J Carrol Naish) works in a carnival horror house with his sidekick Groton the Mad Zombie (Lon Chaney Jr). A Frank Zappa-like Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) and a monster with a face like a big mushroom slug it out. The film also features Russ Tamblyn as a beach biker and a Vegas showgirl heroine on LSD. This Region 2 DVD is sadly bereft of the extras found on the US Troma Region 1 disc. --Kim Newman

• That Night in Rio | DVD | (24/09/2012) from £6.10   |  Saving you £3.89 (63.77%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Have a rendezvous with music and gaiety! An entertainer (Ameche) in Rio impersonates a wealthy arisocrat (also Ameche). When the aristocrat's wife (Faye) asks him to carry the impersonation further, complications ensue.

• Rio Grande (John Wayne) | DVD | (05/06/2006) from £13.48   |  Saving you £-3.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara are embroiled in an epic battle with the Apaches and each other in this John Ford classic. Lt Col. Yorke (Wayne) heads to the Rio Grande to fight a warring tribe. But Yorke faces his toughest battle when his unorthodox plan to outwit the elusive Apaches leads to possible court-martial. Locked in a bloody war he must fight to redeem his honour and save his family.

• Down Argentine Way | DVD | (17/04/2006) from £3.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (225.56%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Irresistible songs and lavish musical numbers give a staccato beat to the romantic adventures of Betty Grable and Don Ameche in this Technicolor extravaganza. Everyone goes south of the border in this comic tale of horseracing with lots of romance and nightclubbing tossed in. Glenda (Grable) wants to buy a horse from Ricardo (Ameche). But because their families have been feuding for years Ricardo's father refuses. But in true Romeo and Juliet fashion the two fall in love. Carmen

• Sahara | DVD | (28/01/2002) from £6.22   |  Saving you £13.77 (221.38%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Columbia's biggest hit of 1943, Sahara confirmed the superstar status Humphrey Bogart attained with his Warner Brothers' North African adventure, Casablanca (1942). Surrounded by the Germans on three sides, Bogart's tough-as-they-come Sergeant Joe Gunn takes his tank and a crew of American, British and French soldiers into the Sahara to reach the retreating allied forces. But when they find that the only water for 100 miles is also the target of a German battalion they decide to take a desperate stand. Early scenes present the characters with assorted perils: thirst, sandstorms and a German air attack. The characters are rather stereotypical: the cowardly Italian prisoner, the Frenchman obsessed with food, the German humourless and fanatical, though the British come out well, and there's a sympathetically drawn black British Sudanese soldier (Rex Ingram). The director was Zoltan Korda, the man behind such British classics as The Four Feathers (1939), and though Sahara lacks the scale of that adventure, Korda's experience pays off in mounting the extended and suspenseful siege/action climax. With support from Lloyd Bridges and Dan Duryea, Oscar-nominated photography by Rudolph Mate and a fine score by Miklós Rózsa, Sahara is a taut, gripping desert war thriller which wouldn't be bettered until Ice Cold in Alex (1958). On the DVD: The black and white picture is presented in the original 4:3 ratio and looks very good for its age, though there are numerous brief instances of substantial print damage. Audio is strong, clear mono. Given the age of the movie it is not surprising the only extras are filmographies and a small selection of beautifully reproduced original advertising posters. The film is presented with alternative soundtracks in French, Italian and Spanish, as well as with English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Finnish subtitles. There are trailers for The Caine Mutiny (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and The Guns of Navarone (1961). --Gary S Dalkin

• Annie Get Your Gun | DVD | (09/10/2006) from £9.21   |  Saving you £3.78 (29.10%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The story of the great sharpshooter, Annie Oakley, who rises to fame while dealing with her love/professional rival, Frank Butler.

• Sitting Bull | DVD | (19/05/2007) from £7.09   |  Saving you £-1.10 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In the Black Hills of Dakota war is brewing between the United States Army and a tribe of Sioux Indians lead by the legendary Chief Sitting Bull. Despite numerous treaties the Indian Nation finds themselves victimised murdered and driven from their land. Major Parrish is a man caught between his duty and his conscience - appalled at the treatment of the Indians but unable to stop the military machine. Intent on bringing peace Parrish arranges a meeting between Sitting Bull and President Grant but the two warring parties draw ever closer to the final bloody conflict which history will remember as the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

• Down Argentine Way | DVD | (02/07/2012) from £4.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (234.11%)   |  RRP £9.99

  American girl (Grable) on vacation in Argentina falls for wealthy racehorse owner (Ameche).

• Rio Grande | DVD | (28/05/2001) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Rio Grande was the last and least memorable of John Ford's famous cavalry trilogy (following Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon), but it none the less maintains an interesting continuity about the gentlemanly rules of military conduct. Here the focus is on the family. While creating a heated controversy over his handling of the Apache war, John Wayne must also contend with disgruntled wife Maureen O'Hara and estranged son Claude Jarman Jr, a new recruit trying to earn his father's love and respect. Ford suggests that there are two conflicting codes of honour in every cavalry officer's life, the personal as well as the professional, and that it takes an act of heroism to maintain both. It's fascinating to observe Wayne's progression throughout the trilogy, as his personal stakes intensify. This is the first of five onscreen appearances between the Duke and O'Hara, each filled with a competitive spirit and stormy sexuality. --Bill Desowitz, Amazon.com

• Annie Get Your Gun | Blu Ray | (20/04/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• 3 Classic Westerns Of The Silver Screen - Vol. 5 | DVD | (01/08/2005) from £4.98   |  Saving you £0.01 (0.20%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Hurricane Express: John Wayne stars as pilot Larry Baker who makes an unscheduled landing in a vain attempt to prevent a railway collision that kills his father and is fired for disobeying orders. Larry must find out the truth behind the wreck of the Hurricane Express! Rage At Dawn: A Special Agent is sent way out west to round up the norotious Reno gang. He stages a fake train robbery in order to attract the evil Reno brothers and their gang in this gritty and force

• Rage At Dawn | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £8.96   |  Saving you £1.03 (10.30%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A Special Agent is sent way out west to round up the norotious Reno gang. He stages a fake train robbery in order to attract the evil Reno brothers and their gang in this gritty and forceful western....

• War | DVD | (26/03/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Jet Li and Jason Statham go head to head in this all action spectacular as an FBI Agent seeks revenge on a mysterious assassin.

• Rage at Dawn | DVD | (12/02/2008) from £5.72   |  Saving you £-2.73 (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

• Cult Action Extravaganza | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Cult Action Extravaganza three-disc set offers three very different movies that have nothing in common bar residency in Siren's film archive. They are: The Most Dangerous Game (1932), Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) and Get Christie Love! (1974). The Most Dangerous Game is a classic, one of the first talkies to get pictures moving after five very static years following the birth of sound. The plot finds resourceful hero Joel McCrea and heroine Fay Wray being hunted on the island of the insane Zaroff (Leslie Banks). One of the grandfathers of the summer blockbuster, the film's setup has been reworked many times since, notably in John Woo's Hard Target (1993). By modern standards it's technically primitive, though still gripping stuff, complete with the jungle set built as a test run for King Kong (1933) and graced by Max Steiner's prototype of all Hollywood action scores. Beneath the 12-Mile Reef is another landmark or rather watermark. The third-ever CinemaScope production, this was a prestige release with Technicolor location filming at Key West, Florida of never-before-achieved underwater cinematography and four-channel stereo recording of a superlative Bernard Herrmann score. Even a still-impressive underwater battle with an octopus pre-dates the more famous giant squid of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). The humans aren't bad either, with a young Robert Wagner making a charismatic if ethnically unconvincing Greek lead as sponge fisherman Tony and Terry Moore playing Juliet to his Romeo with real vivacity. Starring Theresa Graves, Get Christie Love! is a tame TV movie imitation of early 1970s female blaxploitation films such Pam Grier's Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). Running a standard TVM 73 minutes and with a low budget and content sanitised to US network standards, this is lightweight stuff about an undercover cop determined to smash a drugs ring. Nevertheless the movie was popular enough to spawn a short-lived TV show and is significant for being the first time a black woman took the title role in any American network production. Tarantino completists may be interested, as before he paid homage to Christie Love in the dialogue of Reservoir Dogs (1991). On the DVD: Cult Action Extravaganza presents the films in their original aspect ratio and sound format; The Most Dangerous Game and Get Christie Love! are 4:3, mono. The former is faded b/w with reasonably sturdy sound, though the transfer suffers from compression artefacting. No one would expect great quality from a 1974 TV movie, but Get Christie Love! suffers from both a poor print and a mediocre DVD transfer. Beneath the 12-Mile Reef is presented in the extra wide 2.55:1 of early CinemaScope and though sadly not anamorphic both the seascapes and underwater cinematography are still impressive. The four-channel stereo sound is revelatory, clear, detailed and years ahead of what we have come to expect early 1950s films to sound like. --Gary S Dalkin