A precocious teenage daughter writes a steamy bestseller featuring fictionalised versions of her family and friends, turning their quiet suburban life upside down in the process when their neighbours believe that the book's contents are true! Ted Ray, Jean Kent, Leslie Phillips and Joan Sims star in this hilarious comedy from the quintessential Carry On team of writer Norman Hudis, producer Peter Rogers and Director Gerald Thomas. Based on the hit West End comedy Book of the Month, Please Turn Over is featured here as a High Definition remaster from original film elements in its theatrically exhibited aspect ratio.
A global byword for cinematic quality of a quintessentially British nature, Ealing Studios made more than 150 films over a three decade period. A cherished and significant part of British film history, only selected films from both the Ealing and Associated Talking Pictures strands have previously been made available on home video format - with some remaining unseen since their original theatrical release. The Ealing Rarities Collection redresses this imbalance - featuring new transfers from...
A titillating British farce partly inspired by Peyton Place Please Turn Over was based on the long-running West End play Book of the Month by Basil Thomas. The orderly suburban life of a 1950s English town is turned on its head when the teenage daughter (Julia Lockwood Heidi) of one of the residents writes a steamy bestseller featuring characters obviously based on the local population. They begin to see themselves and their neighbours in a surprising new light. As the girl's fame escalates her friends and family enter the realm of notoriety which turns out not to be so bad after all. From the Carry-On writer-director team of Norman Hudis and Gerald Thomas Leslie Phillips stands out amongst an estimable British cast including Joan Sims Charles Hawtrey and Lionel Jeffries as the wonderfully named Dr. Henry Manners.
An extraordinarily racy movie for its time, The Wicked Lady was and still is as notable for its acres of heaving bosom as for its radical challenge to female stereotypes. This bodice-ripper about a bored aristocratic woman who turns highwayman just for kicks became a huge box-office success in post-war Britain, but Margaret Lockwood's eloquent bust proved a bit too expressive for Hollywood, so the film was expensively reshot for a sanitised US release. (From 1945 right up to Janet Jackson at the 2004 Superbowl, American audiences apparently have an enduring problem with those prominent parts of the female anatomy). This is the definitive Gainsborough picture, a period romp crammed with cads, in which the camera gazes lasciviously down (it's all shot from a male eyelevel) at the low-cut ladies' dresses. But this time the female anti-heroine gives as good as she gets... and then some. Lockwood's Lady Barbara Skelton is quite gleefully amoral--more so even than Thackeray's arch-manipulator Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair--failing even to pay lip service to the moral standards of the 1940s, let alone those of the 17th century. It is she who wears the trousers (quite literally, in her highwayman guise) while the weak-chinned and weak-willed men around her crumble under the weight of their conventionality. Only James Mason's handsome dandy highwayman can keep up with her, but even he has to draw the line somewhere. Ultimately, social mores reassert their grip and Lady Barbara gets her comeuppance, but not before she's overturned every contemporary movie convention about femininity. "She was the wickedest woman ever seen on the screen", trumpets the original theatrical trailer on this otherwise bare-bones DVD release: it's still probably true even today. --Mark Walker
Public schoolmaster Crocker-Harris has become a bitter disillusioned man. Stuck in a loveless marriage with a wife who openly cheats on him the enthusiasm he once showed for his career and his pupils has long since vanished and `The Crock has become a figure of disdain among the students whose life he has made a misery. With ill-health forcing him to resign his long-standing post a simple act of kindness from one boy has a profund impact on the seemingly heartless master.
An amoral French girl and her playboy father discover the dark side of passion in this sizzling 1958 adaptation of Francoise Sagan's notorious bestseller. Jean Seberg is Cecile the spoiled 17-year-old daughter of Raymond (David Nevin) a wealthy Parisian widower vacationing in a sumptuous villas on the French Rivera. Their shallow pleasure-seeking existence is threatened when Raymond decides to marry Cecil's straitlaced godmother Anne.(Deborah Kerr) who disapproves of the teen
Bruce Lee fan Jason Stillwell is not the best student in his martial arts class. Beaten numerous times he is horrified when the local crime syndicate runs his teacher out of town. Training hard using pearls of wisdom from the ghost of Lee Stillwell sets his newly acquired skills upon the syndicate and its' champion the deadly Ivan (Van Damme)...
This pilot episode filmed in 1990 by Yorkshire Television for the ITV network stars Patricia Routledge as Hetty and John Graham Davies as DCI Adams. Nobody played Robert or Geoffrey. It wasn't until some years later that the series would get the go-ahead in 1996. In this episode Hetty decides to track down the long lost son of her friend's husband.....
The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) was Marilyn Monroe's only British-made film and scores highly for curiosity value. There's something rather outrageous about this iconic American star playing a second-rate hoofer living in a theatrical boarding house in Brixton. Monroe herself is predictably good and touching as Elsie Marina, plucked from the chorus to entertain the Regent of Carpathia for the evening and ultimately smoothing his rough edges. There is, however, a rather uphill feeling all the way. The making of the movie was by all accounts a troubled experience for everybody concerned. Monroe, increasingly unreliable and exasperating, had an unsympathetic director in Laurence Olivier, also playing the Regent Charles, who hardly had the patience for a star of her mercurial talents with her own ideas of professional behaviour. His own performance as the Balkan royal is hammy and mannered and there isn't even a damp squib of sexual chemistry between them. Terence Rattigan's script, based on his successful play, is far too wordy and stage-bound. But somehow Monroe effervesces through all this adversity, aided considerably by British character actor Richard Wattis and the great Sybil Thorndyke, who became her ally during the difficult filming. Not vintage Marilyn but fascinating all the same, and she looks fantastic. On the DVD: The Prince and the Showgirl is presented in 4:3 with an occasionally muffled, apparently mono, soundtrack, giving this DVD a rather dusty quality which is in keeping with the vintage British 1950s production values. Extras include a cast list, original trailer and newsreel footage of the announcement that Marilyn was to make the film with Olivier, referred to at that stage as The Sleeping Prince. --Piers Ford
Robert Beatty plays an Italian Bank clerk bullied by his wife (Jean Kent) and mother in law (Margaret Rutherford). When a gang of robbers discover that he is a perfect double for their leader they kidnap him and the two men switch places. The result is a wild confusion of mistaken identities. With original music composed by Nino Rota.
Shout at the Devil was Roger Moore's second starring role in an adaptation of one Wilbur Smith's bestselling African adventures (the first being 1974's Gold, also directed by Peter Hunt). Taking its mixture of comedy and drama, and part of its plot, from The African Queen the movie finds Moore's decent, upright Englishman teamed with Lee Marvin--in a variation on his Cat Ballou drunken brawler comedy persona--fighting the Germans in colonial East Africa at the beginning of the Great War. Moore plays it straight and makes a most heroic and handsome matinee idol hero. Produced between Moore's second and third outings as Bond, Shout at the Devil was staffed with various 007 regulars, including Hunt who was had edited the first three and directed On Her Majesty's Secret Service, title designer Maurice Binder and director John Glen. It even has a ticking clock-gigantic explosion finale. This is an exciting, beautifully shot escapade which deserves to be much better known. On the DVD: The original Panavision 2.35:1 image is incorrectly letterboxed at around 2:1, cropping so much picture information that the credits disappear at either side of the screen. The print used is of very variable quality, with some scenes looking fine, others washed out and lacking detail, with long shots often being slightly out of focus. Adding to the problems is the abysmal digital encoding which, despite anamorphic enhancement, has left many scenes swarming with compression artefacts. The sound is adequate mono. Unfortunately this disc uses a heavily re-edited and shortened version of the film--cut from 147 to 119 minutes following poor reviews--and the losses in continuity, especially in the early part of the film are very noticeable. The extras are the original trailer, which reveals the entire plot right up to and including the ending, comprehensive filmographies of Marvin, Moore and Hunt, and a seven-minute compilation of posters and publicity stills set to the main themes from Maurice Jarre's score. --Gary S Dalkin
Set in Paris in the late 1940's 'Sleeping Car to Trieste' is a tense Cold War thriller brilliantly directed by John Paddy Carstairs. Post war Europe is in turmoil. Agent Zurta (Albert Lieven) and his beautiful accomplice Valya (Jean Kent) steal a diary with vital Cold War secrets from an embassy in Paris. During the theft Zurta murders a servant and to throw the authorities off his trail enlists the help of Karl (Alan Wheatley). But Karl double crosses Zurta and attempts to makes his escape on the Orient Express. As the train pulls out of the Gare de Lyon in Paris there are some very contrasting characters on board. Zurta and Valya are on Karl's trail but he is tucked away in a hidden compartment. As the train hurtles through southern Europe the eclectic bunch of passengers which includes an adulterous couple and their idiot friend (David Tomlinson) a wealthy autocratic writer (Finley Currie) and a French police inspector seem determined to foil Zurta in his quest for the diary. As the film reaches its climax will Zurta and Valya recover the diary and make their escape or will they be captured before they reach the Iron Curtain?
Boxset of four classic films from the 1940s. 'Sleeping Car to Trieste' (1948) stars Jean Kent and Albert Lieven. Set on board the Orient Express the film follows the story of a man named Charles Poole (Alan Wheatley) who has stolen an important political diary and is being pursued by two different people who want it back. 'It's Not Cricket' (1949) stars Basil Radford as Major Bright and Naunton Wayne as Captain Early - detectives who have recently been thrown out of the army for their failure to capture a notoriously evil Nazi Otto Fisch (Maurice Denham). The detectives are invited to a weekend of cricket by their old friend Gerald Lawson (Nigel Buchanan) but what Gerald doesn't realise is that the ball he has purchased for the match contains the famous Rothstein diamond, stolen by Fisch, who will stop at nothing to get it back. 'All Over the Town' (1949) is a British comedy drama starring Norman Wooland as a Royal Air Force pilot who returns to work as a newspaper reporter. After fighting in the Second World War, Nat Hearn (Wooland) resumes his former position at the Tormouth Clarion and finds himself working with Sally Thorpe (Sarah Churchill), the woman who was given his job when he left. When Nat is promoted to editor of the paper, he decides to use his new status to make changes within the publication that will benefit the town but in the process he angers powerful figures within the community. 'Once a Jolly Swagman' (1949) is a British drama about speedway racer Bill Fox (Dirk Bogarde). Factory worker Fox is bored of his daily life and decides to quit his job to become a motorbike racer. Success goes to his head as he leaves his wife (Sandra Dorne) for socialite Pat (Renee Asherson), but when tragedy strikes on the track he returns to his wife and joins a union to fight for riders' rights.
A great value triple fillm collection of superb British thrillers that includes Gunpowder, The Woman in Question & Girl In The Headlines. Starring Gordon Jackson, Debra Burton, Stephen Crane, Anthony Crewe,Ian Hendry and Ronald Fraser.
This intriguing wartime thriller adapts Vernon Sylvaine's stage play imagining a Nazi plot to kidnap Winston Churchill – a plotline famously revisited more than three decades later in The Eagle Has Landed. Blending keen suspense and defiant humour in equal measure Warn That Man sees professional Cockney and box office favourite Gordon Harker starring alongside Canadian-born Raymond Lovell and British film stalwart Finlay Currie. Made in 1943 the film is presented here in a brand-new High Definition transfer from the original elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. At the height of World War II the Germans discover that a certain British personage is to stay at the country house of Lord Buckley. They devise a plan whereby they will kidnap the real Lord Buckley and send to England an actor who will masquerade lie in wait for the visitor with a number of gunmen and take him back to Germany... Special Feature: Original Theatrical Programme PDF
This intriguing wartime thriller adapts Vernon Sylvaine's stage play imagining a Nazi plot to kidnap Winston Churchill – a plotline famously revisited more than three decades later in The Eagle Has Landed. Blending keen suspense and defiant humour in equal measure Warn That Man sees professional Cockney and box office favourite Gordon Harker starring alongside Canadian-born Raymond Lovell and British film stalwart Finlay Currie. Made in 1943 the film is presented here in a brand-new High Definition transfer from the original elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. At the height of World War II the Germans discover that a certain British personage is to stay at the country house of Lord Buckley. They devise a plan whereby they will kidnap the real Lord Buckley and send to England an actor who will masquerade lie in wait for the visitor with a number of gunmen and take him back to Germany... Special Feature: Original Theatrical Programme PDF
Based on a story by Terence Rattigan, Bond Street is a compelling portmanteau drama which tells the secret story of a wedding day with four vignettes revealing the hidden tales behind each of its most essential items. Presented as a brand-new transfer from the original film elements, Bond Street features a strong cast which includes Jean Kent, Kathleen Harrison, Hazel Court, Roland Young and Derek Farr.There is romance in every wedding, but more so, perhaps, in that of Julia Chester-Barratt and Frank Moody. The bride's dress, her veil, her pearls, her flowers all must be perfect, but all have tales to tell. Tales of birth, death, love and deception...SPECIAL FEATURE:Image GalleryPromotional Material PDFs
As World War Two rages Jim Colter (John Mills) finds himself called up to serve in the army - but he's soon to find himself at war on two fronts.While he's away his lovely wife Tillie (Joy Shelton) attracts the amorous attention of Ted Purvis (Stewart Granger) a vicious local spiv and self-acclaimed ladies man.When Jim's sister writes informing him of what is happening Jim decides that the Nazis can wait and that an even more insidious enemy needs to be dealt with first. He breaks out of camp goes AWOL and sets off to find his wife. With the military hot on his tail Jim must make his way through war torn London to settle things once and for all.
Agnes Astra Huston (Jean Kent) a fortune teller at a run-down fair is found murdered in her bedroom. The police track down five of the most likely suspect and start asking questions. As the police question the suspects their interactions with her are shown in flashbacks from their highly suspicious points of view. Director Anthony Asquith working in the style of a Hitchcock whodunit deftly moves between multiple points of view in this gritty look at life in a seaport town.
Terrence Morgan stars in the classic 1960's action adventure series - Sir Francis Drake. Drake is a freebooter adventurer expert swordsman and defender of the crown during Britain's war with Spain during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I a war which he wages from the bridge of his ship The Golden Hind. Presented here is the entire series of 26 action-packed episodes of this classic action show. This thrilling adventure series will appeal to people who enjoyed Network's previous releases of The Adventures Of Robin Hood and archive television fans.... Episodes: 1. The Prisoner 2. The Lost Colony Of Virginia 3. Mary Queen Of The Scots 4. Doctor Dee 5. Bold Enterprise 6. The English Dragon 7. Boy Jack 8. The Garrison 9. Visit To Spain 10. The Flame Thrower 11. The Governor's Revenge 12. The Slaves Of Spain 13. The Doughty Plot 14. King Of America 15. The Irish Pirate 16. Beggars Of The Sea 17. Drake On Trial 18. The Bridge 19. Johnnie Factotum 20. Mission To Paris 21. The Reluctant Duchess 22. The Gypsies 23. Court Intrigue 24. Gentlemen Of Spain 25. The Fountain Of Youth 26. Escape
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