"Actor: Jeff Gilbert"

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £7.11   |  Saving you £4.88 (68.64%)   |  RRP £11.99

  Dating from 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has never lost its popularity or its unusual appeal as a star-driven Western that tinkers with the genre's conventions and comes up with something both terrifically entertaining and--typical of its period--a tad paranoid. Paul Newman plays the legendary outlaw Butch Cassidy as an eternal optimist and self-styled visionary, conjuring dreams of banks just ripe for the picking all over the world. Robert Redford is his more level-headed partner, the sharp-shooting Sundance Kid. The film, written by William Goldman (The Princess Bride) and directed by George Roy Hill (The Sting), basically begins as a freewheeling story about robbing trains but soon becomes a chase as a relentless posse--always seen at a great distance like some remote authority--forces Butch and Sundance into the hills and, finally, Bolivia. Weakened a little by feel-good inclinations (a scene involving bicycle tricks and the song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" is sort of Hollywood flower power), the film maintains an interesting tautness, and the chemistry between Redford and Newman is rare. (A factoid: Newman first offered the Sundance part to Jack Lemmon.) --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com On the DVD: This anamorphic widescreen print of the 2.35:1 Panavision original looks marvellously crisp, highlighting the sepia tinting and washed-out, over-exposed look of the film nicely and making the best of the deep focus cinematography. The mono soundtrack sounds clean and clear in Dolby 2.0. The commentary track is hosted by documentary-maker Robert Crawford with contributions from George Roy Hill, cinematographer Conrad Hall, and lyricist Hal David (who chips in during the "Raindrops" sequence). The 40-minute documentary dates from 1968 and is narrated by director Hill, who talks in detail about the making-of process, comments on his relationship with the three principals (Katharine Ross was the difficult one apparently), and adds little nuggets such as how they sprayed the bull's testicles to make him charge at the end of the bicycle scene. Also included are a series of absorbing 1994 interviews with all the main players: Newman, Redford, Ross, writer William Goldman, and composer Burt Bacharach. Trailers, Production Notes and an Alternate Credit Roll complete an attractive package. --Mark Walker

• 2000 Maniacs | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £10.55   |  Saving you £2.44 (23.13%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Available "fully uncut" for the first time in the UK, Two Thousand Maniacs! is the second of director HG Lewis' "blood" trilogy. Though the "once-in-a-lifetime" title makes a promise no film could keep--only about 30 maniacs show up--and the level of gore is a notch or so down from Blood Feast--only four deaths--this is perhaps the director's most watchable film. The Brigadoon-derived plot nugget concerns a Deep South town (variously suggested to be in Georgia or Arkansas, but actually Florida) wiped out by Union raiders during the Civil War, which reappears once every 100 years to wreak "blood vengeance". For the centennial celebrations, Pleasant Valley lures Yankee tourists off the road and subjects them to gruesome fairground games--a cannibal BBQ, a "horse-race", a "barrel roll" and "teetering rock". The ideas are nasty, and Lewis even attempts subtlety by keeping the quartering and the spiked barrel inside mostly off screen, but the creepiest touch is the "aw-shucks" good humour with which the ghostly Confederate maniacs--led by a mayor who is the spitting image of Sergeant Bilko's Colonel Hall--treat their horrible sport. It has the usual Lewis drawbacks--mostly inept staging, acting that veers between the wooden ("Playmate" Connie Mason) and the amateurishly hammy (one of the worst child actors in film history), clumsy editing, community theatre production values--but his fans wouldn't have it any other way and the hayseed music is great! On the DVD: The full-screen image is as good as this ever will look, considering Lewis' primitive understanding of lighting cinematography, with rich scarlet blood, vividly ugly 1963 leisurewear and very few print imperfections. The features offer an imaginative "Welcome to Pleasant Valley Centennial" menu, with buttons like the target you have to hit to drop the "teetering rock" on the Yankee; lurid original trailer ("Two thousand maniacs crazed for carnage started bathing a whole town in pulsing, human blood ... brutal, evil, ghastly beyond belief"); filmographies for Lewis, Friedman and star William Kerwin (aka Thomas Wood); promotional art gallery; notes by aptly-monickered expert Billy Chainsaw, highlighting the connections with John Waters and Brigadoon; a teaser trailer for "the Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection"; a mass of trailers for other "Tartan terror" titles. The Lewis-Friedman commentary and mind-numbing outtakes reel available on the Region 1 DVD are sadly absent, but that release doesn't have this one's major bonus addition--the entire soundtrack album, with compositions by Lewis himself (including the immortal "Yee-Hah, the South's Gonna Rise Again") and Flatt and Scruggs (of Bonnie and Clyde fame). --Kim Newman

• Six - The Mark Unleashed | DVD | (30/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  In the not too distant future a brutal dictator rules over the planet. Using high tech surveillance from satellites through a sophisticated chip implant to enforce his rule. The community police force infiltrates every facet of human existence tracing each physical and digital footprint left behind. For humanity freedom is just a fond memory... and defiance means death.

• Gory Gory Hallelujah | DVD | (20/10/2008) from £7.89   |  Saving you £2.10 (26.62%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Four actors compete for the role of Jesus - a black revolutionary a bisexual hippie a Jew and a woman. When all four are rejected they hit the road on bad-ass motorcycles bound for glory in New York City. But when a run-in with a gang of Elvises ends in murder they find themselves stranded in a little town called Jackville - where folk don't take kindly to blasphemers. Taken prisoner the Jesuses fall prey to an evil conspiracy that can only lead to the Apocalypse. As the oppressed turn against each other and the undead rise who will emerge as the true Jesus? Can zombies bring redemption or just eat flesh?