"Actor: Jill Day"

• Hell Drivers | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Hell Drivers sees James Bond (Sean Connery), Doctor Who (William Hartnell), one of the men from UNCLE (David McCallum), the Prisoner (Patrick McGoohan) and a Professional (Gordon Jackson), all supporting Stanley Baker in this hard-as-nails British action picture realistically set in a bleak late-1950s England. Baker plays Tom Yately, an ex-con who takes the only job he can get--truck driving at breakneck speeds for a corrupt manager (Hartnell) and brutal foreman (McGoohan). The constant short runs and competition between the drivers makes for an intense atmosphere which inevitably explodes into violence. Baker's only friend is an Italian ex-POW played sensitively by Herbert Lom, while Peggy Cummings is a remarkably free-spirited heroine for a British film of the time. Baker himself is superb, quietly tough, and broodingly charismatic, McGoohan is compellingly malevolent and Hartnell simply chilling. The film is consistently engrossing and often exciting, even when the plot spirals into melodrama towards the finale. One has to wonder where the police are during all this mayhem, but the fact that the screenplay, by John Kruse and Cy Endfield, received a BAFTA nomination suggests the scenario was at least reasonably realistic. Endfield also directed this, the second of six films he would helm for Baker, the most famous of which would be the all-time classic, Zulu (1964). On the DVD: Hell Drivers is presented in an anamorphically enhanced ratio of 1.77:1. This means a little of the original 1.96:1 VistaVision (70mm) image is cropped at the sides, which is just noticeable in a few shots. The print used is excellent, with only very minor damage, and the mono sound is fine. The disc also includes Look in on Hell Drivers, a 1957 TV programme that offers interviews with Stanley Baker, Cy Endfield and Alfie Bass, as well as comments from genuine truck drivers confirming the realism of the story, and a contemporary 15-minute television interview with Baker, which focuses on Hell Drivers, Sea Fury(1958) (also directed by Cy Endfield) and Violent Playground (1958). The original trailer rounds out an excellent package. --Gary S Dalkin

• American High School | DVD | (17/09/2012) from £5.38   |  Saving you £-0.39 (-7.80%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Every once in a while a movie comes along that touches the soul and sweeps you away on a wave of emotion...THIS IS NOT THAT MOVIE! American High School is in the tradition of American Pie and Porky's where plenty of things besides the soul are being touched! It's the final week of senior year at American High School and the race for prom queen is heating up. The popular and sweet girl Gwen (Jillian Murray - Wild Things) and her exhibitionist husband are headed for divorce. Her rich ri...

• All For Mary | DVD | (08/04/2013) from £6.09   |  Saving you £6.90 (113.30%)   |  RRP £12.99

  1950s British comedy following two men who compete for the affections of the same woman in a Switzerland skiing resort. While holidaying in the Swiss Alps Clive (Nigel Patrick) and Humpy (David Tomlinson) both fall for Mary (Jill Day). They each try different ways to win her over without much success and when they contract chicken pox they find themselves in quarantine under the watchful eye of Humpy's old nanny Miss Cartwright (Kathleen Harrison). Their situation becomes even more complicate...

• Tower of Evil - Blu-ray | Blu Ray | (02/11/2015) from £9.45   |  Saving you £12.54 (132.70%)   |  RRP £21.99

  A horror classic finally remastered in HD! Tower of Evil is set in a deserted lighthouse on fog-shrouded Snape Island. A nude crazed woman slaughters a sailor and when she is found to possess an ancient relic an expedition is mounted to solve a series of psycho-sexual murders. Stars Jill Haworth Bryant Haliday Dennis Price and George Coulouris.

• A Stitch In Time | DVD | (12/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Norman Wisdom returns as his famous "Pitkin" character, but also for the first time since his appearance in 1958's The Square Peg, Edward Chapman is also back to provide Norman with the excuse to reprise his immortal catch-phrase "Mr Grimsdale". Following on from the previous year's On the Beat, this is actually Wisdom's third adventure as Norman Pitkin, and he certainly has a thing about uniforms. In the previous pictures he was in the army then the police, while here he succeeds in causing chaos in a St. John's Ambulance unit, as well as donning drag to play a blonde nurse complete with suspender belt and silk stockings. Each Norman Wisdom movie usually sees him as the accidental Lord of Misrule in one institution or another, and this time its the NHS: after being banned from his local hospital, Norman resorts to subterfuge to visit a little orphan girl. There's an autobiographical touch here, as Wisdom himself was raised in an orphanage and centred the plot of One Good Turn (1954) around such an establishment. It's all good fun and clearly shows where such later British comedy as Michael Crawford's BBC TV series Some Mothers Do 'Av 'Em (1973-78) found its inspiration. --Gary S. Dalkin