"Actor: Joan Shawlee"

• Some Like It Hot - Special Edition | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £6.10   |  Saving you £13.89 (227.70%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Maybe "nobody's perfect", as one character in this masterpiece suggests. But some movies are perfect, and Some Like It Hot is one of them. In Chicago, during the Prohibition era, two skirt-chasing musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), inadvertently witness the St Valentine's Day Massacre. In order to escape the wrath of gangland chief Spats Colombo (George Raft), the boys, in drag, join an all-woman band headed for Florida. They vie for the attention of the lead singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a much-disappointed songbird who warbles "I'm Through with Love" but remains vulnerable to yet another unreliable saxophone player. (When Curtis courts her without his dress, he adopts the voice of Cary Grant--a spot-on impersonation.) The script by director Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is beautifully measured; everything works, like a flawless clock. Aspiring screenwriters would be well advised to throw away the how-to books and simply study this film. The bulk of the slapstick is handled by an unhinged Lemmon and the razor-sharp Joe E. Brown, who plays a horny retiree smitten by Jerry's feminine charms. For all the gags, the film is also wonderfully romantic, as Wilder indulges in just the right amounts of moonlight and the lilting melody of "Park Avenue Fantasy". Some Like It Hot is so delightfully fizzy, it's hard to believe the shooting of the film was a headache, with an unhappy Monroe on her worst behaviour. The results, however, are sublime. --Robert Horton

• The Apartment | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £5.94   |  Saving you £10.05 (169.19%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Romance at its most anti-romantic--that is the Billy Wilder stamp of genius, and this Best Picture Academy Award winner from 1960 is no exception. Set in a decidedly unsavoury world of corporate climbing and philandering, the great filmmaker's trenchant, witty satire-melodrama takes the office politics of a corporation and plays them out in the apartment of lonely clerk CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon). By lending out his digs to the higher-ups for nightly extramarital flings with their secretaries, Baxter has managed to ascend the business ladder faster than even he imagined. The story turns even uglier, though, when Baxter's crush on the building's melancholy elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine) runs up against her long-standing affair with the big boss (a superbly smarmy Fred MacMurray). The situation comes to a head when she tries to commit suicide in Baxter's apartment. Not the happiest or cleanest of scenarios, and one that earned the famously caustic and cynically humoured Wilder his share of outraged responses, but looking at it now, it is a funny, startlingly clear-eyed vision of urban emptiness and is unfailingly understanding of the crazy decisions our hearts sometimes make. Lemmon and MacLaine are ideally matched and while everyone cites Wilder's Some Like It Hot closing line "Nobody's perfect" as his best, MacLaine's no-nonsense final words--"Shut up and deal"--are every bit as memorable. Wilder won three Oscars for The Apartment, for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (cowritten with long-time collaborator I A L Diamond). --Robert Abele

• Willard | DVD | (30/10/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  As accomplished as it is superfluous, Willard is a stylish horror film with plenty of style but precious little horror. Genre buffs will appreciate it as a visually superior sequel/remake of its popular 1971 predecessor, giving Crispin Glover a title role perfectly suited to his uniquely odd persona, in the same league as Psycho's Norman Bates. This time, Willard's the psychotically lonely son of the original film's now-deceased protagonist: a milquetoast introvert who befriends an army of obedient rats--lethal allies when Willard's pushed to his emotional breaking point by his abusive boss (R. Lee Ermey). In keeping with his memorably macabre episodes of X-Files, writer-director Glen Morgan excels with dreary atmosphere and mischievously morbid humor (including an ill-fated cat named Scully), and Glover gives his best performance since River's Edge. But even the furry villain Ben--an oversized rat with attitude--is more funny than frightful. With some justification, Glover's fans will appreciate the open door to a sequel. --Jeff Shannon

• Some Like It Hot | DVD | (09/10/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Maybe "nobody's perfect", as one character in this masterpiece suggests. But some movies are perfect, and Some Like It Hot is one of them. In Chicago, during the Prohibition era, two skirt-chasing musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), inadvertently witness the St Valentine's Day Massacre. In order to escape the wrath of gangland chief Spats Colombo (George Raft), the boys, in drag, join an all-woman band headed for Florida. They vie for the attention of the lead singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a much-disappointed songbird who warbles "I'm Through with Love" but remains vulnerable to yet another unreliable saxophone player. (When Curtis courts her without his dress, he adopts the voice of Cary Grant--a spot-on impersonation.) The script by director Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is beautifully measured; everything works, like a flawless clock. Aspiring screenwriters would be well advised to throw away the how-to books and simply study this film. The bulk of the slapstick is handled by an unhinged Lemmon and the razor-sharp Joe E. Brown, who plays a horny retiree smitten by Jerry's feminine charms. For all the gags, the film is also wonderfully romantic, as Wilder indulges in just the right amounts of moonlight and the lilting melody of "Park Avenue Fantasy". Some Like It Hot is so delightfully fizzy, it's hard to believe the shooting of the film was a headache, with an unhappy Monroe on her worst behaviour. The results, however, are sublime. --Robert Horton

• Irma La Douce | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £14.18   |  Saving you £1.81 (12.76%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Irma La Douce reunited The Apartment team of Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine with director Billy Wilder in an adaptation of the stage musical of the same name which had been a hit in Paris, London and New York. The screen transfer by Wilder and his colleague--writer IAL Diamond--however, omits the show's songs, relegating them to a background score refashioned by Andre Previn with some additional themes of his own. Background here is a complimentary term, for whatever qualms one might entertain as to this move, the two sets of themes are skilfully woven together by Previn and emerge as a witty and lyrical aural delight in their own right which is given due prominence on the soundtrack. Wilder is no rush to tell prostitute Irma's story: her affair with Lemmon being the pivot of the tale as he takes on the disguise of an English Lord. Lemmon and MacLaine beautifully play their mutual attraction under Wilder's deft direction with the slapstick never allowed to get out of hand. Many will recognise Wilder's touch in his handling of the scene where Lemmon as a policeman is carted off in a van full of voracious prostitutes from the bunks-in-the-train sequence in Some Like It Hot. The handsome production, designed by Alexander Tranner--with the occasional view of the Seine thrown in for good measure--and the Panavision photography by Joseph La Shelle are further assets. On the DVD: The DVD contains a longer than usual theatrical trailer, half shot as a cartoon with characters closely resembling those Pink Panther figures who emerged at the same time from the Mirisch Brothers, a pair prominent in sustaining the unique success of United Artists, whose name was deleted, in favour of the MGM logo, in the early 1960s. It's too bad that the music on this DVD transfer sometimes strikes a coarse note particularly over the extended opening credits. --Adrian Edwards

• Tony Rome | DVD | (03/07/2006) from £9.92   |  Saving you £3.07 (30.95%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Tony Rome a tough Miami PI living on a houseboat is hired by a local millionaire to find jewelry stolen from his daughter and in the process has several encounters with local hoods as well as the Miami Beach PD.

• I'll Be Yours | DVD | (02/05/2011) from £4.94   |  Saving you £8.05 (162.96%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A beautiful but naive young woman invents a fictitious fiance to escape the attentions of a businessman. Includes the songs: 'Cobbleskill High Scholl Love Song' Love's Old Sweet Song' 'Grandpa Brahms's Lullaby' and 'It's Dreamtime'.

• Comin' Round The Mountain / Little Giant | DVD | (28/08/2006) from £2.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (70.10%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Buck Privates Come Home: Two ex-soldiers return from overseas--one of them having smuggled into the country a French orphan girl he has become attached to. They wind up running into their old sergeant--who hates them--and getting involved with a race-car builder who's trying to find backers for a new midget racer he's building. The World Of Abbott And Costello: A compilation of clips from 19 Abbott & Costello features: The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap In the Navy Hit the Ice Who Done It? Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Mexican Hayride Hold That Ghost Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion Little Giant In Society Ride 'Em Cowboy The Naughty Nineties Buck Privates Come Home Buck Privates Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops Lost in Alaska Comin' Round the Mountain Abbott and Costello Go to Mars and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

• Francis the Talking Mule: 7 Film Collection | Blu Ray | (03/05/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• La Garçonnière | DVD | (04/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A