"Actor: John Allen"

• Baywatch - Hawaiian Reunion | DVD | (03/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Baywatch Hawaiian Reunion, like the 11-year television series itself, is a guilty pleasure short on story credibility but long on action, hardbody appeal, and hot passions. The hyperdrive plot finds Mitch Buchannon (David Hasselhoff), presumed dead at the end of season 10, alive and well and in love with a woman named Allison (Alexandra Paul), who bears a spooky resemblance to Mitch's late lover, Stephanie. Wedding plans that include the old Baywatch lifeguard crew (Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth, Billy Warlock, etc.) are set for Hawaii, but in a Wrath of Khan-like twist, a villain (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) from the old show's second season turns up with an elaborate plan to kidnap and endanger Mitch's guests. The script is shameless, of course, but the outré element is fun to watch, including a subplot in which Mitch's former wife (Gena Lee Nolin)--suspicious of Allison's true motives--gets into a spectacular catfight with her ex's new lady.--Tom Keogh

• We're Doomed: The Dad's Army Story (BBC) | DVD | (01/02/2016) from £7.79   |  Saving you £0.20 (2.57%)   |  RRP £7.99

  The dramatised story of how Jimmy Perry and David Croft overcame BBC management scepticism, focus groups and cast constipation to get the much-loved series onto air. Running from Perry's initial idea in 1967 until the transmission of the first episode in 1968, this affectionate and witty film shows the beginnings of Perry and Croft's writing partnership and the casting woes, personal clashes and production difficulties that put the show's very existence in jeopardy. It reveals to fans and newcomers alike what went on behind the scenes in the making of Dad's Army and is a true love letter to British creativity.

• The Four Feathers | DVD | (19/06/2007) from £3.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (150.38%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Far too many film versions of the The Four Feathers have been made over the years, which is especially surprising considering that this 1939 Korda brothers production is surely definitive. The film simultaneously celebrates and pokes fun at British imperialism, showing the kind of dogged stiff-upper-lippery that forged an empire, but also the blinkered attitudes and crass snobbishness of the ruling classes (and those plummy accents--did people ever really talk like that?). Whatever political subtext may or may not be read into it, though, the film is best celebrated for its magnificent vistas: partially made on location in the Sudan, as well as at the famous Denham Studios, this is British cinema from the days when it thought to rival Hollywood for sheer spectacle. Vincent Korda's production design and the glorious early colour cinematography are helped greatly by fellow Hungarian émigré Miklos Rozsa's epic score. John Clements is the notional hero, the man who is determined to show the world he is not a coward after resigning his commission (even though it would surely have saved everyone a lot of bother if he had just stuck with it) but the film is stolen by Ralph Richardson, magnificent as an officer struck blind and led to safety by Clements' Harry Faversham. The latter scenes when Richardson's Captain Durrance realises the truth and its implications are the most poignant and emotionally truthful in the film. C Aubrey Smith is delightful as the old buffer who relives his battles on the dinner table; to a modern audience, however, the "blackface" casting of John Laurie as the Khalifa strikes a discordant note. But adjusting some expectations for its vintage, this is a triumph of derring-do and far and away the most gripping version of this oft-told story on film. --Mark Walker

• Dog Day Afternoon | DVD | (13/02/2006) from £7.19   |  Saving you £9.80 (136.30%)   |  RRP £16.99

  The robbery should have taken ten minutes. Eight hours later it was the hottest thing on live TV. And it's all true. On a hot Brooklyn afternoon two optimistic losers set out to rob a bank. Sonny (Al Pacino) is the mastermind Sal (John Cazale) is the follower and disaster is the result. Because the cops crowds TV cameras and even the pizza man have arrived. The ""well-planned"" heist is now a circus. Based on a true incident this thriller earned six Academy Award nomina

• Shining Through | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £9.95   |  Saving you £-3.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Based on a novel by Susan Isaacs, Shining Through is uncomfortably close to Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious. This World War II drama concerns a love affair between a spy (Michael Douglas) and a secretary (Melanie Griffith) that goes south when duty turns him cold and pushes her into dangerous, behind-the-lines intelligence work. Liam Neeson plays the gentleman Nazi unwittingly providing Griffith with cover as domestic help. The best parts of the film are the twists and turns in the romance (Douglas is very good at playing a character who can turn off all feeling at will) at the beginning; the German scenes are less compelling despite such high stakes for the heroine. The climax--taking us back to Notorious whether it wants to or not--is quite gripping, largely due to Douglas's performance.--Tom Keogh

• The Conversation | Blu Ray | (18/11/2024) from £18.10   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 seminal neo-noir thriller THE CONVERSATION symbolises the uneasy line between technology and privacy a topic more relevant than ever today. Nominated for 3 Academy Awards® and winner of the prestigious 1974 Cannes Film Festival Palme D'or THE CONVERSATION is a tense, paranoid thriller, regarded as one of Coppola's greatest films. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is an expert surveillance expert in San Francisco. His routine wiretapping job turns into a nightmare when he hears something disturbing in his recording of a couple; he may have captured something a lot more important than adulterous goings-on. His investigation of the tape and how it might be used sends Harry spiralling into a web of secrecy, murder and paranoia. THE CONVERSATION is a harrowing psychological thriller that co-stars Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest and Harrison Ford.

• Dog Day Afternoon | DVD | (13/02/2006) from £10.78   |  Saving you £-0.79 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A gripping true crime yarn, a juicy slice of overheated New York atmosphere and a splendid showcase for its young actors, Dog Day Afternoon is a minor classic of the 1970s. The opening montage of New York street life (set to Elton John's lazy "Amoreena") establishes the oppressive mood of a scorching afternoon in the city with such immediacy that you can almost smell the garbage baking in the sun and the water from the hydrants evaporating from the sizzling pavement. Al Pacino plays Sonny, who, along with his rather slow-witted accomplice Sal (John Cazale, familiar as Pacino's Godfather brother Fredo), holds hostages after a botched a bank robbery. Sonny finds himself transformed into a rebel celebrity when his standoff with police (including lead negotiator Charles Durning) is covered live on local television. The movie doesn't appear to be about anything in particular, but it really conveys the feel of wild and unpredictable events unfolding before your eyes, and the whole picture is so convincing and involving that you're glued to the screen. An Oscar winner for original screenplay, Dog Day Afternoon was also nominated for best picture, actor, supporting actor (Chris Sarandon, as a surprise figure from Sonny's past), editing, and director (Sidney Lumet of Serpico, Prince of the City, The Verdict and Running on Empty). --Jim Emerson

• Toy Story | DVD | (08/03/2010) from £5.99   |  Saving you £-1.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Disney/Pixar's "Toy Story 2" picks up as Andy heads off to Cowboy Camp, leaving his toys to their own devices. Things shift into high gear when an obsessive toy collector named Al McWhiggin, owner of Al's Toy Barn, kidnaps Woody.

• Shaun the Sheep - Two's Company | DVD | (06/09/2010) from £5.98   |  Saving you £7.01 (117.22%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Shaun The Sheep: Two's Company

• A Town Like Alice (1981) | DVD | (13/11/2020) from £24.65   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• I Was Monty's Double | DVD | (29/01/2007) from £9.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (30.03%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In World War II North Africa an actor is set the task of posing as Field Marshal Montgomery in an effort to confuse the Nazis. Based on a true story.

• Face/Off | DVD | (11/06/2001) from £5.98   |  Saving you £10.01 (167.39%)   |  RRP £15.99

  At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks Woo's first American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes a patently absurd premise--hero and villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction plastic surgery--and creates a double-barrelled revenge film driven by the split psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) must play the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man, while using every tool at his disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the most visceral action thrills ever. Woo fills the screen with one show-stopping set-piece after another, bringing a poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. --Sean Axmaker

• Mr Deeds | DVD | (05/09/2005) from £3.95   |  Saving you £6.04 (152.91%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A sweet-natured, small-town guy inherits a controlling stake in a media conglomerate and begins to do business his way.

• Fear X | DVD | (28/06/2004) from £9.30   |  Saving you £9.68 (153.41%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Security guard Harry Caine (Turturro) is desperately searching for a reason behind the murder of his wife. He spends his nights watching CCTV footage to find a face that might give him a clue. His walls are plastered with 'suspects' but when he closes in on one who might be the killer his world is turned upside down once again...

• National Lampoon's Animal House | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £4.94   |  Saving you £11.05 (223.68%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A groundbreaking screwball caper, 1978's National Lampoon's Animal House was in its own way a rite of passage for Hollywood. Set in 1962 at Faber College, it follows the riotous carryings-on of the Delta Fraternity, into which are initiated freshmen Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst. Among the established house members are Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert and the late John Belushi as Bluto, a belching, lecherous, Jack Daniels guzzling maniac. A debauched house of pranksters (culminating in the famous Deathmobile sequence), Delta stands as a fun alternative to the more strait-laced, crew-cut, unpleasantly repressive norm personified by Omega House. As cowriter the late Doug Kenney puts it, "better to be an animal than a vegetable". Animal House is deliberately set in the pre-JFK assassination, pre-Vietnam era, something not made much of here, but which would have been implicitly understood by its American audience. The film was an enormous success, a rude, liberating catharsis for the latter-day frathousers who watched it. However, decades on, a lot of the humour seems broad, predictable, boorish, oafishly sexist and less witty than Airplane!, made two years later in the same anarchic spirit. Indeed, although it launched the Hollywood careers of several of its players and makers, including Kevin Bacon, director John Landis, Harold Ramis and Tom Hulce, who went on to do fine things, it might well have been inadvertently responsible for the infantilisation of much subsequent Hollywood comedy. Still, there's an undeniable energy that gusts throughout the film and Belushi, whether eating garbage or trying to reinvoke the spirit of America "After the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour" is a joy. On the DVD: Animal House comes to disc in a good transfer, presented in 1.85:1. The main extra is a featurette in which director John Landis, writer Chris Miller and some of the actors talk about the making of the movie. Interestingly, 23 years on, most of those interviewed look better than they did back in 1978, especially Stephen "Flounder" Furst. --David Stubbs

• SILVERADO (BLU-RAY) - VARIOUS | Blu Ray | (17/09/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Killer Klowns From Outer Space | Blu Ray | (28/10/2024) from £10.00   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Shaun The Sheep - Flock To The Floor | DVD | (26/01/2015) from £3.50   |  Saving you £6.49 (185.43%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Ten episodes from the children's animated series following Shaun a mischievous and unique sheep who leads his flock into all manner of trouble. The episodes are: 'The Looney Tic' 'Men at Work' 'The Dog Show' 'Missing Piece' 'Wildfire Watch' 'The Pelican' 'Bad Boy' 'Remote Control' 'Phoney Farmer' and 'Ground Dog Day'. This compilation also features 5 Morph episodes and a “Where’s Shaun?” insert. Episode List: The Looney Tic Men at Work The dog Show Missing Piece Wildlife watch The Pelican Bad Boy Remote Control Phoney Farmer Ground Dog Day Portable Hole Great Outdoors Fetch Stick Up Twin Decks

• Silverado | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Director Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill) clearly set out to make an old-fashioned Western, but he couldn't help bringing a hip, self-conscious attitude to the proceedings. Silverado thus finds its own funky tone--sometimes rousing, sometimes winking. Four cowboys--Kevin Kline (a distinctly modern kind of Western hero), Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, and the rowdy young Kevin Costner--converge on a little Western burg called Silverado. Kasdan peppers the somewhat generic action with smart dialogue and a parade of quirky supporting players, including John Cleese as a sheriff who seems to have stepped straight from a Monty Python sketch into an Old West saloon. Bruce Broughton supplies the music, a real throwback to the glory days of thundering Western themes. One thing's for sure: Silverado's a lot more fun than the later Kasdan-Costner Western, Wyatt Earp. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com

• Shaun The Sheep - Abracadabra | DVD | (20/10/2008) from £14.91   |  Saving you £-1.92 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Another bunch of great woolly adventures for Shaun Bitzer Shirley and the flock - not to mention those troublesome pigs - as they go looking for more sheep thrills! The shear delights in this collection include a disappearing flock in Shaun's magic show newly-hatched chicks thinking Shaun is their mum Shirley getting the hiccups and a bull seeing red all over when the Naughty Pigs pour paint into the sheep dip! Featuring 8 barnstorming adventures: 1. Abracadabra 2. The Bull 3. Who's the Mummy? 4. Hiccups 5. Heavy Metal Shaun 6. Troublesome Tractor 7. Sheepwalking 8. Save the Tree