"Actor: John Boorman"

• Long Shot (Flipside 034) (DVD + Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (26/06/2017) from £11.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  LONG SHOT (BFI Flipside 034) (DVD + Blu-ray) A film by Maurice Hatton THE FLIPSIDE: rescuing weird and wonderful British films from obscurity and presenting them in new high-quality editions. Rarely seen in the last 40 years our latest Flipside marks the release of this important and funny slice of Scottish cinema. A budding Scottish film producer tries to get his ambitious Aberdeen-set western financed, and while he attracts some major stars and directors to the film, he finds that with their support come more and more script changes... Filmed around the 1977 Edinburgh Film Festival, Long Shot is a deadpan satire about the trials and tribulations of British independent filmmaking, with terrific cameos from Charles Gormley, Wim Wenders, Susannah York, Stephen Frears, Alan Bennett and John Boorman. Extras: Scene Nun, Take One (Maurice Hatton, 1964, 26 mins): short film starring Susannah York and directed by Maurice Hatton Sean Connery's Edinburgh (1982, 28 mins): short film starring the iconic actor. The film was sponsored by the City of Edinburgh District Council and aimed at increasing tourist trade Hooray for Holyrood (Ross Wilson, 1986, 50 mins): Scottish Television short presented by Robbie Coltrane celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Edinburgh Film Festival Booklet with new writing from Bill Forsyth, Vic Pratt and Dylan Cave, plus full film credits

• Zardoz | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A box office failure at the time, John Boorman's 1974 cult science fiction film Zardoz is an entrancing if overly ambitious project that offers pointed commentary on class structure and religion inside its complex plot and head-movie visuals. Its healthy doses of sex and violence will involve viewers even if the story machinations escape them. Beautifully photographed near Boorman's home in Ireland's Wicklow Mountains by Geoffrey Unsworth (2001), its production design is courtesy of longtime Boorman associate Anthony Pratt, who creates a believable society within the film's million-dollar budget. A bewigged Sean Connery is Zed, a savage "exterminator" commanded by the mysterious god Zardoz to eliminate Brutals, survivors of an unspecified worldwide catastrophe. Zed stows away inside Zardoz's enormous idol (a flying stone head) and is taken to the pastoral land of the Eternals, a matriarchal, quasi-medieval society that has achieved psychic abilities as well as immortality. Zed finds as much hope as disgust with the Eternals; their advancements have also robbed them of physical passion, turning their existence into a living death. Zed becomes the Eternals' unlikely messiah, but in order to save them--and himself--he must confront the truth behind Zardoz and his own identity inside the Tabernacle, the Eternals' omnipresent master computer. --Paul Gaita

• The Bunker - The Evil Is Within | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-4.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Thriller/horror set during World War II. A group of German soldiers in the Ardennes in 1944 take refuge from the advancing Allied troops in an underground bunker system. However during the night a series of strange and horrifying events occur.