"Actor: John Dierkes"

• The Omega Man | DVD | (29/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Science fiction took a grim turn in the 1970s--the heyday of Agent Orange, nuclear peril and Watergate. Suddenly, most of our possible futures took on a "last man on Earth" flavour, with The Omega Man topping the doom-struck heap. Charlton Heston plays the government researcher behind the ultimate biological weapon, a deadly plague that has ravaged humanity. There are two groups of survivors: a dwindling band of immune humans and an infected, psychopathic mob of light-hating quasi-vampires. The infected are led by Mathias, a clever, charismatic man set on destroying the last remnants of the civilisation that produced the plague. Heston has a vaccine--but he and the few remaining normals are outnumbered and outgunned. By day, he builds a makeshift version of the nuclear family (with Rosalind Cash as his afro-wearing, gun-toting little lady). They plan for the future while roaming freely through an empty urban landscape, taking what few pleasures life has left. By night, they defend themselves against the growing horde of plague victims. Both a bittersweet romance and a gothic cautionary tale, The Omega Man paints a convincing portrait of hope and despair. It ain't pretty, but it's a great movie. --Grant Balfour

• Shane | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £6.30   |  Saving you £9.69 (153.81%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Consciously crafted by director George Stevens as a piece of American myth making, Shane is on nearly everyone's shortlist of great movie Westerns. A buckskin knight, Shane (Alan Ladd) rides into the middle of a range war between farmers and cattlemen, quickly siding with the "sod-busters". While helping a kindly farmer (Van Heflin), Shane falls platonically in love with the man's wife (Jean Arthur, in the last screen performance of a marvellous career). Though the showdowns are exciting, and the story simple but involving, what most people will remember about this movie is the friendship between the stoical Shane and the young son of the farmers. The kid is played by Brandon De Wilde, an amazing child performer; his parting scene with Shane is guaranteed to draw tears from even the most stony-hearted moviegoer. And speaking of stony hearts, Jack Palance made a sensational impression as the evil gunslinger sent to clean house--he has fewer lines of dialogue than he has lines in his magnificently craggy face, but he makes them count. The photography, highlighting the landscape near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, won an Oscar. --Robert Horton

• Abbott And Costello - Meet The Killer/Jekyll And Hyde | DVD | (28/08/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Meet The Killer: Lost Caverns Hotel bellhop Freddie Phillips is suspected of murder. Swami Talpur tries to hypnotize Freddie into confessing but Freddie is too stupid for the plot to work. Inspector Wellman uses Freddie to get the killer (and it isn't the Swami). Jekyll And Hyde: Slim and Tubby are American cops in London to study police tactics. They wind up in jail and are bailed out by Dr. Jekyll. Jekyll has been murdering fellow doctors who laugh at his experiments. He has more murders in mind. At one point the serum that turns Jekyll into the murderous Hyde gets injected into Tubby.

• Orson Welles' Macbeth | DVD | (17/07/2000) from £17.46   |  Saving you £2.53 (14.49%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Orson Welles' Macbeth is an expressionist masterpiece about a doomed man of ordinary ambition who believes an evil prophecy that he will become King. The shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies, Welles long considered Macbeth to be the most filmable of the Bard's work. Produced on a slim budget over a mere 32 days, the results are consistently impressive. As depicted by Welles, the title character is not a warrior king or conscience-stricken, poetic soul on a par with Hamlet; rather, he is revealed to be a facile, superstitious man consigned to fate even as the character does not trust to fate. For her part, Lady Macbeth (Jeanette Nolan) is merely obsessed with the unimpeded exercise of her will to power, viewing her husband's life as a tale told by an idiot (she is particularly effective during the "out, damned spot" scene from Act V). Welles has also created some new scenes here, conflating several characters into a "Holy Father" (Alan Napier) while eliciting strong supporting turns from actors such as Dan O'Herlihy (Macduff) and Roddy McDowall (Malcolm). All of this unfolds within a highly disordered state in which nature itself is on the rant ("Fair is foul and foul is fair"). Though the technically poor soundtrack and the occasional indecipherable Scottish brogue make the film seem a trifle compromised at times, each moment feels preternaturally alive. There is an almost Brechtian quality here, with Welles giving us splendid pieces then leaving it to us to fit them into a theatrically coherent puzzle. Refusing to believe that Birnham Wood could ever travel to Dunsinane, Macbeth is finally exposed as a man of insufficient character. As such, some might suggest that this Macbeth is more accurately described as the story of how Malcolm became King. --Kevin Mulhall

• The Raven | DVD | (20/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  One of the most sublimely silly products to emanate from Roger Corman's studio, The Raven has the very loosest of connections with the Edgar Allen Poe poem that gives it its title and which Vincent Price intones sepulchrally at the beginning. A retiring magician, Craven (Price) has opted out of the power struggles of peers such as Dr Scarabus (Boris Karloff) to brood on his dead wife and bring up his daughter. The arrival of Bledlo (Peter Lorre), an incompetent drunk whom Scarabus has turned into the raven of the title, involves him in everything he had renounced--life is complicated further by the arrival of Bledlo's son Rexford, played by a staggeringly young Jack Nicholson. The special effects are almost perfunctory, yet the culminating magical duel between Price and Karloff is inventive and charming; this is one of those films that looks as if the actors enjoyed making it; while the script by Richard Matheson has a blithe awareness of its own shortcomings that makes it hard to dislike. On the DVD: The Raven comes to DVD with very boxy remastered mono sound, but is presented in its original widescreen 2.35:1 ratio, formatted for 16:9 TVs. The only extra is the original theatrical trailer. --Roz Kaveney

• The Naked Jungle | DVD | (31/01/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Charlton Heston is the powerful brooding owner of a plantation in the wild and treacherous South American jungle. Eleanor Parker is his charming American mail-order bride. But Heston is wary of the beautiful and talented Parker and wonders why she would leave America for the rigours of jungle life. They're both threatened by the advance of billions of relentless killer ants who are making their way across the jungle cutting a path of creeping horror 20 miles long and 2 miles wide..

• Silver City | Blu Ray | (29/05/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Naked Jungle | Blu Ray | (07/01/2022) from £34.90   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Charlton Heston is the powerful, brooding owner of a plantation in the wild and treacherous South American jungle. Eleanor Parker is his charming American mail-order bride. But Heston is wary of the beautiful and talented Parker and wonders why she would leave America for the rigors of jungle life. They're both threatened by the advance of billions of relentless killer ants who are making their way across the jungle-cutting a path of creeping horror which is 20 miles long and two miles wide. Produced by George Pal, The Naked Jungle is a timeless fan favourite starring Charlton Heston & Eleanor Parker.