"Actor: John Michael Graham"

• Halloween: The Complete Collection (Eight Disc Box Set) | DVD | (11/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  A group of teens win a contest to spend a night in Michael Myers' childhood home to be broadcast live on the internet. But things go frightfully wrong and the game turns into a struggle to make it out of the house alive.

• The Lord of the Rings -- Limited Edition Box Set | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is a bold, colourful, ambitious failure. Severely truncated, this two-hour version tackles only about half the story, climaxing with the battle of Helm's Deep and leaving poor Frodo and Sam still stuck on the borders of Mordor with Gollum. Allegedly, the director ran out of money and was unable to complete the project. As far as the film does go, however, it is a generally successful attempt at rendering Tolkien's landscapes of the imagination. Bakshi's animation uses a blend of conventional drawing and rotoscoped (traced) animated movements from live-action footage. The latter is at least in part a money-saving device, but it does succeed in lending some depth and a sense of otherworldly menace to the Black Riders and hordes of Orcs: Frodo's encounter at the ford of Rivendell, for example, is one of the film's best scenes thanks to this mixture of animation techniques. Backdrops are detailed and well conceived, and all the main characters are strongly drawn. Among a good cast, John Hurt (Aragorn) and C3PO himself, Anthony Daniels (Legolas), provide sterling voice characterisation, while Peter Woodthorpe gives what is surely the definitive Gollum (he revived his portrayal a couple of years later for BBC Radio's exhaustive 13-hour dramatisation). The film's other outstanding virtue is avant-garde composer Leonard Rosenman's magnificent score in which chaotic musical fragments gradually coalesce to produce the triumphant march theme that closes the picture. None of which makes up for the incompleteness of the movie, nor the severe abridging of the story actually filmed. Add to that some oddities--such as intermittently referring to Saruman as "Aruman"--and the final verdict must be that this is a brave yet ultimately unsatisfying work, noteworthy as the first attempt at transferring Tolkien to the big screen but one whose virtues are overshadowed by incompleteness. --Mark Walker

• Halloween | UMD | (17/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Halloween is as pure and undiluted as its title. In the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois, a teenage baby sitter tries to survive a Halloween night of relentless terror, during which a knife-wielding maniac goes after the town's hormonally charged youths. Director John Carpenter takes this simple situation and orchestrates a superbly mounted symphony of horrors. It's a movie much scarier for its dark spaces and ominous camera movements than for its explicit bloodletting (which is actually minimal). Composed by Carpenter himself, the movie's freaky music sets the tone; and his script (cowritten with Debra Hill) is laced with references to other horror pictures, especially Psycho. The baby sitter is played by Jamie Lee Curtis, the real-life daughter of Psycho victim Janet Leigh; and the obsessed policeman played by Donald Pleasence is named Sam Loomis, after John Gavin's character in Psycho. In the end, though, Halloween stands on its own as an uncannily frightening experience--it's one of those movies that had audiences literally jumping out of their seats and shouting at the screen. ("No! Don't drop that knife!") Produced on a low budget, the picture turned a monster profit, and spawned many sequels, none of which approached the 1978 original. Curtis returned for two more instalments: 1981's dismal Halloween II, which picked up the story the day after the unfortunate events, and 1998's occasionally gripping Halloween H20, which proved the former baby sitter was still haunted after 20 years. --Robert Horton

• Monty Python Monster Collection (Special Edition) | DVD | (05/11/2007) from £119.95   |  Saving you £10.04 (8.37%)   |  RRP £129.99

  Everything Ever In One Gloriously Fabulous Ludicrously Definitive Outrageously Luxurious Monty Python Box Set For the ultimate gift this Christmas look no further than the 16 disc Monty Python Monster Box Set. Containing all the Monty Python films and the complete Flying Circus TV series. The box set includes all four series of Monty Python's Flying Circus all of the legendary (and poll-topping) films including both the brand new special edition of Monty Python's The Life Of Brian as well as Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

• Watership Down | DVD | (29/08/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  From Richard Adams' best seller comes a beautifully realized animated adventure about a nomadic band of rabbits. Nestled among the rolling hills and peaceful meadows of England lives a community of rabbits. When their warren is threatened a small group of brave rabbits escapes into the unknown countryside in search of a new home. Led by the visionary Fiver the courageous Bigwig the clever Blackberry and the honerable Hazel they face daunting challenges and use their strength and cunning to survive while pursuing their dream. Along their trek they make an unlikely friend - a looney seagull named Kehaar - and battle the vicious General Woundwort the cruel leader of another warren.

• And Now For Something Completely Different (Collector's Edition) (DVD) | DVD | (03/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python's first feature, is a reworking of their best skits from the first two seasons of the TV series. Originally made for the US market (where the show had yet to be aired), it was shot on film outside the usual studio sets ("Nudge Nudge", for example, is set in a tavern filled with passers-by). The writing and performances are fine and the film is packed with some of their best bits: "How to Avoid Being Seen", " Hell's Grannies", "Blackmail", "The Lumberjack Song" and "The Upper Class Twit of the Year", among others. Many of the sketches have been shortened, however, and the loss of the overly bright video sheen (the film has a muddy, dull look to it) and the invigorating presence of a live audience leaves the film sluggish at times. They're still feeling out the possibilities of the feature length, which they conquered with their next movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974). --Sean Axmaker

• Watership Down | Blu Ray | (22/10/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  From Richard Adams' best seller comes a beautifully realized animated adventure about a nomadic band of rabbits. Nestled among the rolling hills and peaceful meadows of England lives a community of rabbits. When their warren is threatened a small group of brave rabbits escapes into the unknown countryside in search of a new home. Led by the visionary Fiver the courageous Bigwig the clever Blackberry and the honerable Hazel they face daunting challenges and use their strength and cunning to survive while pursuing their dream. Along their trek they make an unlikely friend - a looney seagull named Kehaar - and battle the vicious General Woundwort the cruel leader of another warren.