"Actor: Jonathan Le"

• Hercules - Handel | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £19.32   |  Saving you £13.66 (83.65%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Musical drama in three acts.

• Farscape 4.4 | DVD | (14/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The fourth volume of Farscape's fourth (and final) series does all those things that the later stages of any season should do: individual episodes play interesting games with how we think television works, while the tension of the overall story arc builds and builds. Of the individual episodes here, "Mental as Anything" is an ensemble piece for the male members of Moya's crew: D'Argo's back-story gets some sort of resolution and Scorpius puts John Crichton through hell for the best of reasons. "Bringing Home the Beacon" is rather more fun-- the women of Moya frustrate a Sebacean/Scarren peace treaty--but ends in stark tragedy. In "Constellation of Doubt", Moya picks up, and the crew obsessionally watch, a documentary from American television about their recent visit to earth: Crichton gets to see human paranoia and wishful thinking through cold, intelligent alien eyes. Finally, in "Prayer", Aeryn suffers terribly at the hands of her Scarren captors and Crichton makes a devil's bargain with Scorpius to save her. By this point the season is building to the surprises of its last episodes: Farscape was about to be cancelled, but it never lost its edge. On the DVDs: Farscape, Series 4 Vol. 4 includes a dictionary of alien slang and technical terms with illustrative clips from the show, as well as text files on the villainous Peacekeepers Braca and Grayza. The high point of the extras, though, is an interview with the wonderfully flakey Gigi Edgeley (Chiana) and a lot of deleted scenes from "Constellation of Doubt", with footage of Chiana, Aeryn and Noranti interacting with Crichton's family in bizarre and touching ways. --Roz Kaveney

• The Roger Corman Horror Collection | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Siren DVD's three-disc Roger Corman Collection contains The Little Shop of Horrors and The Terror, which Corman directed, as well as Dementia 13, which he produced. Though he has a reputation as one of the craftiest businessmen in Hollywood, Corman was too cheapskate in the 1960s to bother copyrighting a bunch of his films and so the same titles have been showing up on video and now DVD from many different distributors. All these films were thrown together in odd circumstances to take advantage of leftover sets, contracted performers or tied-up production funds. Little Shop of Horrors (a disguised remake of A Bucket of Blood) was famously made over a three-day weekend "because it was raining and we couldn't play tennis". The Terror exists because Boris Karloff owed a few days' work after completing The Raven and castle sets were still standing. Dementia 13 was written and directed by a young Francis Coppola in Ireland to take advantage of a European trip made for Corman's The Young Racers. All the films are interesting, in themselves and as footnotes to distinguished filmographies. Little Shop of Horrors has a lasting cult reputation for its blackly comic tale of codependency between a skid-row botanist (Jonathan Haze, relying a bit too much on a Jerry Lewis impersonation) and a blood-drinking, flesh-hungry mutant plant voiced by screenwriter Chuck Griffith ("feed meeee!"), with a creepy cameo from a young Jack Nicholson as a masochist who loves to visit the dentist. The Terror, which has Nicholson as the bewildered lead, is a wilfully incomprehensible Gothic picture made up on the spot by Corman and a handful of other directors (including Coppola and Monte Hellman), climaxing with Karloff's bogus baron and a decaying spectre woman swept away by a flood in the dungeons. Dementia 13, a saga of axe murders and mad sculptors, is brisk grand guignol with a lot of creepy imagery to do with drowned children and family rituals. On the DVD: The Roger Corman Collection limply claims the films are "digitally mastered" (note, not "remastered") as they are simply copies of low-quality video onto disc. Because these titles are public domain no one seems willing to take any care with transfers, and all three films are in terrible state. The Terror, the only colour film, looks especially atrocious (Vistascope cropped to full-frame) but the black-and-white films also suffer all manner of damage. The packaging is classy, but it's a shame more work wasn't done on the films themselves.--Kim Newman

• The Mummy/The Mummy Returns/The Scorpion King | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The Mummy (Dir. Stephen Sommers 1999): Deep in the Egyptian desert a handful of people searching for a long-lost treasure have just unearthed a 3 000 year old legacy of terror... Combining the thrills of a rousing adventure with the suspense of Universal's legendary 1932 horror classic The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser is a true nonstop action epic filled with dazzling visual effects top-notch talent and superb storytelling. The Mummy Returns (Dir. Stephen Sommers 2001): Set in 1933 ten years after the events in the first film Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) is married to Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) and the couple has settled in London raising their 9-year-old son Alex (Freddie Boath). When a chain of events finds the corpse of Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) resurrected in the British Museum Imhotep walks the earth determined to fulfill his quest for immortality. But another force has also been set loose one born of the darkest rituals of ancient Egyptian mysticism and even more powerful than Imhotep. When these forces clash the fate of the world will hang in the balance sending the O'Connell's on a mission to save the world and their son before it is too late... The Scorpion King (Dir. Charles Russell 2002): In the notorious city of Gomorrah evil warlord Memnon is determined to lay to waste all the nomadic peoples of the desert. Because the few remaining tribes are virtually powerless against him they decide to hire a skilled assassin Mathayus to eliminate Memnon's most prized asset: the sorceress Cassandra who lies at the root of Memnon's power. Mathayus's plan however is to kidnap Cassandra rather than kill her. He knows if he takes her deep into the desert badlands as his hostage Memnon and his henchman will stop at nothing to rescue her...

• Sky Dancers - Love Lost, Love Found | DVD | (22/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  High above the clouds lies an enchanted world of flying creatures. The secret Sky Kingdom is inhabited by many races of flying creatures. Their sole concern is music and dance and everyone has always lived in peace and harmony with one another... until today! Skyla the queen of the Sky Kingdom has sought help on earth. She has chosen five young students from the Dance Academy three girls and two boys to become Sky Dancers the flying defenders of her world against Sky Clone the grotesque ruler of the Nether-World! Episode titles: Lost Love Love Found Time And Again The Alliance.

• Farscape 4.5 | DVD | (25/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This last ever sequence of Farscape episodes is as effective and powerful a climax as those of earlier seasons. The three-parter "We're So Screwed" (a title censored by the BBC in the UK) starts with "Fetal Attraction", in which the crew of Moya attempt to rescue the pregnant Aeryn Sun from her Scarren captors and end up starting a dangerous epidemic on a space station. They get Aeryn back and lose Scorpius; in "Hot to Katratzi", the necessity of saving his worst enemy--who just knows too much to be left a captive--forces John Crichton to gate-crash the Sebacean-Scarren peace conference and bluff his way to success. Seemingly betrayed by Scorpius, John snatches victory in "La Bomba", striking another deadly blow against the Scarren empire. The title of the last episode "Bad Timing" refers both to the show's cancellation--the cast and crew felt real bitterness towards the SciFi Channel over this--and to the cliff-hanger ending; the crew of Moya have to prevent a Scarren ship finding its way through the worm-hole to Earth. Farscape was perhaps the best ever television space opera and certainly the most sexy, stylish, funny and dramatic; it will be greatly missed. On the DVD: Farscape, Series 4 Part 5 presents the shows in 16:9 format with impressively loud Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. The special features include a documentary about the cancellation of Farscape, in which the cast talk about their shock and grief and fans talk about the "Save Farscape" campaign. There are a couple of extended versions of scenes from these episodes and an extensive blooper reel, much of it hilarious. Also included is an illustrated glossary of terms from the Uncharted Territories and a collection of interesting facts about these last four episodes. --Roz Kaveney

• The 13th Sign | DVD | (27/11/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The 13th Sign is a no-budget horror-action flick in which a solar-eclipse provides the backdrop for all manner of cultish goings-on in rural England. Obvious fans of The Wicker Man, directors Adam Mason and Jonty Acton gamely try to imbue the action with that film's sinister tones, most notably through the creepy rural setting and the appearance of a suave, philosophy-spouting country lord. Sadly they don't stop there, also throwing in (among a plethora of other jarring and disparate elements) a copious dose of supernatural mumbo-jumbo and a trio of cyberpunk hitmen. The film's miniscule budget is an Achilles' heel that cannot be disguised by enthusiasm alone. It is all very well staging a Desperado-style face-off to wow your audience, but its impact will inevitably be dampened somewhat if it has to take place outside the village Co-op. What we are left with then is a buxom, blood-drenched heroine gamely fighting a losing battle against bizarre bounty-hunters, lazily possessed rednecks, unconvincingly fiery-eyed demons and production values that make The 13th Sign look like the goriest and most convoluted You've Been Framed clip of all time. --Paul Philpott

• Farscape 3.5 | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £15.98   |  Saving you £9.01 (36.10%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The final four episodes of Farscape's remarkable third season prove conclusively that this is the show's best and bravest year to date. Powerful issues of love, loyalty and sacrifice remain to be resolved, but after enduring a vertiginous emotional roller-coaster ride in recent episodes, Moya's reunited crew have no time to recuperate as Crichton determinedly calls them to arms for their sternest challenge yet. Scorpius and his Wormhole research must be destroyed at any price. Thus the scene is set to conclude the series' biggest story arc in a climactic confrontation aboard the Peacekeeper Command Carrier. In "I-Yensch, You-Yensch" the plan is set in motion, as a canny Rygel bargains with Scorpius and gains his grudging respect during an unexpected and tragi-comic heist by two murderously incompetent criminals. Then the two-parter "Into the Lion's Den" takes everyone onto the Command Carrier, where Aeryn is confronted by her past, Crichton's subconscious finally releases its Wormhole secrets, and Crais persuades Talyn to do something extraordinarily noble. By the end, it's hard not to sympathise with poor put-upon Scorpius. In the final episode, "Dog with Two Bones", Moya's crew seem finally free to go their separate ways as a mysterious refugee helps Crichton confront his worst fears about Aeryn. Emotions reach a climax and remain tantalisingly unresolved at the cliffhanger ending. On the DVD: Farscape, Volume 3.5 carries all the usual gallery of extra features--including deleted scenes, "Info-Pods" on Rygel, Crais and Scorpius, "Farscape Facts", trailers and stills--plus of course four uncut episodes. --Mark Walker

• Farscape 3.2 | DVD | (06/05/2002) from £12.97   |  Saving you £15.01 (150.40%)   |  RRP £24.99

  With the third season well under way, it's clear that Farscape has developed into a grown-up show. There's a new self-confidence and a new maturity here that's entirely welcome after the often wildly erratic tone of the second season. The production design and high-quality effects work remain true to the show's original quirky style, although both the look and the more adult-themed scripts have become progressively darker. This second box set of Season 3 features five of the nastiest, most shocking and incident-packed episodes to date. Things start badly when psychotic madman Kaarvok kills D'Argo and Chiana and sucks out their brains. Only later do we discover he's "twinned" them when the same fate befalls Crichton--though both Crichton "twins" survive. Life just gets more and more complicated thereafter. Crichton twin 1 stays on Moya with D'Argo, Chiana and Jool, while Crichton twin 2 transfers to Talyn with Aeryn, Crais, Rygel and Stark. Talyn is being pursued by a Peacekeeper retrieval squad led by Aeryn's mum, Xhalax Sun, and is then swallowed by a Budong (in the Ben Browder-penned episode "Green-Eyed Monster") before Mrs Sun catches up with her daughter and pals. Back on Moya a mysterious "Energy Rider" possesses the crew in turn. Meanwhile on Talyn, Aeryn and Crichton twin 2 have been blissfully having sex, while Crais lusts vainly for Aeryn. Just wait until Scorpius gets involved. On the DVD: This box set contains the usual "Info Pods" and other extras, plus the first Region 2 commentary, for the episode "Relativity", with actor Lani Tupu and director Peter Andrikidis; it's a shame that they don't have a lot to say. --Mark Walker

• 3 Modern Classics - The Stepfather / Glengarry Glen Ross / The Last Seduction | DVD | (20/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The Stepfather - This is the chilling tale of a congenial family man whose engaging smile and staid demeanor insidiously mask a deep-seated dementia. His obsessive desire to live the ideal family life ultimately leads to the family's very destruction. Glengarry Glen Ross - He's an animal of instinct. Ferocious. Hungry. Driven by the kill. He's an endangered species. A dying breed. And he's going down fighting. He is The Property Salesman. Cinema's star players chase le

• Something About Sex | DVD | (15/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Marriage what a wonderful institution. But who wants to be in an institution or so the joke goes. Sit back for a comedic roller-coaster ride through love sex trust monogamy and cheating. Through the cynical vision of a bachelor nerd (Jason Alexander) doubts about fidelity are planted in the minds of three seemingly happy couples. Follow the exploits and sexploits as the couples set about hiding or exposing the naked truth in the upside-down and steamy world of your favourite subject...S-E-X.

• Sky Dancers - Where's My Body | DVD | (22/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  High above the clouds lies an enchanted world of flying creatures. The secret Sky Kingdom is inhabited by many races of flying creatures. Their sole concern is music and dance and everyone has always lived in peace and harmony with one another... until today! Skyla the queen of the Sky Kingdom has sought help on earth. She has chosen five young students from the Dance Academy three girls and two boys to become Sky Dancers the flying defenders of her world against Sky Clone the grotesque ruler of the Nether-World! Episode titles: Where's My Body? Slam Bang Treasure Cloud.

• Macross II : Super Dimensional Fortress | DVD | (01/08/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Eighty years have passed on Earth since the events chronicled in Macross. The descendants of the Zentradi/Metrandi conflict have established a new society with the people of Earth. The UN Space force has integrated Zentradi warships into its fleet and Zentradi and humanity co-exist peacefully. Events quickly change as an invading alien force enters the solar system and the Earth forces are mobilised: armed with the legendary 'Minmay Song Attack'... Episode Listing: Contact Ishtar Festival Marduk Disorder Station Break Sing Along

• Farscape 4.3 | DVD | (19/05/2003) from £7.65   |  Saving you £17.34 (226.67%)   |  RRP £24.99

  In the episodes contained in this third volume, Farscape's fourth series finally kicks into gear and does some of the most surprising things a television show has ever done. The first three episodes are all Farscape classics, which take our expectations and jump up and down on them. "Unrealised Realities" takes John Crichton (Ben Browder) through a wormhole to be interrogated by a creature who regards the Ancients who put the knowledge of wormhole technology in his brain as annoying bumblers and who tells him a lot about time and about alternate universes. This gives the cast a chance to play each other again--Claudia Black's performance as Chiana is particularly disorientating. In "Kansas" John finds himself finally back on Earth, during his own adolescence, with the task of ensuring that his father does not die in the Challenger explosion and alter his personal history. The visit to his long-missed home continues in "Terra Firma" where the crew of Moya have to cope with Bush's America and John discovers the hard way--politics, family, old girlfriends, alien assassins--that you cannot go home again. Lastly in the moderately weaker "Twice Shy", Chiana (Gigi Edgeley) and the others learn that no good deed goes unpunished as a slave they rescue turns out to be one of the more deadly individual menaces they have ever faced. --Roz Kaveney

• Rough Science - Series 5 | DVD | (01/01/2005) from £20.25   |  Saving you £2.74 (13.53%)   |  RRP £22.99

• Dragon Flyz - Lost Eden And Two Other Stories | DVD | (22/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Three animated action episodes: 'Lost Eden' 'The Mount Alayas' and Dark Dramen'.

• Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Complete TV Movies | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £75.99

  The boxset includes all 10 ""cliffhanger"" episodes from the popular TV series - presented in their feature-length TV movie formats. Disc 1: Encounter At Farpoint / Best Of Both Worlds Pts 1 & 2 Disc 2: Redemption Pts 1 & 2 / Unification Pts 1 & 2 Disc 3: Time's Arrow Pts 1 & 2 / Chain Of Command Pts 1 & 2 Disc 4: Birthright Pts 1 & 2 / Descent Pts 1 & 2 Disc 5: Gambit Pts 1 & 2 / All Good Things Pts 1 & 2 Disc 6: DS9: Emmissary / ST-TNG

• Farscape 2.2 | DVD | (07/05/2001) from £19.27   |  Saving you £5.72 (22.90%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The second season of Farscape expands upon and develops the characters introduced in the ambitious first season. John Crichton's new nemesis is the deadly Scorpius, replacing Crais who has taken the living ship Moya's offspring on a voyage into the unknown. Moya's regular crew--Aeryn, Zhaan, Chiana, D'Argo and Rygel--remain as divided and suspicious of each other as ever, yet somehow manage to pull together at times of crisis. After revelations about Pilot's introduction to Moya in "The Way We Weren't", the writers continue to exploit the show's gift for surprising as well as emotionally convincing character development. The CGI effects, prosthetics and state-of-the-art puppetry, courtesy of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, continue to make Farscape the most original looking sci-fi show on TV. The witty scripts, peppered with post-modern pop culture references and movie in-jokes, are also a breath of fresh air. The result is episodic TV sci-fi that continually pushes at the accepted boundaries of the genre. On the DVD: the four episodes included here are all distinguished by ambitious storytelling, somewhat let down in the execution. In "Picture if You Will", an old enemy returns with a truly bizarre and barely comprehensible scheme to imprison Moya's crew inside a picture (shades of Dorian Gray maybe?). "Home on the Remains" has a contrived plot that harks right back to classic Star Trek, with Crichton even quoting Jim Kirk (the highlight, though, is Zhaan's transformation, which gives a whole new meaning to hay fever). Both "Dream a Little Dream" and "Out of Their Minds" play around with the crew's perceptions of reality--the former is a curious flashback episode set in between the first and second season, as Zhaan is put on trial for murder on a dystopian planet run by lawyers; the second plays body-swap with the crew, with everyone obviously having fun pretending to be everyone else (the aliens, however, look like leftovers from The Dark Crystal). DVD extras include a handful of deleted scenes, a DVD-ROM screensaver and yet another photo gallery. --Mark Walker

• Farscape 2.4 | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £25.00   |  Saving you £-0.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The second season of Farscape expands upon and develops the characters introduced in the ambitious first season. John Crichton's new nemesis is the deadly Scorpius, replacing Crais who has taken the living ship Moya's offspring on a voyage into the unknown. Moya's regular crew--Aeryn, Zhaan, Chiana, D'Argo and Rygel--remain as divided and suspicious of each other as ever, yet somehow manage to pull together at times of crisis. The writers continue to exploit the show's gift for surprising as well as emotionally convincing character development, while the CGI effects, prosthetics and state-of-the-art puppetry, courtesy of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, continue to make Farscape the most original looking sci-fi show on TV. The witty scripts, peppered with post-modern pop culture references and movie in-jokes, are also a breath of fresh air. The result is episodic TV sci-fi that continually pushes at the accepted boundaries of the genre. --Mark Walker

• The Twilight Zone - Vol. 3 | DVD | (29/05/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In 1959 screenwriter Rod Serling first opened the door to the "dimension of imagination" that is The Twilight Zone, a show quite unlike anything that had gone before, and better than much that has followed in its wake. This original and daring television series ran for a magnificent five seasons from 1959 to 1964 and still looks as fresh as ever, particularly on DVD. What distinguished the series (and still does) is the quality of the scripts, many of which were penned by Serling, but with significant contributions from veteran sci-fi authors and screenwriters such as Richard Matheson. Actors of the calibre of Robert Redford, Burgess Meredith, Lee Marvin and William Shatner gave some of their best small-screen performances, while an unforgettable main title theme by Bernard Herrmann and musical contributions from young turks such as Jerry Goldsmith underlined the show's attraction for great creative talent both behind and in front of the cameras. Volume 3 contains another selection of four episodes from across the series. "Steel" (episode 122) stars Lee Marvin in a futuristic Richard Matheson story concerning a penniless boxing manager who is forced into the ring when his robot boxer breaks down. Matheson is concerned to illustrate the lengths to which people are forced to go when desperate, but his moral is undermined a little by setting the story in the far future of 1974; Marvin, however, is a magnetic presence. In the tense and tautly written "A Game of Pool" (episode 70), Jack Klugman (The Odd Couple, Quincy) is a boastful pool player who challenges champion "Fats" Brown (Jonathan Winters) to a match in which the stakes are his life. "Walking Distance" is a slice of wistful, semi-autobiographical nostalgia from Serling in which a burned-out media exec returns to the town of his childhood (watch out for a very young Ron Howard as one of the kids). Bernard Herrmann's masterful score for this episode was composed not long after his music for Hitchcock's Vertigo, and has a similar tragi-romantic streak. Finally, "Kick the Can" (episode 86) is the story of the residents of a retirement home who discover (or rediscover) Peter Pan's secret for staying permanently young: it's easy to see why Steven Spielberg decided to adapt this episode for the 1983 movie. On the DVD: A neat animated menu with a winking eye guides the viewer "Inside the Twilight Zone", which consists of digests of background information on the individual episodes, as well as a general history of the show, season-by-season breakdown and a potted biography of Serling. --Mark Walker