"Actor: Keith David"

• The Stranger | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The Stranger, according to Orson Welles, "is the worst of my films. There is nothing of me in that picture. I did it to prove that I could put out a movie as well as anyone else." True, set beside Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, or even The Trial, The Stranger is as close to production-line stuff as the great Orson ever came. But even on autopilot Welles still leaves most filmmakers standing. The shadow of the Second World War hangs heavy over the plot. A war crimes investigator, played by Edward G Robinson, tracks down a senior Nazi, Franz Kindler, to a sleepy New England town where he's living in concealment as a respected college professor. The script, credited to Anthony Veiller but with uncredited input from Welles and John Huston, is riddled with implausibilities: we're asked to believe, for a start, that there'd be no extant photos of a top Nazi leader. The casting's badly skewed, too. Welles wanted Agnes Moorehead as the investigator and Robinson as Kindler, but his producer, Sam Spiegel, wouldn't wear it. So Welles himself plays the supposedly cautious and self-effacing fugitive--and if there was one thing Welles could never play, it was unobtrusive. What's more, Spiegel chopped out most of the two opening reels set in South America, in Welles' view, "the best stuff in the picture". Still, the film's far from a write-off. Welles' eye for stunning visuals rarely deserted him and, aided by Russell Metty's skewed, shadowy photography, The Stranger builds to a doomy grand guignol climax in a clock tower that Hitchcock must surely have recalled when he made Vertigo. And Robinson, dogged in pursuit, is as quietly excellent as ever. On the DVD: not much in the way of extras, except a waffly full-length commentary from Russell Cawthorne that tells us about the history of clock-making and where Edward G was buried, but precious little about the making of the film. Print and sound are acceptable, but though remastering is claimed, there's little evidence of it. --Philip Kemp

• Moment of Truth | DVD | (20/08/2012) from £21.58   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  2011 Academy Award winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Academy Award nominee Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) and Academy Award nominee Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas) star in writer/director Jake Goldberger’s darkly comic debut. Don McKay (Haden Church) flees his hometown after a horrendous tragedy and vows never to return. But 25 years later he comes back to find a dark menace looming over the town. As he attempts to rekindle his romance with an old high school girlfriend (Shue), Don is pulled into a malevolent world from which he may never escape. Special Features Commentary with Director Jake Goldberger

• Todd McFarlane's Spawn 1 And 2 | DVD | (13/10/2003) from £89.99   |  Saving you £-80.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Spawn: He once was a man now he's a 'Hell Spawn' battling the forces of evil on Earth and in himself. Using his strange powers he fights to uncover the thruth about his identity and fulfil his destiny. One of the comic book industry's most popular and intriguing characters Spawn explodes on the screen in a maelstrom of fantastic imagery with action romance and high-level espionage. Spawn 2: Todd McFarlane's hell-spawn returns to battle the forces of evil on earth in this powerful second feature-length installment of SPAWN. How can you avenge betrayal and murder? How can you fight for right in a world so steeped in evil? How can you protect those you love most from all that can do them harm? No man living - or dead - can tell you. But one trapped between both is struggling for an answer that can save the lives of his most beloved or plunge the world into eternal darkness. The cloak and chains of SPAWN are back. Exploding from the comic book page onto the screen is a deadly tornado of untapped unwrapped merciless power.

• The Thing - 4K UHD (Includes Blu-Ray) | Blu Ray | (20/09/2021) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Exclusive Art by Matt Ferguson Horror-meister John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape from New York) teams Kurt Russell's outstanding performance with incredible visuals to build this chilling version of the classic The Thing. In the winter of 1982, a twelve-man research team at a remote Antarctic research station discovers an alien buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Once unfrozen, the form-changing alien wreaks havoc, creates terror and becomes one of them. Special Features Feature Commentary with Director John Carpenter and Kurt Russell John Carpenter's The Thing: Terror Takes Shape Outtakes Theatrical Trailer

• Wild Bill | DVD | (20/12/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Platoon (Collector's Edition) | Blu Ray | (13/09/2022) from £25.15   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A