"Actor: Mark Douglas"

• The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy | DVD | (28/01/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The original BBC radio adventures of Arthur Dent (an ape-descendant whose anger at the apparently inexplicable destruction of his home planet Earth, situated in an obscure corner of the outer spiral arm of the galaxy, is expressed in frequent irritation at friendly automatic doors and vending machines) and his travelling companions, Ford Prefect (an itinerant towel-carrying hitch-hiker originally from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse), Zaphod Beeblebrox (the notorious ex-Galactic President and patron of Eccentrica Galumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six) and Marvin the Paranoid Android (who's still suffering from that terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side) proved to be such a success for the BBC that its transition to TV was (almost) inevitable. In 1981 several key members of the radio cast made the move to the small screen. Simon Jones' bewildered Arthur Dent remains the central character, shambling around in his dressing gown (a fact easy to forget on radio); Mark Wing-Davey's Zaphod Beeblebrox is the same as his boastful radio persona, even if the second head utterly fails to convince. Unfortunately, newcomers David Dixon (as Ford Prefect) and the irritating Sandra Dickinson (as Trillian) are no match for their radio predecessors.The problem here is not so much the low-budget look as the script itself, which is lovingly faithful to the radio series in a way that Douglas Adams' novels aren't. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a lucid, satirical, occasionally profound, utterly unique comic invention on radio. As such, it has nothing to gain from TV. The script needs no visual elaboration--that's best left to the listener's own imagination. Only the animated renditions of the Guide itself enhance Peter Jones' wonderfully dry narration; otherwise--paradoxically, perhaps--by supplying images the concept is oddly diminished here.On the DVD: A suitably eclectic not to say eccentric collection of extra features makes this a wholly satisfying two-disc set, neatly packaged in a fold-out slipcase. On the second disc there's an hour-long "making of" documentary from 1992 featuring contributions from the cast and crew, including Douglas Adams; and then there's even more in a 20-minute section entitled "Don't Panic!". A fascinating behind-the-scenes peek at filming as the clock runs out on studio time and a look at the recording of the original radio series complete the first part. Then navigate to the "Outer Planets" to find outtakes, a deleted scene, Zaphod's animatronic second head on Tomorrow's World and Peter Jones's witty and shambolic introduction to the first episode, plus more besides. The series itself is presented in standard 4:3 ratio and Dolby stereo. --Mark Walker

• Shetland Series 5 | DVD | (15/04/2019) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Award-winning crime writer Ann Cleeves' bestselling detective series returns for a fifth season as DI Jimmy Perez faces a compelling new single mystery. A human hand washes up on a Shetland beach. A few hours later, more body parts are discovered in a hold-all that has been dumped at sea. The victim is identified as a young Nigerian man, spotted in Lerwick a few days before. What was he doing on the islands? In investigating his murder, DI Perez becomes involved in the search for a vulnerable young woman, leading him to uncover a complex network of human trafficking across Scotland's remote rural communities.

• Nativity 4 Film Collection | DVD | (28/10/2019) from £16.69   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Nativity Rocks! returns to St Bernadette's Primary School as the staff and students work together to win the coveted prize of ˜Christmas Town of the Year' by performing a spectacular rock music-themed nativity. Celia Imrie reprises her role as headmistress Mrs Keen, starring alongside a host of British talent including Simon Lipkin, Daniel Boys, Helen George, Hugh Dennis, Anna Chancellor, Ruth Jones, Meera Syal, Bradley Walsh and Craig Revel Horwood.

• The Eagle | DVD | (18/07/2011) from £4.80   |  Saving you £15.19 (316.46%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In 140 AD, two men - master and slave - venture beyond the edge of the known world on a dangerous and obsessive quest that will push them beyond the boundaries of loyalty and betrayal, friendship and hatred, deceit and heroism...

• Panic in the Streets | Blu Ray | (31/07/2017) from £18.75   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  When a body is found in the New Orleans docks, it's pretty obvious that he died from gun shot wounds. The police surgeon notices that the man is also displaying other symptoms and Lt. Commander Clint Reed, a doctor with the U.S. Public Health Service, diagnoses a highly contagious disease, pneumonic plague. He tries to convince local officials to find everyone who may have been in contact with the dead man. The Mayor supports his efforts but many, including the police, are doubtful. Reed wants to avoid publicity so as not to panic the public. They have little information to go on - they don't know the dead man's identity - and Reed estimates they have 48 hours before disease begins to spread. With police Capt. Tom Warren going through the motions, Reed sets out to find the killers. High Definition Transfer Commentary by Alain Silver and James Ursini More TBC

• Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977) (Masters of Cinema) Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) | Blu Ray | (31/10/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Eureka Entertainment to release Robert Aldrich's TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING, a nail-biting thriller starring screen legend Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark, on home video for the first time in the UK in a Dual Format edition, as part of the Masters of Cinema series, on 17 October 2016. High among idiosyncratic auteur Robert Aldrich's most powerful and intense dramas, Twilight's Last Gleaming is a thunderous political thriller and race-against-time doomsday classic. Burt Lancaster stars as the Air Force general Lawrence Dell who seizes control of a stockpile of nuclear missiles to force the US President (Charles Durning) to tell the truth about the Vietnam war. As negotiations get ever more desperate, General MacKenzie (Richard Widmark) leads an elite fighting team into the complex to disable Dell and his team directly. One of the most overlooked nail biters of the 1970s, Twilight's Last Gleaming is presented here on UK home video for the first time in a new Dual-Format edition. SPECIAL FEATURES: High-definition digital restoration Uncompressed PCM audio on the Blu-ray English subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired Aldrich Over Munich - The Making of Twilight's Last Gleaming documentary PLUS: A booklet featuring new writing and archival images

• National Lampoon's Animal House | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £4.94   |  Saving you £11.05 (223.68%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A groundbreaking screwball caper, 1978's National Lampoon's Animal House was in its own way a rite of passage for Hollywood. Set in 1962 at Faber College, it follows the riotous carryings-on of the Delta Fraternity, into which are initiated freshmen Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst. Among the established house members are Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert and the late John Belushi as Bluto, a belching, lecherous, Jack Daniels guzzling maniac. A debauched house of pranksters (culminating in the famous Deathmobile sequence), Delta stands as a fun alternative to the more strait-laced, crew-cut, unpleasantly repressive norm personified by Omega House. As cowriter the late Doug Kenney puts it, "better to be an animal than a vegetable". Animal House is deliberately set in the pre-JFK assassination, pre-Vietnam era, something not made much of here, but which would have been implicitly understood by its American audience. The film was an enormous success, a rude, liberating catharsis for the latter-day frathousers who watched it. However, decades on, a lot of the humour seems broad, predictable, boorish, oafishly sexist and less witty than Airplane!, made two years later in the same anarchic spirit. Indeed, although it launched the Hollywood careers of several of its players and makers, including Kevin Bacon, director John Landis, Harold Ramis and Tom Hulce, who went on to do fine things, it might well have been inadvertently responsible for the infantilisation of much subsequent Hollywood comedy. Still, there's an undeniable energy that gusts throughout the film and Belushi, whether eating garbage or trying to reinvoke the spirit of America "After the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour" is a joy. On the DVD: Animal House comes to disc in a good transfer, presented in 1.85:1. The main extra is a featurette in which director John Landis, writer Chris Miller and some of the actors talk about the making of the movie. Interestingly, 23 years on, most of those interviewed look better than they did back in 1978, especially Stephen "Flounder" Furst. --David Stubbs

• Animal House (Includes Blu-Ray) | Blu Ray | (17/05/2021) from £16.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Starring comedy legend John Belushi, National Lampoon's ® Animal House is the ultimate college movie filled with food fights, fraternities and toga parties! Follow the uproarious escapades of the Delta House fraternity as they take on Dean Wormer (John Vernon), the sanctimonious Omegas, and the entire female student body. Directed by John Landis (The Blues Brothers), the most popular college comedy of all-time also stars Tim Matheson, Donald Sutherland, Karen Allen, Kevin Bacon, Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst along with Otis Day and the Knights performing their show-stopping rendition of ˜Shout.' Special Features THE YEARBOOK: AN ANIMAL HOUSE REUNION WHERE ARE THEY NOW? A DELTA ALUMNI UPDATE SCENE IT? ANIMAL HOUSE GAMES and more!

• National Lampoon's Animal House (1979) | DVD | (04/02/2002) from £9.93   |  Saving you £6.06 (37.90%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A groundbreaking screwball caper, 1978's National Lampoon's Animal House was in its own way a rite of passage for Hollywood. Set in 1962 at Faber College, it follows the riotous carryings-on of the Delta Fraternity, into which are initiated freshmen Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst. Among the established house members are Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert and the late John Belushi as Bluto, a belching, lecherous, Jack Daniels guzzling maniac. A debauched house of pranksters (culminating in the famous Deathmobile sequence), Delta stands as a fun alternative to the more strait-laced, crew-cut, unpleasantly repressive norm personified by Omega House. As cowriter the late Doug Kenney puts it, "better to be an animal than a vegetable". Animal House is deliberately set in the pre-JFK assassination, pre-Vietnam era, something not made much of here, but which would have been implicitly understood by its American audience. The film was an enormous success, a rude, liberating catharsis for the latter-day frathousers who watched it. However, decades on, a lot of the humour seems broad, predictable, boorish, oafishly sexist and less witty than Airplane!, made two years later in the same anarchic spirit. Indeed, although it launched the Hollywood careers of several of its players and makers, including Kevin Bacon, director John Landis, Harold Ramis and Tom Hulce, who went on to do fine things, it might well have been inadvertently responsible for the infantilisation of much subsequent Hollywood comedy. Still, there's an undeniable energy that gusts throughout the film and Belushi, whether eating garbage or trying to reinvoke the spirit of America "After the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour" is a joy. On the DVD: Animal House comes to disc in a good transfer, presented in 1.85:1. The main extra is a featurette in which director John Landis, writer Chris Miller and some of the actors talk about the making of the movie. Interestingly, 23 years on, most of those interviewed look better than they did back in 1978, especially Stephen "Flounder" Furst. --David Stubbs

• Panic In The Streets | DVD | (21/03/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Watch out!! A medical examiner discovers that an innocent shooting victim in a robbery died of bubonic plague. With only 48 hours to find the killer who is now a ticking time bomb threatening the entire city a grisly manhunt through the seamy underworld of the New Orleans Waterfront is underway. This film picked up an Academy Award Nomination for Best Story and features the debut performance of Jack Palance as Blackie the infected killer.

• Panic In The Streets | DVD | (31/01/2011) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-4.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Winner of the 1950 Academy Award for writing (Best Motion Picture Story) and directed by Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront Street Car Named Desire) Panic In The Streets is a gripping and powerful crime story that builds relentlessly from beginning to its shattering end. What begins as a simple homicide case turns into a race against an epidemic of death! An autopsy of a murdered man reveals he had the bubonic plague; now his killer must be found before he becomes contagious and begins spreading the deadly scourge. It's a nightmare manhunt through the seamy steamy underside of the New Orleans waterfront. This classic crime melodrama features an all-star cast taut action and searing performances by Richard Widmark Jack Palance and Zero Mostel. Palance is the cold-blooded killer who becomes a ticking time bomb. Widmark is the public health service doctor who has 48 hours to find him.

• Tales Of The Unexpected - Vol. 1 | DVD | (29/03/2004) from £6.98   |  Saving you £3.01 (43.12%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A unique collection from the 1970's and 1980's cult tv series - the four classic episodes included are: The Vorpal Blade: A notorious duel to the death in Germany in the 1920's has scarred the lives of many who were involved - including elderly aristocrat Von Baden who recalls the deadly challenge and reveals a shocking secret. The Tribute: Three thrifty ex-colonial ladies are re-united when they learn of the death of a devoted servant who once served all their familie

• The Planets | DVD | (24/01/2000) from £6.05   |  Saving you £28.94 (478.35%)   |  RRP £34.99

  While watching The Planets, be prepared to fight your way past all kinds of computer animation which makes Walking with Dinosaurs seem like the last word in realism. It seems that no solar or planetary event which ever happened (or which may or may not have happened) is worthy of mention here without recourse to lovingly detailed shots of implausible-looking collisions and explosions. These come complete with sound effects, despite the fact that there is no sound in the vacuum of space, and are enhanced by a range of colours, some of which are visible only to bees. Somehow Patrick Moore's The Sky at Night manages to convey just as much excitement with little more than a couple of diagrams and the presenter's hyperactive enthusiasm. Fortunately, this two-DVD set is redeemed by both its subject matter and its sheer scope, offering all eight 50-minute episodes of the 1999 documentary series covering the history of the solar system and humanity's age-old desire to learn its secrets. Detailed indexing and scene access makes this a convenient reference source too, so amateur astronomers everywhere can finally bin those off-air VHS copies. --Roger Thomas

• Angels And Insects | DVD | (22/09/2003) from £35.85   |  Saving you £-22.86 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Angels and Insects--an ambitious costume drama--tells the tale of William Adamson (Mark Rylance), a buttoned-down Victorian explorer who returns to England penniless and dependent on the kindness of his sponsor, Sir Harald Alabaster (Jeremy Kemp). Adamson's intelligence and lower social standing endear him to the old man, but Sir Harald's son, Edgar, seems annoyed by his presence. Nevertheless, Adamson falls in love with Sir Harald's daughter, a shy sex kitten (Patsy Kensit), and offers to marry her. As the web of sexual politics, true love, and class struggles develop; the explorer begins an intriguing study of a nearby ant colony. With encouragement from a dirt-poor Alabaster cousin (Kristin Scott Thomas), Adamson begins to write about the insects, never realising the parallels with his own life. The film, too, is a puzzle for the audience to solve while savouring the beauty of flesh and outlandish, vibrant costumes. Rylance is a perfect hero to root for, with his impeccable manners and soothing Scottish tones. All in all it's another curious winner from filmmakers Philip and Belinda Haas (The Music of Chance). --Doug Thomas, Amazon.com

• Gilda | DVD | (10/01/2000) from £5.00   |  Saving you £14.99 (299.80%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The legendary Rita Hayworth sizzles with sensuality and magnetism as she sings ""Put the blame on Mame"" and delivers a dazzling performance as the enticing temptress Gilda. In the story of Gilda Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) goes to work for Ballin Mundson (George MacReady) the proprietor of an illegal gambling casino in a South American city and quickly rises to become Mundson's ""main man"". All is well until Mundson returns from a trip with his new bride Gilda - a woman from Johnn

• Deception | DVD | (09/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A solid enough thriller held together by some somewhat implausible plot devices, Deception stars Ben Affleck as Rudy, whose cellmate Nick is lucky enough to be pen-pal to the beautiful Ashley (Charlize Theron) who in turn has pledged herself, body and soul to the man inside whom she has never set eyes upon. Upon his release, Rudy decides to pose as Nick in order to take up with this luscious and adoring female. Unfortunately, the scheme backfires on Rudy when he discovers that Ashley was apparently a pawn in her ruthless brother Monster's game to coerce him into helping him and his gang of gun-runners rob a casino that Nick used to work in. Deception rumbles along at a pretty seedy, violent pace for a long time, with Rudy's efforts to escape resulting in Monster (a menacing Gary Sinise) using him as a dartboard in one memorably brutal scene. Following their raid on the casino, however (clad in Santa outfits), the plot takes a couple of devilish twists and turns which reward the viewer prepared to come this far down the road with these people. The lack of empathy may be redeemed by some viewers with a scene featuring Charlize Theron naked in a pool. --David Stubbs

• Martian Successor Nadesico - Vol. 6 - Episodes 22-26 | DVD | (17/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Earth and Jovian fleets converge upon Mars as the Nadesico and Nergal frantically battle to uncover the secrets buried in the ancient city. Driven past the point of human endurance the crew of the Nadesico must unlock the mysteries hidden within their own pasts in order to save the future of the human race! It's the spectacular climatic conclusion of Martian Successor!

• Deadly Manor | DVD | (04/03/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  The classic horror story follows a cast of attractive youngsters on a camping trip to a remote wooded area. Joined by a mysterious hitchhiker the group take shelter from a storm in an aging mansion. Mystery piles upon mystery.... until the deaths begin.

• Freshman Fall | DVD | (16/01/2002) from £9.88   |  Saving you £-3.89 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Naive college freshman Melissa feeling nervous as the new girl at college is all-too eager to try to fit in. Invited to a party by older students she suffers a humiliating date-rape before being consumed by her desire for revenge...

• National Lampoon's Animal House 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital - 4K UHD | Blu Ray | (18/05/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A