"Actor: Michael Davi"

• Dressed To Kill | DVD | (10/02/2014) from £9.43   |  Saving you £0.56 (5.94%)   |  RRP £9.99

  To condemn Dressed to Kill as a Hitchcock rip-off is to miss the sheer enjoyment of Brian De Palma's delirious thriller. Homages to Hitchcock run rampant through most of De Palma's earlier films, and this one's chock-full of visual quotes, mostly cribbed from Vertigo and Psycho. But De Palma's indulgent depravity transcends simple mimicry to assume a vitality all its own. It's smothered in thickly atmospheric obsessions with sex, dread, paranoia, and voyeurism, not to mention a heavy dose of Psycho-like psychobabble about a wannabe transsexual who is compelled to slash up any attractive female who reminds him--the horror--that he's still very much a man. Angie Dickinson plays the sexually unsatisfied, forty-something wife who's the killer's first target, relaying her sexual fantasies to her psychiatrist (Michael Caine) before actually living one of them out after the film's celebrated cat-and-mouse sequence in a Manhattan art museum. The focus then switches to a murder witness (De Palma's then-girlfriend Nancy Allen) and Dickinson's grieving whiz-kid son (Keith Gordon), who attempt to solve the murder while staying one step ahead (or so they think) of the crude detective (Dennis Franz) assigned to the case. Propelled by Pino Donaggio's lush and stimulating score, De Palma's visuals provide seductive counterpoint to his brashly candid dialogue, and the plot conceals its own implausibility with morbid thrills and intoxicating suspense. If you're not laughing at De Palma's shameless audacity, you're sure to be on the edge of your seat. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Mona Lisa (The Criterion Collection) | Blu Ray | (14/09/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Maker | DVD | (21/10/2002) from £4.99   |  Saving you £-1.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Josh Millen a very bright but somewhat directionless teen turns 18. He's surprised when his brother Walter Schmeiss shows up on the doorstep wishing him a happy birthday. He lies that he's married with two children but explains to Josh that he's in the storage and transfer business.

• Tale of A Vampire | DVD | (23/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A cross-cultural oddity, Tale of a Vampire feels like a 1970s British horror movie retranslated from the Japanese and mounted as a vehicle for Julian Sands. Director-writer Shimako Sato takes a gloom-haunted approach to the undead, allegedly influenced by the necrophile romanticism of Edgar Allan Poe (it claims to be based on Poe's poem "Annabel Lee") but also draws on the popular blood-sucking posiness of Anne Rice's bestselling novels. Alex (Sands), is a style-conscious vampire whose white shirts are always immaculate although he spends most of his nights messily pouring gore over his face. Living in a spartan docklands pad, Alex haunts a library of long-forgotten lore where he sets his cap at a young woman (Suzanna Hamilton) who may be the reincarnation of his lost love. Unfortunately, a hat-wearing rival vampire (Kenneth Cranham) has been nurturing a grudge against Alex for lifetimes and sticks his oar in, complicating the relationship between vampire and willing victim, setting up for a big stake-shoving climax. For all its vampire feuds and dodgily S&M-flavoured blood-drinking scenes, this is somewhat staid and solemn, with few locations and a low budget abstraction reminiscent of those old episodes of The Avengers where they could only afford to build a corner of a set and there wasn't any money left to hire actors. While Sands, with aptly vampirish poise, and Cranham, with a sinister Southern accent, are interesting and poised antagonists, making the most of Sato's allusive dialogue, heroine Hamilton lets the side down with an awkward performance that hardly suggests anyone worth giving up immortality for. Cranham's character is supposed to be Poe himself, oddly transformed from his historical stature: he seems to have put on a bit of weight since his death in 1849, but Cranham's sly nasty way of ordering gruesome nouvelle cuisine and tormenting a harmless crackpot is aptly Poeish. The slow-paced film takes a long time to confirm what is obvious from the outset (even from the title) and then shudders to a halt with all the characters' fates left vague. However, it has a unique and disturbing atmosphere--the few familiar vampire images of a bloody Sands are outweighed by weirder moments like Cranham's presentation of a pale Hamilton, tied to a bed with red ribbons, as an offering to his nemesis--that makes it more insidiously memorable than many of its higher-budgeted, splashier cousins. On the DVD: A no-frills (no trailer, no cast notes, no nothing), full-screen presentation, which sometimes cramps Sato's careful compositions, this also has a mixed blessing transfer which lends a mouldy or rusty fuzz to some of the blacks in the many night scenes. There is, however, a nice animated menu. --Kim Newman

• Moon 44 | DVD | (17/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  The year is 2038. Giant intergalactic corporations have taken control of the universe locked in a ruthless battle for planets where men and robots mine the priceless chemicals that are now Earth's only source of fuel. Space pirates are systematically hijacking the vital space shuttle from the moon 44 mining base which is also the location of an experimental defence programme using highly advanced helicopter gunships. It is undercover investigator Felix Stone's task to hunt down the hijackers. But if Moon 44 base is attacked the orders are to sacrifice the men and save the robots.

• Phantasm III - Lord Of The Dead | DVD | (05/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Thirteen years after the original nightmare began Mike and Reggie reunite with the spirit of Mike's dead brother and are pursued by The Tall Man through warped dimensions of space and time. Who Will reign supreme? Prepared to be scared witless as the fine line between the living and the dead snaps with a vengeance!

• Boyfriends | DVD | (08/08/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Close friends Will, Matt and Paul rent a house at the seaside for the Easter weekend. Three gay friends and their partners head off to a country cottage for a relaxing weekend to escape from the city. Paul and Ben have now been together for five years and it's beginning to feel like a lot longer. Matt and Owen have been going steady for three months. While Matt is beginning to hear wedding bells, Owen is hearing the call of the wild! Will picked up Adam the night before and although it appears that they have history, the question is do they have a future?

• Ripping Yarns - The Box Set | DVD | (24/10/2002) from £69.99   |  Saving you £-45.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Ripping Yarns: six episodes of Michael Palin's remarkable comedy showcase in one box set. The Testing of Eric Olthwaite: Set in the days of dark depression before Last of the Summer Wine started bringing jobs to the area. Eric's tough mining parents find their son so boring that they run away from home. Eric torn between love for his parents and lack of brain cells becomes involved with a hardened criminal. The rest is history. Tompkinson's Schooldays: Set in the Edwardian era the heyday of school stories it has all the authentic ingredients for absolutely topping schoolboy fun - excitement adventure heroes and bullies. Escape from Stalag Luft 112B: A tale of courage and valour from behind the lines in the Kaiser's Germany. An inspiring story of camp life and British officer who won't lie down! Whinfrey's Last Case: Dashing debonair Gerald Whinfrey saves his country twice a week but in 1913 a German plot to start the First World War without telling anybody coincides with his holiday. Where do Whinfrey's priorities lie? Has he got any? The Curse of the Claw: Gothic horror comes to Maidenhead. A timely reminder of what happens when men dabble in the dark world of oriental superstition. Michael Palin aided by plastic surgery plays old and young Kevin as well as Kevin's childhood hero Uncle Jack - an enormously cheerful physical disaster area who has had every disease known to man usually at the same time. Golden Gordon: Superfan Gordon Ottershaw supports a team which hasn't won a match for six years. But worse is yet to come when Gordon and his bicycle clips are re-united in a last desperate bid for glory.

• Carry On Don't Lose Your Head | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £6.66   |  Saving you £3.33 (50.00%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Carry On Don't Lose Your Head parodies the adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel, with crinkly, cackling Sid James as master of disguise the Black Fingernail and Jim Dale as his assistant Lord Darcy. He must rescue preposterously effete aristo Charles Hawtrey from the clutches of Kenneth Williams' fiendish Citizen Camembert and his sidekick Citizen Bidet (Peter Butterworth). The Black Fingernail is assisted in his efforts to thwart the birth of the burgeoning republic by the almost supernatural stupidity of his opponents, who fail to recognise the frankly undisguisable Sid James even when dressed as a flirty young woman. What with an executioner who is tricked into beheading himself in order to prove the efficacy of his own guillotine, it's all a little too easy. As usual, no groan-worthy pun is left unturned, nor unheralded by the soundtrack strains of a long whistle or wah-wah trumpet. This is pretty silly stuff even by Carry On standards, with most of the cast barely required to come out of first gear and an overlong climactic swordfight sequence hardly raising the dramatic stakes. Most of the humour here resides neither in the script nor the characterisation but in the endlessly watchable Williams' whooping, nasal delivery (occasionally lapsing into broad Cockney) and the jowl movements of the always-underrated Butterworth. On the DVD: There are no extra features except scene selection. The picture is 4:3 full screen ratio.--David Stubbs

• Dockers | DVD | (01/08/2002) from £17.48   |  Saving you £-11.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Dockers is a landmark one-off drama suspended somewhere between Ken Loach and Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff. A striking Channel Four production Dockers dramatises the infamous struggle that developed when five Merseyside dockworkers were fired for refusing to work overtime with no pay, and gained the support of co-workers who wouldn't cross their picket line. As a result, those who stood in solidarity with the original five were sacked as well--500 in total--leading to a two-year stand-off. Co-written by award-winning screenwriters Jimmy McGovern (Cracker) and Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), the two-year ordeal is brought home with startling reality, not least because of the contribution of the real-life Liverpool dockers who helped develop the script in extensive writing workshops, lending the film an authenticity it might have otherwise lacked. While the narrative hangs around the moving central story of one family in which both father and son are caught up in the strike, dramatic conflicts develop on multiple levels: between father and son; between the families of the sacked workers (this is particularly well realised as one long-time friend, played by The Royle Family's Ricky Tomlinson, turns scab); and between the workers and the union that betrays them. Ken Stott and Crissy Rock (Ladybird, Ladybird) are outstanding as the central working-class couple, old before their time at 47, and if nothing else, the film reveals one further reason why Liverpool loved Robbie Fowler quite so ferociously: during post-goal celebrations, Fowler lifts his jersey to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with a message of support for the wronged dockers, ensuring national attention for the action at a time when all hope seemed lost. --Tricia Tuttle

• Cold Night into Dawn | DVD | (23/07/2007) from £6.73   |  Saving you £-1.74 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  FBI Agent Parr is going through a bad spell: his partner and best friend has just retired and his wife has just left him. While investigating a robbery at a gun shop by a paramilitary gang Parr and his new partner Sinclaire find clues to a plot to level the entire city of Chicago. Their main suspect is a recent Vietnamese immigrant with experience as a weapons researcher and a burning grudge against the U.S. Is he the man they're looking for? And if so can they track him down before it's too late?

• Spaceways | DVD | (04/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Yet another Fisher/Hammer colaboration pre-dating their classic horror output. 'Spaceways' is a cold war space adventure filled with intrigue and deceit. A British rocket scientist stands accused of the brutal murder of his wife and her Soviet lover. His accusers believe he shot their remains into space and he can only prove them wrong by personally going up there. Accompanying him on this cold cold journey is a lovely fellow scientist (Bartok) who is guaranteed to keep things warm.

• First Daughter / Just Married / Never Been Kissed | DVD | (19/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  First Daughter: The girl who always stood out is finally getting the chance to fit in. Samantha Mackenzie (Katie Holmes) has fame and glamour but she just wants what every college freshman wants: the opportunity to experience the world away from home and most importantly away from her parents. She just wants to be treated like anyone else. To be... normal. But it's not going to be easy because Sam's home address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and her dad is John Mackenzie (

• A Christmas Without Snow | DVD | (11/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Jo Jenson moves to a big city leaving behind a broken marriage and a small son. Her only joy in life is music. A choirmaster inspires her to give the performance of a lifetime but her life is still empty without her son...

• Phantasm | DVD | (31/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Phantasm (1979): If this one doesn't scare you you're already dead! After their friend is murdered two brothers begin a hunt in search of the killer. Their investigation leads them to the discovery of a startling and hideous secret. As the brothers learn more about what is really going on at Morningside mortuary (involving a floating sphere with razor-sharp protruding daggers which seeks out victims and drains the blood from their heads) they get deeper into trouble but it may be already too late! Phantasm 2 - The Ball Is Back (1988): Armed with his lethal band of flying silver spheres the deadly mortician who was thought to have killed his last victim nine years ago returns more dangerous than ever! Once again young Michael Pearson and his pal Reggie take on the master of the killer orbs as they race against time and risk their lives to thwart his murderous rampage forever... Phantasm 3 - Lord Of The Dead (1994): Thirteen years after the original nightmare began Mike and Reggie reunite with the spirit of Mike's dead brother and are pursued by The Tall Man through warped dimensions of space and time. Who will reign supreme? Prepare to be scared witless as the fine line between the living and the dead snaps with a vengeance! Phantasm 4 - Oblivion (1998): The sequel with balls! The nightmare lives on... but humanity may not! The Phantasm saga reaches its terrifying climax in a horrific explosion of gut-wrenching battles lethal flying spheres and a spine-tingling quest to discover once and for all the secret of the mysterious Tall Man. For years the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) has waged a gruesome war against humanity slowly populating the world with his undead legions. But two determined heroes Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) and Reggie (Reggie Bannister) have pledged to stop the horrifying onslaught - for good! By hurling themselves through a gateway in the time/space continuum they're able to unearth a vital clue from their enemy's past that may put an end to the horror. But the Tall Man not to be so easily defeated is massing his dark army for a blood-curdling final assault in which Michael and Reggie must fight not only for their own lives but future of all mankind. Directed by Phantasm creator Don Coscarelli and including never-before-seen footage excised from the bone-chilling original Phantasm: Oblivion is a nerve-shattering horror thriller charged with astonishing special effects and shocking scenes of pure terror. Brace yourself for a journey beyond your worst nightmares!

• Stargate S.G. 1 - Series 9 - Vol. 4 | DVD | (19/06/2006) from £5.38   |  Saving you £14.61 (73.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Step through the stargate with SG-1 a team of soldiers and scientists as they travel instantaneously to other planets to explore forge alliances defuse crises establish trade investigate ancient mysteries and defend Earth from such hostile forces as the Goa'uld and the Replicators. Episodes comprise: 12. Collateral Damage 13. Ripple Effect 14. Stronghold

• The Twilight Zone - Season 1 | DVD | (12/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Travel into the fifth dimension once again with The Twilight Zone testing the limits of reality and exploring the mysteries of the universe. Airing from 1985 to 1989 this critically acclaimed anthology series carried on the legacy of the original Rod Serling program and attracted a brand-new audience of fans. The series features major stars in compelling tales of intrigue by such noted writers as: Ray Bradbury Stephen King Harlan Ellison Rockne S. O'Bannon Arthur C

• Jimmy Neutron / Rugrats | DVD | (27/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius: Jimmy is trying to make contact with an alien civilization. Unbeknownst to him a satellite he launches (okay it's the kitchen toaster but it works!) is picked up by an alien species. In the dark of night the aliens fly their war ships-looking like a fleet of rubber chickens to earth and abduct all the parents in Jimmy's hometown of Retroville. So it's up to Jimmy to create a fleet of space ships from the rides at the town's new amusement park (hey

• Stargate SG-1: Season 7 (Vol. 37) | DVD | (28/06/2004) from £5.98   |  Saving you £14.01 (234.28%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Make it your mission to seek out STARGATE SG-1 Season 7's feature-length finale - a stunning adventure which sees our intrepid space travellers including heart throbs Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks fighting to save Earth from destruction. Volume 37 is the very last release of the superb Season 7 and includes the feature length season climax Lost City which also sets up the story for the all-new Stargate spin-off series Atlantis which is currently being filmed. In Lost City the SG-1 team makes an amazing discovery- information which will lead them to learn the location of the Lost City of the Ancients and use that race's technology to save the galaxy from evil Goa'uld oppression. Just as they are about to remove the vital information however evil forces launch an attack...

• Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill | DVD | (03/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Ute Lemper sings Kurt Weill live at the Bouffes du Nord Paris and Ute Lemper sings Michael Nyman at the Musikhalle Hamburg. Tracks include: Le Grand Lustucru Train Du Ciel I'm A Stranger Here Myself Bilbao Song Die Rote Rosa Complainte De La Seine Barbara Song Moritat Vom Mackie Messer Surabaya-Johnny Alabama Song Denn Wie Man Sich Bettet Youkali / Tango Habanera Je Ne T'aime Pas J'attends Un Navire The Saga Of Jenny September Song Tchaikovsky Trouble Man My Ship