"Actor: Miles Malleson"

• The Terry Thomas Movie Collection | DVD | (27/05/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.89

  The three films in this Terry Thomas Collection--The Naked Truth, Too Many Crooks and Make Mine Mink--are each an unalloyed delight from beginning to end. Though produced on slim budgets they possess witty scripts by Michael Pertwee, deft direction in two instances by Mario Zampi, inventive music scores and marvellous casts featuring two generations of British actors, from Athene Seyler to a young Kenneth Williams. Individually and as an ensemble these players are a pleasure to watch. But of course Terry Thomas, the catalyst of the collection, runs the gamut with a plethora of facial expressions, body language and verbal repartee that contribute so much to the unbuttoned joy of each film. In the earliest of them, The Naked Truth (1957), TT plays a dodgy peer of the realm being blackmailed in the company of Peter Sellers, Peggy Mount and Shirley Eaton by a gutter press journalist, Dennis Price ("Don't try to appeal to my better nature, because I haven't one"). The moments of slapstick are brought off to a tee as when the larger-than-life Peggy Mount attempts a suicide drop from her window to be saved by an awning on a shop front. Too Many Crooks (1959) has TT being blackmailed once again, this time for the hoards he's stashed away as a renowned tax dodger. Look out for the very funny court scene, where TT makes three appearances on separate charges, before a bemused magistrate, John Le Mesurier. Make Mine Mink (1960), the odd one out in this collection, was adapted from a West End stage farce, Breath of Spring. TT leads a gang of middle-aged biddies who decide to brighten up "the dullness of the tea time of life", by staging a series of robberies on furriers, then donating the proceeds to charitable concerns. The splendid cast includes Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams. On the DVD: The Terry Thomas Collection comes in an attractive box containing the three discs. All are 4:3 ratio and with mono sound. The only extras are a trailer for each film which, in the instance of Make Mine Mink, is introduced by Terry Thomas himself, who presents us to his gang of fur thieves as the voice on the soundtrack announces him as "fur, fur funnier than you've seen him before". --Adrian Edwards

• Kind Hearts And Coronets | DVD | (21/06/2004) from £7.18   |  Saving you £2.81 (39.14%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Set in Victorian England, Robert Hamer's 1949 masterpiece Kind Hearts and Coronets remains the most gracefully mordant of Ealing Comedies. Dennis Price plays Louis D'Ascoyne, the would-be Duke of Chalfont whose Mother was spurned by her noble family for marrying an Italian singer for love. Louis resolves to murder the several of his relatives ahead of him in line for the Dukedom, all of whom are played by Alec Guinness, in order to avenge his Mother--for, as Louis observes, " revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold". He gets away with it, only to be arraigned for the one murder of which he is innocent. Guinness' virtuoso performances have been justly celebrated, ranging as they do from a youthful D'Ascoyne concealing his enthusiasm for public houses from his priggish wife ("she has views on such places") to a brace of doomed uncles and one aunt, ranging from the doddery to the peppery. Miles Malleson is a splendid doggerel-spouting hangman, while Valerie Hobson and Joan Greenwood take advantage of unusually strong female roles. But the great joy of Kind Hearts and Coronets is the way in which its appallingly black subject matter (considered beyond the pale by many critics at the time) is conveyed in such elegantly ironic turns of phrase by Dennis Price's narrator/anti-hero. Serial murder has never been conducted with such exquisite manners and discreet charm. --David Stubbs

• Kidnapped | DVD | (28/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Cheated out of his rightful inheritance after being kidnapped young David Balfour joins forces with daring adventurer Alan Breck Stewart and together they flee across the Highlands to evade the King's redcoat forces...

• Thief Of Baghdad | DVD | (19/06/2006) from £7.39   |  Saving you £2.60 (35.18%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This wondrous fantasy comes out of the pages of ""A Thousand and One Nights."" When the nefarious Jaffar usurps the Sultan's throne the princess's beloved suitor Ahmad and the strong and handsome thief Abu use magic to help the king regain power. To defeat them Jaffar causes Ahmad to go blind and turns Abu into a dog. But the heroes overcome these adversities and conquer many other mortal dangers before reclaiming the kingdom. The Thief of Bagdad made quite an impact on the

• Trent's Last Case | DVD | (28/01/2008) from £19.78   |  Saving you £-6.79 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Philip Trent sets out to investigate the mysterious death of an American tycoon whose death has been recorded by the coroner as a suicide...

• I'm All Right Jack | DVD | (05/02/2007) from £8.99   |  Saving you £4.00 (44.49%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In 'I'm Alright Jack' a man becomes the pawn of a corrupt management and a labour union.

• The Hound Of The Baskervilles | DVD | (20/10/2003) from £20.75   |  Saving you £-7.76 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Sherlock Holmes gets the Gothic treatment in Hammer's Hound of the Baskervilles, a typical mix of mystery and supernatural horror from the famous studio. Peter Cushing is perfectly cast as the great detective, the very embodiment of science and reason (which also made him a great Van Helsing in the Dracula series) in a case wound around a legacy of aristocratic cruelty and a devilish dog wandering the swampy moors. Christopher Lee is a less satisfying fit as the last of the Baskervilles, as he waffles between fear and apathetic disregard, but Andre Morell is a fine Dr Watson and a far cry from Nigel Bruce's sweet bumbler from the Hollywood incarnation of the 1940s. Director Terence Fisher was Hammer's top stylist and the film drips with the mood of the moors, mist hanging in the air, the dying vegetation itself threatening to come to life and trap the next unwary traveller. --Sean Axmaker

• Private's Progress | DVD | (16/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  With a remarkable cast headlined by Ian Carmichael, Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price and Terry Thomas, WWII army comedy Private's Progress was one of the major British hits of 1956. Carmichael is Stanley Windrush, a naïve young soldier who during training falls in with the streetwise Private Cox (Attenborough). Windrush's uncle is the even more ambitiously corrupt Colonel Tracepurcel (Price), who plans to divert the war effort to liberate art treasures already looted by the Germans. The first half of the film is quite pedestrian, though the pace picks up considerably once the heist gets underway, and the cheery tone masks a really rather dark and cynical heart. Carmichael's innocent abroad quickly wears thin, but Attenborough and Price steal the film, as well as the paintings, with typically excellent turns. With a nod in the direction of Ealing's The Ladykillers (1955) the film also anticipates the attitudes of both The League of Gentlemen (1959) and Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22 (1961), though lacks the latter's greater sophistication. The cast also contains such British stalwarts as William Hartnell, Peter Jones, Ian Bannen, John Le Mesurier, Christopher Lee and David Lodge, and was sufficiently popular to reunite all the major players for the superior sequel, I'm Alright Jack (1959). On the DVD: Private's Progress is presented in black and white at 4:3 Academy ratio, though the film appears to have been shot full frame and then unmasked for home viewing so there is more top and bottom to the images than at the cinema. The print used shows constant minor damage and is quite grainy, though no more than expected for a low-budget film of the time. The mono sound is average and unremarkable, and there are no special features. --Gary S Dalkin

• The Importance Of Being Earnest | DVD | (30/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The timeless 1952 version of Oscar Wilde's comedy of errors in a Special Collectors' Edition.

• Brothers In Law | DVD | (04/06/2007) from £8.00   |  Saving you £4.99 (62.38%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Newly qualified barrister Roger Thursby joins his flatmate as a trainee at a London law firm. Thrown in at the deep end by the absent-minded senior partner his first few appearances in court border on the disastrous as he encounters a succession of cantankerous judges.

• The Naked Truth | DVD | (27/05/2002) from £6.73   |  Saving you £3.26 (48.44%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In 1957's The Naked Truth Terry Thomas plays a dodgy peer of the realm being blackmailed in the company of Peter Sellers, Peggy Mount and Shirley Eaton by a gutter press journalist, Dennis Price ("Don't try to appeal to my better nature, because I haven't one"). One fascinating element in this picture is the portrayal of those relationships that could be only suggested in a period of tighter censorship, such as Peter Sellers' TV personality and Kenneth Griffith as his dresser, whose gay relationship is only faintly etched in here. More overt is the characterisation of a masculine looking authoress, known only by her initials, but sporting Agatha Christie's hairdo. The moments of slapstick are brought off to a tee, as when the larger-than-life Peggy Mount attempts a suicide drop from her window to be saved by an awning on a shop front. On the DVD: The Naked Truth comes to DVD in 4:3 ratio and with a mono soundtrack. The only extra feature is a trailer. More TT tomfoolery can be found in the three-disc Terry Thomas Collection. --Adrian Edwards

• Vintage Classics Ealing Comedy Collection | DVD | (23/10/2017) from £29.39   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Collection of five classic British comedies. In 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' (1949) an embittered aristocrat sets out to murder the eight heirs that stand between him and succession to the family title. Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) holds no love for the family he counts as relations, the D'Ascoynes. The D'Ascoynes cast his mother out when she decided to marry a commoner, Louis's father, and on her death refused to allow her to be buried in the family vault. An outraged Louis vows revenge and begins working his way into the trust of the family to provide him with the opportunity to bump off the male heirs (all played by Alec Guinness) one by one. However, complications arise when he becomes romantically entangled with one of the widows of his victims, Edith D'Ascoyne (Valerie Hobson). Will Louis be able to stay the course and murder his way to a dukedom? In 'Passport to Pimlico' (1949) an unexploded bomb goes off in Pimlico, uncovering documents which reveal that this part of London in fact belongs to Burgundy in France. An autonomous state is set up in a spirit of optimism, but the petty squabbles of everyday life soon shatter the utopian vision of a non-restrictive nation. In 'Whisky Galore!' (1949), set during the Second World War, the inhabitants of a small Hebridean island are wilting under a chronic shortage of whisky. When a ship is wrecked on the shore, it is discovered to contain 50,000 cases of malt, which are promptly appropriated by the men of the island. All is well until an English Home Guard commander - determined to see the whisky restored to its rightful owners - calls in Her Majesty's Customs, and the islanders make frantic attempts to hide their treasured alcoholic booty! In 'The Man in the White Suite' (1951) Sidney Stratton (Guinness) is a laboratory cleaner in a textile factory who invents a material that will neither wear out nor become dirty. Initially hailed as a great discovery, Sidney's astonishing invention is suffocated by the management when they realise that if it never wears out, people will only ever have to purchase one suit of clothing. Finally, in 'The Ladykillers' (1955) a group of bank robbers struggle to silence the eccentric old lady who discovers their crime. Mrs Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) lives alone in King's Cross with her parrots. She has been led to believe that the group of men renting rooms from her, Professor Marcus (Guinness), the Major (Cecil Parker), Louis (Herbert Lom), Harry (Peter Sellers) and One-Round (Danny Green), are classical musicians. However, when one of the group's cases gets caught in the door and opens to reveal, not a musical instrument, but a plethora of banknotes, the virtuous Mrs Wilberforce vows to go to the police with the identities of the men. The criminals agree that the old lady has to be killed to silence her, but will this be as straightforward as it sounds?

• Dead Of Night | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Architect Walter Craig seeking the possibility of some work at a country farmhouse soon finds himself once again stuck in his recurring nightmare. Dreading the end of the dream that he knows is coming he must first listen to all the assembled guests' own bizarre tales.... A relatively unknown Ealing gem Dead Of Night is a portemanteau of the stories Christmas Party & The Ventriloquist's Dummy (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti) Golfing Story (dir. Charles Crichton) Hearse Driver (dir. Basil Dearden) and The Haunted Mirror (dir. Robert Hamer).

• I'm Alright Jack *Digitally Restored | DVD | (19/01/2015) from £10.35   |  Saving you £7.64 (73.82%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Winning BAFTAs for Best British Screenplay and Best British Actor (Peter Sellers) I’M ALL RIGHT JACK is popularly considered to be the best of John and Roy Boulting’s social satires.Sellers plays both Sir John Kennaway and the tragic-comic trade union leader Fred Kite. The result is laugh-out-loud comedy with a satiric edge lampooning the then-burning issue of industrial relations. Bertram Tracepurcel (Dennis Price) plans to make a fortune from a missile contract a scheme that involves manipulating his innocent nephew Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) into acting as the catalyst in an escalating labour dispute from which the socialist Mr. Kite is only too keen to make capital. Featuring a superb supporting cast including Terry-Thomas Richard Attenborough John Le Mesurier Irene Handl and Margaret Rutherford this is an ingenious comedy about the British workplace and self-serving hypocrisy. A sequel to 1956’s A Private’s Progress the film is bought roaringly to life by Sellers’ astonishing turn as the Stalinist unionist. Bonus Features: Brand new interview with Liz Fraser The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film Cinefile: Seller’s Best

• First Men In The Moon | DVD | (14/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  H. G. Wells' fantastic account of life on the moon is vividly brought to the screen by special effects master Ray Harryhausen in this amazing sci-fi epic featuring extraterrestrial creatures. Told mostly in flashback the movie starts with preparations for a modern mission to the Moon being interrupted by an old man's ramblings about a flight he and two companions took to the moon many decades earlier...

• The Importance Of Being Earnest | DVD | (08/10/1999) from £17.77   |  Saving you £-7.78 (-77.90%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The timeless 1952 version of Oscar Wilde's comedy of errors in a Special Collectors' Edition.

• I'm Alright Jack *Digitally Restored | Blu Ray | (19/01/2015) from £11.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (91.74%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Winning BAFTAs for Best British Screenplay and Best British Actor (Peter Sellers) I’M ALL RIGHT JACK is popularly considered to be the best of John and Roy Boulting’s social satires.Sellers plays both Sir John Kennaway and the tragic-comic trade union leader Fred Kite. The result is laugh-out-loud comedy with a satiric edge lampooning the then-burning issue of industrial relations. Bertram Tracepurcel (Dennis Price) plans to make a fortune from a missile contract a scheme that involves manipulating his innocent nephew Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) into acting as the catalyst in an escalating labour dispute from which the socialist Mr. Kite is only too keen to make capital. Featuring a superb supporting cast including Terry-Thomas Richard Attenborough John Le Mesurier Irene Handl and Margaret Rutherford this is an ingenious comedy about the British workplace and self-serving hypocrisy. A sequel to 1956’s A Private’s Progress the ?lm is bought roaringly to life by Sellers’ astonishing turn as the Stalinist unionist. Bonus Features: Brand new interview with Liz Fraser The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film Cinefile: Seller’s Best

• Thunder Rock | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £59.99   |  Saving you £-50.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A writer tries to reveal what is happening in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy but is unable to do so. Frustrated he retires to a lighthouse in the Great Lakes where he is haunted by the ghosts of travellers who were shipwrecked many years earlier. Eventually he is persuaded to return to the world...

• Kind Hearts And Coronets | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Ladykillers director Alexander Mackendrick's third Ealing farce is the final comedy produced by the famous British studio and one of its most celebrated. Like the equally applauded Kind Hearts And Coronets the film is more sophisticated and blacker in tone than typically lighthearted Ealing fare (such as Mackendrick's Whiskey Galore!). Alec Guinness stars as the superbly shifty toothily threatening Professor Marcus the leader of a crime ring planning a heist. Marcus rents rooms from a sweet eccentric old lady Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) in her crooked London house. The professor and his co-conspirators blowhard Major Courtney (Cecil Parker) creepily suave Louis (Herbert Lom) chubby Harry (Peter Sellers) and muscleman One-Round (Danny Green) pose as an unlikely string quartet using the rooms for rehearsal. Dodging Mrs. Wilberforce's constant interruptions the hoods hit upon the idea to use her in the daring daylight robbery (filmed in and around London's King's Cross station). When the old girl discovers the truth Marcus and company cannot persuade her to stay buttoned up about it and thus decide to do her in. Accompanied by a noirish cacophony of screeching trains parrots and little old ladies at afternoon tea a series of unlikely events builds to the hilarious surprising finale.

• I'm All Right Jack | DVD | (16/02/2004) from £14.21   |  Saving you £2.78 (16.40%)   |  RRP £16.99

  After a decade on radio in The Goons, 1959's I'm All Right Jack set Peter Sellers on the road to international stardom. Sellers played both Sir John Kennaway, and unforgettably, the Bolshy trade union leader Fred Kite (he would go on to take three roles in Dr Strangelove and featured endless disguises in The Pink Panther in 1963) series. The result is laugh-out-loud comedy with a satiric edge, lampooning the then burning issue of industrial relations. Bertram Tracepurcel's (Dennis Price) plans to make a fortune from a missile contract, a scheme which involves manipulating his innocent nephew Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) into acting as the catalyst in an escalating labour dispute, from which the socialist Mr Kite is only too keen to make capital. Management and labour both have their self-serving hypocrisy dissected in this ingenious comedy, actually a sequel to the military comedy Private's Progress (1956), but which stands independent of the earlier film. Both films were made by the brothers John and Roy Boulting, director and producer of such British classics as Brighton Rock (1947), Seven Days to Noon (1950), Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959) and Heaven's Above (1963). The superb cast of I'm All Right Jack also features Richard Attenborough, John Le Mesurier, Margaret Rutherford and Terry Thomas. --Gary S. Dalkin