"Actor: Murray Alper"

• The Maltese Falcon | DVD | (01/06/2006) from £6.78   |  Saving you £7.21 (106.34%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Maltese Falcon is still the tightest, sharpest, and most cynical of Hollywood's official deathless classics, bracingly tough even by post-Tarantino standards. Humphrey Bogart is Dashiell Hammett's definitive private eye, Sam Spade, struggling to keep his hard-boiled cool as the double-crosses pile up around his ankles. The plot, which dances all around the stolen Middle Eastern statuette of the title, is too baroque to try to follow, and it doesn't make a bit of difference. The dialogue, much of it lifted straight from Hammett, is delivered with whip-crack speed and sneering ferocity, as Bogie faces off against Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, fends off the duplicitous advances of Mary Astor, and roughs up a cringing "gunsel" played by Elisha Cook Jr. It's an action movie of sorts, at least by implication: the characters always seem keyed up, right on the verge of erupting into violence. This is a turning-point picture in several respects: John Huston (The African Queen) made his directorial debut here in 1941, and Bogart, who had mostly played bad guys, was a last-minute substitution for George Raft, who must have been kicking himself for years afterward. This is the role that made Bogart a star and established his trend-setting (and still influential) antihero persona. --David Chute END

• Saboteur | DVD | (17/10/2005) from £8.99   |  Saving you £1.00 (11.12%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This Hitchcock thriller is mainly famous for its climax, which finds the villain (Norman Lloyd) hanging by his sleeve from the torch on the Statue of Liberty as the seam begins to unravel. Otherwise, it's not one of the director's great pictures, though it's still worth a look. Set during the initial stages of World War II, the story concerns a ring of Nazi fifth columnists who plot to weaken American military defences by blowing up a munitions factory, a dam and a battleship. In an early example of Hitchcock's celebrated "wrong man" theme, the hero Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) gets falsely accused of sabotage and becomes a fugitive, hunted from coast to coast. Eventually, he hooks up with the heroine Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane), a super-patriot who takes some convincing of his innocence and plans to turn him in--until the inevitable chemical reaction occurs. It's a highly episodic tale that may put you in mind of Hitchcock's previous The 39 Steps (1935) and his later North by Northwest (1959).The miscellaneous incidents (a shoot-out at a cinema, a bizarre encounter with the freaks in a circus troupe) are often exciting in themselves. The trouble is they just sort of lie there like so-many scattered marbles, never building into a coherent and satisfying whole. The bland dialogue supplied by novice screenwriter Peter Viertel doesn't help matters much. Neither does the casting of the two stars, square, wholesome types, entirely lacking in the perversity and eccentricity one associates with the Hitchcock universe. (It's tedious to hear Lane endlessly mouthing off about the American way, while Cummings must be counted one of the dullest leading men in Hollywood history.) Still, this half-hearted effort by the pot-bellied master of suspense would probably make the reputation of a dozen lesser directors. --Peter Matthews