"Actor: Nanette Newman"

• The Raging Moon (Digitally Restored) | Blu Ray | (23/11/2015) from £11.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (91.74%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Bruce (Malcolm McDowell, If, A Clockwork Orange) is a lively young man with an irrepressible sense of fun and a sharp eye for a pretty girl. Returning home slightly the worse for wear after a wedding, he suddenly collapses. When he wakes the next day he finds himself in hospital unable to walk and the Doctors cannot diagnose his condition. When his family is unable to house him, Bruce is forced to move to a convalescence home. Here he becomes bitter about his situation and resents the intrusion of the other inmates upon his melancholy state. After a while Bruce strikes up a friendship with fellow inmate Jill (Nanette Newman) and under her influence, he begins to enjoy life again. Falling deeply in love, Bruce and Jill decide to get married against the wishes of the home's owners. Faced with the prospect of having to move out of the home and seek work, will Bruce's and Jill's love survive? Sensitively directed by Bryan Forbes (Whistle Down the Wind, The Stepford Wives), THE RAGING MOON is a tender love story featuring strong performances from Newman and McDowell

• The League Of Gentlemen | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The League of Gentlemen is a sardonic crime drama in which Jack Hawkins plays an embittered retired army officer who recruits seven fellow ex-soldiers to carry out a bank raid with military precision. The film presents an England between post-war austerity and the more liberated 1960s where traditional moral certainties were rapidly being discarded; a London where ex-officers left on the scrapheap at war's end could justify turning their military experience to armed robbery. Unfortunately the tale is neither particularly amusing or thrilling, with an overlong central detour via an army camp prefacing the exciting heist and a largely anti-climactic ending. Nevertheless Hawkins effectively subverts his heroic officer type from The Cruel Sea (1953) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and there's excellent support from a great cast including Nigel Patrick, Richard Attenborough and Roger Livesey. Bryan Forbes not only wrote the cynical screenplay but costarred with wife Nanette Newman in her first significant screen role. More influential than truly classic, The League of Gentlemen has lent its name to a modern BBC comedy, an "Extraordinary" comic strip-turned-movie, and proved the template for heist films ever since, including both versions of The Italian Job (1969 and 2003). On the DVD:The League of Gentlemen is presented in an anamorphically enhanced 16:9 transfer from an excellent condition print and mostly looks and sounds fine. There's minimal print damage, though sadly Philip Green's ironically patriotic main title music suffers from significant distortion. The only extra is the original trailer, which is now something of a period piece itself. --Gary S Dalkin

• Faces in the Dark | DVD | (28/11/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Faces In The Dark is a suspenseful drama by director David Eady. Richard Hammond (John Gregson) owns a factory, and on the very day his wife Christine (Mai Zetterling) is coming to his office to tell him she wants a divorce, he is accidentally blinded during an experiment. His wife relents in her decision, but Richard is still as abrasive as ever, and now the bumpy spots in his personality are made worse by self-pity and a suspicion that he is losing his sanity. Meanwhile, Richard begins to suspect that the cool and aloof Christine and Richard's partner conspire against him, but as a blind man he has fewer resources to pinpoint why he is suspicious....

• Wrong Arm Of The Law, The / Never Let Go / Waltz Of The Toreadors / Soft Beds, Hard Battles | DVD | (07/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Wrong Arm Of The Law Peter Sellers stars as gang-leader Pearly Gates who has a double life as Monsieur Jules the manager of a fashion house. The criminal world of London is being reduced to chaos by an Australian 'IPO mob' who acting on information provided by Gates' girlfriend Valerie (Nanette Newman) impersonate police officers and take the spoils of the true criminals after the crime has been safely committed. The crimes are relatively victimless involving jewellery thefts from the rich or robbery from institutions such as banks and post offices. Gates is instrumental in getting a deal between organised crime and Scotland Yard. Never Let Go A cosmetic salesman sets out to prove to himself and his wife that he is not a failure. Waltz Of The Toreadors The immortal Peter Sellers is hilarious as a pompous retired general who still has a taste for the ladies in French playwright Jean Anouilh's philosophical farce. A lusty comedy of manners 'Waltz of the Toreadors' tempers its treatment of an old rake's delusions with generous dollops of wit and compassion. Soft Beds Hard Battles Peter Sellers plays six different characters in this hilarious sexploitation comedy. A renowned Paris brothel has turned into an active centre for the French Resistance. The girls assist the Allied war effort by attracting and eliminating the enemy amongst its clientele in the bedroom...

• The Stepford Wives | DVD | (15/01/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Ira Levin's scary novel about forced conformity in a small Connecticut town made for this compelling 1975 thriller. Katharine Ross stars as a city woman who moves with her husband to Stepford and is startled by how perpetually happy many of the local women seem to be. Her search for an answer reveals a plot to replace troublesome real wives with more accommodating fake ones (not unlike the alien takeover in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers). The closer she gets to the truth, the more danger she faces--not to mention the likelihood that the men in town intend to replace her as well. Screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and director Bryan Forbes (King Rat) made this a taut, tense semi-classic with a healthy dose of satiric wit. The DVD release presents the film in its original widescreen dimensions. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Seance On A Wet Afternoon | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An intensely claustrophobic nail-biter to rival prime Hitchcock, 1964's Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a classic British thriller written and directed by Bryan Forbes. Set largely in an imposing Gothic house in north London, the film stars Richard Attenborough as Bill Savage, a man struggling to maintain his marriage to his increasingly unbalanced wife, Myra, played in an Oscar-nominated performance by the little-known but brilliant Broadway actress Kim Stanley. Myra, who believes she is a medium, plans a scheme that will make her famous, involving kidnapping then "psychically" locating a little girl. Attenborough (who won a BAFTA) and Stanley are both superb in what is part riveting battle of wills, part nerve-wracking kidnap thriller with, just possibly, a touch of the supernatural. Gerry Turpin's precise b/w cinematography and John Barry's chilling score add significantly to the atmosphere of dread, and if the plot has one or two gaping holes, Forbes's direction covers them deftly. Forbes explored female delusion again in The Whispers (1967) and The Mad Woman of Chaillot (1969); the film also marked a major entry in his long-term collaboration with John Barry and with his wife, the actress Nanette Newman. Séance clearly had an influence on Attenborough's own directorial contribution to the genre, the highly unsettling Anthony Hopkins vehicle, Magic (1978). On the DVD: Séance on a Wet Afternoon is presented in an excellent 16:9 transfer, anamorphically enhanced for widescreen televisions, that effectively captures the brooding look of Gerry Tupin's BAFTA-nominated cinematography. Unfortunately the print used, though generally very good, does show some damage, including some instances that appear to run through the best part of a reel. Though noticeable and sometimes distracting, they barely mar this gripping film. The mono soundtrack is fine, though there is the very occasional touch of distortion. The disc comes with optional English subtitles, the excellent original trailer and a new and first-rate 33-minute interview with Bryan Forbes in which he engagingly explains every aspect of the making of the film. --Gary S Dalkin