"Actor: Oscar Beregi"

• Young Frankenstein | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £8.25   |  Saving you £4.74 (57.45%)   |  RRP £12.99

  If you were to argue Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein ranks among the top-10 funniest movies of all time, nobody could reasonably dispute the claim. Spoofing classic horror in the way that Brooks' previous film Blazing Saddles sent up classic Westerns, the movie is both a loving tribute and a raucous, irreverent parody of Universal's classic horror films Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Filming in glorious black and white, Brooks recreated the Frankenstein laboratory using the equipment from the original Frankenstein (courtesy of designer Kenneth Strickfaden), and this loving attention to physical and stylistic detail creates a solid foundation for non-stop comedy. The story, of course, involves Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) and his effort to resume experiments in re-animation pioneered by his late father. (He's got some help, since dad left behind a book titled How I Did It.) Assisting him is the hapless hunchback Igor (Marty Feldman) and the buxom but none-too-bright maiden Inga (Teri Garr), and when Frankenstein succeeds in creating his monster (Peter Boyle), the stage is set for an outrageous revision of the Frankenstein legend. With comedy highlights too numerous to mention, Brooks guides his brilliant cast (also including Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars and Gene Hackman in a classic cameo role) through scene after scene of inspired hilarity. Indeed, Young Frankenstein is a charmed film, nothing less than a comedy classic, representing the finest work from everyone involved. Not one joke has lost its payoff, and none of the countless gags have lost their zany appeal. From a career that includes some of the best comedies ever made, this is the film for which Mel Brooks will be most fondly remembered. No video library should be without a copy of Young Frankenstein. And just remember--it's pronounced "Fronkensteen". --Jeff Shannon

• Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse | Blu Ray | (24/09/2012) from £12.85   |  Saving you £7.14 (55.56%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With the etching onto glass of a single word - MABUSE - Berlin reawakens into a nightmare. Fritz Lang's electrifying Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) is the astonishing second instalment in the German master's legendary Mabuse series, a film that puts image and sound into an hypnotic arrangement unlike anything seen or heard in the cinema before - or since.It's been eleven years since the downfall of arch-criminal and master-of-disguise Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), now sequestered in an asylum under the watchful eye of one Professor Baum (Oskar Beregi). Mabuse exists in a state of catatonic graphomania, his only action the irrepressible scribbling of blueprints that would realise a seemingly theoretical Empire of Crime. But when a series of violent events courses through the city, police and populace alike start asking themselves with increasing panic: Who is behind all this?! The answer borders on the realm of the impossible...

• Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse | Blu Ray | (24/09/2012) from £21.58   |  Saving you £8.41 (38.97%)   |  RRP £29.99

  With the etching onto glass of a single word - MABUSE - Berlin reawakens into a nightmare. Fritz Lang's electrifying Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) is the astonishing second instalment in the German master's legendary Mabuse series, a film that puts image and sound into an hypnotic arrangement unlike anything seen or heard in the cinema before - or since.It's been eleven years since the downfall of arch-criminal and master-of-disguise Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), now sequestered in an asylum under the watchful eye of one Professor Baum (Oskar Beregi). Mabuse exists in a state of catatonic graphomania, his only action the irrepressible scribbling of blueprints that would realise a seemingly theoretical Empire of Crime. But when a series of violent events courses through the city, police and populace alike start asking themselves with increasing panic: Who is behind all this?! The answer borders on the realm of the impossible...

• The Testament Of Dr Mabuse | DVD | (22/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  The Testament of Dr Mabuse is Fritz Lang's sequel to his flamboyant Dr Mabuse two-part epic of the 1920s, this time adding subtle use of sound to the creepy effects developed for the earlier film. Once a Moriarty-like mastermind, the haggard Dr M (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) has become an autistic asylum inmate who scrawls plans for daring crimes in his cell and exerts an unhealthy influence on his psychiatrist. Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke), the jolly policeman from Lang's M, is puzzled by a series of daring crimes that bear the Mabuse signature, and a gang of thugs take instructions from a shadowy figure who claims after the doctor's death to be Mabuse reborn and is staging a reign of crime apparently designed to bring about the ruin of all law-abiding society. Though it works best as a textbook thriller, some commentators, including Lang, suggested that the pulp plot was intended to allegorise the evil influence of the Nazi party, with a crime boss who rants like Hitler. The many impressive set-pieces still work, too: the pursuit of a spy through a grinding print-works, an assassination at a traffic light, hero and heroine trapped in a room with a bomb and cutting a water main to flood their way to freedom, the persecution of the asylum head by a phantom of his patient, and a last-reel night-time chase. On the DVD: The Testament of Dr Mabuse on disc is accompanied by a 15-minute illustrated essay on the film and its history. There are English subtitles. --Kim Newman

• The Twilight Zone - Vol. 6 | DVD | (31/07/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99