"Actor: Peter V"

• Robin Of Sherwood - Series 3 - Part 2 - Episodes 7 To 13 | DVD | (02/12/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  When Robin of Loxley transformed into Robert of Huntingdon in the third series of Robin of Sherwood, many viewers were understandably confused. Michael Praed left the series for reasons that never really became apparent while Jason Connery clearly wasn't a replacement chosen for similar looks or performance. Across the 13 episodes of the third series, Connery's choice became slowly apparent. The magical stories frequently dipped into darker territory as much as they aimed for uplifting humour. The new Hood was at ease with both, while reuniting the merry band and ultimately wooing the fair Marion all over again. Connery turned in a very confident embodiment of the character, clearly bonding well with the established team of actors. Guest stars lined up to contribute alongside him. Memorable appearances include those of Richard O'Brien, David Rappaport, Matt Frewer, Patricia Hodge, Ian Ogilvy and Lewis Collins. (It's fascinating to speculate how different things could have been if the close-second casting choice of Neil Morrissey had been pursued.) The strangest aspect of the series, however, is knowing in retrospect that everyone's confidence and merriment was for nothing. Scripts were written in readiness for the fourth series, but then the studio went bankrupt. Cliffhangers therefore remain that will confuse viewers far more than the lead's replacement. --Paul Tonks

• Nineteen Eighty-Four (DVD + Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (11/04/2022) from £16.97   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  George Orwell's enduring dystopian masterpiece is brought vividly to life in this celebrated BBC production. Adapted by Nigel Kneale (The Quatermass Experiment), Nineteen Eighty-Four broke new ground for television drama when first broadcast in 1954. Featuring a stunning central performance from Peter Cushing as the doomed Winston Smith, this highly influential small screen landmark has been newly restored by the BFI using original film materials from the BBC archive One of the most requested BBC productions it's presented here for the very first time on Blu-ray and DVD and released to coincide with Kneale's centenary. Experience Orwell's haunting vision of a world dictated by tyranny and propaganda; Big Brother is watching. Product Features Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition Newly recorded commentary by Jon Dear, also featuring Toby Hadoke and Andy Murray Nigel Kneale: Into the Unknown (2022): writer, actor and stand-up comedian Toby Hadoke in conversation with Kneale biographer and programmer Andy Murray. Together they try to unpick who Nigel Kneale was, what he did and why his work still matters in 2022 Late Night Line-Up (1965, 25 mins): excerpt from a rarely seen episode of the BBC series featuring Nigel Kneale, Peter Cushing, Yvonne Mitchell, Andre Morell and Rudolph Cartier Ministry of Truth (2022): Oliver Wake is interviewed by the BFI's Dick Fiddy as he dispels some of the myths surrounding the production and looks at the controversy it caused Illustrated booklet with new writing by Oliver Wake and David Ryan Newly commissioned sleeve art by Matt Needle **All extras are subject to change**

• Top Secret | DVD | (04/11/2002) from £7.05   |  Saving you £5.94 (84.26%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In between the disaster movie satire Airplane! in 1980 and the hardboiled cop show parody The Naked Gun in 1988, the comedy crew of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker put together a picture that's almost as funny as their better-known hits. Top Secret! sends up spy movies and cheesy teen rock 'n' roll musicals. Val Kilmer stars as swivel-hipped American rocker Nick Rivers, a sort of blonde Elvis whose secret weapon is Little Richard's tune "Tutti Fruitti." On tour behind the Iron Curtain, Nick strikes blows for democracy overtly and covertly, with his music as well as his espionage skills. In short, this is a very, very silly motion picture. Some great gags, including a subtitled scene in a Swedish book shop, and an inspired bit with a Ford Pinto that not everybody may get anymore. (The Pinto, you may or may not recall, was notoriously prone to gas tank explosions when rear-ended.) --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com

• Amistad | DVD | (29/01/2001) from £6.77   |  Saving you £13.22 (195.27%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Steven Spielberg's most simplistic, sanitised history lesson, Amistad, explores the symbolic 1840s trials of 53 West Africans following their bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship. For most of Schindler's List (and, later, Saving Private Ryan) Spielberg restrains himself from the sweeping narrative and technical flourishes that make him one of our most entertaining and manipulative directors. Here, he doesn't even bother trying, succumbing to his driving need to entertain with beautiful images and contrived emotion. He cheapens his grandiose motives and simplifies slavery, treating it as cut- and-dry genre piece. Characters are easy Hollywood stereotypes--"villains" like the Spanish sailors or zealous abolitionists are drawn one-dimensionally and sneered upon. And Spielberg can't suppress his gifted eye, undercutting normally ugly sequences, such as the terrifying slave passage, which is shot as a gorgeous, well-lit composition. At its core, Amistad is a traditional courtroom drama, centred by a tired, clichéd narrative: a struggling, idealistic young lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) fighting the crooked political system and saving helpless victims. Worse yet, Spielberg actually takes the underlying premise of his childhood fantasy, E.T. and repackages it for slavery. Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), the leader of the West African rebellion, is presented much like the adorable alien: lost, lacking a common language, and trying to find his way home. McConaughey is a grown-up Elliot who tries communicating complicated ideas such as geography by drawing pictures in the sand or language by having Cinque mimic his facial expressions. Such stuff was effective for a sci-fi fantasy about the communication barriers between a boy and a lost alien; here, it seems like a naive view of real, complex history. --Dave McCoy, Amazon.com

• The Suicide Squad | Blu Ray | (08/11/2021) from £21.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Assemble a collection of cons, arm them heavily and drop them on the enemyinfused island of Corto Maltese. If anyone's laying down bets, the smart money is against themall of them.

• Moonstone | DVD | (26/01/2009) from £17.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Rachel Verinder a young Englishwoman imherits a large Indian diamond on her eighteenth birthday. It is a legacy from her uncle a corrupt English army officer who served in India. The diamond is of great religious significance as well as being enormously valuable and three Hindu priests have dedicated their lives to recovering it. Rachel's eighteenth birthday is celebrated with a large party. She wears the Moonstone on her dress that evening for all to see. Later that night the diamond is stolen from Rachel's bedroom and a period of turmoil unhappiness misunderstandings and ill-luck ensues. Told via a series of narratives from some of the main characters the complex plot traces the subsequent efforts to explain the theft identify the thief trace the stone and recover it.

• Supergirl | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £8.95   |  Saving you £4.04 (45.14%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Adventure runs in the family! On a desperate mission to save Planet Earth Supergirl (Helen Slater) must retrieve a missing life-giving power source to save her home city from total destruction. Startled by her own amazing Superpowers Supergirl traces the lost Omegahedron only to discover that it has fallen into the hands of the rapacious Selena (Faye Dunaway) who unleashes untold horrors to thwart her young adversary. When Selena ensnares her brave opponent in the dreaded

• Our Mutual Friend (Repackaged) | DVD | (23/01/2012) from £6.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (42.92%)   |  RRP £9.99

  As the river flows silently through Victorian London, its dark waters bring with them a tale of crime and passion. And it’s on the banks of the Thames that the poor, but captivating Lizzy helps her father earn his unwholesome living. But they little suspect that the next body they recover will lead them to a world far removed from their own. A superficial world of dinner parties at the Veneerings and the aspirations of the Wilfers household. And as their lives weave with a multitude of characters, a complex story of love and money emerges with true Dickenson vision.

• Quo Vadis | Blu Ray | (02/02/2009) from £13.25   |  Saving you £6.74 (50.87%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Before 300... Before Gladiator... Before Ben-Hur... There Was Quo Vadis. Rome burns. Nero fiddles. Christianity rises. And moviegoers turned out in throngs for this years-in-the-making film colossus boasting eight Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) and featuring 110 speaking parts 30 000 participants and a filmed-on-location panoply of marching legions magisterial pageantry and massive spectacle that includes the martyrdom of Christians thrown to the lions before cheering Coliseum throngs. Robert Taylor plays the Legion commander whose love for a Christian slave girl (Deborah Kerr) crosses the divide between Empire and a sect with a higher loyalty. Presiding over all is Nero (Peter Ustinov). He is Caesar madman murderer - an imperial ruler of the spectacular and spectacularly doomed glory that was Rome.

• The Goose Steps Out - 75th Anniversary (Digitally Restored) | Blu Ray | (15/05/2017) from £14.39   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Comedy legend Will Hay stars as William Potts, a hapless, clumsy schoolteacher, who just happens to be an identical body double for a notorious German Nazi general. When the army is made aware of this uncanny resemblance to the German, who they are currently holding prisoner; they decide to drop the reluctant Mr Potts behind enemy lines. His deadly mission is to find and retrieve information on a secret weapon that the Germans are planning to use. But whilst impersonating the Nazi general, William Potts manages to infiltrate the college of Hitler Youth. He also manages to make a big impression on the students who are being trained as spies and are learning how to fit into British society. Luckily Mr Potts is at hand to give them lots of handy hints in honour of the war effort! Extras: Interview with Graham Rinaldi Go to Blazes Will Hay short BBC Radio 3 The Essay: British Film Comedians Will Hay Audio Featurette by Simon Heffer

• Stuart Little / Stuart Little 2 / Stuart Little 3 | DVD | (27/02/2006) from £8.95   |  Saving you £-1.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.99

  Stuart Little: Join the fun when the Little family adopts an adorably spunky boy named Stuart (voiced by Michael J. Fox) who looks a lot like a mouse. Mr. and Mrs. Little (Hugh Laurie and Geena Davis) fall in love with Stuart right away but their older son George (Jonathan Lipnicki) isn't so sure what to make of his new brother and the family's white cat Snowbell (voiced by Nathan Lane) devises a dastardly plan to get Stuart out of the house...permanently. Stuart Littl

• Mercury Rising | DVD | (04/10/1999) from £5.28   |  Saving you £4.71 (89.20%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Take off your thinking caps and toss 'em in a corner, 'cos you won't need 'em when you're watching this deliriously dumb thriller from 1997. Bruce Willis stars as a demoted FBI agent who comes to the aid of an autistic boy whose mind holds a potentially deadly secret. It seems that by gazing on a puzzle magazine and making order out of a hidden system of numbers, the 9-year-old autistic boy (Miko Hughes) has accidentally deciphered a sophisticated top-secret government code. This makes him the prime target of the ruthless bureaucrat (Alec Baldwin, in one of his silliest roles) and Willis comes to the rescue. This formulaic thriller sets up this plot with a lot of entertaining urgency but you can't give any thought to Mercury Rising or the whole movie collapses under the weight of its own illogic and nonsense. The redeeming values are the performances of Willis, young Hughes and newcomer Kim Dickens as a woman who agrees (perhaps too easily, it seems) to aid Willis in his plot to out manoeuvre the bad guys. Mercury Rising is not a waste of time compared to other formulaic thrillers but its entertainment value depends on how much you enjoy being smarter than the movie. --Jeff Shannon

• Harry And The Hendersons | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £4.93   |  Saving you £8.06 (163.49%)   |  RRP £12.99

  When an average American family meets a legendary creature the fur is sure to fly. After John Lithgow's car accidentally hits 'Harry' his life is turned upside down when he makes friends with a real-life Bigfoot. It's a race against time to get Harry back to his natural environment in this hilarious comedy for the entire family. Incidentally Harry won the Oscar for his outstanding make-up at the 1988 Academy Awards. Harry's good friend Rick Baker picked up the statuette on his beha

• For Pete's Sake | DVD | (04/11/2002) from £25.00   |  Saving you £-12.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  For Pete's Sake is a bright-eyed romantic comedy about a young couple, the eternally optimistic Henrietta (Barbra Streisand) and her husband Pete (Michael Sarrazin), who works by day as a cab driver while studying at night school. Money is tight, a fact constantly brought home to them by Pete's successful but tedious brother, Fred (William Redfield) and his bitchy wife Helen (Estelle Parsons, quite superb here). When Pete hears of an opportunity to make money on the stock market (on pork bellies, of all things) he's desperate to get his hands on $3,000, believing it will make everything come right. After conventional sources have turned them down, Henrietta secretly turns to a loan shark on the understanding that he'll be paid back in a week. The comedy arises when the shares in pork do a belly flop and her contract is sold on to increasingly dubious characters at increasingly exorbitant rates of interest. Thus, we have her taken on by a high-class madam and getting embroiled in bomb-planting and cattle-rustling. As a vehicle for Streisand-the-actress rather than Streisand-the-singer, it certainly works (though she does perform the vapid title-song), her manic comedic skill chiming well with the demands of her character in this amiable piece of froth. On the DVD: For Pete's Sake is pretty thin on the special features front: theatrical trailers; a director's commentary (reasonably worthwhile); and basic filmographies. The picture has come up surprisingly well given its age, and though it's in mono, there are no complaints about the sound either. --Harriet Smith

• The Last Seduction | DVD | (29/03/2004) from £15.97   |  Saving you £-6.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Linda Fiorentino is like a home-grown apocalyptic nightmare in The Last Seduction as the sizzling, sexy dame who thinks "sharing" is a dirty word. Fiorentino, a master of the double-cross, hooks up with naive Peter Berg, a nice guy desperate for a little adventure. There are endless twists to this cleverly vicious story, but the real draw is Fiorentino, whose performance is brilliant. She is the everywoman you never want to meet: cool as ice, passionate, tough, self-satisfied, smart, and amoral. Bill Pullman is a surprise as a Machiavellian doctor who is almost her match. Definitely not a date flick, as this represents one vicious battle in the sex wars. --Rochelle O'Gorman

• Green, Green Grass - Series 1 | DVD | (23/10/2006) from £10.19   |  Saving you £9.80 (96.17%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Boycie - the wheeler dealer from the nations favourite Only Fools And Horses - is in trouble. Local mobsters the Driscoll brothers believe that the tashed one has grassed them up to the Police. Demonstrating his usual steel back bone Boycie decides to quickly uproot from the suburb of Peckham and whisk his family away from danger to start a new life in the countryside. As ever Boycie has idea's above his station but that's not going to deter him from re-inventing himself as a 'gentlemen farmer'!

• Doctor Who - Four To Doomsday | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £8.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (122.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Peter Davidson's recently regenerated Fifth Doctor finds that they are Four to Doomsday when the Tardis materialises inside a vast starship with a multiracial crew from Earth's distant past. Downloaded into computer chips are the memories of the three billion survivors of the Urbankan race and the Earth is to be their new home. Can the Doctor save humanity from total destruction?

• Stargate SG-1: Season 4 | DVD | (31/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  It wasn't until the beginning of Stargate SG-1's fourth season that fans knew to take the Replicator threat seriously. The spidery nasties had only seemed like one of many new enemies introduced in previous years. But when the one seemingly omnipotent backbone of the galaxy was asking Earth for help, clearly we were in real trouble! In fact, the team's list of enemies expanded and got far more complicated this year. Proving without a shadow of a doubt that this is science fiction, the Russians reveal they have their own Stargate program and ask the Americans for help. This twist allows for exploration of all the political machinations occurring behind the scenes of the SG-C, all of which appear to stem from the embittered Senator Kinsey (Ronny Cox). There were quite a few Earth-based stories in the year, but not all the new enemies were originally local. Willie Garson comically guest-starred as Martin, a geekily suspicious guy with too much knowledge of the Stargate. More sinister was an old flame of Daniel's turning into something far more painful than an old wound (thanks to an ancient Egyptian curse). Thankfully, the writers hadn't forgotten the importance of one-off storylines too. In "Upgrades" the team learns a lesson in abuse of power. In "The Other Side" (featuring DS9's Rene Auberjonois) they learn about blind trust. In "Scorched Earth" a dangerous claim for a planet's ownership means they learn to value Daniel's contribution to the group dynamic. If only this last lesson were learned better, season 5 might not have ended up as muddled as it did. --Paul Tonks

• Twins Of Evil | DVD | (09/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In nineteenth century middle-Europe orphaned teenage twins Maria and Frieda go to live with their uncle Gustav Weil who heads the Brotherhood a vigilante group trying to stamp out vampirism. But their methods are random and misplaced and the only result is a terrorised populace. The real threat lies with Count Karnstein and although the twins seem outwardly to be identical Frieda finds herself much more drawn than her sister to the Count's castle dominating the skyline.

• A Town Like Alice | Blu Ray | (06/03/2017) from £6.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Although made in 1956, A Town Like Alice has remained enduringly effective and affecting. Based on Nevil Shute's novel the story revolves around a romance set against the unlikely backdrop of a forced march through the jungles of Malaysia by British prisoners--mostly women and children--captured by the invading forces of Japan. The title is a reference to the homesick yearnings of Australian soldier Joe Harman, played by Peter Finch. He forms a bond with one of the female prisoners, Jean Paget (Virginia McKenna), and their travails are depicted with a remarkable subtlety and commendable lack of corniness. It's a minor classic. On the DVD: The black-and-white picture is presented in 4:3 format, with English subtitles if required. Extra features include a 25-minute "making of" documentary, a collection of behind-the-scenes photographs, potted biographies of the cast and crew and the original trailer. --Andrew Mueller