After a nine-year break from the genre that made him an international star (the Western just before this one was The Outlaw Josey Wales, from 1976), Clint Eastwood returned in this gritty Western, crafted in the tradition of Shane and High Noon. Eastwood directed and stars as the nameless stranger known only as "Preacher" because he rides into a beleaguered mining town wearing a clerical collar. He's either an agent of death or an angel of mercy, and the echoes of Shane ring loud and clear when he comes to the aid of independent miners who are being terrorized by a local tycoon (Richard Dysart) and his ruthless band of hired guns. Befriended by a miner (Michael Moriarty) and idolized by the miner's wife and daughter (played by Carrie Snodgress and Sydney Penny, respectively), the "Pale Rider" sparks the defiant spirit of the underdog miners and takes after the bad guys with single-minded purpose. --Jeff Shannon
AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME ON 3D BLURAY! Amateur astronomer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and his fiancée Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) are stargazing in the desert when a spaceship bursts from the sky and crashes to the ground. Just before a landslide buries the ship, a mysterious creature emerges and disappears into the darkness. Of course, when he tells his story to the sheriff (Charles Drake), John is branded a crackpot; but before long, strange things begin to happen, and the tide of disbelief turns... Based on a story by acclaimed writer Ray Bradbury, It Came From Outer Space is a science fi ction classic that is as thought- provoking and tantalizing today as it was when it fi rst landed on the silver screen.
A stirring example of courage and the indomitable human spirit, for many John Sturges' The Great Escape is both the definitive World War II drama and the nonpareil prison escape movie. Featuring an unequalled ensemble cast in a rivetingly authentic true-life scenario set to Elmer Bernstein's admirable music (who writes contrapuntal march themes these days?), this picture is both a template for subsequent action-adventure movies and one of the last glories of Golden Age Hollywood. Reunited with the director who made him a star in The Magnificent Seven Steve McQueen presents a career-defining performance as the laconic Hilts, the baseball-loving, motorbike-riding "Cooler King". The rest of the all-male Anglo-American cast--Dickie Attenborough, Donald Pleasance, James Garner, Charles Bronson, David McCallum, James Coburn and Gordon Jackson--make the most of their meaty roles (though you have to forgive Coburn his Australian accent). Closely based on Paul Brickhill's book, the various escape attempts, scrounging, forging and ferreting activities are authentically realised thanks also to the presence of technical advisor Wally Flood on set, one of the original tunnel-digging POWs. Sturges orchestrates the climactic mass break-out with total conviction, giving us both high action and very poignant human drama. Without trivialising the grim reality, The Great Escape thrillingly celebrates the heroism of men who never gave up the fight. On the DVD: The Great Escape World Cup Special Edition includes all the features of the two-disc special edition, plus a full-size St George's Cross England flag, a feature on England footballers' World Cup memories and World Cup-themed packaging. --Mark Walker
The original Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of the silver screen's most unforgettable characters and, along with the other Universal Classic Monsters, defined the Hollywood horror genre. The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Complete Legacy Collection includes all 3 films from the original legacy including the gripping classic and the sequels that followed. These landmark motion pictures perfectly blended Universal's classic monster heritage with the science-fiction explosion of the 1950s and continue to inspire remakes and adaptations that strengthen the legend of the Creature from the Black Lagoon to this day. Bonus Features: Back to the Black Lagoon Documentary 3 Feature Commentaries Production Photographs Theatrical Trailers
The all time classic tale of a massive escape from a World War Two German Prisoner of War camp released as a two disc DVD set with a host of extra features.
If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--Brazil is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. In fact it was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek government clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. It's not a software bug but a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets squashed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen, one Mr Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in unravelling this bureaucratic tangle, he himself winds up labelled as a miscreant. The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously screened his cut for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who named it the best movie of 1985 and virtually embarrassed Universal into releasing it. --Jim Emerson On the DVD: Brazil comes to DVD in a welcome anamorphic print of the full director's cut--here running some 136 minutes. Disappointingly the only extra feature is the 30-minute making-of documentary "What Is Brazil?", which consists of on-set and behind-the-scenes interviews. There's nothing about the film's controversial release history (covered so comprehensively on the North American Criterion Collection release), nor is Gilliam's illuminating, irreverent directorial commentary anywhere to be found. The only other extra here is the ubiquitous theatrical trailer. A welcome release of a real classic, then, but something of a missed opportunity. --Mark Walker
So you're interested in the beginnings of Sherlock Holmes? Well then its elementary my dear Watson that you start here with 'The Dark Beginnings'... This BBC drama provides a fascinating insight into the fictional beginnings of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson the tale based on the real-life relationship between Arthur Conan Doyle and Doctor Joseph Bell his tutor at Edinburgh University.
The original Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of the silver screen's most unforgettable characters and, along with the other Universal Classic Monsters, defined the Hollywood horror genre. The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Complete Legacy Collection includes all 3 films from the original legacy including the gripping classic and the sequels that followed. These landmark motion pictures perfectly blended Universal's classic monster heritage with the science-fiction explosion of the 1950s and continue to inspire remakes and adaptations that strengthen the legend of the Creature from the Black Lagoon to this day. Bonus Features: Back to the Black Lagoon Documentary 3 Feature Commentaries Production Photographs Theatrical Trailers
Eureka Entertainment to release Robert Aldrich's TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING, a nail-biting thriller starring screen legend Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark, on home video for the first time in the UK in a Dual Format edition, as part of the Masters of Cinema series, on 17 October 2016. High among idiosyncratic auteur Robert Aldrich's most powerful and intense dramas, Twilight's Last Gleaming is a thunderous political thriller and race-against-time doomsday classic. Burt Lancaster stars as the Air Force general Lawrence Dell who seizes control of a stockpile of nuclear missiles to force the US President (Charles Durning) to tell the truth about the Vietnam war. As negotiations get ever more desperate, General MacKenzie (Richard Widmark) leads an elite fighting team into the complex to disable Dell and his team directly. One of the most overlooked nail biters of the 1970s, Twilight's Last Gleaming is presented here on UK home video for the first time in a new Dual-Format edition. SPECIAL FEATURES: High-definition digital restoration Uncompressed PCM audio on the Blu-ray English subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired Aldrich Over Munich - The Making of Twilight's Last Gleaming documentary PLUS: A booklet featuring new writing and archival images
Neil Diamond's self-revealing style has established him as one of the most popular singer/songwriters in pop music. His legendary status as a live performer is fully confirmed with the 18 songs on this collection. Recorded at the Aquarius Theater in Los Angeles Greatest Hits Live captures Neil and his band at their peak performing the best of Neil's hit-filled catalog. Tracklist: 1. America 2. September Morn 3. I'm Alive 4. Cherry Cherry 5. Sweet Caroline 6. I Am...I Said 7
This direct-to-video feature, which serves as a lead-in to the Disney animated TV series, continues the adventures of Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story films--and introduces the new supporting cast. Buzz battles the evil Emperor Zurg, who steals the "Unimind", a device that enables three-eyed aliens to function as a single intellect. The aliens, referred to as "LGMs" (little green men), form the support crew that keep Star Command running, but as individual thinkers, they're inept. During the course of this tongue-in-cheek adventure, Buzz acquires the sidekicks who form Team Lightyear: Booster, an oversized, overeager alien; XR (short for "Experimental Ranger"), one of the aliens' less successful robot inventions; and the inevitable spunky girl, Princess Mira Nova of the planet Tangeah. The two-dimensional, hand-drawn figure of the three-dimensional, computer-generated Buzz recalls the animated versions of live performers who populated Saturday morning TV during the 1980s. This adventure is typical of current kidvid: it has more special effects and sight gags than the cartoons of 20 years ago did, but the violence-free battles feel very tame. Buzz Lightyear may engage kids who play with the toys, but it won't appeal to the adults who flocked to the brilliant Toy Story features. --Charles Solomon, Amazon.com
Get out your handkerchiefs for this four-star weepie, a 1957 remake of the 1939 Love Affair, directed by Leo McCarey, who also made the original. Grant and Kerr are strangers on an ocean liner, involved with other people, who can't resist each other for a shipboard romance. But they decide to test whether this is the real thing by agreeing to split up, then meeting in six months atop the Empire State Building. Is there anyone who can resist that set-up or the tragic romantic mishap that nearly splits them up? Can you keep dry eyes during the famous finale? Some prefer the original (with Charles Boyer); practically no one liked the underrated 1994 remake with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. While occasionally a shade slow, this one soars on Grant's charm and Kerr's noble suffering. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com
After Rocky and its sequels, Sylvester Stallone cast about for another character that would bring him the same kind of box-office hit--and found it in disillusioned Vietnam vet John Rambo in First Blood, a solid little action thriller. So when all else failed, Stallone went back to the same well in hopes of recapturing the same commercial success. Which this film did. But where First Blood was a no-nonsense thriller that pitted Stallone against a worthy (and not necessarily bad) Brian Dennehy, this one is a sadistic chest-thumper in which Rambo gets to go back to Vietnam: ostensibly, he is there to rescue missing POWs, but in fact the movie was a lame excuse for him to refight the Vietnam War--and win. Audiences ate up the cruel Vietcong (and their Russian manipulators) and Stallone's bogus heroics, but it was strictly by-the-numbers action. --Marshall FineThe Rambo trilogy is also available on DVD as a complete set.
Something of a cult item among British war movies (and brilliantly spoofed a few years back by a lager ad), The Dam Busters turns a minor World War II incident into a saga of heroic stiff-upper-lippery in the classic British style. A bombing raid is proposed on a strategically vital Ruhr dam, but its position is inaccessible. Enter eccentric inventor Dr Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave in best daffy professor mode) who comes up with a genius idea--a bomb that will bounce on water like a skimmed pebble. Naturally the top brass pooh-pooh it, but gallant Wing Commander Guy Gibson (Richard Todd) is persuaded, and between them flyer and boffin forge ahead. The touches of carefully understated emotion now verge on self-parody, but it's hard not to get caught up in the narrative sweep, especially when the bombers take off on their mission and Eric Coates' stirring march hits the soundtrack. The modelwork, state-of-the-art for its early 1950s period, still looks impressive, and the death of Gibson's beloved black Labrador (embarrassingly called Nigger) is a three-hanky moment to rival the shooting of Bambi's mum. --Philip Kemp
Best of enemies. Deadliest of friends. They are fast friends and worse foes. One is Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) a law unto himself. The other is the law: Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) who once rode with Billy. Set to a bristling score by Bob Dylan (who also plays Billy's sidekick Alias) and with a `Who's Who' of iconic Western players Sam Peckinpah's saga of one of the West's great legends is now restored to its intended glory. For the first time since it left
A Tale of Love and Revenge... and Stamps. Moist von Lipwig is a con artist of the highest degree: polite charming and skillful in his work. Nevertheless as the story begins he is confined to a cell in Ankh Morpork and scheduled to die within half an hour after having stolen AM0 000. He is saved when Lord Vetinari offers him a choice: he can walk out of the door (and fall to his death) or he can become Postmaster of the city's run down Post Office. Lipwig chooses the latter hoping for a chance to escape. Unfortunately for him Lipwig's first and last attempt at escape is thwarted by a golem named Mr. Pump who delivers Lipwig back to the office of the Patrician...
IT IS A MATTER OF GOOD BREEDING. REALLY. After producing Stuart Gordon s hit Re-Animator, Brian Yuzna (Bride of Re-Animator, Return of the Living Dead III) turned his hand to directing with 1989 s Society, and gave birth to one of the ickiest, most original body horror shockers of all time. Teenager Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock) has always felt like the odd one out in his wealthy, upper-class Beverly Hills family. For some reason, he just doesn t seem to fit in. But his sense of alienation takes a sinister turn when he hears an audio recording of his sister s coming-out party, which seems to implicate his family and others in a bizarre, ritualistic orgy. And then there are the strange things he s been seeing glimpses of people with their bodies contorted impossibly out of shape... Is Bill going mad or is there something seriously amiss in his neighborhood? Packing stomach-churning grue and thought-provoking social commentary in equal measure, Society is a biting horror satire which culminates in one of the most gag-inducing climaxes in all of horror history.
Exclusive Art by Matt Ferguson Horror-meister John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape from New York) teams Kurt Russell's outstanding performance with incredible visuals to build this chilling version of the classic The Thing. In the winter of 1982, a twelve-man research team at a remote Antarctic research station discovers an alien buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Once unfrozen, the form-changing alien wreaks havoc, creates terror and becomes one of them. Collectors Edition Includes 1 x 4K UHD Disc of The Thing (1982) 1 x Blu-Ray Disc of The Thing (2011); 1 x Official Motion Picture Soundtrack Disc by Ennio Morricone 1x Matt Ferguson's The Thing Poster 1x Art Booklet (includes production notes, excerpt of the script, behind the scenes photos, early concepts) Bonus Content Feature Commentary with Director John Carpenter and Kurt Russell John Carpenter's The Thing: Terror Takes Shape Outtakes Theatrical Trailer
Wagner's passionate opera about a medieval minstrel torn between the temptations of sacred and profane love is seen here. A distinguished cast is headed by Richard Cassilly who was perhaps the leading exponent of Tannhauser at this time; Eva Marton is the radiant Elisabeth; Tatiana Troyanos a musically and dramatically stunning Venus.
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