"Actor: Robert Patrick"

• The Birthday Party | DVD | (02/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Harold Pinter's first full-length stage play, The Birthday Party, was 10 years old when William (The Exorcist) Friedkin directed it for the cinema in 1968. In some ways, it was already a period-piece by then, Pinter's use of a combination of silence and excruciatingly banal dialogue to generate precipitous dramatic tension having been absorbed by contemporary theatrical mythology long since. Are the sinister McCann and Goldberg real? Or do they exist only in Stan's head? At the end, we're none the wiser. But Friedkin's claustrophobic direction, with the tormented Stan as its focus, has taken us through a master study in understated horror. The handheld camera, so fashionable in modern television drama, has rarely been used to such hypnotic effect. As Stan, Robert Shaw is mesmerising in his descent to animal-like submission. Sydney Tafler's Goldberg and Patrick Magee 's McCann make a truly terrifying double act. Cult television fans will appreciate an early appearance by Helen Fraser (these days best known as a sadistic prison warder in Bad Girls) as the easily seduced neighbour. Now that Friedkin's film is itself over 30 years old, the scent of mothballs ought to be even more pronounced. Its decrepit seaside boarding house setting and the drabness of the peripheral players are redolent of the distinctly non-swinging side of the 1960s in which it was made. But more than anything, The Birthday Party is about unspecified terror and the sort of inner demons that lurk in all of us. On the DVD: Excellent sound quality helps to make this a compellingly theatrical experience: never has the noise of tearing newspaper been more menacing. And the picture quality retains the grainy authenticity of the original print. Special features include brief backgrounders on the history of the play and Friedkin's career, and a slide show of still s from key scenes. --Piers Ford

• Showgirls | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £9.27   |  Saving you £-3.28 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  When Goldie Hawn recommended Elizabeth Berkley for a small role in First Wives Club, she publicly stated that Berkley deserved the opportunity to redeem herself after starring in the ridiculous Showgirls. That says it all: this sleazy, stupid movie, which mixes soft pornography with the clichés of backstage dramas, is the kind of project an aspiring actress would have to put well behind her to keep a career going (though co-star Gina Gershon certainly benefited from her, uh, exposure in the film). Berkley plays a drifter who hitches a ride to Las Vegas, becomes a lap dancer and then a performer, and discovers--gasp!--there's a whole world of sex and violence involved with these things. Gershon is probably the best element in the film, playing Berkley's bisexual rival for the big spotlight on stage. Joe Eszterhas was well overpaid for writing this howler, and director Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct) should have known better than to take it seriously. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Eloise | DVD | (06/02/2017) from £5.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Four friends break into an abandoned insane asylum in search of a death certificate which will grant one of them a large inheritance. However, finding it soon becomes the least of their worries in a place haunted by dark memories.

• Fire In The Sky | DVD | (08/11/2004) from £5.38   |  Saving you £10.61 (197.21%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Based on the chilling events surrounding the disappearance of a government forester in 1975 Fire In The Sky is a gripping tale of alien abduction and the fight to uncover the truth about an incident no-one could explain. Starring Henry Thomas and Robert Patrick as members of a gang of loggers working in the woodlands of North East Arizona the story focuses on the disappearance of one of the group and the claims by his friends that he was abducted by a UFO. When the friends are accu

• Thriller - The Complete Series | DVD | (27/06/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £99.99

  The complete collection of terrifying tales from Brian Clemens' classic series. Famed scriptwriter Brian Clemens is probably best known for his work on 'The Avengers' and 'The Professionals' but arguably the his best work is 'Thriller' a series he made for Lew Grade in the mid 1970s. 'Thriller' is an antholoy series of single plays - some horrific some terrifying - but always with a singular twist in the tale. Highly popular and critically acclaimed in its time 'Thriller' attra

• The Dark Half | DVD | (22/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Although it lacks the creepy subtleties of Stephen King's celebrated novel, George Romero's underrated adaptation of The Dark Half is among the best films based on King's fiction, with Romero taking care to honour the central theme while serving up some gruesome gore in the film's much-criticised finale. Inspired by King's own admission that he wrote several novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, The Dark Half explores the duality of a writer's impulse, ranging from literary respectability to the viscerally cathartic thrills of exploitative pulp fiction. Author and teacher Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton) finds himself torn between those extremes when he "kills" his profitable alter ego, George Stark (the bestselling dark half to Thad's light), who then assumes evil, autonomous form (again played by Hutton) to defend lethally his role in Thad's creative endeavours. Forced to wrestle with this evil manifestation of his own unformed twin, Thad must fight to protect his wife (Amy Madigan), their twin babies and himself. While Romero skilfully develops the twin/duality theme to explore the writer's dilemma, Hutton is outstanding in his dual roles, playing Stark (in subtly fiendish makeup) as a redneck rebel with a knack for slashing throats. Julie Harris adds class in a supporting role, and horror fans will relish Romero's climactic showdown, in which swarms of sparrows seal Stark's fate. It favours a pulp sensibility with clunky exposition to explain Stark's existence, but The Dark Half is a laudable effort from everyone involved. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Striptease (1996) | DVD | (24/04/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  This horrible misfire from the usually reliable writer-director Andrew Bergman (The Freshman) has nothing funny, provocative, timely or interesting to say (despite being based on a novel by Carl Hiaasen) once Demi Moore gets her clothes off. Moore plays a single, unemployed mum caught up in a custody battle who elects to make some money by stripping at a club. The character's troubles don't end there, however: her ex-husband is posing a threat, and a perverted congressman (Burt Reynolds) is looking for more than a lap dance. Bergman's great wit is nowhere in sight, and the film primarily becomes another opportunity for Moore to function like a special effect. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• From Dusk Till Dawn 2 - Texas Blood Money | DVD | (01/07/2002) from £6.54   |  Saving you £8.45 (56.40%)   |  RRP £14.99

  B-movie mavens turned A-list genre fiends Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino teamed up in 1996 to take vampire gothic south of the border into spaghetti Western territory for the gory cult film From Dusk Till Dawn. The high-concept mix of southwestern criminals versus supernatural nasties proved too irresistible for either of the video-hound creators to allow it to remain dead (or undead, as the case may be), so they plotted and produced a pair of direct-to-video sequels. Tarantino takes a story credit on the first, a heist film coscripted and directed by Scott Speigel. A Mexican bank robbery helmed by drawling criminal Robert Patrick (Terminator 2) turns into a literal bloodbath when his crew are turned into hungry bloodsuckers. Speigel, a buddy of Sam Raimi, tops both Tarantino and Rodriguez for sheer cinematic acrobatics, putting his camera in the most absurd places (even from inside the mouth of a vampire chomping down on a victim) and driving the film with adrenaline-charged overkill, but despite some clever scenes and a hilarious Psycho spoof, From Dusk Till Dawn 2--Texas Blood Money turns into another aggressively trashy latex-mask and rubber-bat gorefest as cops and robbers team up against the fanged gang. Bo Hopkins costars as the police detective dogging Patrick's trail. Bruce Campbell and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen make cameos in the jokey opening sequence and Speigel and fellow director Kevin Smith briefly appear as vampire bait. Bartender Danny Trejo is the only returning cast member. --Sean Axmaker

• The X Files: Season 2 | DVD | (30/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Season Two, the 1994-95 run, of The X Files was the one where creator Chris Carter, having had a surprise hit when he expected a one-season wonder, started trying to make sense of all the storylines he had thrown into the pile in the first year. Moreover, he had to cope with Gillian Anderson's maternity leave by having Scully get abducted by aliens (back then, a pretty fresh device) for a few episodes and come back strangely altered. The season also inaugurated the tradition of opening ("Little Green Men") and closing ("Anasazi") with the show's worst episodes, both pot-boiling attempts to keep the alien infiltration/government conspiracy balls up in the air while seeming to offer narrative forward-thrusts or revelations.But it's also a show noticeably surer of itself than Season One, with its stars reading from the same page in terms of their characters' relationship and attitudes to the wondrous. Scully's no-longer-workable scepticism finally starts to erode in the face of Mulder's increasingly cracked belief. There are fewer marking-time leftover-monster-of-the-week shows--although we do get a human fluke ("The Host"), vampires ("3"), an invisible rapist ("Excelsius Dei") voodoo ("Fresh Bones")--and the flying-saucer stories at last seem to be going somewhere. The powerful two-episode run ("Duane Barry", "Ascension") features Steve Railsback as Mulder's possible future, an FBI agent burned out after a UFO abduction who has become a hostage-taking terrorist, which climaxes with Scully's disappearance into the light. The standout episode is also a stand-alone--"Humbug"--the first and still most successful of the show's self-parodies (written by Darin Morgan, who had played the Flukeman in "The Host"), in which the agents investigate a murder in a circus freakshow, allowing the actors to make fun of the mannerisms they have earnestly built up in a run of solemn, even somnolent, explorations of the murk. Other worthy efforts: "Aubrey", about genetic memory; "Irresistible", a rare (and creepy) straight psycho-chiller with little paranormal content; and "The Calusari", a good ghost/mystery. Rising deputy characters include Nicholas Lea as the perfidious Krycek and Brian Thompson as the shapeshifting alien bounty hunters. Notable guest stars: Charles Martin Smith, C.C.H. Pounder, Leland Orser, Terry O'Quinn, Bruce Weitz, Daniel Benzali, John Savage, Vincent Schiavelli, Tony Shalhoub. --Kim NewmanOn the DVD: The individual episode discs have a small selection of deleted scenes, foreign language clips and behind-the-scenes footage, but the bulk of the extra material is on the final disc. There's not a lot to get to grips with, but what there is consists of a 14-minute documentary about the making of Season Two, with contributions from Chris Carter, various directors, writers and actors (but not the two principals); Carter talking briefly about each episode in turn; a series of short TV spots and pieces about the show's FX and secondary characters; and three very short behind-the-scenes glimpses, one of which has the self-explanatory title "Gillian eats a cricket". There's also a DVD-ROM utility with Web links and a game. --Mark Walker

• Charlie's Angels/Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle | DVD | (17/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Charlie's Angels: Cameron Diaz Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu are Charlies Angels - a trio of elite private investigators who with the latest in high-tech gadgets martial arts techniques and a vast array of disguises unleash their state of the art skills on land sea and air. Their goal to track down a kidnapped billionaire-to-be and keep his top-secret voice identification software out of his lethal hands. Aided by their faithful lieutenant Bosley (Bill Murray) and u

• Bridge To Terabithia | Blu Ray | (15/10/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.99

  An 11-year-old boy's life is changed forever when he befriends the class outsider—who happens to be a girl.

• Hellions | DVD | (26/10/2015) from £3.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (300.75%)   |  RRP £15.99

  “It’s creepy… We can’t wait to see it again” SciFiNow Strange trick-or-treaters plague conflicted teenager Dora Vogel (Chloe Rose) at her isolated home on Halloween. Under siege by forces she can’t understand, Dora must defend both body and soul from relentless hellions, dead-set on possessing something Dora will not give them. With officer Corman (Robert Patrick: Terminator 2: Judgment Day) in tow will Dora survive and kill these forces of evil? From director Bruce McDonald (Ponytpool), set in a visually haunting landscape, HELLIONS redefines the boundaries of horror with its potent brew of Halloween iconography, teenage angst and desperate survival.

• Death Warrant | DVD | (09/07/2001) from £11.97   |  Saving you £4.01 (44.65%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In 1990, Death Warrant was one of several back-to-back action movies that suddenly made Jean Claude Van Damme's name a rival to Stallone's and Schwarzenegger's. Its distinction from the likes of Cyborg or Double Impact is in its firm grounding in reality. In fact, Los Angeles County Jail couldn't seem more harshly real. That's where Detective Burke finds himself going undercover to investigate a string of mysterious (and politically embarrassing) deaths. Of course, the prison environment is ideally suited to Van Damme's strengths, where he elicits sympathy as the innocent abroad during one fight sequence after another. Lots of colourful secondary characters are along for the ride, such as the enigmatic Priest, tough-as-nails peanut-shucking Sergeant DeGraf and Burke's arch nemesis, the Candyman (Patrick Kilpatrick). There's an admirable attempt at portraying the action with some panache. Light and shadow is used to good effect and every kickbox move is punctuated by a double cut. Although the script dispenses with the essential Van Damme elements in the opening seconds (he lost a partner / he's from Canada / he can kickbox), this is definitely an above-average Van Damme flick. On the DVD: The bare-bones transfer offers an occasionally grainy picture in 1.85:1 ratio and a three-channel surround soundtrack. The only extra off the static menu is the original theatrical trailer. --Paul Tonks

• The Jigsaw Man | DVD | (13/09/2002) from £8.48   |  Saving you £-5.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Kim Philby Guy Burgess Donald Maclean Peter and Helen Kroger... and now Sir Philip Kimberly... All traitors spies defectors - call them what you will. Each betrayed their country or the country they had adopted for money for ideal or for both.

• Terminator 2- Judgment Day 30th Anniversary Vinyl Edition | Blu Ray | (06/12/2021) from £69.09   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  James Cameron's epic action, sci-fi masterpiece starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in his most iconic role, first hit cinema screens in 1991, 30 years later Terminator 2 is still considered one of the greatest action blockbusters of all time. It has been 10 years since the events of Terminator. Sarah Connor's ordeal is only just beginning as she struggles to protect her son John, the future leader of the human resistance against the machines, from a new Terminator, T1000 sent back in time to eliminate John Connor while he's still a child. Sarah and John don't have to face this terrifying threat alone however. The human resistance have managed to send them an ally, a warrior from the future ordered to protect John Connor at any cost. The battle for tomorrow has begun Extras: Includes vinyl soundtrack and 12 lenticular picture T2: Reprogramming The Terminator documentary (including exclusive interviews with James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Edward Furlong and many more) 55 mins 2 Feature Commentaries; 23 Members of Cast & Crew (1993)/Director James & Co-Author William Wisher The Making of T2 (1993) Seamless Branching Of The Theatrical Version (137 mins approx.) Special Edition Version (154 mins approx.) Extended Special Edition Version (156 mins approx.) 2 Deleted Scenes With Audio Commentary Trailers T2:3D (2017) T2 Theatrical Trailer ˜This Time There Are Two'/'Same Make New Mission'/'Building The Perfect Arnold

• Too Late The Hero | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Set on a Pacific island in 1942, Too Late the Hero is a hard-as-nails "men on a mission" war movie: a group of British soldiers have to traverse the New Hebrides to destroy a Japanese radio transmitter, then get back to safety while being hunted all the way. Inevitably everything goes wrong, but director Robert (The Dirty Dozen) Aldrich turns the book of WWII movie clichés on its head and springs some unnerving surprises. Even the token American star, Cliff Robertson--echoing William Holden's grafted-on role in The Bridge on the River Kwai--proves less than obviously heroic, while an outstanding Michael Caine brings considerable depth to his usual cynical cockney. Henry Fonda gets heavily billed for a brief guest appearance, but there are star performances such fine British character actors as Denholm Elliot, Ian Bannen, Ronald Fraser and Lance Percival. This portrait of battle-worn men offers greater complexity than Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, while the jungle trek was more recently paralleled in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. Only the attitudes--more 1970 than 1942--detract from Aldrich's tellingly realistic vision, which with a thoughtfully ironic script and a succession of tense set pieces and brutal firefights, builds to a harrowing climax. On the DVD: The picture is presented at approximately 1.7:1, reformatted from the original 2.2:1 70mm theatrical presentation. Despite approximately 25 per cent of the original image being missing, this loss is only really noticeable in a few scenes. Apart from the occasional fleck, the print is in superb condition, and despite the lack of anamorphic enhancement the picture is sharp, detailed and has excellent colour. The surround sound (not mono as listed on the packaging) is highly effective, with the tension being increased by a considerable amount of the music coming from the rear speakers. The special features are simply a few static pages of biographical and production notes. --Gary S. Dalkin

• Lovelace | DVD | (23/12/2013) from £5.74   |  Saving you £12.25 (213.41%)   |  RRP £17.99

  In 1972 before the internet before the explosion of the adult film industry Deep Throat was a phenomenon: the first scripted pornographic theatrical feature film featuring a story some jokes and an unknown and unlikely star Linda Lovelace (Amanda Seyfried; Les Miserables). Escaping a strict religious family Linda discovered freedom and the high-life when she fell for and married charismatic hustler Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard; TVs The Killing). As Linda Lovelace she became an international sensation-less centerfold fantasy than a charming girl-next-door with some 'impressive skills'. Fully inhabiting her new identity Linda became an enthusiastic spokesperson for sexual freedom and uninhibited hedonism. Six years later she presented another utterly contradictory narrative to the world-and herself as the survivor of a far darker story. The all-star cast includes; Emmy Award winner Hank Azaria (The Simpsons) BAFTA winner Juno Temple (The Dark Night Rises) Adam Brody (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World) Academy Award nominee James Franco (127 Hours) Golden Globe nominee Chris Noth (Sex and The City) Emmy Winner Bobby Cannavale (TVs Nurse Jackie) Wes Bentley (The Hunger Games) Robert Patrick (Gangster Squad) Debi Mazar (Collateral) Eric Roberts (The Expendables The Dark Night) Academy Award nominee Sharon Stone (Casino Basic Instinct) and Academy Award nominee Chloe Sevigny (Boys Don't Cry).

• The X Files: Season 5 | DVD | (27/12/2004) from £19.73   |  Saving you £15.26 (77.34%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Mulder continues his search for a cure for Scully's illness even as her genetically altered DNA takes her to the brink of death. Scully's DNA comes into play once again when it proves that she is somehow the mother of a little girl named Emily an incident that could only be related to her abduction years earlier. But in the end it is a young boy named Gibson Praise whose body may actually contain the elusive proof Mulder has been searching for so desperately. Episodes comprise:

• The X Files: Season 4 | DVD | (27/12/2004) from £16.90   |  Saving you £18.09 (107.04%)   |  RRP £34.99

  In Season 4 of The X-Files, Scully is a bit upset by her on-off terminal cancer and Mulder is supposed to shoot himself in the season finale (did anyone believe that?), but in episode after episode the characters still plod dutifully around atrocity sites tossing off wry witticisms in that bland investigative demeanour out of fashion among TV cops since Dragnet. Perhaps the best achievement of this season is "Home", the most unpleasant horror story ever presented on prime-time US TV. It's not a comfortable show--confronted with this ghastly parade of incest, inbreeding, infanticide and mutilation, you'd think M & S would drop the jokes for once--but shows a willingness to expand the envelope. By contrast, ventures into golem, reincarnation, witchcraft and Invisible Man territory throw up run-of-the-mill body counts, spotlighting another recurrent problem. For heroes, M & S rarely do anything positive: they work out what is happening after all the killer's intended victims have been snuffed ("Kaddish"), let the monster get away ("Sanguinarium") and cause tragedies ("The Field Where I Died"). No wonder they're stuck in the FBI basement where they can do the least damage. The series has settled enough to play variations on earlier hits: following the liver vampire, we have a melanin vampire ("Teliko") and a cancer vampire ("Leonard Betts"), and return engagements for the oily contact lens aliens and the weasely ex-Agent Krycek ("Tunguska"/"Terma"). Occasional detours into send-up or post-modernism are indulged, yielding both the season's best episode ("Small Potatoes") and its most disappointing ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man"). "Small Potatoes", with the mimic mutant who tries out Mulder's life and realises what a loser he is (how many other pin-up series heroes get answerphone messages from their favourite phone-sex lines?), works as a genuine sci-fi mystery--for once featuring a mutant who doesn't have to kill people to live--and as character insight. --Kim Newman

• Barbarian Queen | DVD | (22/10/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  No Man Can Posses Her. No Man Can Defeat Her. On the eve of her wedding the beautiful Amathea (Lana Clarkson) sees her world dissolve - her prince groom imprisoned her village razed her friends raped and slaughtered. Becoming the Barbarian Queen she vows revenge and retribution. With savage charm and deadly skill the Barbarian Queen and her female warriors entice then destroy their adversaries. Her power and beauty are legendary... she is the Barbarian Queen!