"Actor: Robinson"

• H.M.S. Defiant | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Set in 1797 at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, HMS Defiant is an enthralling British naval drama made to capitalise upon MGM's epic remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, also released in 1962. Based on the novel Mutiny by Frank Tilsey and starring Alex Guinness as a fair-minded captain locked in psychological conflict with Dirk Bogarde, his manipulative, coldly malicious first officer, the parallels with the famous true story are clear. However there were many naval mutinies at this period and this large-scale saga, which includes some spectacularly staged widescreen naval battles, offers a realistic depiction of life in the British navy at the time--from the press gangs and floggings, to the appalling food and living conditions. Director Lewis Gilbert--who previously helmed Sink the Bismarck! (1960)--strikes a good balance between the personal drama and sweeping maritime adventure. Guinness successfully varies his firm-but-fair officer from The Bridge on the River Kwai, Bogarde is chillingly hateful and Anthony Quayle gives strong support. ITV's recent Hornblower cumulatively offers a more detailed portrait of the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars, though the TV series cannot match the visual scale of this big-screen production. On the DVD: HMS Defiant is presented anamorphically enhanced at 2.35:1, though a little of the original CinemaScope frame is still cropped at the sides. The image is generally very good, though a handful of scenes near the end show considerable print damage and there is an inconstancy of colour grading between some shots. Grain is variable, but not generally a problem, though some unattractive "ringing" from edge enhancement is noticeable, particularly around Alex Guinness when he stands against a bright sky. The sound is in very clear mono with just occasional distortion on the music score. The disc offers the option of watching with dubbed French, German, Italian or Spanish soundtracks. The original trailer is included--under the American title of Damn the Defiant!--as are trailers for three other classic war films. The only other extra features are a small gallery of original publicity materials and three very basic filmographies. --Gary S Dalkin

• Blood - The Last Vampire | DVD | (17/09/2001) from £6.46   |  Saving you £10.53 (163.00%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Blood the Last Vampire brings a moody atmospheric quality all of its own to the Japanese animated film tradition. In a few short enigmatic scenes, we learn of the young girl Saya who is working for nameless government agencies and is sent, after one of her killings, to pose as a new pupil at an American school on an air force base. The Vietnam War is underway, but this does not concern her--she is involved with a far older war. All we ever find out is that she is not quite human, and that two of her schoolmates (and a whore in the mean streets adjacent to the base) are something yet again. Much of what ensues--gore and metamorphosis and nightmare chases--is all the more confusing for being seen through the eyes of a schoolteacher who never learns very much. This is a dreamlike film which does not have to make entirely literal sense, far more so than the creator's more famous Ghost in the Shell. It is also a memorable stage in the development of digitised animation. --Roz Kaveny

• Tosh | DVD | (20/06/2022) from £5.33   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Accountant | Blu Ray | (13/03/2017) from £16.49   |  Saving you £3.50 (21.22%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Christian Wolff (Affleck) is a math savant with more affinity for numbers than people. Behind the cover of a small-town CPA office, he works as a freelance accountant for some of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations. With the Treasury Department's Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King (J.K. Simmons), starting to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk (Anna Kendrick) has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise.Click Images to Enlarge

• Pilates Body Control | DVD | (01/01/2009) from £17.53   |  Saving you £-4.54 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Pilates uses slow controlled movements yet achieves dynamic results. Introduction: Pat Cash introduces the various sections to follow. Before You Begin: An explanation of the key postural positions and the correct breathing technique. Warm Up & Daily Session: A total balanced workout incoporating the fundamental movements to warm up the whole body. Main Programme: A comprehensive workout with some advanced techniques. Winding Down: A soothing re

• Shape Up The Pilates Way With Lynne Robinson | DVD | (26/12/2002) from £8.90   |  Saving you £-0.91 (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  Lynne Robinson takes you on a body control course to help you shape up in a friendly informative and fun way!

• Happy Hell Night (Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (07/08/2017) from £12.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Slasher cinema is all too often seen as a mainstay of the 1980s but the fact is that, come the turn of a new decade, plenty of fresh teen-kill titles were being produced and few are more ferocious than HAPPY HELL NIGHT! One of the trendsetting terror titles in bridging the gap between the grindhouse excess of the eighties and the VHS-era insanity of the early nineties, HAPPY HELL NIGHT is a fright-flick that has the cinematic quality of a highbrow hack and stab slice and dicer and the fast-paced sex 'n' violence sensibility of a video cassette cut 'em up. Released in 1992 to appreciative audiences who believed the bloodshed of the FRIDAY THE 13TH era had long since passed, this is a claustrophobic tale of supernatural stabbings in an old deserted asylum - and when some youngsters begin bothering this dusty place of the past they are understandably upset to find out that it houses a hysterical lunatic that does not intend to retire his limb-lopping ambitions anytime soon! Rarely seen in a quality deserving of its colourful carnage, and featuring the thespian talents of Sam Rockwell (MOON/ IRON MAN 2), HAPPY HELL NIGHT has finally been unleashed in the UK from 88 Films in a plasma-perfect HD restoration!

• Never Smile at a Crocodile | DVD | (01/11/2012) from £4.99   |  Saving you £2.00 (40.08%)   |  RRP £6.99

  20 fun songs to sing and dance to. Join Tony, Emma and the boys and girls as they sing and dance to some of your favourite songs. Children will love the brilliant songs and will enjoy joining in with some of the dances!

• Braveheart (Special Edition) | DVD | (29/01/2001) from £8.50   |  Saving you £3.49 (41.06%)   |  RRP £11.99

  A stupendous historical saga, Braveheart won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for star Mel Gibson. He plays William Wallace, a 13th-century Scottish commoner who unites the various clans against a cruel English King, Edward the Longshanks (Patrick McGoohan). The scenes of hand-to-hand combat are brutally violent, but they never glorify the bloodshed. There is such enormous scope to this story that it works on a smaller, more personal scale as well, essaying love and loss, patriotism and passion. Extremely moving, it reveals Gibson as a multitalented performer and remarkable director with an eye for detail and an understanding of human emotion. (His first directorial effort was 1993's Man Without a Face.) The film is nearly three hours long and includes several plot tangents, yet is never dull. This movie resonates long after you have seen it, both for its visual beauty and for its powerful story. --Rochelle O'Gorman

• The Stranger | DVD | (29/04/2015) from £12.15   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The legendary story that hovers over Orson Welles' The Stranger is that he wanted Agnes Moorehead to star as the dogged Nazi hunter who trails a war criminal to a sleepy New England town. The part went to Edward G. Robinson, who is marvellous, but it points out how many compromises Welles made on the film in an attempt to show Hollywood he could make a film on time, on budget and on their own terms. He accomplished all three, turning out a stylish if unambitious film noir thriller, his only Hollywood film to turn a profit on its original release. Welles stars as unreformed fascist Franz Kindler, hiding as a schoolteacher in a New England prep school for boys and newly married to the headmaster's lovely if naive daughter (Loretta Young). Welles, the director, is in fine form for the opening sequences, casting a moody tension as agents shadow a twitchy low-level Nazi official skulking through South American ports and building up to dramatic crescendo as Kindler murders this little man, the lovely woods becoming a maelstrom of swirling leaves that expose the body he furiously tries to bury. The rest of the film is a well designed but conventional cat-and-mouse game featuring an eye-rolling performance by Welles and a thrilling conclusion played out in the dark clock tower that looms over the little village. --Sean Axmaker

• Blackadder the Fourth (Remastered) | DVD | (25/07/2011) from £9.43   |  Saving you £6.56 (69.57%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The final Blackadder series, which first appeared in 1990, was the most highly evolved of all of the Richard Curtis/Ben Elton-scripted excursions. Having contrived to attain the Crown at the end of the third series, Rowan Atkinson's Edmund Blackadder is now reduced to a mere Captaincy in the trenches during World War I, with these episodes finding him shooting messenger pigeons, grumbling about Charlie Chaplin and unscrupulously evading his patriotic duty to pile over the top and be slaughtered pointlessly. Hugh Laurie plays the upper class silly arse to the hilt while Baldrick, who has grown progressively more stupid throughout the four series, can barely muster the intelligence to move from the spot. Blackadder Goes Forth stoutly refused to the end to abandon its relish for broad, puerile scatological puns: "Captain Darling will pump you thoroughly in the debriefing room," growls Stephen Fry's General Melchett. However, Blackadder's cynicism is laced with genuine despair at the recent madness of World War I. The closing moments of the final episode, as Blackadder and co. finally receive their orders, are handled with sober poignancy and became a frequent fixture in Remembrance Day TV scheduling. --David Stubbs

• The A Word | DVD | (19/09/2016) from £12.74   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  THE A WORD is the story of the Hughes family who work and love and fight like every other family. Then their youngest son is diagnosed with autism and they don't feel like every other family anymore. They realise that if their son is ever going to communicate, they are going to have to learn how to communicate themselves. It's a funny and thought-provoking series about parenthood and childhood and what it means to be different.

• Lords Of Dogtown | DVD | (16/01/2006) from £8.08   |  Saving you £11.91 (147.40%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The film follows the surf and skateboarding trends that originated in California during the '70s.

• The Real Da Vinci Code | DVD | (15/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The recent phenomenal success of Dan Brown's Book The Da Vinci Code has once again brought The Holy Grail and it's myriad of hunters into the spotlight. It may be a novel but Brown has claimed that his book is based on research and that all the art architecture and secret societies he describes are real. It's a controversial claim because if based in truth The Da Vinci Code threatens to turn our view of history on its head. Millions of readers have been hooked but do its maj

• Hellraiser | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £13.72   |  Saving you £-8.73 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Having made his reputation as one of the most prolific and gifted horror writers of his generation (prompting Stephen King to call him "the future of horror"), Clive Barker made a natural transition to movies with this audacious directorial debut from 1987. Not only did Barker serve up a chilling tale of devilish originality, he also introduced new icons of horror that since have become as popular among genre connoisseurs as Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman. Foremost among these frightful, Hellraiser visions is the sadomasochistic demon affectionately named Pinhead (so named because his pale, bald head is a geometric pincushion and a symbol of eternal pain). Pinhead is the leader of the Cenobites, agents of evil who appear only when someone successfully "solves" the exotic puzzle box called the Lamont Configuration--a mysterious device that opens the door to Hell. The puzzle's latest victim is Frank (Sean Chapman), who now lives in a gelatinous skeletal state in an upstairs room of the British home just purchased by his newlywed half-brother (Andrew Robinson, best known as the villain from Dirty Harry), who has married one of Frank's former lovers (Claire Higgins). The latter is recruited to supply the cannibalistic Frank with fresh victims, enabling him to reconstitute his own flesh--but will Frank succeed in restoring himself completely? Will Pinhead continue to demonstrate the flesh-ripping pleasures of absolute agony? Your reaction to this description should tell you if you've got the stomach for Barker's film, which has since spawned a number of interesting but inferior sequels. It's definitely not for everyone, but there's no denying that it's become a semiclassic of modern horror. --Jeff Shannon

• Horimiya - The Complete Season | DVD | (27/02/2023) from £16.35   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  !Having opposite personalities yet sharing odd similarities, Kyouko Hori and Izumi Miyamura quickly become friends and often spend time together in Hori's home. As they both emerge from their shells, they share with each other a side of themselves concealed from the outside world.

• Suburban Shootout - Series 1 | DVD | (10/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Move over ladies of Wisteria Lane! Surburban Shootout is the new dark comedy following the topsy turvy world of a surburban housewife turf war! In Surburban Shootout the routine of world of morning exercise classes daily school runs and coffee mornings mask the secret super sexed super violent world where women don't kill time...they kill each other! The series chronicles the malicious and sordid battle between two power hungry housewives Camilla Diamond and Barbara Du Prez...Features the complete first series. Episodes Comprise: 1. Hot Flush 2. Super Sex Me 3. Kill Bill 4. Botox Rox 5. Dance Chill 6. Throw Momma From The Train 7. Let The Beginning Commence 8. What Do I Hear For Rod Stewart's Thong

• Tom and Jerry Cowboy Up! | DVD | (24/01/2022) from £4.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The Wild, Wild West just got wilder with Tom and Jerry on the ranch! This time, the rivals team up to help a cowgirl and her brother save their homestead from a greedy land-grabber, and they're going to need some help! Jerry's three precocious nephews are all ready for action, and Tom is rounding up a posse of prairie dogs. But can a ragtag band of varmints defeat a deceitful desperado determined to deceive a damsel in distress? No matter what happens, with Tom and Jerry in the saddle, it'll be a rootin'-tootin' good time!

• The Very Best Time Team Digs | DVD | (21/08/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Channel 4's Time Team is the most popular and longest running history programme on television having completed over 150 digs at different locations both abroad and throughout the British Isles. This exclusive 3 disc box set features the very best of those digs as chosen by the team themselves. These include; the discovery of the huge Roman villa at Turkdean the Anglo-Saxon treasures uncovered at Braemore Time Team's adventures in the Caribbean an investigation into a crashed spitfire from World War 2 and the dig that no one will ever forget - the mysterious site at Llygadwy in Wales where the archaeology seemed just too good to be true. The Very Best Time Digs are introduced and reviewed by Tony and the Time Team.

• The Brute (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (19/08/2024) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In The Brute, Sarah Douglas (Superman II) gives a courageous performance as Diane, a glamorous fashion model trying to escape the brutal blows of her sadistic husband, fearsomely portrayed by Julian Glover (For Your Eyes Only). After a particularly savage attack, Diane leaves to stay with photographer friend Mark (Bruce Robinson, writer and director of Withnail & I) and his girlfriend Carrie (Suzanne Stone). Finding solidarity with other victims at a nearby women's refuge, she aims to forge a new life alone, but her violent ex-partner is determined to track her down. Written and directed by Gerry O'Hara (The Pleasure Girls, The Bitch), The Brute is an uncompromising exploitation film which dares to tackle the taboo subject of domestic violence. INDICATOR STANDARD EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES New restoration from a 4K scan of the original negative by Powerhouse FilmsTwo presentations of the film: the more explicit export cut (90 mins); and the uncensored UK version, under its pre-release title, The Brute Syndrome (89 mins)Original mono audioAudio commentary with actor Sarah Douglas and writer and critic Kim Newman (2022)Sticks and Stones (2022, 14 mins): director Gerry O'Hara recalls the film's origins and incurring the wrath of the women's liberation movementUK theatrical prologue (1977): a 'psychiatrist' contextualises the film's themesThe Sea Can Kill (1976, 27 mins): Royal Navy short, written and directed by Gerry O'Hara, about surviving a disaster at seaThis Week in Britain: 'Erin Pizzey' (1978, 5 mins): interview with the inspirational founder of the world's first refuge for women, produced by the Central Office of InformationOriginal theatrical trailersImage gallery: promotional and publicity materialNew and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing