"Actor: Sydney"

• Getting Even With Dad | DVD | (07/04/2003) from £6.73   |  Saving you £6.26 (93.02%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Small time crook Ray Gleason just committed the perfect crime but it took one small thing to screw it up - a visit from his son. Because after a lifetime of being ignored Timmy is getting even! Macaulay Culkin and Ted Danson join forces in this hilarious and heartwarming comedy about an enterprising kid who finds the ideal way to make his father into the dad he never had; a little love a little kindness and a little blackmail...

• Children's Film Foundation Collection: Runaways | DVD | (21/04/2014) from £18.75   |  Saving you £1.24 (6.61%)   |  RRP £19.99

  JOHNNY ON THE RUN | HIDE AND SEEK | TERRY ON THE FENCE For Over 30 years the Children’s Film Foundation produced quality entertainment for young audiences employing the cream of British filmmaking talent. Newly transferred from the best available elements held in the BFI National Archive these much-loved and fondly remembered films finally return to the screen after many years out of distribution in this specially curated DVD release from the BFI. Johnny on the Run a superb early work by illustrious British director Lewis Gilbert (You Only Live Twice Education Rita Alfie) follows orphaned Polish refugee Janek who runs into trouble in the shape of two scheming thieves. Starring Sydney Tafler (Carve Her Name with Pride The Spy Who Loved Me) as a cunning spiv and featuring an appearance from John Laurie (The 39 Steps Dad’s Army) Johnny on the Run is an action-packed adventure with a remarkable performance from its young lead. Hide and Seek stars a teenage Gary Kemp (The Krays) as do-gooding Chris who becomes entangled with a borstal escapee known locally as the Deptford Dodger. With friend Bev Chris traces the ungrateful Dodger’s disreputable dad. With Roy Dotrice and Robin Askwith in supporting roles this thriller is among the best of the Foundation’s 1970s output. In Terry on the Fence when our 11-year-old protagionist runs away from home he only intends to put the wind up his parents. But a gang of older bullies led by tough-nut Les soon draw him into their daunting world of break-ins and stolen goods. Based on the book by author Bernard Ashley Terry on the Fence goes far beyond the concept of goodies and baddies to the ambiguity at the heart of Terry’s moral dilemma.

• Carve Her Name With Pride | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-10.01 (-100.20%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The moving and dramatic story of Violette Szabo (McKenna) a courageous WW2 secret agent who was captured in northern France... Carve Her Name With Pride is the inspiring true life story of Violette Szabo. During World War II Violette (Virgina McKenna) volunteers to parachute into France as a secret agent to aid a Resistance group. Her mission successful she joins the Resistance where she stays until captured by the Germans. Tortured by the Gestapo for information she refuses to betray her comrades... Directed by Lewis Gilbert Carve Her Name With Pride is a moving tale about the endurance of the human spirit in even the most adverse circumstances.

• The Dambusters | DVD | (18/04/2005) from £11.32   |  Saving you £1.67 (14.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  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

• Mystery Junction | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £7.01   |  Saving you £2.98 (42.51%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Sydney Tafler stars as a celebrated crime writer who finds life imitating art when he boards a train on which murder is a travelling companion... Also featuring Barbara Murray and soon-to-be Hollywood star Patricia Owens, Mystery Junction is a rare and inventive addition to the classic whodunnit genre. Believed to be lost for decades, it is presented here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio.Miss Owens, an avid reader of detective stories, finds herself travelling in the same railway compartment as crime writer Larry Gordon neither of them realising that amongst their fellow passengers is a prisoner under escort to trial for murder. When a rescue attempt claims a policeman's life and the passengers become snowbound at a remote railway station, it's a race against time to unmask the culprit before the murderer strikes again!SPECIAL FEATURE:Image Gallery

• Fish Tank | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.98   |  Saving you £9.01 (129.08%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In "Fish Tank", 15 year old Mia's life is turned on its head when her mum brings home a new boyfriend. Starring Michael Fassbender ("300", "Inglourious Basterds") and talented newcomer Katie Jarvis.

• War Hunt | DVD | (07/08/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  No one is a better soldier than Pvt. Raymond Endore (John Saxon) at least in his own mind. Stationed in Korea as the conflict between the United States and the divided peninsula is coming to an end Endore sleeps while his platoon works to gear up for his nightly patrols of the area. These patrols used to bring vital information but now they have become a nightly ritual for Endore to slash the throats of suspected enemies tolerated by a Captain (Charles Aidman) who fears Endore's unstable nature. A Korean war orphan (Tommy Matsuda) befriends Endore as well as an idealistic soldier (Robert Redford) and these two soldiers must decide the fate of the child as the ceasefire is announced.... Madness in men during their tour of duty a subject also at the heart of Hell Is For Heroes and Attack! is the focus of this brutal 1961 war drama. Redford in his film debut offers a strong counterpart to the criminally underrated John Saxon (who would go on to a career of character work) who gives a stunning performance as a killer who only seems at peace after taking the life of another victim.

• Dragonslayer | DVD | (20/07/2004) from £8.25   |  Saving you £6.74 (81.70%)   |  RRP £14.99

  In the Dark Ages a young would be sorcerer sets out to slay Vermithrax the terrifying dragon that has reigned supreme throughout the land.... Abounding in fantasy and science fiction Dragonslayer is lit by magic and from it's medieval alchemy emerges an entertainment bursting with suspense - an awesome adventure that sends the imagination soaring to new heights!

• Westerns Collection | Blu Ray | (17/09/2012) from £19.99   |  Saving you £15.00 (75.04%)   |  RRP £34.99

  The Searchers With The Searchers, John Wayne and director John Ford forged an indelible saga of the frontier and the men and women who challenged it. Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, an ex-Confederate who sets out to find his niece, captured by Comanches who massacred his family. He won't surrender to hunger, thirst, the elements or loneliness. And in his obsessive quest, Ethan finds something unexpected: his own humanity. One of the most influential movies ever made. Pale Rider In ...

• Creature From The Black Lagoon | DVD | (02/10/2002) from £4.49   |  Saving you £5.50 (55.10%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Scientists drug and capture the creature who becomes enamoured with the head scientist's female assistant. The lonely creature escapes and kidnaps the object of his affection. leaving it up to the chief scientist to rescue his assistant and cast the ominous creature back to the depths from which he came.

• Eyes Wide Shut | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £17.94   |  Saving you £-3.95 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Visually beautiful, Stanley Kubrick's last completed film Eyes Wide Shut blends the sinister, the sensual and the clinical in a combination that is rather too personal and idiosyncratic to be entirely successful as the final statement about gender and sexuality he intended it to be. Adapted by Frederick Raphael from the Dream Story of Freud's friend Schnitzler, it shows a young successful couple confront the dangers that lurk beyond monogamy; Nicole Kidman's Alice does little more than fantasise, flirt and dream, but even this causes guilt and pain. Doctor Bill (Tom Cruise) does rather more--he visits a whore, crashes an orgy and continues to ask questions when warned off; if no disaster ensues, and it is possible that two people die as a result, it is only luck that averts it. Much of the best of what is here is to be found in occasional moments of stillness--Cruise walking through a morgue--or wild comedy--Cruise's attempt to hire a costume in the middle of the night interrupts major shenanigans at the fancy-dress shop. Cruise and Kidman do what they can with material that never means as much as it aspires to, and the standout performance is Sydney Pollack's, as a worldly wise client. On the DVD: Eyes Wide Shut on DVD is presented in lavish Dolby Sound that makes the most of the obsessive Ligeti piano piece and Shostakovich waltz that dominate the score, and in the 1.33:1 ratio that was Kubrick's considered choice. It has subtitles in English, Arabic, Bulgarian and Rumanian, two TV spots and informative interviews with Kidman and Cruise, as well as with Steven Spielberg, to whom Kubrick had talked at length about his artistic intentions. --Roz Kaveney

• Passport To Pimlico | DVD | (21/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  An archaic document found in a bombsite reveals that the London district of Pimlico has for centuries technically been part of France. The local residents embrace their new found continental status seeing it as a way to avoid the drabness austerity and rationing of post-war England. The authorities do not however share their enthusiasm... A whimsical and charming British film 'Passport To Pimlico' is one of the finest examples of the classic Ealing comedies.

• The Dam Busters | Blu Ray | (04/06/2018) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A BRAND NEW RESTORATION COMMEMORATING THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ORIGINAL WWII RAID A much-loved British classic, Michael Anderson's 1955 drama captures the tension and bravery of an audacious raid on the center of Nazi Germany's industrial complex and the quintessentially English combination of inventiveness and dogged determination. Split into two distinct sections, the film deals first with the fraught, but the ultimately successful development of a new bomb, by Dr. Barnes N. Wallis (Michael Redgrave). The second deals with the mission itself during the British raid on the Ruhr Dams, and its associated costs for the enemy and for the British airmen. Adapted by R.C. Sherriff from Paul Brickhill's book Enemy Coast Ahead and featuring superlative special effects photography by Gilbert Taylor (to say nothing of Eric Coates' stirring theme tune), The Dam Busters was Britain's biggest box office the success of 1955

• The Birthday Party | DVD | (02/07/2001) from £19.15   |  Saving you £-6.16 (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

• Hamlet | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £10.98   |  Saving you £1.00 (11.12%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In the opening scene of Hamlet, Laurence Olivier describes the play in a voice-over as "the tragedy of a man who couldn't make up his mind". But Olivier's screen adaptation is considerably more thoughtful and complex than this thesis would suggest. The contradictions and ambiguities of the title character, who prowls cavernous sets filled with vast, ancient corridors and winding staircases, emerge as if from a dream. The plethora of tracking shots--precise enough to impress Stanley Kubrick--encircle Olivier and his tightly constructed geometry of demise. Drawing on his experience playing the Prince on stage at Elsinore in 1937, the legendary thesp provides the film with the patina of greatness and shows how the constitution of the formerly cheerful Prince weakens increasingly under the burden of his own thoughts and inability to accept his mother's o'er-hasty marriage to uncle Claudius (Basil Sydney). Indeed, if emotions could possess ghosts, Olivier's Hamlet shows how they would manifest themselves. There is even a dollop of Freud, suggesting that Queen Gertrude (Eileen Herlie) has perhaps loved her offspring too closely--thus providing the fuel for Hamlet's actions. As Ophelia, Jeans Simmons captures the character's early spirit better than her gradual disintegration (Helena Bonham Carter fares better in Franco Zeffirelli's fine 1990 remake). Purists may bemoan the loss of Fortinbras, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but these choices allow Olivier to focus more squarely on Hamlet's plight. His monologues, many held in secret enclaves, glow with the dramatic markedness of a Dostoevski novel, with all of the master's irony, allusions and witticisms in place. The winner of four Oscars (Best Picture, Actor, Art Direction, and Costumes), this is a Hamlet for the ages. The rest is silence. --Kevin Mulhall

• Dragonslayer | Blu Ray | (21/03/2023) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Angel With the Trumpet | DVD | (05/10/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A British adaptation of one of post-war Austria's most significant films, The Angel With the Trumpet is the powerful, panoramic story of a family's tribulations from the last decades of the nineteenth century through to the dark days of Nazi rule. Featuring the great dramatic actress Eileen Herlie in her first starring role, this film also stars Basil Sydney, Norman Wooland and Anthony Bushell, who also directed. It is presented here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio.When Francis Alt, the head of the famous family of Viennese piano makers, decides to marry socialite Henrietta Stein, his family object due to her Jewish heritage and known dalliance with the Crown Prince Rudolph. When the marriage goes ahead despite their objections the Prince commits suicide, leaving Henrietta a note...SPECIAL FEATURES:Image GalleryPromotional Material PDFs

• Madame Web 4K Ultra HD Steelbook | Blu Ray | (27/05/2024) from £31.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Madame Web tells the standalone origin story of one of Marvel UK publishing's most enigmatic heroines. The suspense-driven thriller stars Dakota Johnson as Cassandra Webb, a paramedic in Manhattan who may have clairvoyant abilities. Forced to confront revelations about her past, she forges a relationship with three young women destined for powerful futures...if they can all survive a deadly present.Deleted Scenes, Easter Eggs - the Many Threads of Madame Web, Fight Like A Spider, Future Vision, Oracle of the Page

• The Dam Busters | Blu Ray | (14/06/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Dr Barnes Wallis was possessed with a seemingly crazy idea - the creation of a bouncing bomb designed to destroy the Ruhr dams and paralyse the enemy's industrial nerve centre. He fought persistent scepticism and disbelief that such a feat was possible though even with the matchless skill of RAF Wing Commander Guy Gibson and his squadron could such a mission succeed?

• Disney's Lilo & Stitch (Live action) 2025 4K Ultra HD/BD steelbook | Blu Ray | (25/08/2025) from £36.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Experience this wildly funny and touching live-action reimagining of Disney's beloved animated classic. When a lonely girl named Lilo adopts Stitch, a rambunctious alien 'puppy', Stitch helps to mend Lilo's broken family - but not without wreaking hilarious havoc and mischievous fun on the Hawaiian IslandsSpot Gloss on the characters and title treatment.