Classic Films

• Nosferatu (1922) - Two-disc set | DVD | (22/01/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Nosferatu ... the name alone can chill the blood!". F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, released in 1922, was the first (albeit unofficial) screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Nearly 80 years on, it remains among the most potent and disturbing horror films ever made. The sight of Max Schreck's hollow-eyed, cadaverous vampire rising creakily from his coffin still has the ability to chill the blood. Nor has the film dated. Murnau's elision of sex and disease lends it a surprisingly contemporary resonance. The director and his screenwriter Henrik Gaalen are true to the source material, but where most subsequent screen Draculas (whether Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella or Gary Oldman) were portrayed as cultured and aristocratic, Nosferatu is verminous and evil. (Whenever he appears, rats follow in his wake.)The film's full title--Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror)--reveals something of Murnau's intentions. Supremely stylised, it differs from Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) or Ernst Lubitsch's films of the period in that it was not shot entirely in the studio. Murnau went out on location in his native Westphalia. As a counterpoint to the nightmarish world inhabited by Nosferatu, he used imagery of hills, clouds, trees and mountains (it is, after all, sunlight that destroys the vampire). It's not hard to spot the similarity between the gangsters in film noir hugging doorways or creeping up staircases with the image of Schreck's diabolic Nosferatu, bathed in shadow, sidling his way toward a new victim. Heavy chiaroscuro, oblique camera angles and jarring close-ups--the devices that crank up the tension in Val Lewton horror movies and edgy, urban thrillers such as Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice--were all to be found first in Murnau's chilling masterpiece. --Geoffrey MacnabOn the DVD: This two-disc set gives you the choice of watching Nosferatu in either a sepia-tinted version or the original black & white. Both, however, feature the same modern electronic music score by Art Zoyd (at the movie's lavish 1922 premiere a live orchestra performed a newly composed, quasi-Wagnerian score by Hans Erdmann). The anonymous commentary track is a scholarly critical appraisal of the movie that exhaustively documents every aspect of it, from Murnau's aesthetic use of framing devices to the homoerotic subtext of the Hutter-Orlock relationship. In the "Nosferatour" featurette the movie's locations (principally, the Baltic cities of Wismer and Lubeck) are shown as they are today, and there is also a look at the original artwork that served as Murnau's inspiration. Two text features provide a brief history of the vampire myth from Vlad the Impaler onwards, as well as a discussion of the controversy caused by the movie's release. Appropriately, a trailer for the John Malkovich-Willem Dafoe movie Shadow of the Vampire, which imagines that "Max Schreck" actually was a vampire employed by Murnau in his obsessive pursuit of verisimilitude, is also included. --Mark Walker

• R.P.M - Limited Edition | Blu Ray | (21/01/2019) from £17.39   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  NOTICE: Polish Release, cover may contain Polish text/markings. The disk DOES NOT have English audio and subtitles.

• Classic Films Triple - The Boys From Brazil/The Eagle Has Landed/Escape To Athena | DVD | (06/10/2008) from £14.85   |  Saving you £-1.86 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Titles Comprise: The Boys From Brazil: This terrifying thriller is based on Ira Levin's best seller in which Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) alive and living in South America gathers a group of former Nazis to work on a mysterious project. Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) begins to unravel the conspiracy and discovers that Mengele has cloned 94 young Hitlers. Suddenly the terrifying extent of Mengele's plan is revealed: twisting genetic science to become a new weapon of global horror. The Eagle Has Landed: The daring World War II plot that changed the course of history. In November 1943 Heinrich Himmler (Donald Pleasance) received a simple message The Eagle Has Landed. It meant that a crack force of German paratroopers were safely in England poised and ready to kidnap the Prime Minister of England Winston Churchill. The force is under the command of Colonel Kurt Steiner (Michael Caine). All goes smoothly as the German force disguised in Polish uniforms is accepted by the villagers. But one of the men is killed while rescuing a little girl and his German uniform is discovered. The entire village has to be taken hostage and hidden in the town church. Agents and counteragents work desperately to keep the scheme alive. Steiner himself takes a dangerous gamble. He overpowers an American ranger commandeers his jeep and uniform and drives to the mansion where Churchill is relaxing. The action and suspense are nonstop in this World War II thriller which also stars Treat Williams Larry Hagman Anthony Quayle and Jean Marsh. Escape To Athena: A battle of action and wits in a World War II prison camp where the Fuhrer's scheme for looting a treasure-laden island off Greece is under way. Prisoners of war labour under the eye of the camp's Austrian Commandment Major Otto Hecht as they dig up priceless Greek art. Zeno the island's resistance leader and his woman Eleana scheme to defeat the occupiers. Zeno and his men clash with the Germans to save the lives of condemned prisoners and try to locate a submarine oil supply depot. If the Germans are to be defeated they must also seek and dismantle the communications equipment on Mount Athens which promises a blaze of action...

• Those Were The Days - Britain In The 1960s | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £6.95   |  Saving you £-4.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £1.99

  The 1960s promised great things for Britain and the world. It was a period of optimism idealism and limitless possibilities. Newsreels captured the development of a new kind of culture and lifestyle during the decade. Some of the optimism of the early 1960s had faded by the end of the decade but the period still saw remarkable progress in medicine science and industry - as well as music fashion and civil liberties. This film tells the story of a decade of massive change in Britain. From beatlemania to the violent anti-war protests in Grosvenor Square the major news stories of the period are placed in their social context by use of rarely seen material that shows the way we lived and the way we were forty years ago.

• Hollow Triumph | DVD | (18/05/2009) from £4.82   |  Saving you £6.43 (180.62%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Directed by Steve Sekely (Day Of The Triffids) Hollow Triumph stars Paul Henreid (Casablanca The Conspirators) as Johnny Muller a thief whose casino raid has gone wrong. Only he and Marcy played by Herbert Rudley (Brewster's Millions) escape. Soon Marcy ends up shot in the street and Johnny needs to escape. He is being pursued by the police and the casino owners. Out on the street Johnny is mistaken for a psychiatrist Dr. Bartok. He visits his office where the secretary - Joan Bennett (Scarlet Street) - also mistakes Johnny for her boss until she notices that the scar on her boss's cheek is missing. Johnny decides to replicates the scar but manages to put the scar on the wrong side of his face. Does it matter? Do people really look at other people's faces? Will the scar give him away? Is he marked for death?

• The Ken Loach Collection Volume 1 | DVD | (03/09/2007) from £47.14   |  Saving you £14.61 (32.19%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Available together in a box set for the first time experience the drama and intensity from some truly ground-breaking and memorable British Cinema. This box set comes complete with 2 hours of extras across the 8 discs a 16 page companion booklet featuring introductions from Ken Loach himself and Barry Hines quotes and production notes and a bonus DVD containing a documentary profiling Loach plus the theatrical for his new cinematic masterpiece 'It's A Free World'. As if

• The Blue Angel | DVD | (17/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Two things make it impossible to consign Josef von Sternberg's seedily atmospheric 1930 masterpiece The Blue Angel to the archives of museum land: it was the first film to put Marlene Dietrich in front of an international audience; and it features a towering performance from Emil Jannings as the professor whose fall from grace is precipitated by his obsession with Dietrich's archly vampish showgirl Lola-Lola. On both counts The Blue Angel remains a potent, vibrant work which still has moments of real relevance. Dietrich's performance is indeed hypnotic: von Sternberg lights her face and exposed flesh--shoulders and thighs--in a way that clearly indicates the erotic charge she generates among the men in the Blue Angel night club, and in Jennings in particular. Before our eyes his repressed, puritanical self-will disintegrates and his fate is sealed. The pivotal moment is, of course, when Dietrich teases her audience with "Falling in Love Again", her stockinged and suspendered legs astride a beer barrel, a top hat rakishly on her head. It would become the signature tune of her cabaret act in later years but here she delivers it with a far less studied, throwaway cheeriness; how, indeed, can it be her fault if men cluster around her like moths around a flame? This is the raw material on which an icon was built, but there is much else to fascinate in the film itself: you can still smell the pungent grim reality of a trouper's life on the road; and the professor's pathetic efforts to control his class of unruly boys still resonates today... this is an essential piece of film history. On the DVD: The Blue Angel is presented in its German and English-language versions, both restored and digitally remastered. As far as the sound quality is concerned this is of limited benefit since there is a great deal of distortion on both versions. But thanks to the picture restoration we can see how von Sternberg treats Dietrich: her face becomes a radiant, mocking pool of light always in contrast with the dark, grainy characters around her. The English version (in truth, only the Dietrich/Jannings scenes were shot in each language) is slightly pruned, missing a key scene in which the professor's repressed sensitivity is established at the very beginning. So despite some erratic sub-titling, the German version remains definitive. And it also reveals the worldliness of the original lyrics to Friedrich Hollander's classic songs: "I Was Made for Love from Head to Toe" suggests a rather more robust attitude than the vague whimsy of "Falling in Love Again." A final thought: releasing films of this importance on DVD surely creates an opportunity to put them in context by including documentary and factual resources, but this release has no extras of any kind. At the very least it cries out for an authoritative commentary. --Piers Ford

• The Satanic Rites Of Dracula | DVD | (13/11/2018) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Those People Next Door | DVD | (24/03/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Twiggs are a typical working-class family: Sam (Jack Warner) and Mary (Marjorie Rhodes) are trying to bring their family up in the shadow of the Blitz whilst taking everything in good humour. Their neighbours Joe (Charles Victor) and Emma (Gladys Henson) are constantly in the Twiggs' house borrowing a cup of sugar or using their Anderson shelter and between them the two working class families put the world to rights. But when their daughter falls for an upper class RAF pilot the Twiggs are asked by his mother Lady Diana Stephens to tell their daughter to call the romance off as the social gap between the families is too large. Incensed by Lady Diana's offer of money Sam Twigg throws her out of the house. But events take a sudden turn as the war enters the Twiggs' own living room. Will the two families manage to overcome their disdain for each other and let true love find its way?

• I'm No Angel | DVD | (04/06/2007) from £5.00   |  Saving you £4.99 (99.80%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Mae West's reputation for tweaking the noses of film censors was well-established by the time she made I'm No Angel generally considered her most successful picture. The frank-speaking blonde bombshell delivered some of her most classic double entendres in this 1933 film her second consecutive outing opposite the luminous Cary Grant. The two had made She Done Him Wrong earlier that year and in I'm No Angel West does Grant wrong again to hilarious effect. West plays her typical floozy a carnival dancer who escapes a murder charge and cozies her way into high society where she famously tells her maid: ""Beulah peel me a grape."" Eventually she wins Grant then drops him and sues him for breach of contract. Rarely has a more intelligent sexually powerful and dominant female figure been seen on screen and West is at her sizzling comic peak. Already a major entertainment figure West rode the popularity of I'm No Angel to greater notoriety but she never again teamed up with a male superstar so successfully. West's movies were among those most responsible for bringing a new era of censorship after the early 1930s.

• Films That Define A Decade: '70s | Blu Ray | (22/08/2016) from £28.92   |  Saving you £-19.33 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.59

  They say the ˜60s really happened in the ˜70s. Bell-bottoms and disco took over, while films from the ˜70s captured the free-spirited movement of the decade in many ways. There was the LA disaster epic Earthquake; pushing all boundaries came the cult classic National Lampoon's Animal House; there was the rip-roaring road trip Smokey and the Bandit; and crime caper The Sting starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

• LES COUSINS | DVD | (08/04/2013) from £80.88   |  Saving you £-62.89 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Made barely a year after Claude Chabrol's debut Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins featured the earlier film's same starring pair of Jean-Claude Brialy and Grard Blain, here reversing the good-guy/bad-guy roles of the previous picture. The result is a simmering, venomous study in human temperament that not only won the Golden Bear at the 1959 Berlin Film Festival, but also drew audiences in droves, and effectively launched Chabrol's incredible fifty-year-long career. A gripping and urbane examination of city and country, ambition and ease, Les Cousins continues to captivate and shock audiences with its brilliant scenario, the performances of Brialy and Blain, and the assuredness of Chabrol's precocious directorial hand. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Claude Chabrol's breakthrough film in a beautiful new Gaumont restoration on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time in the UK. Special Features: Gorgeous new Gaumont restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio New and improved English subtitles Original theatrical trailer A 47-minute documentary about the making of the film L'Homme qui vendit la Tour Eiffel [The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower], Chabrol's 1964 short film A lengthy booklet with a new and exclusive essay by critic Emmanuel Burdeau; a new and exclusive translation of a rare text about actress Franoise Vatel provided for this release by its author, the filmmaker and critic Luc Moullet; excerpts of interviews and writing by Chabrol; and more

• Boom Town | DVD | (28/01/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Films That Define A Decade: '80s | Blu Ray | (22/08/2016) from £15.00   |  Saving you £-1.54 (-11.40%)   |  RRP £13.46

  The excessive ˜80s... where everyone had huge hairdos and massive shoulder pads, mobile phones were the size of bricks and the movies were larger than life. We had John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd starring as The Blues Brothers; An American Werewolf in London took horror to new heights; a young Al Pacino thrilled as the iconic Scarface; and Kurt Russell challenged shape-shifting aliens in The Thing.

• Antigone | DVD | (01/01/1975) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With fierce originality, this powerful adaptation of the Sophocles tragedy presents a world of honour, treachery and fateful consequences. Acclaimed actress, Genevieve Bujold, skilfully combines elements of zealotry and idealism in her affecting portrait of Antigone. Jean Anouilh's retelling of Antigone stages the inescapably wrenching, central confrontation between Antigone and Creon by presenting Miss Bujold and Mr. Weaver seated at a long, executive-suite table - a hallmark of Anouilh's play. The New York Times critic, John J. O'Connor, lauded this Antigone as well acted, well directed and beautifully staged.

• D.O.A. | DVD | (02/05/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Edmund O'Brian - DOA

• Dracula (1931)/House of Dracula/Dracula | DVD | (09/04/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Dracula (1931 & 1999 version with new soundtrack by Phillip Glass) : Although there have been numerous screen versions of Bram Stoker's classic tale none is more enduring than this 1931 original. Towering ominously among the shadows of the Carpathian Mountains Castle Dracula strikes fear in the hearts of the Transylvanian villagers below... Illuminated by the haunting presence of Bela Lugosi as the Count Tod Browning's direction makes full use of crisp black and white cinem

• My Blue Heaven | DVD | (05/11/2012) from £7.37   |  Saving you £2.62 (35.55%)   |  RRP £9.99

  My Blue Heaven is an entertaining musical romp with a rich story, as well as plenty of comedy and romance! Kitty (Betty Grable) and Jack (Dan Dailey) are a popular husband-and-wife entertainer team making their move from radio to television. However, as exciting as this progress is, they believe their lives will be complete when they can start a family. But when they decide to adopt - a process fraught with problems and disappointments - they are ultimately rewarded with an overabunda...

• 13 Rue Madeleine | DVD | (03/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A group of Allied agents prepare to infiltrate German intelligence in Paris to find the whereabouts of a secret rocket site during World War 2. Their task is made even more hazardous by the fact that one of them is a double agent...

• The Plow That Broke The Plains | DVD | (02/01/2007) from £10.45   |  Saving you £2.54 (19.60%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Pare Lorentz's The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937) are landmark American documentary films. Aesthetically, they break new ground in seamlessly marrying pictorial imagery, symphonic music, and poetic free verse, all realized with supreme artistry. Ideologically, they indelibly encapsulate the strivings of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 'New Deal'. Virgial Thomson's cores for both films are among the most famous ever composed for the movies. Aaron Copland praised the music for The Plow fit its 'frankness and openness of feeling', calling it 'fresher, more simple, and more personal' than the Hollywood norm. He called the music for The River 'a lesson in how to treat to treat Americana'.The Plow that Broke the Plains - 27:02.The River - 31:23.