"Director: Charles Crichton"

• A Fish Called Wanda | DVD | (09/08/2005) from £10.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  A Fish Called Wanda was the blockbuster which proved that John Cleese could be a movie star in his own right. Directed by the Veteran Charles Crichton, who made the 1951 Ealing Comedies classic The Lavender Hill Mob, Wanda combined Ealing-comedy capers and Basil Fawlty-esque farce with contemporary big-screen swearing and black comedy. The plot develops in classic film noir style as Cleese's lawyer, Archie Leech, gets sucked into the double-crossing aftermath of a London diamond heist. For sound box-office reasons, British comedies often sport an American star and here Cleese delivers not only Jamie Lee Curtis as a smooth operating femme fatale, but Kevin Kline as her idiotic, and insanely jealous lover (for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar). Pushing the limits of bad taste is Michael Palin's animal-loving Ken, who in the film's best running gag attempts to murder an old lady, only to slay her beloved pet dogs. Other highlights include Palin as a man with two chips up his nose and Cleese showing the world a different sort of "Full Monty". One of the funniest British films ever made, A Fish Called Wanda was followed by Fierce Creatures (1997), which reunited the lead cast and claimed to be an "equal" not a "sequel", but sadly wasn't. --Gary S Dalkin

• Man In The Sky | DVD | (29/03/2010) from £9.49   |  Saving you £6.50 (68.49%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When an engine catches fire on the experimental rocket-propulsion plane that he is flying test pilot John Mitchell (Jack Hawkins) defies an order to jettison the vehicle into the sea.

• A Fish Called Wanda/Dirty Rotten Scoundrels | DVD | (21/05/2007) from £9.43   |  Saving you £-0.44 (-4.90%)   |  RRP £8.99

  A Fish Called Wanda (Dir. Charles Crichton 1988): Barrister Archie (John Cleese) falls in love and tosses off more than his wig for sexy thief Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) - who can charm the pants off anyone! To make things worse Wanda is already using her charms on fellow partner-in-crime Otto (Kevin Kline in an Oscar-winning performance) a dim-witted intellectual psychopath who thinks the London Underground is a political movement! Meanwhile Otto is making eyes at henchman Ken (Michael Palin) an animal loving multiple dog-killer who is infatuated with a fish called Wanda. Get the Picture? A British comedy gem A Fish Called Wanda 'takes a spot' as one of the funniest romantic comedies of the decade (Box Office). Dirty Rotten Scoudrels (Dir. Frank Oz 1988): One's got a sophisticated suave and debonair con act. The other's got... well an act. Together Steve Martin and Michael Caine are Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and they're absolutely ruining the Riviera in this wonderfully crafted absolutely charming classy and consistently amusing comedy. Martin is Freddy Benson a small-time con man sleazing his way through Europe on whatever handouts he can scam. Caine is Lawrence Jamieson an impeccably dressed and high-minded artiste who thinks Freddy's giving him and all con men a bad name. At first Lawrence agrees to help Freddy spruce up his stunts and his wardrobe. But when it becomes apparent that the Riviera isn't big enough for the both of them they make a winner-takes-all wager over the fortune of a nave American soap heiress (Glenne Headly): the first one to 'clean her out' can make the other clear out - and keep the Riviera and its unsuspecting tourists to himself!

• The Definitive Ealing Studios Collection | DVD | (16/10/2006) from £109.99   |  Saving you £-69.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £40.00

  A box set featuring 16 of the finest efforts from the house of Ealing. 1. Champagne Charlie (Dir. Alberto Cavalcanti 1944) 2. Dead of Night (Dirs. Alberto Cavalcanti & Charles Crichton 1945) 3. Hue & Cry (Dir. Charles Crichton 1947) 4. It Always Rains on Sunday (Dir. Robert Hamer 1947) 5. Kind Hearts and Coronets (Dir. Robert Hamer 1949) 6. The Ladykillers (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick 1955) 7. The Lavender Hill Mob (Dir. Charles Crichton 1951) 8. The Maggie (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick 1954) 9. The Magnet (Dir. Charles Frend 1950) 10. The Man in The White Suit (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick 1951) 11. Nicholas Nickelby (Dir. Alberto Cavalcanti 1947) 12. Passport To Pimlico (Dir. Henry Cornelius 1949) 13. Scott of The Antarctic (Dir. Charles Frend 1948) 14. The Titfield Thunderbolt (Dir. Charles Crichton 1953) 15. Went The Day Well? (Dir. Alberto Cavalcanti 1942) 16. Whisky Galore (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick 1949)

• Dead Of Night (Ealing) - Special Edition | DVD | (24/02/2014) from £10.09   |  Saving you £7.90 (78.30%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A portmanteau work from four of Ealing's best directors, Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden & Robert Hamer. Starring Mervyn Johns, Michael Redgrave and Googie Withers, Dead Of Night represented a departure for Ealing from the classic comedy mode and is instead a spooky psychological thriller made up of five chilling ghost stories.

• The Best Of Ealing Collection | DVD | (06/10/2008) from £29.95   |  Saving you £5.04 (16.83%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Titles Comprise: Kind Hearts And Coronets: Set in the stately Edwardian era Kind Hearts And Coronets is black comedy at is best with the most articulate and literate of all Ealing screenplays. Sir Alec Guinness gives a virtuoso performance in his Ealing comedy debut playing all eight victims standing between a mass-murderer and his family fortune. Considered by some to be Ealing's most perfect achievement of all the Ealing films. The Ladykillers director Alexander Mackendrick's third Ealing farce is the final comedy produced by the famous British studio and one of its most celebrated. Like the equally applauded Kind Hearts And Coronets the film is more sophisticated and blacker in tone than typically lighthearted Ealing fare (such as Mackendrick's Whiskey Galore!). Alec Guinness stars as the superbly shifty toothily threatening Professor Marcus the leader of a crime ring planning a heist. Marcus rents rooms from a sweet eccentric old lady Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) in her crooked London house. The professor and his co-conspirators blowhard Major Courtney (Cecil Parker) creepily suave Louis (Herbert Lom) chubby Harry (Peter Sellers) and muscleman One-Round (Danny Green) pose as an unlikely string quartet using the rooms for rehearsal. Dodging Mrs. Wilberforce's constant interruptions the hoods hit upon the idea to use her in the daring daylight robbery (filmed in and around London's King's Cross station). When the old girl discovers the truth Marcus and company cannot persuade her to stay buttoned up about it and thus decide to do her in. Accompanied by a noirish cacophony of screeching trains parrots and little old ladies at afternoon tea a series of unlikely events builds to the hilarious surprising finale. The Man In The White Suit: Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) works quietly at Michael Corland's (Michael Gough) textile mill until his mysterious costly lab experiment is discovered. Fired by Corland Stratton takes a menial job at Alan Birnley's (Cecil Parker) mill in order to continue his work on the sly. When Daphne (Joan Greenwood) Corland's fianc''e and Birnley's daughter discovers his secret she threatens to expose Stratton. The desperate scientist reveals to Daphne that he has invented an indestructible cloth that never gets dirty. Close to realizing his vision Stratton celebrates by having a white suit made of the fabric (because it repels dye). The trouble however is just beginning. The lowly mill workers (who spout market economics in rough accents) fear for their jobs while the mill owners led by the decrepit Godfather-esque Sir John Kierlaw (Ernest Thesiger) worry about their profits. Passport To Pimlico: 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... The Lavender Hill Mob: Mr. Holland (Alec Guinness) has supervised the bank's bullion run for years. He is fussy and unnecessarily overprotective but everyone knows he is absolutely trustworthy. And so on the day the bullion truck is robbed he is the last person to be suspected. But there is another side to Mr. Holland; he is also Dutch the leader of the Lavender Hill Mob.

• Ealing Boxset | Blu Ray | (31/03/2014) from £19.99   |  Saving you £20.00 (100.05%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Ealing Studio output from the 1940s and the 1950s helped define what was arguably the golden age for British cinema. This Blu-ray collection brings together three much loved comedy classics directed by Ealing stalwarts Robert Hamer Charles Crichton and Alexander Mackendrick and starring the great Sir Alec Guinness in some of his most memorable roles.

• Space: 1999 - The Complete First Series (Repackaged) | DVD | (01/11/2010) from £29.92   |  Saving you £20.07 (67.08%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Space: 1999 is a Gerry Anderson cult classic as unmissable today as it was when first conceived in 1973. Starring husband and wife team Martin Landau and Barbara Bain Space: 1999 revolves around the crew of Moonbase Alpha where scientific experiments are conducted and space data gathered. Disaster strikes and the Moon is blown out of the Earth's orbit by a huge explosion emanating from man-made nuclear waste pits causing it to drift endlessly through the void of space where the real adventures begin. Episodes comprise: 1. Breakaway 2. Force Of Life 3. Collision Course 4. War Games 5. Death's Other Dominion 6. Voyager's Return 7. Alpha Child 8. Dragon's Domain 9. Mission Of The Darians 10. Black Sun 11. Guardian Of Piri 12. End Of Eternity 13. Matter Of Life And Death 14. Earthbound 15. The Full Circle 16. Another Time Another Place 17. The Infernal Machine 18. Ring Around The Moon 19. Missing Link 20. The Last Sunset 21. Space Brain 22. The Troubles Spirit 23. The Testament Of Arkadia 24. The Last Enemy

• The Lavender Hill Mob (60th Anniversary Edition) | Blu Ray | (01/08/2011) from £11.99   |  Saving you £10.99 (122.11%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Directed by Charles Crichton, who would much later direct John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda (1988), 1951's The Lavender Hill Mob is the most ruefully thrilling of the Ealing Comedies. Alec Guinness plays a bowler-hatted escort of bullion to the refineries. His seeming timidity, weak 'r's and punctiliousness mask a typically Guinness-like patient cunning. "I was aware I was widiculed but that was pwecisely the effect I was stwiving to achieve". He's actually plotting a heist. With more conventionally cockney villains Sid James and Alfie Bass in tow, as well as the respectable but ruined Stanley Holloway, Guinness' perfect criminal plan works in exquisite detail, then unravels just as exquisitely, culminating in a nail-biting police car chase in which you can't help rooting for the villains. The Lavender Hill Mob depicts a London still up to its knees in rubble from World War II, a world of new hope but continued austerity, a budding new order in which everything seems up for grabs; as such it could be regarded as a lighter hearted cinematic cousin to Carol Reed's 1949 masterpiece The Third Man. The Lavender Hill Mob also sees the first, fleeting on-screen appearance of Audrey Hepburn in the opening sequence. --David Stubbs

• Hue And Cry (Ealing) *Digitally Restored | DVD | (29/06/2015) from £7.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (125.16%)   |  RRP £17.99

  HUE AND CRY is rightly acknowledged as something of a milestone in British cinema – being considered the first of the Ealing comedies – a pulsating and exuberant piece of filmmaking and one of the most authentic film portrayals of youthful adventure and comic book fantasy.

• The Avengers : The Definitive Dossier 1967 (Box Set 2) | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Six sublimely surreal stories featuring the popular Mrs Emma Peel. The 1967 Box Set Two contains the second six episodes of season five including: The Living Dead The Hidden Tiger The Correct Way To Kill Never Never Say Die Epic The Superlative Seven

• For Those In Peril | DVD | (27/04/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Flt.Lt Murray (David Farrar) is a pilot who fails to join the RAF during WWII and decides to join the Air - Sea Rescue instead. His boat is out in all conditions picking up drowned pilots and taking them to safety. P/O Rawlings (Ralph Michael) is a new recruit who resents joining Farrar's boat and would rather be where the action is - in the air. During a mission they run into an enemy minefield and an armed trawler... For Those In Peril presents the work of the Air-Sea Rescue in documentary terms providing the public with a glimpse of an aspect of war that tends to be overlooked. It was also the closest Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob Dead of Night The Titfield Thunderbolt) got to documentary realism during his long Ealing career. The story was written by Richard Hillary a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain whose experiences inspired his book The Last Enemy.

• Space: 1999 - The Complete Second Series | Blu Ray | (28/09/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  All 24 episodes from the second series of the popular sci-fi show. In 'The Metamorph' a team of Eagle pilots are captured on the planet Psychon by the ruthless Mentor (Brian Blessed). 'The Exiles' has the Alphans revive two aliens who turn out to be rebel leaders. 'One Moment of Humanity' sees Helena (Barbara Bain) and Tony (Tony Anholt) abducted by an alien (Billie Whitelaw) who plans to use them as blueprints for killer androids. In 'All That Glisters' Koenig (Martin Landau) leads a mission to a nearby planet in search of a mineral vital to the life support system on Moonbase Alpha. 'Journey to Where' has Koenig, Helena and Carter (Nick Tate) attempt to teletransport themselves to 22nd century Texas and end up in 14th century Scotland instead. 'The Taybor' sees Alpha visited by a travelling trader who wants to add Maya (Catherine Schell) to his collection of beautiful artefacts. 'The Rules of Luton' finds Koenig and Maya in trouble with the locals during a visit to Luton. 'The Mark of Archanon' has the Alphans discover two aliens frozen beneath the surface of the moon. 'Brian the Brain' sees the moonbase visited by an old Earth spaceship piloted by a lone computer called Brian (voiced by Bernard Cribbins). 'New Adam New Eve' finds Koenig, Helena, Maya and Tony caught up in the plans of one Simon Magus (Guy Rolfe), a cosmic magician who is attempting to discover the secret of life. In 'Catacombs of the Moon' engineer Patrick Osgood (James Laurenson) searches for a rare metal essential for the construction of the replacement heart needed to save the life of his wife Michelle (Pamela Stephenson). 'The AB Chrysalis' has Alpha surrounded by a mysterious ring of moons. 'Seeds of Destruction' sees Alpha endangered by Koenig's evil double. 'The Beta Cloud' finds a huge and terrible creature (Dave Prowse) on the rampage at the moonbase. 'Space Warp' has Maya afflicted with a terrible sickness which causes her to transform into various space monsters. 'A Matter of Balance'

• Painted Boats | DVD | (11/01/2010) from £9.62   |  Saving you £6.37 (66.22%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A drama following the lives of two families who live on colourfully painted canal boats.

• Dance Hall | DVD | (21/01/2013) from £9.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (60.06%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Digitally remastered, the first ever DVD release of this lost gem from Ealing Studios features a brand new Making of featurette. Story by Alexander Mackendrick (Ladykillers, The Man in the White Suit, Whisky Galore!) and from the director of The Lavender Hill Mob and The Titfield Thunderbolt, Dance Hall is a romantic melodrama centred round the life and loves of four working-class women who spend their Saturday nights at the Chiswick Palais dancing to the music of Ted Heath's Big Band. Natasha Parry (Romeo and Juliet, Oh, What a Lovely War!) stars as Eve, whose marriage to Phil (Donald Houston, The Longest Day, Room at the Top) is imperilled when she takes a different partner for an upcoming dance contest. Her reasoning is that Phil is a lousy dancer, but she loves him all the same; Phil, however, is the jealous type, who doesn't quite see things Eve's way. Petula Clark (Goodbye Mr Chips, Finian's Rainbow) plays Georgie, whose ambition is to become a dance champion with her partner, Peter (Douglas Barr, Hue and Cry). Among the other familiar faces floating by in Dance Hall are Bonar Colleano, Diana Dors, Sydney Tafler, Gladys Henson, Dandy Nichols and Jane Hylton. Special Features: Making of Featurette Restoration Comparison Trailer

• Man in a Suitcase: The Complete Series | Blu Ray | (14/10/2019) from £56.55   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A discredited ex-CIA agent reduced to working as a private investigator, McGill travels the world as a 'gun for hire'. His unorthodox approach and strong sense of personal integrity often bring him into conflict with both his employers and the authorities, making him more enemies than friends... Starring Richard Bradford in a career-defining role as McGill, Man in a Suitcase has been newly remastered in High Definition from original 35mm film elements for this Blu-ray release. Featuring all thirty episodes, this critically acclaimed and highly popular action series has never looked better than this.

• The Lavender Hill Mob (60th Anniversary Edition) | DVD | (01/08/2011) from £7.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (100.13%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Directed by Charles Crichton, who would much later direct John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda (1988), 1951's The Lavender Hill Mob is the most ruefully thrilling of the Ealing Comedies. Alec Guinness plays a bowler-hatted escort of bullion to the refineries. His seeming timidity, weak 'r's and punctiliousness mask a typically Guinness-like patient cunning. "I was aware I was widiculed but that was pwecisely the effect I was stwiving to achieve". He's actually plotting a heist. With more conventionally cockney villains Sid James and Alfie Bass in tow, as well as the respectable but ruined Stanley Holloway, Guinness' perfect criminal plan works in exquisite detail, then unravels just as exquisitely, culminating in a nail-biting police car chase in which you can't help rooting for the villains. The Lavender Hill Mob depicts a London still up to its knees in rubble from World War II, a world of new hope but continued austerity, a budding new order in which everything seems up for grabs; as such it could be regarded as a lighter hearted cinematic cousin to Carol Reed's 1949 masterpiece The Third Man. The Lavender Hill Mob also sees the first, fleeting on-screen appearance of Audrey Hepburn in the opening sequence. --David Stubbs

• Ealing Comedy DVD Collection - Hue and Cry/Passport to Pimlico/The Titfield Thunderbolt | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £21.36   |  Saving you £13.63 (63.81%)   |  RRP £34.99

  This second collection of Ealing Comedy, while not quite as important a reissue as the first box, is nonetheless essential viewing for all aficionados of classic English film. In Passport to Pimlico a group of Londoners demonstrate, paradoxically, their Englishness by eccentrically choosing the Burgundian citizenship granted them by a rediscovered medieval charter. Similarly, in The Titfield Thunderbolt neighbours outraged by the closing of their local branch line steal an antique locomotive from the museum and run their own railway. A similar sense of taking charge of your own life fills Hue and Cry as a group of boys, infuriated that crooks have been using their favourite comic to send messages, summon scores of others by radio to help them track down and capture the gang. There are shared themes here, a shared sense of the importance of eccentricity and imagination to a healthy society as well as excellent ensemble acting from casts that include Stanley Holloway, Margaret Rutherford and Sid James. The box is filled out with a television documentary about the history of Ealing Studios. It covers its early silent days, the golden age that produced the classic comedies and such important films as The Cruel Sea, its time as a BBC studio and its possible renaissance under new management. On the DVD: Ealing Comedy presents the three films and the documentary in 1.33:1 (i.e., 4:3), and has excellent mono sound that does full justice to both dialogue and scores. The extra features include introductions to the four films in the first box set by such luminaries as Terry Gilliam and Martin Scorsese as well as DVD-ROM files of the original brochures for all seven films. --Roz Kaveney

• The Battle of the Sexes (DVD + Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (20/04/2020) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  When American businesswoman Angela Barrows (Constance Cummings) is sent by her company to Edinburgh to look into potential export markets, she meets Robert MacPherson (Robert Morley), a company manager who has just inherited his father's textile business and wants her advice on updating it to modern standards. Before long Angela is introducing all sorts of newfangled ideas and the employees, scandalised that they have to work under a female boss, turn to Mr Martin (Peter Sellers), who promises to lead the fight against the interloper. Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition ***FIRST PRESSING ONLY*** Fully illustrated booklet with new writing on the film and full film credits Extras TBC

• Space: 1999 - The Complete Second Series | DVD | (28/09/2015) from £39.98   |  Saving you £12.00 (31.59%)   |  RRP £49.99

  September 13th, 1999... A nuclear waste dump on the moon unexpectedly detonates, blasting the moon out of orbit and taking the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha on a fantastic voyage of discovery to the stars, fraught with danger at every turn. Long awaited, this second series Gerry Anderson's cult sci-fi series is presented here as a stunning High Definition restoration for the very first time. All 24 episodes, presented here in their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio with optional original mono or new 5.1 soundtracks, are featured alongside a wealth of special features, including: Music-only tracks on all episodes Unexposed: Behind the Scenes of Series Two - filming The Mark of Archanon Stock Footage Archive: alternate takes and unused shots Production Audio: original source recordings for material from four episodes Cosmos: 1999: a stop-motion fan film from 1979 Martin Landau: in-depth interview from 1994 Archive Interviews with cast and crew Seed of Destruction: the series two episode re-edited and re-scored as if it were made for series one Outtake: a blooper featured in It'll Be All Right on the Night Trailers and promos: contemporary promotional material for the UK and US Behind the Scenes - Model Shop: footage taken during The AB Chrysalis - with Brian Johnson commentary Clean series two titles Image galleries of rare and previously unseen stills Script and annual PDFs