"Director: Cornel Wilde"

• The Naked Prey (1965) | Blu Ray | (19/10/2015) from £43.55   |  Saving you £-27.56 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Known mostly as an actor of the studio era, Cornel Wilde took on a parallel career as an independent producer, writer, and director to create a series of films that explored man in the midst of extreme dramatic situations — and The Naked Prey is perhaps his most personal and violent rumination. Set in nineteenth-century Africa’s colonial periods, Wilde portrays an unnamed safari guide whose group encounters and subsequently insults a local tribe. Following the execution of the other party members, Wilde alone is the last to be spared and is given a head start to elude his pursuers as game to be hunted for retributive satisfaction, unless and until he can attain safety… The Naked Prey remains a special entry in the cinema of actors-turned-auteurs, which also includes such luminaries as Robert Montgomery, Charles Laughton, and Ida Lupino. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Wilde’s most ruthless picture for the first time in the UK in a special Dual Format special edition.

• Beach Red | DVD | (03/11/2014) from £8.05   |  Saving you £4.94 (61.37%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Cornel Wilde produced directed and starred in this sincere hard-edged look at World War II that doesn't flinch from the horrors of battle. As a US marine unit fight against the defenders of a Japanese-held island both sides are haunted by their own thoughts and memories. The action takes place during a single American campaign to take an island held by the Japanese. Brief flashbacks to civilian life are the only escape from the gritty dreary setting. The usual cliché characters are replaced by new ones such as the captain (Wilde) who loves his wife but hates the war the sergeant (Rip Torn) who gets sadistic pleasure out of battle the minister's son (Patrick Wolfe) who keeps remembering the girl he left back home and the Southern illiterate (Burr DeBenning) who finds a place for himself in the Marines. The screenplay (from a 1945 novel by Peter Bowman) avoids stereotypes yet doesn't make any of these men into fleshed-out characters. Still the acting is solid and Wilde deserves commendation for taking a harsh unromanticised look at the Big One over thirty years before Steven Spielberg did it with Saving Private Ryan.

• Sword Of Lancelot | DVD | (14/06/2010) from £6.73   |  Saving you £-1.74 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  The legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as told from the perspective of Lancelot.