"Director: Fritz LANG"

• Cloak and Dagger | DVD | (26/05/2008) from £14.56   |  Saving you £-4.57 (-45.70%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Directed by Fritz Lang and starring Gary Cooper and Lili Palmer this rare film mixes intrigue with the atomic threat tension builds as a research scientist turned spy (Cooper) has to enter an occupied Europe of World War 2. Cooper is backed up by a host of talent including Robert Alda (father of Alan Alda of M.A.S.H. fame). The film culminates in a vicious hand-to hand duel with and Italian Gestapo agent (Marc Lawrence). This film has an intrigue all it''s own and is unique in many ways. The thread holding it all together is the down home character played credibly by Gary Cooper as the simple man thrust into a complex situation.

• M - A Film by Fritz Lang | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Fritz Lang's first sound movie, the serial-killer film M, has often been voted the best German film of all time, but, until now, most of us have never seen it properly. What we have seen is a heavily cut 1950s re-edit with extra sound and music patched in, where Lang was deliberately economical with the new technology. This new "Ultimate Edition" is dominated by a marvellous restoration which is true to his intentions and oft-voiced complaints about what had been done to his best film. The young Peter Lorre is terrifyingly ordinary as the child-murderer whom police and criminals hunt down in what is still one of the best forensic police procedurals ever made, while Gustaf Grundgens has effortless charisma as the chief gangster. Lorre's Hollywood exile and decay, and Grundgens' betrayal of old friends and principles under the Nazis, merely add a layer of irony to all this. Lang's ironic cuts--a gangster's gesture is completed by his police equivalent--and dark, studio-bound cinematography make this one of the great precursors of American film noir. Simply, seen without cracks and pops and lines running down the screen, M is revealed as a true classic--a film that shames everything made in its genre since. On the DVD: M on disc has a great deal of documentary material featuring scholars and technicians telling us just how clever they have been in preparing this splendid restoration. The film also comes with a detailed commentary into which has been spliced interview material with Lang talking in English about specific sequences. There is a German-language film interview with Lang in which he talks through his career and re-enacts the interview with Goebbels that led to his exile; an audio interview with Peter Bogdanovich; and an intelligent video critical essay by film historian R Dixon Smith. The restored film is shown in its correct, unusual visual aspect ratio of 1.90:1 and has vivid cleaned-up digital mono sound: the murderer's whistling of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" has never sounded so chilling. --Roz Kaveney

• Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse | Blu Ray | (24/09/2012) from £12.85   |  Saving you £7.14 (55.56%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With the etching onto glass of a single word - MABUSE - Berlin reawakens into a nightmare. Fritz Lang's electrifying Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) is the astonishing second instalment in the German master's legendary Mabuse series, a film that puts image and sound into an hypnotic arrangement unlike anything seen or heard in the cinema before - or since.It's been eleven years since the downfall of arch-criminal and master-of-disguise Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), now sequestered in an asylum under the watchful eye of one Professor Baum (Oskar Beregi). Mabuse exists in a state of catatonic graphomania, his only action the irrepressible scribbling of blueprints that would realise a seemingly theoretical Empire of Crime. But when a series of violent events courses through the city, police and populace alike start asking themselves with increasing panic: Who is behind all this?! The answer borders on the realm of the impossible...

• The Thousand Eyes Of Dr. Mabuse | Blu Ray | (11/05/2020) from £13.35   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  After enjoying fantastic success with Fritz Lang's two-part Indian Epic in 1959, German producer Artur Brauner signed the great director to direct one more film. The result would be the picture that, in closing the saga he began nearly forty years earlier, brought Lang's career full-circle, and would come to represent his final celluloid testamentby extension: his final film masterpiece. The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse [Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse] finds that diabolical Weimar name resurfacing in the Cold War era, linked to a new methodology of murder and mayhem. Seances, assassinations, and Nazi-engineered surveillance techall abound in Lang's paranoid, and ultimate, filmic labyrinth. One of the great and cherished last films in the history of cinema, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse provides a stylistic glimpse into the 1960s works on such subjects as sex-crime, youth-culture, and LSD that Lang would unfortunately never come to realise. Nonetheless, Lang's final film remains an explosive, and definitive, closing statement. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Fritz Lang's final film on Blu-ray. Special Features: LIMITED EDITION O-CARD SLIPCASE [First Print Run of 2000 copies only] 1080p presentation on Blu-ray Original German soundtrack Optional English audio track, approved by Fritz Lang Optional English subtitles Feature-length audio commentary by film-scholar and Lang expert David Kalat 2002 interview with Wolfgang Preiss Alternate ending Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned and original poster artwork Plus: a collector's booklet featuring a new essay by Philip Kemp; vintage reprints of writing by Lang; an essay by David Cairns; notes by Lotte Eisner on Lang's final, unrealised projects

• The Complete Fritz Lang Mabuse Box Set | DVD | (19/10/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  THE COMPLETE FRITZ LANG MABUSE BOX SET - From the early stages of his career across five decades to his final film Fritz Lang built a trilogy of paranoiac thrillers focused on an entity who began as a criminal mastermind and progressed into something more amorphous: fear itself embodied only by a name - Dr. Mabuse. For the first time on home video all three of Fritz Lang's Mabuse films have been collected for one package in their complete and restored forms. 1: Dr. Mabuse der Spieler. [Dr. Mabuse the Gambler.] (1922) - Lang's two-part nearly 5-hour silent epic detailing the rise and fall of Dr. Mabuse in Weimar-era Berlin. 2: Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse [The Testament of Dr. Mabuse] (1933) - a tour-de-force thriller rife with supernatural elements all converging around an attempt by the now-institutionalised Mabuse (or someone acting under his name... and possibly his will) to organise an Empire of Crime. 3: Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse [The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse] (1960) - Fritz Lang's final film in which hypnosis clairvoyance surveillance and machine-guns come together for a whiplash climax that answers the question: Who's channelling Mabuse's methods in the Cold War era? The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Fritz Lang's complete Mabuse trilogy - a cornerstone in the work of one of cinema's all-time greatest directors. The Complete Fritz Lang Mabuse Box Set is released on 19 October 2009

• Der Tiger von Eschnapur / Das indische Grabmal (Fritz Lang's Indian Epic) | DVD | (18/04/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Fritz Lang returned to Germany on the eve of the 1960s to direct this enchanted penultimate work a redraft of the diptych form pioneered in such silent Lang classics as Die Spinnen; Dr. Mabuse der Spieler.; and Die Nibelungen. Although no encapsulating title was lent at the time of release to what is effectively a single 3-hour-plus film split in two the work that has come to be referred to in modern times as the Indian epic (consisting of Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische Grabmal) proved to be one of the legendary director's most adventurous achievements. It was also one of the most popular successes Lang was to experience in his native land. A German architect (Paul Hubschmid) is commissioned by an Indian maharaja (Walter Reyer) to construct a temple on his palatial grounds. After saving the life of a bewitching dancer (Debra Paget) on whom the maharaja has spousal designs the pair are drawn into a hazardous maze of traps perhaps the purest realisation of Lang's obsession with a labyrinthine 'house of traps' - that is Man challenging Fate. Like Lang's following final work Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse the Indian epic charts new territory for the director as it strikes out into the ber-melodramatic tenor of his early silents while instigating the colours of his emulsion into adopting a lurid sometimes gaseous palette. Arriving in the wake of The River (Renoir) India matri bhumi (Rossellini) and Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger) it also stands among the remarkable mid-century contributions of the greatest Western filmmakers who have explored India.

• Human Desire | DVD | (23/08/2010) from £16.18   |  Saving you £-3.19 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Carl Buckley needs the intervention of his beautiful wife Vicki to keep his job so Vicki meets with Carl's boss Owens and secures Carl's job. Insanely jealous Carl finds Vicki with Owens on board a train and brutally beats her and kills Owens. Jeff Warren an off-duty engineer protects Vicki and they begin an affair. Still obsessively jealous Carl becomes an alcoholic and blackmails Vicki into staying with him. Vicki then comes up with a plan for Jeff to dispose of her violent husband....

• Metropolis -- Two Disc Special Edition | DVD | (27/01/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  If you think you know Fritz Lang's Metropolis backwards, this special edition will come as a revelation. Shortly after its premiere, the expensive epic--originally well over two hours--was pulled from distribution and re-edited against Lang's wishes, and this truncated, simplified form is what we have known ever since 1926. Though not quite as fully restored as the strapline claims, this 118-minute version is the closest we are likely to get to Lang's original vision, complete with tactful linking titles to fill in the scenes that are irretrievably missing. Not only does this version add many scenes unseen for decades, but it restores their order in the original version. Until now, Metropolis has usually been rated as a spectacular but simplistic science fiction film, but this version reveals that the futuristic setting is not so much prophetic as mythical, with elements of 1920s architecture, industry, design and politics mingled with the mediaeval and the Biblical to produce images of striking strangeness: a futuristic robot burned at the stake, a steel-handed mad scientist who is also a 15th Century alchemist, the trudging workers of a vast factory plodding into the jaws of a machine that is also the ancient God Moloch. Gustav Frohlich's performance as the hero who represents the heart is still wildly overdone, but Rudolf Klein-Rogge's engineer Rotwang, Alfred Abel's Master of Metropolis and, especially, Brigitte Helm in the dual role of saintly saviour and metal femme fatale are astonishing. By restoring a great deal of story delving into the mixed motivations of the characters, the wild plot now makes more sense, and we can see that it is as much a twisted family drama as epic of repression, revolution and reconciliation. A masterpiece, and an essential purchase. On the DVD: Metropolis has been saddled with all manner of scores over the years, ranging from jazz through electronica to prog-rock, but here it is sensibly accompanied by the orchestral music Gottfried Huppertz wrote for it in the first place. An enormous amount of work has been done with damaged or incomplete elements to spruce the image up digitally, and so even the scenes that were in the film all along shine with a wealth of new detail and afford a far greater appreciation for the brilliance of art direction, special effects and Helm's clockwork sexbomb. A commentary written but not delivered by historian Ennio Patalas covers the symbolism of the film and annotates its images, but the production information is left to a measured but unchallenging 45-minute documentary on the second disc (little is made of the astounding parallel between the screen story in which Klein-Rogge's character tries to destroy the city because the Master stole his wife and the fact that Lang married the actor's wife Thea von Harbou, authoress of the Metropolis novel and screenplay!). There are galleries of production photographs and sketches; biographies of all the principals; and an illustrated lecture on the restoration process which uses before and after clips to reveal just how huge a task has been accomplished in this important work. --Kim Newman

• Ministry of Fear - Limited Edition Blu Ray | Blu Ray | (27/08/2018) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Set during Blitz-torn wartime England, Ray Milland (Dial M for Murder, The Lost Weekend) stars as a man just released from a sanatorium who stumbles into an elaborate and murderous Nazi plot. Reminiscent of Lang's early expressionist films (The Spiders, Dr Mabuse the Gambler, M) and full of bravura set pieces and hallucinatory visuals, Ministry of Fear is one of Lang's finest films a mature and beautifully crafted thriller, and a vivid adaptation of Graham Greene's celebrated novel. INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES: 2K Restoration Original mono audio Audio commentary with author and film historian Neil Sinyard Tony Rayns on Fritz Lang and ˜Ministry of Fear' (2018): a newly filmed appreciation and analysis by the film historian Graham Greene and ˜Ministry of Fear' (2018): Adrian Wootton, OBE, author of The Films of Graham Greene and CEO of Film London, discusses Greene's long and rich relationship with the cinema. 1949 NBC University Theatre radio play adaptation Original theatrical trailer Image gallery: promotional photography and publicity material New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay, an overview of contemporary critical responses and historic articles on the film UK premiere on Blu-ray Limited Edition of 3,000 copies All extras subject to change

• Man Hunt | Blu Ray | (19/06/2017) from £11.76   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  British hunter Thorndike vacationing in Bavaria has Hitler in his gun sight. He is captured, beaten, left for dead, and escapes back to London where he is hounded by German agents and aided by a young woman.

• The Big Heat (Dual Format Limited Edition) | Blu Ray | (27/03/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  There's a satisfying sense of closure to the definitive noir kick achieved in The Big Heat: its director, Fritz Lang, had forged early links from German expressionism to the emergence of film noir, so it's entirely logical that the expatriate director would help codify the genre with this brutal 1953 film. Visually, his scenes exemplify the bold contrasts, deep shadows, and heightened compositions that define the look of noir, and he matches that success with the darkly pessimistic themes of this revenge melodrama. The story coheres around the suicide of a crooked cop, and the subsequent struggle of an honest detective, Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford), to navigate between a corrupt city government and a ruthless mobster to uncover the truth. Initially, the violence here seems almost timid by comparison to the more explicit carnage now commonplace in films, yet the story accelerates as its plot arcs toward Bannion's showdown with kingpin Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and his psychotic henchman, the sadistic Vince Stone, given an indelible nastiness by Lee Marvin. When Bannion's wife is killed by a car bomb intended for the detective, both the hero and the story go ballistic: suspended from the force, he embarks on a crusade of revenge that suggests a template for Charles Bronson's Death Wish films, each step pushing Lagana and Stone toward a showdown. Bodies drop, dominoes tumbled by the escalating war between the obsessed Bannion and his increasingly vicious adversaries. Lang's disciplined visual design and the performances (especially those of Ford, Marvin, Jeanette Nolan as the dead cop's scheming widow, and Gloria Grahame as Marvin's girlfriend) enable the film to transcend formula, as do several memorable action scenes--when an enraged Marvin hurls scalding coffee at the feisty Debby (Grahame), we're both shattered by the violence of his attack, and aware that he's shifted the balance of power. --Sam Sutherland

• Giorgio Moroder Presents: METROPOLIS (DVD) | DVD | (29/10/2012) from £22.93   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In the era when one could still but only dream of a comprehensive restoration of Fritz Lang's silent sci-fi epic Metropolis, esteemed pop artist/producer and pioneering electronic composer Giorgio Moroder followed his work on Brian De Palma's cult-classic Al Pacino vehicle Scarface by assembling his own version of Lang's 1920s classic. The result was a zeitgeist-infused, high-kitsch/high-art amalgam of some of the quintessential cinema images and then-contemporary 1980s pop-chart melodrama. For millions around the world, it is this version of Metropolis – featuring music by Moroder himself and artistes such as Adam Ant, Pat Benatar, Freddie Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, and Jon Anderson – which first comes to mind whenever mention is made of the Lang original or, indeed, the iconic imagery and power of silent cinema.

• Ministry Of Fear | DVD | (03/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Stephen Neale is released into WWII England after two years in an asylum but it doesn't seem so sane on the outside either. On his way back to London to rejoin civilization he stumbles across a murderous spy ring and doesn't quite know who to turn to.....

• Four Film Noir Classics Limited Edition | Blu Ray | (20/11/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Four Films 1936-1938 brings together a quartet of 1930s features by Sacha Guitry, the celebrated French filmmaker, playwright and actor of the stage and screen, each based on his earlier works. Indiscretions (Le Nouveau testament) follows a holier-than-though physician who is scuppered by his own hypocrisy. My Father Was Right (Mon père avait raison) tells off a man who, after being left by his wife for another man, raises his son to be wary of women. Let's Dream (Faisons un rêve ) is another story of mistrust, between husband, wife and lovers. And the history of one of France's most famous streets is retold in Up the Champs-Élysées (Remontons les Champs-Élysées), featuring multiple performances from Guitry himself. Available for the first time on Blu-ray this set presents some of Guitry's earliest and most enjoyable works.

• Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse | Blu Ray | (24/09/2012) from £21.58   |  Saving you £8.41 (38.97%)   |  RRP £29.99

  With the etching onto glass of a single word - MABUSE - Berlin reawakens into a nightmare. Fritz Lang's electrifying Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) is the astonishing second instalment in the German master's legendary Mabuse series, a film that puts image and sound into an hypnotic arrangement unlike anything seen or heard in the cinema before - or since.It's been eleven years since the downfall of arch-criminal and master-of-disguise Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), now sequestered in an asylum under the watchful eye of one Professor Baum (Oskar Beregi). Mabuse exists in a state of catatonic graphomania, his only action the irrepressible scribbling of blueprints that would realise a seemingly theoretical Empire of Crime. But when a series of violent events courses through the city, police and populace alike start asking themselves with increasing panic: Who is behind all this?! The answer borders on the realm of the impossible...

• Giorgio Moroder Presents: METROPOLIS (LIMITED EDITION DVD STEELBOOK) | DVD | (23/07/2012) from £33.02   |  Saving you £-13.03 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In the era when one could still but only dream of a comprehensive restoration of Fritz Lang's silent sci-fi epic Metropolis, esteemed pop artist/producer and pioneering electronic composer Giorgio Moroder followed his work on Brian De Palma's cult-classic Al Pacino vehicle Scarface by assembling his own version of Lang's 1920s classic. The result was a zeitgeist-infused, high-kitsch/high-art amalgam of some of the quintessential cinema images and then-contemporary 1980s pop-chart melodrama. For millions around the world, it is this version of Metropolis – featuring music by Moroder himself and artistes such as Adam Ant, Pat Benatar, Freddie Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, and Jon Anderson – which first comes to mind whenever mention is made of the Lang original or, indeed, the iconic imagery and power of silent cinema.

• Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. | Blu Ray | (28/10/2013) from £28.33   |  Saving you £-5.34 (-23.20%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Dr. Mabuse and his organization of criminals are in the process of completing their latest scheme, a theft of information that will allow Mabuse to make huge profits on the stock exchange. Afterwards, Mabuse disguises himself and attends the Folies Berg�res show, where Cara Carozza, the main attraction of the show, passes him information on Mabuse's next intended victim, the young millionaire Edgar Hull. Mabuse then uses psychic manipulation to lure Hull into a card game where he loses heavil...

• American Guerrilla In The Philippines | DVD | (30/09/2013) from £10.35   |  Saving you £-0.36 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  For the first time on DVD in the UK the wonderful 1950 film American Guerrilla in the Philippines. This is a long-awaited opportunity to view the movie which was directed by that giant of cinema Fritz Lang and shot in Technicolor on location in the Philippines. Based on Ira Woldert's true account the movie casts Tyrone Power as an American Navy officer stranded after the wreck of Bataan. Along with harassed local - Jeanne Martinez (Micheline Prelle) - he leads a small heroic band in feats of espionage until General MacArthur's famous return to the Philippines at the end of WWII.

• Scarlet Street | DVD | (22/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A major box office hit in its day despite being banned in three American states Scarlet Street is seen by many as one of Fritz Lang's finest films. Its film-noire setting sees Edward G. Robinson in one of his most emphatic performances as a middle-aged cashier Chris Cross who has a chance meeting with the wayward Kitty (Joan Bennett). Trapped in an unfulfilling marriage and desperate to be a painter Chris falls in love with Kitty. Kitty however is already under the spell of her conman boyfriend Johnny (Dan Duryea) and as Chris becomes obsessed with the irresistibly vulgar Kitty Johnny senses an opportunity to extort money from the love struck cashier.

• Man Hunt | DVD | (31/01/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Director Fritz Lang's political thriller follows a British hunter's attempts to outrun Nazi agents after he targets Adolf Hitler. While on holiday in Bavaria willdlife hunter Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) stumbles upon the Fuhrer's country retreat eventually spotting Hitler in the gardens. After lining up the leader in the crosshairs of his empty rifle Thorndike is arrested by members of Hitler's Gestapo bodyguard who try to beat a confession out of him. After eventually escaping and navigating a tortuous route back to Britain Thorndike is forced to seek help from local seamstress Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett) when he discovers German agents are hunting him down.