"Director: Henry Koster"

• Deanna Durbin | DVD | (03/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Because Of Him: Young and beautiful Kim Walker (Durbin) aspires for the life of a Broadway actress and singer. She devises a scheme which will get her on stage in fact she gets the lead role in a new play through the help of the magnificent John Sheridan (Laughton) even against the writer's objections. Christmas Holiday: A young woman realizes that the wealthy man she married is an incorrigible wastrel... Mad About Music: Gloria Harkinson's mother an actr

• Hooray For Hollywood | DVD | (29/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Happy Go Lovely (Dir. H. Bruce Humberstone 1951): David Niven plays a rich bachelor the head of a successful greeting-card company in Scotland essentially a kind man but respectable to the point of stodginess and extreme stuffiness. An American troupe wants to produce a musical in town but has trouble getting backers. Niven's character meets several of the leading ladies of the show; through a misunderstanding he doesn't correct they come to think that he's a newspaper reporter. He falls in love with one of the women who reciprocates; he grows more lively and friendly to the surprise of his employees... Pajama Game (Dir. Stanley Donen and George Abbott 1957): A truly joyous tale starring Doris Day as the union leader in a clothing factory. From the novel 'Seven And A Half Cents' by Richard Bissell and adapted into a successful musical which the french director Jean Luc Goddard called the first left wing operetta! The Inspector General (Dir. Henry Koster 1949): In this delightful period farce set in Russia in the 1800's Danny Kaye plays an illiterate buffoon who is mistaken by the villagers for their feared Inspector General.Hilarious situations ensue as Danny is caught up in court intrigue without having a clue of what is going on. Made For Each Other (Dir. John Cromwell 1939): This highly appealing comedy drama stars James Stewart and Carole Lombard as a young couple battling illness lack of money inept servants and interfering in-laws... The Little Shop Of Horrors (Dir. Roger Corman 1960): The original movie of this classic black comedy/horror about a rather dim-witted young man Seymour (Jonathan Haze) working for a week in Mushnick's flower shop on skid row who develops an intelligent bloodthirsty plant. He names the plant Audrey Jr and as it grows it demands human meat for sustenance and Seymour is forced to kill in order to feed it. Jack Nicholson has a notable cameo part as an undertaker Wilbur Force who is a masochistic dental patient and the film also features the writer Charles Griffith as the hold-up man and the voice of Audrey Jr. Sources differ but it was reputed that the film was shot in just two or three days and in 1961 it was billed as The Funniest Picture This Year. The film inspired the well-known off-Broadway hit musical and musical/comedy movie remake starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene was made in 1986.

• Classic Cuts Collection - Oscar Winning Drama | DVD | (26/03/2007) from £9.95   |  Saving you £15.04 (151.16%)   |  RRP £24.99

  All The Kings Men (Dir. Robert Rossen): Broderick Crawford stands out in this fine drama about the rise and fall of a corrupt southern governor who promises his way to power. Crawford portrays Willie Stark who once he is elected finds that his vanity and power lust prove to be his downfall. The film is based on the 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren which in turn was based largely on the story of Louisiana legend Huey Long. From Here To Eternity (Dir. Fred Zinnemann): Director Fred Zinnemann's 1953 Oscar-winning best picture 'From Here To Eternity' is a powerful portrait of a peacetime military camp stationed in Hawaii just before the attack on Pearl Harbour. Montgomery Clift is superlative in the major role of Robert Prewitt while Frank Sinatra delivers an electrifying Academy Award-winning (1953 Best Supporting Actor) performance as Clift's buddy. Deborah Kerr's love scene in the Hawaiian surf with Burt Lancaster is enshrined as one of the most famous moments in cinema history. To Kill A Mockingbird: Gregory Peck won an Oscar for his brilliant performance as the Southern lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape in this film version of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The setting is a dusty Southern town during the Depression. A white woman accuses a black man of rape. Though he is obviously innocent the outcome of his trial is such a foregone conclusion that no lawyer will step forward to defend him - except Peck the town's most distinguished citizen. His compassionate defense costs him many friendships but earns him the respect and admiration of his two motherless children. Harvey (Dir. Henry Koster): James Stewart stars as Elwood P. Dowd a wealthy alcoholic whose sunny disposition and drunken antics are tolerated by most of the citizens of his community. That is until Elwood begins to claim that he has a friend named Harvey who is an invisible six foot rabbit. Elwood's snooty socialite sister Veta determined to marry off her daughter Myrtle to a respectable man begins to plot to keep Elwood's lunacy from interfering.

• Deanna Durbin | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  A collection of five classic musical films starring the singing star Deanna Durbin. The box set features: Up in Central Park Hers to Hold Nice Girl? It Started with Eve and His Butler's Sister.

• Comedy Greats | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A "two-plus-one" package from Siren, Comedy Greats features classics from the two greatest silent-screen comics, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, plus a rather dreary effort from Danny Kaye. Never the most scintillating of comedians, Kaye's personable talents are thinly spread in 1949's The Inspector General. Distantly(!) based on a short story by Russian satirist Nikolay Gogol, this tale of mistaken identity enables Kaye to indulge in obvious wisecracks and not-so-smart dialogue. Sylvia Fine's songs are mildly amusing, and Henry Koster draws capable support from Walter Slezak and Elsa Lanchester, but it's a long haul. When he made Tilli's Punctured Romance in 1914, Charles Chaplin had yet to perfect the "little man" routine which made him the most popular 1920s screen star. His loveable rogue is well displayed opposite Marie Dressler's formidable country maid, whose unexpected windfall becomes the real object of his desire. Mabel Normand contributes an attractively period chic, and if, in the hands of Mack Sennett, the humour tends to fall back on music-hall slapstick, the historical significance of the film is undoubted. Yet it's Buster Keaton's 1928 classic Steamboat Bill Jr which comes out on top here. Keaton is perfectly cast as the put upon student, whose bravery saves both his father and his steamboat-owning rival, and wins the hand of the latter's daughter. Solid support comes from Ernest Torrence and the winsome Marion Byron, with Charles Riesner getting maximum drama from the cyclone sequence, but it's Keaton's soulful expression and breathtaking stuntwork which are the most potent reminders of a talent only later to receive its due. On the DVD: Comedy Greats is acceptably remastered, with 1.33:1 aspect ratio and 12 chapter headings per film, and decently packaged, this is worth acquiring--even though Keaton's film is the only one you're likely return to often. --Richard Whitehouse

• The Inspector General | DVD | (23/06/2003) from £9.35   |  Saving you £7.64 (81.71%)   |  RRP £16.99

  In this delightful period farce set in Russia in the 1800's Danny Kaye plays and illiterate buffoon who is mistaken by the villagers for their feared Inspector General. Hilarious situations ensue as Danny is caught up in court intrigue without having a clue of what is going on.

• Classic Epic Films Collection - 300 Spartans/Alexander The Great/The Robe/Demetrius And The Gladiators | DVD | (01/10/2007) from £25.63   |  Saving you £4.36 (17.01%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Titles Comprise: The 300 Spartans:Released just a few years before a similar British film Zulu this 1962 English gladiator film depicts the tiny army of Sparta and their efforts to stave off an attack by Persian forces which greatly outnumbered the Spartans. Led by King Leonidis (Richard Egan) the Spartans army consisted primarily of a security force who guarded the palace. This rousing gladiator epic boasts an incredible cast including Diane Baker Ralph Rich

• James Stewart Boxset | DVD | (09/06/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £99.99

  A box set housing a bevy of brilliant Jimmy Stewart films from the Universal vaults. Films Comprise: 1. It's a Wonderful Life (1946) 2. The Rare Breed (1966) 3. Shenandoah (1965) 4. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) 5. Rear Window (1954) 6. Harvey (1950) 7. Destry Rides Again (1939) 8. Vertigo (1958) 9. Night Passage (1957) 10. The Glenn Miller Story (1953) 11. Thunder Bay (1953) 12. Bend Of The River (1952) 13. Winchester '73 (1950) 14. Rope (1948) 15. The Far Country (1954) 16. You Gotta Stay Happy (1948) 17. Vivacious Lady (1938) 18. Airport '77 (1977) 19. Next Time We Love (1936)