The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) was Marilyn Monroe's only British-made film and scores highly for curiosity value. There's something rather outrageous about this iconic American star playing a second-rate hoofer living in a theatrical boarding house in Brixton. Monroe herself is predictably good and touching as Elsie Marina, plucked from the chorus to entertain the Regent of Carpathia for the evening and ultimately smoothing his rough edges. There is, however, a rather uphill feeling all the way. The making of the movie was by all accounts a troubled experience for everybody concerned. Monroe, increasingly unreliable and exasperating, had an unsympathetic director in Laurence Olivier, also playing the Regent Charles, who hardly had the patience for a star of her mercurial talents with her own ideas of professional behaviour. His own performance as the Balkan royal is hammy and mannered and there isn't even a damp squib of sexual chemistry between them. Terence Rattigan's script, based on his successful play, is far too wordy and stage-bound. But somehow Monroe effervesces through all this adversity, aided considerably by British character actor Richard Wattis and the great Sybil Thorndyke, who became her ally during the difficult filming. Not vintage Marilyn but fascinating all the same, and she looks fantastic. [+]

Set in 1797 at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, HMS Defiant is an enthralling British naval drama made to capitalise upon MGM's epic remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, also released in 1962. Based on the novel Mutiny by Frank Tilsey and starring Alex Guinness as a fair-minded captain locked in psychological conflict with Dirk Bogarde, his manipulative, coldly malicious first officer, the parallels with the famous true story are clear. However there were many naval mutinies at this period and this large-scale saga, which includes some spectacularly staged widescreen naval battles, offers a realistic depiction of life in the British navy at the time-from the press gangs and floggings, to the appalling food and living conditions. Director Lewis Gilbert-who previously helmed Sink the Bismarck! (1960)-strikes a good balance between the personal drama and sweeping maritime adventure. Guinness successfully varies his firm-but-fair officer from The Bridge on the River Kwai, Bogarde is chillingly hateful and Anthony Quayle gives strong support. ITV's recent Hornblower cumulatively offers a more detailed portrait of the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars, though the TV series cannot match the visual scale of this big-screen production. On the DVD: HMS Defiant is presented anamorphically enhanced at 2. 35:1, though a little of the original CinemaScope frame is still cropped at the sides. The image is generally very good, though a handful of scenes near the end show considerable print damage and there is an inconstancy of colour grading between some shots. Grain is variable, but not generally a problem, though some unattractive "ringing" from edge enhancement is noticeable, particularly around Alex Guinness when he stands against a bright sky. [+]

Columbia's biggest hit of 1943, Sahara confirmed the superstar status Humphrey Bogart attained with his Warner Brothers' North African adventure, Casablanca (1942). Surrounded by the Germans on three sides, Bogart's tough-as-they-come Sergeant Joe Gunn takes his tank and a crew of American, British and French soldiers into the Sahara to reach the retreating allied forces. But when they find that the only water for 100 miles is also the target of a German battalion they decide to take a desperate stand. Early scenes present the characters with assorted perils: thirst, sandstorms and a German air attack. The characters are rather stereotypical: the cowardly Italian prisoner, the Frenchman obsessed with food, the German humourless and fanatical, though the British come out well, and there's a sympathetically drawn black British Sudanese soldier (Rex Ingram). The director was Zoltan Korda, the man behind such British classics as The Four Feathers (1939), and though Sahara lacks the scale of that adventure, Korda's experience pays off in mounting the extended and suspenseful siege/action climax. With support from Lloyd Bridges and Dan Duryea, Oscar-nominated photography by Rudolph Mate and a fine score by Miklós Rózsa, Sahara is a taut, gripping desert war thriller which wouldn't be bettered until Ice Cold in Alex (1958). On the DVD: The black and white picture is presented in the original 4:3 ratio and looks very good for its age, though there are numerous brief instances of substantial print damage. Audio is strong, clear mono. Given the age of the movie it is not surprising the only extras are filmographies and a small selection of beautifully reproduced original advertising posters. [+]

One of the most sublimely silly products to emanate from Roger Corman's studio, The Raven has the very loosest of connections with the Edgar Allen Poe poem that gives it its title and which Vincent Price intones sepulchrally at the beginning. A retiring magician, Craven (Price) has opted out of the power struggles of peers such as Dr Scarabus (Boris Karloff) to brood on his dead wife and bring up his daughter. The arrival of Bledlo (Peter Lorre), an incompetent drunk whom Scarabus has turned into the raven of the title, involves him in everything he had renounced-life is complicated further by the arrival of Bledlo's son Rexford, played by a staggeringly young Jack Nicholson. The special effects are almost perfunctory, yet the culminating magical duel between Price and Karloff is inventive and charming; this is one of those films that looks as if the actors enjoyed making it; while the script by Richard Matheson has a blithe awareness of its own shortcomings that makes it hard to dislike. On the DVD: The Raven comes to DVD with very boxy remastered mono sound, but is presented in its original widescreen 2. 35:1 ratio, formatted for 16:9 TVs. The only extra is the original theatrical trailer. -Roz Kaveney.

Shot in the rough, 16-millimeter style of a low-budget documentary, Tigerland marked director Joel Schumacher's welcomed return to simplicity after a slew of bloated blockbusters such as Batman & Robin. In revitalising Schumacher's directorial talent, Tigerland-which is partially inspired by the Danish Dogme 95 movement of no-frills filmmaking-suggested that one solution to Hollywood's moribund "product" was to abandon excess, focus on essentials, and assemble a fine cast of unknown actors to make it all worthwhile. To that end, Tigerland also marked the deserving arrival of Irish actor Colin Farrell as Hollywood's hottest new discovery. Its story never leaves US soil, so Tigerland differs from such in-country Vietnam films as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. Instead, it's about the anxieties and moral dilemmas that arise from the anticipation of death and killing. These roiling emotions are focused on the character of Private Bozz (Farrell), whose insubordination betrays a singular knack for leadership during infantry training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, in 1971. Part RP McMurphy and part Cool Hand Luke, Bozz is a defiant maverick, barely tolerated by his superiors, challenged or revered by his fellow grunts and ultimately honed into a soldier of remarkable promise. An intense final week in the live-ammo training ground nicknamed "Tigerland" galvanises the platoon and Bozz's place in it, and although the film (partially based on co-writer Ross Klavan's own experience) lacks the emotional impact of Platoon, it deals quite poignantly with the internal conflicts that must be waged before external warfare can be endured. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Fred Astaire plays a fashion photographer based on real-life cameraman Richard Avedon, in this entertaining musical directed by Stanley Donen (Singin' in the Rain). The story finds Astaire's character turning Audrey Hepburn into a chic Paris model-not a tough premise to buy, especially within this film's air of enchantment and surrounded by a great Gershwin score. Based on an unproduced play, this is one of the best films from the latter part of Astaire's career. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.