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Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / How To Steal A Million [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Audrey Hepburn
  • Hugh Griffith
  • William Wyler
  • Peter O'Toole
  • Eli Wallach
  • Charles Boyer
Release date: 2005-04-18
Run time: 118 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.79

Review How To Steal A Million [1966] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / The Ladykillers [1955]
Actors & Directors
  • Katie Johnston
  • Herbert Lom
  • Alexander MacKendrick
  • Peter Sellers
  • Cecil Parker
  • Alec Guinness
Release date: 2006-11-13
Run time: 87 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.93

Review The Ladykillers [1955] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review MGM Entertainment / The Party (2 Disc Special Edition) [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Blake Edwards
  • Marge Champion
  • Jean Carson
  • Claudine Longet
  • Peter Sellers
  • Natalia Borisova
Release date: 2004-09-27
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.59

Review The Party (2 Disc Special Edition) [1968] / MGM Entertainment:

Though this film is a relatively minor one in the massive canon of Peter Sellers, it has moments of absolute hilarity. Written and directed by Blake Edwards, one of Sellers' most fertile collaborators, the film stars Sellers as a would-be actor from India (let them try to get away with that today) who is a walking disaster area. After ruining a day's shooting as an extra on a film, he finds himself unintentionally invited to a big Hollywood party. That's pretty much it as far as plot goes, but Edwards and Sellers know how to milk a simple idea for an unending string of slapstick gags. The result is a film that is episodic and sketchy but also frequently loony in an inspired way. -Marshall Fine.

Review Bfi Video / Monsieur Hulot's Holiday [1953]
Actors & Directors
  • Jacques Tati
  • Jacques Tati
Release date: 2004-11-29
Run time: 84 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £11.45

Review Monsieur Hulot's Holiday [1953] / Bfi Video:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Hobson's Choice [1953]
Actors & Directors
  • Brenda De Banzie
  • John Mills
  • Charles Laughton
  • David Lean
Release date: 2008-08-11
Run time: 103 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £9.98

Review Hobson's Choice [1953] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Laurel & Hardy - The Collection (21-disc Box Set) [1918]
Actors & Directors
  • Oliver Hardy
  • Stan Laurel
Release date: 2004-05-03
Run time: 999 min.
RRP: £199.99
Price: £55.12

Review Laurel & Hardy - The Collection (21-disc Box Set) [1918] / Universal Pictures UK:


Review ITV DVD / The Norman Wisdom Collection [1953]
Actors & Directors
  • David Lodge
  • Norman Wisdom
  • Margaret Rutherford
  • Joan Rice
  • Leslie Phillips
Release date: 2005-10-17
Run time: 1088 min.
RRP: £59.99
Price: £16.99

Review The Norman Wisdom Collection [1953] / ITV DVD:

This Norman Wisdom Collection contains twelve vintage Wisdom comedies, from "Trouble in Store" (1953) to "Press for Time" (1966). All are also released as six separate two-in-one sets. You can also refer to our individual film reviews for each two-set release: Trouble in Store/Up in the World The Square Peg/Follow a Star On the Beat/Man of the Moment The Bulldog Breed/One Good TurnA Stitch in Time/Just My Luck The Early Bird/Press for Time On the DVDs: The Norman Wisdom Collection also has four brand-new audio commentaries from Norman Wisdom himself, in conversation with film historian Robert Ross. The four films with commentary are: "Trouble in Store" (1953), "On the Beat" (1962), "A Stitch in Time" (1963) and "The Early Bird" (1965). All the discs come with a trailer and English subtitles as standard.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / The Court Jester [1956]
Actors & Directors
  • Basil Rathbone
  • Glynis Johns
  • Danny Kaye
  • Cecil Parker
  • Angela Lansbury
  • Melvin Frank
  • Norman Panama
Release date: 2007-03-12
Run time: 97 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.01

Review The Court Jester [1956] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Danny Kaye spoofs Robin Hood and Scaramouche in this inventive slapstick swashbuckler. Portraying the clownish but good-hearted entertainer Hawkins, he infiltrates the court of the corrupt Basil Rathbone (up to his usual brand of cruel villainy) disguised as the legendary king of jesters, Giacomo. After a court sorceress hypnotises Hawkins into believing he is also a legendary assassin, Hawkins has more identities than he can keep straight, and Kaye zips back and forth between them at, literally, a snap of the fingers. Comic highlights include a wonderful sword fight with Rathbone in which he constantly switches identities, and the classic "chalice from the palace/vessel with pestle" wordplay as Hawkins plays "hide the poison" and forgets where it is. With comely Glynis Johns as his spy-in-arms love interest, Angela Lansbury as the scheming princess, and Mildred Natwick as the dotty spellcaster, this is Danny Kaye at his comic best. -Sean Axmaker, Amazon. com.

Review MGM Entertainment / Some Like It Hot - Special Edition [1959]
Actors & Directors
  • Marilyn Monroe
  • Jack Lemmon
  • Tony Curtis
  • Pat O'Brien
  • George Raft
  • Billy Wilder
Release date: 2001-11-26
Run time: 117 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £2.85

Review Some Like It Hot - Special Edition [1959] / MGM Entertainment:

Maybe "nobody's perfect", as one character in this masterpiece suggests. But some movies are perfect, and Some Like It Hot is one of them. In Chicago, during the Prohibition era, two skirt-chasing musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), inadvertently witness the St Valentine's Day Massacre. In order to escape the wrath of gangland chief Spats Colombo (George Raft), the boys, in drag, join an all-woman band headed for Florida. They vie for the attention of the lead singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a much-disappointed songbird who warbles "I'm Through with Love" but remains vulnerable to yet another unreliable saxophone player. (When Curtis courts her without his dress, he adopts the voice of Cary Grant-a spot-on impersonation. ) The script by director Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is beautifully measured; everything works, like a flawless clock. [+]
Aspiring screenwriters would be well advised to throw away the how-to books and simply study this film. The bulk of the slapstick is handled by an unhinged Lemmon and the razor-sharp Joe E. Brown, who plays a horny retiree smitten by Jerry's feminine charms. For all the gags, the film is also wonderfully romantic, as Wilder indulges in just the right amounts of moonlight and the lilting melody of "Park Avenue Fantasy". Some Like It Hot is so delightfully fizzy, it's hard to believe the shooting of the film was a headache, with an unhappy Monroe on her worst behaviour. The results, however, are sublime. -Robert Horton.

Review Warner Home Video / The Philadelphia Story [1940]
Actors & Directors
  • James Stewart
  • Cary Grant
  • Katharine Hepburn
  • George Cukor
Release date: 2005-06-20
Run time: 107 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.98

Review The Philadelphia Story [1940] / Warner Home Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Marx Brothers Collection: A Night At The Opera / A Day At The Races / At The Circus / Go West / The Big Store / A Night In Casablanca [1935]
Actors & Directors
  • Archie Mayo
  • Allan Jones
  • Kitty Carlisle
  • Charles Reisner
  • Maureen O'Sullivan
  • Diana Lewis
  • The Marx Brothers
  • Edward Buzzell
Release date: 2004-08-23
Run time: 529 min.
RRP: £61.99
Price: £16.97

Review Marx Brothers Collection: A Night At The Opera / A Day At The Races / At The Circus / Go West / The Big Store / A Night In Casablanca [1935] / Warner Home Video:


Review Universal Pictures Video / The Quiet Man (John Wayne) [1952]
Actors & Directors
  • John Ford
  • Victor McLaglen
  • Barry Fitzgerald
  • John Wayne
  • Ward Bond
  • Maureen O'Hara
Release date: 2006-06-05
Run time: 129 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.34

Review The Quiet Man (John Wayne) [1952] / Universal Pictures Video:

Blarney and bliss, mixed in equal proportions. John Wayne plays an American boxer who returns to the Emerald Isle, his native land. What he finds there is a fiery prospective spouse (Maureen O'Hara) and a country greener than any Ireland seen before or since-it's no surprise The Quiet Man won an Oscar for cinematography. It also won an Oscar for John Ford's direction, his fourth such award. The film was a deeply personal project for Ford (whose birth name was Sean Aloysius O'Fearna), and he lavished all of his affection for the Irish landscape and Irish people on this film. He also stages perhaps the greatest donnybrook in the history of movies, an epic fistfight between Wayne and the truculent Victor McLaglen-that's Ford's brother, Francis, as the elderly man on his deathbed who miraculously revives when he hears word of the dustup. Barry Fitzgerald, the original Irish elf, gets the movie's biggest laugh when he walks into the newlyweds' bedroom the morning after their wedding, and spots a broken bed. The look on his face says everything. The Quiet Man isn't the real Ireland, but as a delicious never-never land of Ford's imagination, it will do very nicely. -Robert Horton.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / School For Scoundrels [1960]
Actors & Directors
  • Terry-Thomas
  • Ian Carmichael
  • Hal E. Chester
  • Robert Hamer
  • Dennis Price
  • Alastair Sim
  • Cyril Frankel
  • Janette Scott
Release date: 2006-10-30
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.57

Review School For Scoundrels [1960] / Optimum Home Entertainment:

In School for Scoundrels wimpy Ian Carmichael wants to impress girls and get one over on all-round show-off and cad Terry Thomas (playing gloriously to type). Discovering Alastair Simms' unorthodox school Carmichael happily enrols and learns the quaint tricks of the day for securing the admiration of a fair lady. Ultimately as a star pupil he teaches the Master a thing or two about true love when everything turns out just fine in the end. Appealing to all male sensibilities is the idea of a magical set of simple rules for winning someone's affections. Set in the tweed-rich environment of an English boarding school makes this an even quainter notion. To watch this classic comedy is to cock one's snoot at womanisers everywhere while unavoidably making a mental list of anything that might actually work! The three central performances are brilliantly realised, particularly the role reversal between Carmichael and Thomas. Try playing a tennis match after a viewing without calling "hard cheese". -Paul Tonks.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Carry On Screaming [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Harry H. Corbett
  • Gerald Thomas
  • Kenneth Williams
  • Joan Sims
  • Charles Hawtrey
  • Fenella Fielding
Release date: 2007-01-29
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.44

Review Carry On Screaming [1966] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Till Death Us Do Part [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • Norman Cohen
  • Una Stubbs
  • Warren Mitchell
  • Dandy Nichols
  • Bill Maynard
  • Anthony Booth
Release date: 2006-10-30
Run time: 96 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.35

Review Till Death Us Do Part [1969] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Dad's Army - Series 1/Lost Episodes Of Series 2 [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Arthur Lowe
  • John Le Mesurier
  • Clive Dunn
Release date: 2004-09-13
Run time: 270 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £6.59

Review Dad's Army - Series 1/Lost Episodes Of Series 2 [1968] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review ITV DVD / Carry On Camping [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Joan Sims
  • Gerald Thomas
  • Charles Hawtrey
  • Sid James
  • Kenneth Williams
  • Terry Scott
Release date: 2003-07-07
Run time: 136 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.75

Review Carry On Camping [1968] / ITV DVD:

There are three periods to Carry On. Early on, they were typical British light comedy capers, hardly risqué. By the 1970s, the loveable double-entendres had been replaced by an almost nasty sleaziness, culminating in 1977's Carry On Emanuelle. 1969's Carry On Camping, thankfully, belongs to the Golden Years. Pretty much everybody is present and correct, if not politically. Sid James is a likely-ish, if slightly elderly lad, persuading Joan Sims to join him at what he secretly expects to be a nudist colony. Terry Scott is a put-upon suburbian, coerced into outdoor vacations by his ghastly, horsey-laughed wife, while Charles Hawtrey is the campest of campers who befriends them. Kenneth Williams, who alone makes this worth watching, is gloriously ridiculous as head of a girl's school, Chayste Place, with Hattie Jacques as Matron and Barbara Windsor as one of the 30 year old fifth formers in their charge. Technically it's terrible stuff, with Barbara Windsor's flying bra, laboured puns galore, peeping tomfoolery, punchlines visible two miles off, "comedy" incidental music and a reactionary denouement in which they chase off a bunch of hippies. Yet if you don't chuckle at least half a dozen times during this, however many times you've seen it, there's probably something wrong with you. [+]
-David Stubbs Made in 1969, Carry On Camping belongs to the Golden Years before the loveable double-entendres had been replaced by an almost nasty sleaziness. Pretty much everybody is present and correct, if not politically. Sid James is a likely-ish, if slightly elderly lad, persuading Joan Sims to join him at what he secretly expects to be a nudist colony. Terry Scott is a put-upon suburban, coerced into outdoor vacations by his ghastly, horsey-laughed wife, while Charles Hawtrey is the campest of campers who befriends them. Kenneth Williams, who alone makes this worth watching, is gloriously ridiculous as head of a girl's school, Chayste Place, with Hattie Jacques as Matron and Barbara Windsor as one of the 30-year-old fifth formers in their charge. Technically it's terrible stuff, with Barbara Windsor's flying bra, laboured puns galore, peeping tomfoolery, punchlines visible two miles off, "comedy" incidental music and a reactionary denouement in which they chase off a bunch of hippies. Yet if you don't chuckle at least half a dozen times during this, however many times you've seen it, there's probably something wrong with you. -David Stubbs.

Review Odeon Entertainment / Ladies Who Do [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Arthur Mullard
  • Miriam Karlin
  • Robert Morley
  • Harry H. Corbett
  • Dandy Nichols
  • C.M. Pennington-Richards
Release date: 2008-03-24
Run time: 85 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.98

Review Ladies Who Do [1963] / Odeon Entertainment:


Review Optimum Releasing / Whisky Galore (Single Disc) [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Catherine Lacey
  • Basil Radford
Release date: 2006-11-13
Run time: 80 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.49

Review Whisky Galore (Single Disc) [1949] / Optimum Releasing:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Doctor Strangelove (Collectors Edition) [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Sterling Hayden
  • Peter Sellers
  • Keenan Wynn
  • Slim Pickens
  • George C. Scott
  • Stanley Kubrick
Release date: 2002-02-18
Run time: 91 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.99

Review Doctor Strangelove (Collectors Edition) [1963] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made, Stanley Kubrick's cold war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. Dr. Strangelove is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed with "the purity of precious bodily fluids," mounts his singular campaign against Communism by ordering a squadron of B-52 bombers to attack the Soviet Union. The Soviets counter the threat with a so-called "Doomsday Device," and the world hangs in the balance while the US president (Peter Sellers) engages in hilarious hot-line negotiations with his Soviet counterpart. Sellers also plays a British military attaché and the mad bomb-maker Dr. Strangelove; George C. Scott is outrageously frantic as General Buck Turgidson, whose presidential advice consists mainly of panic and statistics about "acceptable losses. " With dialogue ("You can't fight here! This is the war room!") and images (Slim Pickens' character riding the bomb to oblivion) that have become a part of our cultural vocabulary, Kubrick's film regularly appears on critics' lists of the all-time best. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. [+]
com -This text refers to another version of this video.

Models & Brands:
How To Steal A Million [1966], The Ladykillers [1955], The Party (2 Disc Special Edition) [1968], Monsieur Hulot's Holiday [1953], Hobson's Choice [1953], Laurel & Hardy - The Collection (21-disc Box Set) [1918], The Norman Wisdom Collection [1953], The Court Jester [1956], Some Like It Hot - Special Edition [1959], The Philadelphia Story [1940], Marx Brothers Collection: A Night At The Opera / A Day At The Races / At The Circus / Go West / The Big Store / A Night In Casablanca [1935], The Quiet Man (John Wayne) [1952], School For Scoundrels [1960], Carry On Screaming [1966], Till Death Us Do Part [1969], Dad's Army - Series 1/Lost Episodes Of Series 2 [1968], Carry On Camping [1968], Ladies Who Do [1963], Whisky Galore (Single Disc) [1949], Doctor Strangelove (Collectors Edition) [1963]

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