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Review MGM Entertainment / The Knack And How To Get It [DVD] [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Donal Donnelly
  • Michael Crawford
  • Ray Brooks
  • Rita Tushingham
  • Richard Lester
Release date: 2004-08-02
Run time: 85 min.
Creator: Ray Brooks
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.59

Review The Knack And How To Get It [DVD] [1965] / MGM Entertainment:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Operation Petticoat [DVD] [1959]
Actors & Directors
  • Blake Edwards
  • Dina Merrill
  • Cary Grant
  • Tony Curtis
  • Gene Evans
  • Joan O'Brien
Release date: 2007-06-04
Run time: 120 min.
Creator: Tony Curtis
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.59

Review Operation Petticoat [DVD] [1959] / Universal Pictures UK:

Blake Edwards's delightful 1959 comedy stars Cary Grant as a World War II submarine captain whose preference for a by-the-book command reluctantly yields to certain realities. Chief among those is that Grant's first officer (Tony Curtis, who impersonated Grant that same year in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot), a shameless hustler, is better than the navy at delivering whatever supplies the ship and crew need to keep going. But when Curtis sneaks a handful of Philippine refugees and several gorgeous nurses onto the all-male sub, the skipper not only has to cool down his crew but deal with an unexpected feminine influence on ship protocol. The film is a great deal of fun, sprinkled with the director's trademark sight gags (including one of Edwards's best, involving a torpedo and jeep), and graced with his unmistakable lilt. Grant is in great form, his comic brilliance almost impossibly effortless. -Tom Keogh.

Review Bfi Video / The Bed Sitting Room [Blu-ray] [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • Spike Milligan
  • Peter Cook
  • Harry Secombe
  • Richard Lester
  • Dudley Moore
  • Rita Tushingham
Release date: 2009-05-25
Run time: 93 min.
Creator: Peter Cook
RRP: £22.99
Price: £15.93

Review The Bed Sitting Room [Blu-ray] [1969] / Bfi Video:


Review ITV DVD / Carry On Don't Lose Your Head [DVD] [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Kenneth Williams
  • Gerald Thomas
  • Charles Hawtrey
  • Jim Dale
  • Sid James
  • Peter Butterworth
Release date: 2003-02-17
Run time: 89 min.
Creator: Talbot Rothwell
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.49

Review Carry On Don't Lose Your Head [DVD] [1967] / ITV DVD:

Carry On Don't Lose Your Head parodies the adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel, with crinkly cackling Sid James as master of disguise the Black Fingernail and Jim Dale as his assistant Lord Darcy. He must rescue preposterously effete aristocrat Charles Hawtrey from the clutches of Kenneth Williams' fiendish Citizen Camembert and his sidekick Citizen Bidet (Peter Butterworth). The Black Fingernail is assisted in his efforts to thwart the birth of the burgeoning republic by the almost supernatural stupidity of his opponents, who fail to recognise the frankly undisguisable Sid James even when dressed as a flirty young woman. What with an executioner who is tricked into beheading himself in order to prove the efficacy of his own guillotine, it's all a little too easy. As usual, no groan-worthy pun is left unturned, or unheralded by the soundtrack strains of a long whistle or wah-wah trumpet. This is pretty silly stuff even by Carry On standards, with most of the cast barely required to come out of first gear and an overlong climactic swordfight sequence hardly raising the dramatic stakes. Most of the humour here resides neither in the script nor the characterisation but in the endlessly watchable Williams' whooping, nasal delivery (occasionally lapsing into broad Cockney) and the jowl movements of the always-underrated Butterworth. -David Stubbs.

Review ITV DVD / Blithe Spirit [DVD] [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • Margaret Rutherford
  • David Lean
  • Hugh Wakefield
  • Constance Cummings
  • Rex Harrison
  • Kay Hammond
Release date: 2003-05-12
Run time: 91 min.
Creator: Anthony Havelock-Allan
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.17

Review Blithe Spirit [DVD] [1945] / ITV DVD:

Noel Coward's favourite play, Blithe Spirit, was certainly a departure for David Lean, best known at the time for adapting Dickens. While it's the director's only comedy, the result is a delightful gem. Rex Harrison is an acerbic author haunted by the ghost of first wife Elvira (Kay Hammond), who tries to seduce him all over again. This throws his second wife (Constance Cummings) into a panic, second-guessing her lack of passion. It's a celestial sex romp that hasn't lost its bite. Margaret Rutherford, as always, steals the show as the sardonic medium. -Bill Desowitz.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / M*A*S*H [1970] [DVD]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Altman
  • Sally Kellerman
  • Elliott Gould
  • Robert Duvall
  • Donald Sutherland
  • Tom Skerritt
Release date: 2002-04-29
Run time: 111 min.
Creator: Ring Lardner Jr.
RRP: £22.99
Price: £3.15

Review M*A*S*H [1970] [DVD] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

It's set during the Korean War, in a mobile army surgical hospital. But no one seeing MASH in 1970 confused the film for anything but a caustic comment on the Vietnam War; this is one of the counterculture movies that exploded into the mainstream at the end of the 1960s. Director Robert Altman had laboured for years in television and sporadic feature work when this smash-hit comedy made his name (and allowed him to create an astonishing string of offbeat pictures, culminating in the masterpiece Nashville). Altman's style of cruel humour, overlapping dialogue, and densely textured visuals brought the material to life in an all-new kind of war movie (or, more precisely, antiwar movie). Audiences had never seen anything like it: vaudeville routines played against spurting blood, fuelled with open ridicule of authority. The cast is led by Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, as the outrageous surgeons Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, with Robert Duvall as the uptight Major Burns and Sally Kellerman in an Oscar-nominated role as nurse "Hot Lips" Houlihan. The film's huge success spawned the long-running TV series, a considerably softer take on the material; of the film's cast, only Gary Burghoff repeated his role on the small screen, as the slightly clairvoyant Radar O'Reilly. -Robert Horton MASH-a 1970 comedy-drama set among surgeons drafted into the Korean war-was a breakthrough not just for director Robert Altman but for movie-making in general. Although set in the 50s, there are few who did not realise that the film's anti-war messages were directed at the US involvement in Vietnam. Indeed, the Pentagon banned US servicemen from seeing the film. [+]
Starring Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce and Elliot Gould as Trapper John McIntyre, two hip young surgeons drafted against their will. Their general attitude-while never corroding either their humanity or their professionalism as surgeons-is one of insolence towards military authority and the arbitrary structures and regulations continually droning from the tannoy system. The film, too, thrives on a lack of attention to conventional order, with its cross-dialogue and random, episodic style reflecting the vivacious and unbuttoned feel of the content. However, MASH has dated and much of what seemed like "liberating" high jinks, today smacks of sexist, frathouse boorishness and harassment, especially at the expense of Major "Hotlips" Hoolihan (Sally Kellerman), while the episode in which "Painless" plans a suicide out of a fear of being gay reflects the persistence of homophobia even in 60s counterculture. Despite this MASH feels ahead of its time and certainly sharper and blacker than the too-cute sitcom it spawned. On the DVD: this is an excellent restoration, overseen by Altman himself, in which any obfuscation from the original have been cleaned up, especially the sound quality. As well as a commentary from Altman, there are three separate documentaries, featuring interviews with Altman, the cast and screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr, who had been blacklisted during the anti-Communist witch-hunt which swept through Hollywood in the 1950s. We learn he was initially appalled at how little of his script Altman actually used but was mollified by the Academy Award he received. Altman is candid about the making of the movie ("It wasn't released by Fox, it escaped from Fox"). There's an abundance of similarly rich, anecdotal material here. -David Stubbs.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Stalag 17 [1952] [DVD]
Actors & Directors
  • Don Taylor
  • Billy Wilder
  • William Holden
  • Harvey Lembeck
  • Otto Preminger
  • Robert Strauss
Release date: 2002-06-10
Run time: 115 min.
Creator: Edwin Blum
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.53

Review Stalag 17 [1952] [DVD] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Black comedy and suspenseful action inside a German POW camp during World War II-a setting that was later borrowed for the American TV sitcom Hogan's Heroes. The great director Billy Wilder adapted the hit stage play, applying his own wicked sense of humour to the apparently bleak subject matter. William Holden plays an antisocial grouse amid a gang of wisecracking though indomitable American prisoners. Because of his bitter cynicism, Holden is suspected by the others of being an informer to the Germans, an accusation he must deal with in his own crafty way. Holden, who had delivered a brilliant performance for Wilder in Sunset Blvd. , won the 1953 Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17. Very much his equal, however, is Otto Preminger, an accomplished director himself, who plays the strict, sneering camp commandant. -Robert Horton.

Review MGM Entertainment / Tales Of Terror [DVD]
Actors & Directors
  • Joyce Jameson
  • Vincent Price
  • Maggie Pierce
  • Roger Corman
  • Leona Gage
  • Peter Lorre
Release date: 2003-10-20
Run time: 84 min.
Creator: Richard Matheson
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.67

Review Tales Of Terror [DVD] / MGM Entertainment:

Tales of Terror is a trio of Edgar Allen Poe stories, starring three of horror's greats-Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone and Peter Lorre-and produced and directed by the immortal Roger Corman. The first story, "Morella", involves a girl (Debra Paget) who returns to her isolated, spooky family home to see her estranged father (Price) for the first time in 26 years. He's let the housekeeping slide a bit-cobwebs abound and, oh, yes, his dead wife is still upstairs. Peter Lorre joins the fun for "The Black Cat", a piece with comic flavour that allows Price to show his rarely seen silly side, and then it's Basil Rathbone's turn to be creepy in "The Case of M Valdemar", the tale of a mesmerist who decides to experiment with the unknown (bad idea). The movie is well paced, and makes good use of comedy without undercutting its chills. It's a rare treat to see this many masters of the genre working together and so clearly enjoying themselves. -Ali Davis.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Teachers Pet [DVD] [1958]
Actors & Directors
  • Clark Gable
  • George Seaton
  • Doris Day
  • Gig Young
Release date: 2005-07-25
Run time: 115 min.
Creator: Clark Gable
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.87

Review Teachers Pet [DVD] [1958] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Keep Your Seats, Please [DVD] [1936]
Actors & Directors
  • Montague Banks
  • Alastair Sim
  • George Formby
  • Florence Desmond
  • Gus McNaughton
  • Harry Tate
Release date: 2009-06-22
Run time: 82 min.
Creator: Florence Desmond
RRP: £15.99
Price: £7.87

Review Keep Your Seats, Please [DVD] [1936] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review ITV DVD / Carry On Up The Khyber [DVD] [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Joan Sims
  • Gerald Thomas
  • Roy Castle
  • Charles Hawtrey
  • Kenneth Williams
  • Sid James
Release date: 2003-05-12
Run time: 85 min.
Creator: Talbot Rothwell
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.00

Review Carry On Up The Khyber [DVD] [1968] / ITV DVD:

Filmed in 1968 and set in British India in 1895, Carry On Up the Khyber is one of the team's most memorable efforts. Sid James plays Sid James as ever, though nominally his role is that of Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond, the unflappable British Governor who must deal with the snakelike, scheming Khasi of Khalabar, played by Kenneth Williams. A crisis occurs when the mystique of the "devils in skirts" of the 3rd Foot and Mouth regiment is exploded when one of their number, the sensitive-to-draughts Charles Hawtrey, is discovered by the natives to be wearing underpants. Revolt is in the offing, with Bernard Bresslaw once again playing a seething native warrior. Roy Castle neatly plays the sort of role normally assigned to Jim Dale, as the ineffectual young officer, Peter Butterworth is a splendid compromised evangelist, while Terry Scott puts his comedic all into the role of the gruff Sergeant. Most enduring, however, is the final dinner party sequence in which the British contingent, with the Burpas at the gates of the compound, and plaster falling all about them, demonstrate typical insouciance in the face of imminent peril. The "I'm Backing Britain" Union Jack hoist at the end, however, over-excitedly reveals the streak of reactionary patriotism that lurked beneath the bumbling double-entendres of most Carry On films. -David Stubbs.

Review Universal Pictures UK / Laurel & Hardy Volume 11 - Saps At Sea/Music Shorts [DVD] [1940]
Actors & Directors
  • Gordon Douglas
  • Stan Laurel
  • Dick Cramer
  • Oliver Hardy
  • Ben Turpin
  • James Finlayson
Release date: 2004-05-03
Run time: 198 min.
Creator: Oliver Hardy
RRP: £15.99
Price: £0.89

Review Laurel & Hardy Volume 11 - Saps At Sea/Music Shorts [DVD] [1940] / Universal Pictures UK:


Review Fremantle Home Entertainment / The Birthday Party [1968] [DVD]
Actors & Directors
  • Dandy Nichols
  • Patrick Magee
  • William Friedkin
  • Moultrie Kelsall
  • Robert Shaw
  • Sydney Tafler
Release date: 2001-07-02
Run time: 119 min.
Creator: Harold Pinter
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.90

Review The Birthday Party [1968] [DVD] / Fremantle Home Entertainment:

Harold Pinter's first full-length stage play, The Birthday Party, was 10 years old when William (The Exorcist) Friedkin directed it for the cinema in 1968. In some ways, it was already a period-piece by then, Pinter's use of a combination of silence and excruciatingly banal dialogue to generate precipitous dramatic tension having been absorbed by contemporary theatrical mythology long since. Are the sinister McCann and Goldberg real? Or do they exist only in Stan's head? At the end, we're none the wiser. But Friedkin's claustrophobic direction, with the tormented Stan as its focus, has taken us through a master study in understated horror. The handheld camera, so fashionable in modern television drama, has rarely been used to such hypnotic effect. As Stan, Robert Shaw is mesmerising in his descent to animal-like submission. Sydney Tafler's Goldberg and Patrick Magee 's McCann make a truly terrifying double act. Cult television fans will appreciate an early appearance by Helen Fraser (these days best known as a sadistic prison warder in Bad Girls) as the easily seduced neighbour. Now that Friedkin's film is itself over 30 years old, the scent of mothballs ought to be even more pronounced. Its decrepit seaside boarding house setting and the drabness of the peripheral players are redolent of the distinctly non-swinging side of the 1960s in which it was made. [+]
But more than anything, The Birthday Party is about unspecified terror and the sort of inner demons that lurk in all of us. On the DVD: Excellent sound quality helps to make this a compellingly theatrical experience: never has the noise of tearing newspaper been more menacing. And the picture quality retains the grainy authenticity of the original print. Special features include brief backgrounders on the history of the play and Friedkin's career, and a slide show of still s from key scenes. -Piers Ford.

Review MGM Entertainment / A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum [DVD] [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Zero Mostel
  • Jack Gilford
  • Buster Keaton
  • Phil Silvers
  • Michael Crawford
  • Richard Lester
Release date: 2004-01-12
Run time: 93 min.
Creator: Titus Maccius Plautus
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.13

Review A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum [DVD] [1966] / MGM Entertainment:

The words of the opening song pretty much describe the menu in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum-"Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone: a comedy tonight!"-a frantic adaptation of the stage musical by Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove. The wild story, based on the Latin comedies of Plautus and set in ancient Rome, follows a slave named Pseudolus (Zero Mostel, snorting and gibbering) as he tries to extricate himself from an increasingly farcical situation; Mostel and a bevy of inspired clowns, including Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford and Buster Keaton, keep the slapstick and the patter perking. The cast also includes the young Michael Crawford as a love-struck innocent. This project landed in the lap of Richard Lester, then one of the hottest directors in the world after his success with the Beatles' films. Lester telescoped the material through his own joke-a-second sensibility, and also ripped out some of the songs from Stephen Sondheim's Broadway score. The result is very close to the vaudeville spirit suggested by the title-though anyone with a low tolerance for Zero Mostel's overbearing buffoonery may be in trouble. Oddly enough, amid all the frenzy, Lester creates a grungy, earthy Rome that seems closer to the real thing than countless respectable historical films on the subject. Frankie Howerd, who played Pseudolus on the London stage, kept the tradition going with his Up Pompeii TV series. -Robert Horton.

Review Second Sight Films Ltd. / Pygmalion [1938] [DVD]
Actors & Directors
  • Anthony Asquith; Leslie Howard
  • Wendy Hiller; Leslie Howard; Winifred Lawson; Scott Sunderland
Release date: 2007-08-06
Run time: 92 min.
Creator: Wendy Hiller; Leslie Howard; Winifred Lawson; Scott Sunderland
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.40

Review Pygmalion [1938] [DVD] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / How To Marry A Millionaire [DVD] [1953]
Actors & Directors
  • Betty Grable
  • Jean Negulesco
  • Marilyn Monroe
  • Lauren Bacall
  • William Powell
Release date: 2006-05-22
Run time: 92 min.
Creator: Betty Grable
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.69

Review How To Marry A Millionaire [DVD] [1953] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Breakfast At Tiffany's [DVD] [1961]
Actors & Directors
  • Patricia Neal
  • Blake Edwards
  • Martin Balsam
  • Audrey Hepburn
  • George Peppard
  • Buddy Ebsen
Release date: 2000-11-06
Run time: 109 min.
Creator: Truman Capote
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.74

Review Breakfast At Tiffany's [DVD] [1961] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

No film better utilises Audrey Hepburn's flighty charm and svelte beauty than this romantic adaptation of Truman Capote's novella. Hepburn's urban sophisticate Holly Golightly, an enchanting neurotic living off the gifts of gentlemen, is a bewitching figure in designer dresses and costume jewellery. George Peppard is her upstairs neighbour, a struggling writer and "kept" man financed by a steely older woman (Patricia Neal). His growing friendship with the lonely Holly soon turns to love and threatens the delicate balance of both of their compromised lives. Taking liberties with Capote's bittersweet story, director Blake Edwards and screenwriter George Axelrod turn New York into a city of lovers and create a poignant portrait of Holly, a frustrated romantic with a secret past and a hidden vulnerability. Composer Henry Mancini earned Oscars for the hit song "Moon River" and his tastefully romantic score. The only sour note in the whole film is Mickey Rooney's demeaning performance as the apartment's Japanese manager, an offensively overdone stereotype even in 1961. The rest of the film has weathered the decades well. Edwards's elegant yet light touch, Axelrod's generous screenplay and Hepburn's mix of knowing experience and naivety combine to create one of the great screen romances and a refined slice of high-society bohemian chic. -Sean Axmaker.

Review ITV DVD / Carry On Behind [DVD] [1975]
Actors & Directors
  • Jack Douglas
  • Kenneth Williams
  • Bernard Bresslaw
  • Elke Sommer
  • Kenneth Connor
  • Gerald Thomas
Release date: 2003-05-12
Run time: 86 min.
Creator: Dave Freeman
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.49

Review Carry On Behind [DVD] [1975] / ITV DVD:

The discovery of valuable archaeological remains beneath a holiday caravan site is the cause of the mayhem in Carry On Behind. That said, the sub-"plots", which involve Windsor Davies and Jack Douglas as a pair of randy fishermen, a couple sharing their caravan with an outsize dog (no, it's not like that. ), the obligatory giggling dolly birds and so on are all typical grist to the Carry On mill. The location is of course as bleakly miserable as such a place could ever be and will bring a frisson of familiarity to many Brits. Widely held to be one of the best in the series, the film would in fact have been a rather lacklustre effort were it not for the superbly over-the-top presence of Elke Sommer, whose performance as the strapping assistant to archaeologist Roland Crump (Kenneth Williams) seems like a wonderful hybrid of Ute Lemper and Charlie Dimmock. -Roger Thomas.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / A Run For Your Money [DVD] [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Charles Frend
  • Hugh Griffith
  • Meredith Edwards
  • Donald Houston
  • Alec Guinness
  • Moira Lister
Release date: 2009-02-02
Run time: 80 min.
Creator: Meredith Edwards
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.17

Review A Run For Your Money [DVD] [1949] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Network / The Card [1952] [DVD]
Actors & Directors
  • Edward Chapman
  • Petula Clark
  • Glynis Johns
  • Valerie Hobson
  • Alec Guinness
  • Ronald Neame
Release date: 2007-03-12
Run time: 87 min.
Creator: Eric Ambler
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.05

Review The Card [1952] [DVD] / Network:


Models & Brands:
The Knack And How To Get It [DVD] [1965], Operation Petticoat [DVD] [1959], The Bed Sitting Room [Blu-ray] [1969], Carry On Don't Lose Your Head [DVD] [1967], Blithe Spirit [DVD] [1945], M*A*S*H [1970] [DVD], Stalag 17 [1952] [DVD], Tales Of Terror [DVD], Teachers Pet [DVD] [1958], Keep Your Seats, Please [DVD] [1936], Carry On Up The Khyber [DVD] [1968], Laurel & Hardy Volume 11 - Saps At Sea/Music Shorts [DVD] [1940], The Birthday Party [1968] [DVD], A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum [DVD] [1966], Pygmalion [1938] [DVD], How To Marry A Millionaire [DVD] [1953], Breakfast At Tiffany's [DVD] [1961], Carry On Behind [DVD] [1975], A Run For Your Money [DVD] [1949], The Card [1952] [DVD]

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