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Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Best Man [1964]
Actors & Directors
  • Mahalia Jackson
  • Cliff Robertson
  • Edie Adams
  • Franklin J. Schaffner
  • Lee Tracy
  • Henry Fonda
Release date: 2008-10-20
Run time: 99 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £9.75

Review Best Man [1964] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Seminole [1953] [1983]
Actors & Directors
  • Rock Hudson
  • Budd Boetticher
  • Lee Marvin
  • Anthony Quinn
  • Richard Carlson
Release date: 2007-09-03
Run time: 83 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £7.34

Review Seminole [1953] [1983] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Rough Riders / Rough Riders Triple Feature 1 [1941]
Release date: 2006-05-08
Run time: 175 min.
RRP: £7.99
Price: £1.76

Review Rough Riders Triple Feature 1 [1941] / Rough Riders:


Review Warner Home Video / The Wild Bunch [Blu-ray] [1970] [US Import]
Actors & Directors
  • Warren Oates
  • Edmond O'Brien
  • Robert Ryan
  • Sam Peckinpah
  • William Holden
  • Ernest Borgnine
Release date: 2007-09-25
Run time: 145 min.
Price: £11.24

Review The Wild Bunch [Blu-ray] [1970] [US Import] / Warner Home Video:

Here's how director Sam Peckinpah described his motivation behind The Wild Bunch at the time of the film's 1969 release: "I was trying to tell a simple story about bad men in changing times. The Wild Bunch is simply what happens when killers go to Mexico. The strange thing is you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line. " All of these statements are true, but they don't begin to cover the impact that Peckinpah's film had on the evolution of American movies. Now the film is most widely recognized as a milestone event in the escalation of screen violence, but that's a label of limited perspective. Of course, Peckinpah's bloody climactic gunfight became a masterfully directed, photographed, and edited ballet of graphic violence that transcended the conventional Western and moved into a slow-motion realm of pure cinematic intensity. But the film-surely one of the greatest Westerns ever made-is also a richly thematic tale of, as Peckinpah said, "bad men in changing times. " The year is 1913 and the fading band of thieves known as the Wild Bunch (led by William Holden as Pike) decide to pull one last job before retirement. But an ambush foils their plans, and Peckinpah's film becomes an epic yet intimate tale of betrayed loyalties, tenacious rivalry, and the bunch's dogged determination to maintain their fading code of honor among thieves. The 144-minute director's cut enhances the theme of male bonding that recurs in many of Peckinpah's films, restoring deleted scenes to deepen the viewer's understanding of the friendship turned rivalry between Pike and his former friend Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who now leads a posse in pursuit of the bunch, a dimension that adds resonance to an already classic American film. [+]
The Wild Bunch is a masterpiece that should not be defined strictly in terms of its violence, but as a story of mythic proportion, brimming with rich characters and dialogue and the bittersweet irony of outlaw traditions on the wane. -Jeff Shannon.

Review New Line Home Video / Wanted: Dead or Alive: Season One (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Steve McQueen
Release date: 2005-06-07
Run time: 1008 min.
Price: £11.10

Review Wanted: Dead or Alive: Season One (REGION 1) (NTSC) / New Line Home Video:


Review 20th Century Fox / These Thousand Hills [1959] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Don Murray
  • Stuart Whitman
  • Patricia Owens
  • Richard Fleischer
  • Lee Remick
  • Richard Egan
Release date: 2006-05-23
Run time: 96 min.
Price: £4.15

Review These Thousand Hills [1959] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / 20th Century Fox:


Review Prism Leisure / Hell In The Pacific [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • Lee Marvin
  • Toshirô Mifune
  • John Boorman
Release date: 2002-04-08
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £11.99

Review Hell In The Pacific [1969] / Prism Leisure:

Hell in the Pacific is one of the most original and thoughtful war films of the 1960s. Fresh from Point Blank (1967) Lee Marvin reunited with director John Boorman for this elemental story of a US pilot and a Japanese naval officer washed ashore on an otherwise uninhabited Pacific island. Lee Marvin speaks English; Toshiro Mifune (The Seven Samurai) speaks Japanese; and the audience shares their frustrations as they attempt to communicate, as Boorman does not use subtitles. Once the men become aware of each other's presence they move from wary avoidance through conflict to an uneasy truce as they realise they will have to cooperate to survive. The naturalistic acting is key to the film's success, greatly aided by the fact that both stars served their respective countries in the Pacific theatre during the Second World War. Conrad Hall's cinematography is superb, using natural light to evoke the beauty of the island, and the wide Panavision frame to show the men's isolation and their reactions to each another. Boorman developed further his fascination with man against nature in Deliverance (1974) and The Emerald Forest (1985), and there wouldn't be another poetic war film until Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1999). On the DVD: The stereo sound is fine, atmospherically reproducing both the natural sounds of the island and Lalo Schfrin's imaginative score. The picture quality likewise is very good, with the image well focused with strong colours and plenty of detail. Unfortunately the 2. [+]
35:1 image has been panned and scanned to 1. 33:1 TV ratio, destroying the scale and beauty of the compositions and sometimes meaning the viewer sees only one side of the interactions between the two men. Extras are perfunctory, with production notes, biographies of the stars and a "slide show". Considering even BBC2 occasionally shows the film in near full Pavavision and with Boorman's preferred, TS Elliot inspired ending, this DVD is a lost opportunity to bring a modern classic into the digital age. -Gary S Dalkin.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Last Train From Gun Hill [1959]
Actors & Directors
  • Carolyn Jones
  • Brad Dexter
  • Kirk Douglas
  • Anthony Quinn
  • John Sturges
  • Earl Holliman
Release date: 2005-06-06
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.43

Review Last Train From Gun Hill [1959] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review Delta Visual Entertainment / John Wayne - Serial Thriller [1932]
Actors & Directors
  • John Wayne
Release date: 2008-09-01
Run time: 624 min.
RRP: £13.99
Price: £10.49

Review John Wayne - Serial Thriller [1932] / Delta Visual Entertainment:


Review Cinema Club / The Lone Ranger And The Lost City Of Gold [1958]
Actors & Directors
  • Douglas Kennedy
  • Jay Silverheels
  • Clayton Moore
  • Lesley Selander
Release date: 2005-03-28
Run time: 78 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.62

Review The Lone Ranger And The Lost City Of Gold [1958] / Cinema Club:


Review Warner Home Video / None But the Brave [1965] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Christopher Dark
  • Brad Dexter
  • Roger Ewing
  • Don Dorrell
  • Phillip Crosby
Release date: 2008-05-13
Run time: 105 min.
Creator: John Williams
Price: £3.57

Review None But the Brave [1965] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review Paramount / The Far Horizons [1955] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Donna Reed
  • Charlton Heston
  • Fred MacMurray
  • William Demarest
  • Rudolph Maté
  • Barbara Hale
Release date: 2005-06-07
Run time: 107 min.
Price: £2.93

Review The Far Horizons [1955] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Paramount:


Review Paramount / Arrowhead [1953] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Charlton Heston
  • Brian Keith
  • Mary Sinclair
  • Charles Marquis Warren
  • Jack Palance
  • Katy Jurado
Release date: 2004-11-09
Run time: 105 min.
Price: £2.90

Review Arrowhead [1953] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Paramount:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Cowboy [1958]
Actors & Directors
  • Jack Lemmon
  • Glenn Ford
  • Delmer Daves
  • Anna Kashfi
  • Dick York
  • Brian Donlevy
Release date: 2002-05-27
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.75

Review Cowboy [1958] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Cowboy is both a sturdy Delmer Daves picture-his third with Glenn Ford, following Jubal and 3:10 to Yuma-and also one of the most offbeat Westerns ever. It must be the most true to form too, with Frank Harris's memoirs as the source and a picaresque screenplay by Edmund H. North and Dalton Trumbo (a blacklistee, credited only posthumously). There's a pileup of oddities and complications at the outset, with Chicago hotel clerk Harris (Jack Lemmon) already in mid-romance with a daughter of the Mexican aristocracy (Anna Kashfi-Mrs Marlon Brando at the time), and Texas cattleman Tom Reese (Ford) storming in to commandeer an entire floor of the hotel for him and his drovers so they can party 'till, well, the cows come home. Partying is curtailed when Reese loses big at cards; Harris bails him out with his savings, and Reese finds he's taken on not only an unwanted partner but a tenderfoot besides. Soon everyone is headed south. Cowboy merits its bedrock title. This is a rare Western in which the job of breaking horses, trail herding, and so on, figures as a dynamic aspect of the storytelling. The film also has a blunt and original way of looking at death, not as a genre convention but as something abrupt, ungainly, and often absurd, in both senses of the word. (This applies equally to men and cattle, by the way. [+]
) The camerawork is trim, angular, and somehow precarious, and the jagged editing hustles the very eventful proceedings to a close in barely an hour and a half. Saddle up. -Richard T. Jameson, Amazon. com.

Review Universal Pictures UK / No Name On The Bullet
Actors & Directors
  • Warren Stevens
  • Joan Evans
  • Virginia Grey
  • Charles Drake
  • Audie Murphy
  • Jack Arnold
Release date: 2006-01-02
Run time: 74 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.59

Review No Name On The Bullet / Universal Pictures UK:


Review Universal Studios / When the Daltons Rode [1940] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • George Bancroft
  • Randolph Scott
  • Broderick Crawford
  • Kay Francis
  • George Marshall
  • Brian Donlevy
Release date: 2004-06-01
Run time: 81 min.
Price: £4.25

Review When the Daltons Rode [1940] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Universal Studios:


Review Timeless Media / Alexander the Great [1964]
Actors & Directors
  • William Shatner
  • John Cassavetes
  • Joseph Cotten
  • Phil Karlson
Release date: 2006-05-08
Run time: 90 min.
Price: £0.82

Review Alexander the Great [1964] / Timeless Media:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Desert Rats [1953]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Wise
  • James Mason
  • Robert Newton
  • Richard Burton
Release date: 2005-07-04
Run time: 84 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.04

Review The Desert Rats [1953] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Warner Home Video / Cimarron [1960] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Edgar Buchanan
  • George Brenlin
  • John Cason
  • Anthony Mann
  • Anne Baxter
  • Royal Dano
Release date: 2008-08-26
Run time: 147 min.
Creator: Franz Waxman
Price: £3.73

Review Cimarron [1960] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Uncommon Valour Dvd [1983]
Actors & Directors
  • Fred Ward
  • Tim Thomerson
  • Ted Kotcheff
  • Robert Stack
  • Gene Hackman
  • Randall Cobb
Release date: 2002-09-23
Run time: 100 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.74

Review Uncommon Valour Dvd [1983] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Models & Brands:
Best Man [1964], Seminole [1953] [1983], Rough Riders Triple Feature 1 [1941], The Wild Bunch [Blu-ray] [1970] [US Import], Wanted: Dead or Alive: Season One (REGION 1) (NTSC), These Thousand Hills [1959] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Hell In The Pacific [1969], Last Train From Gun Hill [1959], John Wayne - Serial Thriller [1932], The Lone Ranger And The Lost City Of Gold [1958], None But the Brave [1965] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Far Horizons [1955] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Arrowhead [1953] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Cowboy [1958], No Name On The Bullet, When the Daltons Rode [1940] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Alexander the Great [1964], The Desert Rats [1953], Cimarron [1960] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Uncommon Valour Dvd [1983]

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